Commands Guide - Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord - How to use ARCHER & INFANTRY Tactics Tips!

so I thought I would do a mountain blade to banner Lord series where we go over how you can command your army now starting out we're going to be going over specifically infantry and also archers and I'll be telling you how you can use them to beat literally anyone even armies twice your size and also give you a few examples of this and talk you through those different battles and we are doing this obviously on realistic difficulty everything's unrealistic and the combat AI difficulty is challenging so I can show you that this is very much doable if you can command your army in a tactical way I will be doing future videos about cavalry and mounted Archer cavalry as well but I kind of want to slowly increase the depth of this guide as we go on so if you're interested in those future guides go ahead and hit that subscribe button right now and press the bell icon and then YouTube will let you know when that feature video comes out but first off starting out let's just talk about the controls because there's probably a lot of beginners watching this who don't understand how mount a blade controls work when you're commanding your army as you can see here we have all of our infantry that's currently in our party we can choose what formation number it's in and then we can command this formation separately of other formations if we want to so you guys can see my shield infantry is currently formation one so whenever I press the number one key on my keyboard I'm going to be commanding all of my shield infantry and then here I have my archers and you can see they're on formation too so I know that I can separately command my infantry and my arches so as soon as you spawned onto the battlefield you're going to want to look around for a mountain that is very steep and you can put your troops on so this is a bit of a hill and I'll just use this as an example but what we're then going to want to do is press number two as you can see I now have my archers highlighted so I can command them to move around like so if I also click in one spot so like here for example you can see the little flags of where they're all going to be standing I'm want to drag this flag out to the right and then as you can see they're going to go into a long line now this tutorial will get more advanced as we go on so stay tuned make sure but make sure guys you always drag from left to right because if you drag from right to left as you guys can see they're all going to be facing the wrong direction this is an issue when you have like a shield wall for example like with the infantry with archers they'll still turn around but you're kind of making life pretty hard for them so always drag from left to right like so by holding down your left click the next thing you're going to want to do is put them in a formation so currently you can see our archers are in a huddle so we're gonna select our archers by pressing number two and then on the top left you can see if I press F free I can then choose their formation currently they are in a line formation which is like the default formation of everyone I would like my archers to be in loose formation all the time though so at the start of every battle I always press F free so they go into that formation essentially all we've done is we've pressed number two to select our archers and then we've pressed F 3 F 3 and that's all we did it was that simple now these archers are in loose formation every single person can see and shoot at the enemy if they were in a tight formation the people in the back wouldn't be shooting any arrows which mean you know they would be useless they wouldn't be doing any damage so always make sure your archers are in a loose formation on top of a hill somewhere and if you can see some people aren't shooting you can just go ahead and right click and drag and you can spread your lines even thinner so you have a super narrow line of archers and all these guys are going to be able to shoot the enemy and if you just click now you can move them all forward or you can move them all backwards like so and that is essentially all we need to know about commanding our archers at the moment the next thing you're going to want to do is position your archers around the middle of the hill so enemies are gonna have to charge up to meet now currently our infantry are not doing anything so now we're gonna come on then and we're gonna tell them to come behind the arches like so just in a long line like that now the reason we don't stand them in front of the arches is so especially if any cavalry chargers or infantry there's none of our own men are blocking the artists from firing so you're always going to want to position your infantry behind your arches unless you are on a very steep hill in which case you can put the infantry at the bottom of the hill however if you put them at the bottom of the hill and there's a bit of a distance between them and your arches you may find that you get cavalry charged because cavalry always aims for your arches so it's actually usually better to tell our infantry to sit behind our archers in it so they can respond to any attacks or oncoming enemies what I then do is I press f3 to change their formation and then I press f2 to put them in a shield wall formation now essentially what this does is is my archers are going to be shooting the enemies as they come towards us and the enemy archers are going to be trying to shoot us as well so all of my infantry are now defended behind their shields yes some of my own archers will take some damage but it doesn't really matter too much to be honest because they're trying to shoot the enemy back as well and it's better they have full vision and this is essentially going to be my setup of every single battle that I use my archers and infantry together and then as soon as the enemies come close what I will then do is I'll get my infantry like so and I will tell them to move forward and we can tell them if we like to move forward in a line to truly defend our archers from oncoming attacks and because arches are on a hill they're still going to be shooting over their heads at the enemy and when the enemies get close we can just press f1 command them to charge with f3 like so and they will go and attack the enemy but you don't want them running off into the distance and abandoning your arches because otherwise your arches will just be you know running around like headless chickens and doing no damage so your infantry are there to support the arches and now I'm gonna be explaining how this actually works in a battle scenario so let's jump into a actual battle with my army of ninety one versus two hundred and three soldiers and I'm going to be showing you how you can still win against nadya a liter of the western empire as you can see we are well outnumbered here but I kind of just want to demonstrate I'll be showing you guys four different examples with varying different troops but the first thing you need to do when you spawn is look around for a steep hill or a tree line to position your men on or within command your archers specifically by pressing number two on your keyboard and then press f3 f3 to put them in a loose formation on top of a hill the steeper the better you want to make sure bet in a thin line across the hill so each man actually has visibility of the enemy then command your infantry to stand behind them in a shield wall by pressing number one to come on them and then f3 for formation and F 2 to select shield wall this will stop them getting hammered by the enemy arches and allow them to all be well and healthy so they can provide a counter charge as soon as the enemy closes in towards us you can press the Alt key on your keyboard to highlight where the enemy is to make sure they're not flanking me now just sit here and let your archers rain down death upon your enemy as they advance to lower them around and notice that if you are outnumbered like this the enemy AI will always attack you so you don't need to come towards that just wait until the enemy infantry comes close to you before you allow your warriors to charge down the hill towards them you can see on this hill my archers have full visibility even though they can no longer fire through my wall of troops they can still fire over the head the enemy morale will be low at this point and as you can see that infantry is going to start running away from my warriors the enemy's cavalry however is distracting my archers and proving to be a bit of a nuisance this is to be expected though it's more important however that your archers remain in loose formation instead of skirmishing around away from the enemy cavalry because otherwise they'll be doing less damage at this point I am regrouping my infantry and telling them to clean up I don't really want my infantry charging after retreating enemies though since all my archers would then probably die and be very vulnerable to attack as you can see this was enough to absolutely destroy the enemy army please note though that I'm using seasoned well armored warriors for this example but I will be moving on to lesser novice troops later on so don't worry but as you can see we only lost five men and four were wounded in comparison to the enemy army which lost hundreds and this is unrealistic difficulty and that is simply the power of this tactic in this next example it's quite funny really we have the power of AD River whenever you have a river or a lake like this you can just position your archers in loose formation along the banks in a very long line to literally destroy anybody trying to cross the river and an infantry are pull more any infantry are more than likely to retreat in sort of face this absolute killing field we will have a key part infantry in reserve once again in a shield or formation behind archers as you can see the enemy Army is making its way across the river and they are getting absolutely stroyed they just have to walk so slowly through that water they really can't do anything about it now one option you have and I'm going to show you guys this as an example is you can tell your archers to advance and then essentially they will just maintain firing range between themselves and the enemy same of you tell them to fall back they will do so prioritizing falling back all the time however what I've realized is that they spend more time running around and skirmishing than actually doing damage so it's actually a lot more effective to just keep them in a loose formation and also if you keep your cavalry in your shield wool and any enemy cavalry charge you they will just get absolutely obliterated the kids you know the thick line of your three-man shield will should slow down their horses and we can see at the back here our archers are running around in the distance skirmishing because that's what I told them to do by advancing and falling back and then I'm just doing no damage but this is still a good method of keeping your archers safe especially since we are using fian archers and they have the one of the highest athletic skill in the game of 220 I believe which means they can run away from pretty much everyone and shoot them when they gain the ability to do so so what you'll find is that you'll keep your archers safe and they'll be able to run rings around the enemy usually this can be quite a good tactic if you have an elite watch unit however as I'll show you in a moment it doesn't work with the lesser Archer units that aren't very well armored because they'll be so vulnerable to cavalry and melee units who overrun it so as you guys can see the enemies are treating across the river and they're just getting absolutely slaughtered now I'm going to be showing you an example against the exact same army but using less experienced soldiers who don't have as much armor and therefore they will be more vulnerable to so this next example is what happens if you tell your archers to skirmish by advancing or retreating but they have a low athletic skill now we're against the exact same army here we just have less troops and the main issue with this method is that if you're not using archers with a high athletic skill the enemy's army will soon catch shot now what you're gonna notice is that my archers while they're falling back and skirmishing are going to be doing a lot a lot less damage than if they just stood there and shot at the enemy and I'm keeping my warriors behind the archers so the archers still have visibility and can take their potshots while falling back so you're basically losing a lot of ground using this method because of your archers bad athletic skill the enemy army is still gonna cast a lot before they've done enough damage that your worries can then go in in charge so this method is fantastic if you have a big army that can actually utilize it however because the enemy army outnumbers us by double it's just not a method that works as well as you know standing on the spot doing as much damage as possible to lower the enemy's morale and then charging in to destroy them around making them retreat so I'm making a last stand now on the hill and we haven't killed enough of the enemy army that you know we're actually going to be able to win this the enemy Army's infantry is pushing through my infantry and now they're attacking my archers and there's not really anything I can do to recover from this now so I just wanted to show you how much this tactic can really fail what I'm going to show you after this is going back to my original tactic of standing my ground in the spot and lower lowering the enemy's morale and then charging them after we've done enough damage and I'll show you with the exact same forces against the exact same army how much better that tactic works and once again we're on realistic difficulty here you can see we're getting demolished you know we did a lot less damage to the enemy we still did a lot of damage but you know we died and we lost the battle so in my books that isn't very good so this is the exact same army that this time I'm going to turn around I'm going to get up this hill that exists right at the back of the map because I really want to make it as hard as possible for any cavalry to get a decent charge off on me and I want to get on high ground for my infantry to charge down towards the enemy and I'm just gonna put my Sturge and shield warriors behind my hunters and just hope for the best now as the army advances over the plain fairway I have got three followers and I just told them to do their own thing so which waiting for the enemy army to come into range here and you'll see the kill feed start to light up as they attack making sure my warriors are not in the way of my archers and I want like a nice even rule of shield warriors so when I do do that counter charge I can kind of make a wall of defense my archers to carry on laying out the damage so you can see here we're starting to get a few kills they're coming in quite quickly now as the enemy progresses towards us they're charging up a gentle Hill and I'm gonna now charge in my infantry towards the enemy and I'm going to tell them to get you know right across the enemy lines and just make a defensive show before telling mr. Josh some of our archers have gone into battle I'm going to tell the rest to stand there and just you know carry on taking potshots where they can add the enemy infantry but you can see some of the enemy infantry on the right they're already whistle tweeting and I'm gonna have to start doing some work here and taking out that enemy cavalry to keep my arches alive my warriors are doing a good job at wiping out the infantry because they had such low morale many of them retreated because of the damage that my archers did because their archers my archers for standing still so they could do that damage and now my warriors are able to you know finish off those enemy infantries and then run towards the enemy archers though many have died in the process so what I have essentially left is my archers against the enemy cavalry so I'm just helping my archers clean up the cavalry though they are doing a lot of the damage themselves I'm just staying back from the enemy archers I know the enemy has less archers than me but I can kind of run into them distract them a little bit but ideally not get here and just focus on killing an enemy cavalry but once again just avoiding the enemy cavalry pikes because they were taken out in one hit and of course if I can take out the enemy general that's going to really lower them or out by a chunk so I'm focusing on doing that as well myself if I have my own cavalry I'd be able to lead a lot more counter charges and in future episodes I will explain exactly how you can do that to great effect by kind of way to just talk about infantry and archers and you know how you can maximize your damage with that sort of combination as it is currently so as you guys can see the Empire currently still winning this battle with my low-end troops but you know we're taking out these cavalry guys and my archers are definitely strong enough to whittle them down still even enemy general back only remains now it's just getting destroyed by my archers I'm laying a couple of shots and her myself to make sure if she goes down but that's about it you can see that Empire's horses have been diminished and we have won this battle against the greater odds so you know it's very possible to do this technique even when the enemy army outnumbers you by double and still come across even with you know less experienced troops I sorted to show you that and you can see I've taken a lot more wounded men a lot more dead men in fact many of my warriors either dead or wounded only the archers actually survived from this battle we can see we can still took on their entire army and came out victorious and that's the power of this technique give the video a like if you enjoyed it guys I hope it was helpful it's obviously currently we're doing everything on realistic difficulty but I've had some people previously say that I'm actually doing on easy difficulty so to show you for sake of argument what easy difficulty looks like then we'll gather to charge in a moment as you can see I mean March is actually a lot more accurate I mean difficulty I'm gonna tell my men to charge in now we even need to like I wanted to see how long we could deliver light God the enemy inventory is already running away retreating there's just a few calves that the Empire has left yeah as you guys can see we have not lost a single person and they've lost 111 people and 45 are wounded and a lot of their army actually retreated which is quite fine but are you guys can't see you answer hey now you guys can see that most of the army actually retreated and that's why the difference playing on easy difficulty like it's just really easy now the last thing to mention is your warrior to Archer ratio now what I usually do is go six archers for every four warriors with shields so as you guys can see I've got 40 shield warriors and 60 archers that we just used there and I would usually go for more archers because they're all of your damage that you're going to be doing whereas the only point of the shield wall is to protect your arches and let them keep on doing damage you also find the archers a lot easier to level than the shield warriors because the shield warriors are going to be the guys that die most of the time maximum in my opinion go for 70 archers to 30 shield warriors and you probably find you can deal with most threats before they can actually reach you by using that combination however when you start to like fight people with cavalry and other things like that there are different techniques you can use and I'll talk about that in future videos so if you guys are interested in learning more about how to use your own cavalry how to defend from cavalry and so on and check out my other videos linked in the description below but I just want to say thanks so much for watching thanks to the likes on the video and I really do hope you found this helpful this little Anna Lord guide video and if you want to follow along for future videos just subscribe and press the bell icon then YouTube will let you know as soon as the next one comes out but thanks so much for watching guys I'll see you in the next video have a great day and good bye

Channel: ESO

Views: 136,034

Rating: 4.917902 out of 5

Keywords: bannerlord gameplay, bannerlord, bannerlord review, mount and blade 2 bannerlord, mount and blade 2 bannerlord gameplay, mount& blade 2: bannerlord, mount and blade 2, mount and blade 2 gameplay, mount and blade 2 review, mount and blade 2 tips, bannerlord tips, playthrough, video game, guide, unit guide, units, troops, army, best units, best army, best faction, commands, archer, best archer, infantry, best, how to, bannerlord guide, mount & blade II: bannerlord, command, formation, tips

Id: VkkB9obMThg

Length: 21min 16sec (1276 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020