Light Infantry... what the ****

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
Two words, two awesome words that really show the potential of a mass surround strategy:

MASS FLIGHT

That high-level spell was designed for the horde-mentality player, I swear Every single enemy unit that can be surrounded will be surrounded each round, so long as you have enough troops.

By the time you have Mass Flight you can expect to see Storm. Plus, when this tactic works it works better on heavier units, not lighter or missile units.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Spacepain:
Light infantry serve the core and bulk of a persons army.

Their primary purpose is to die so that other more expensive units don't die. And in turn can focus on hitting while not being hit back.

Also, secondary, they serve to finish games where encumberane would force most other units to stop fighting.

The core of someone's army? Curious, is this your multiplayer experience?

The crux of the LI problem is that they cost almost as much as good HI, and die much faster, which makes using them as a shield pointless.

The effect of encumberance in a LI vs HI fight is minor, as typically by the time a give HI is tired, it's already killed several LI.

[Wendigo]

I use always a good amount of LI huskarls when playing Vanheim & Utgard Jotun.

With Vanheim I use them both for early expansion, and as a quick response force once the game advances thanks to their strategic move of 2: huskarls & mages can quickly be re-located, while the slower HI follow up at a slower pace.
Default Vanheim can also easily pull many trooper buffs that allow the humble huskarls to stand up on equal terms vs much heavier troops.

Same issue with Utgard-Jotun: the huskarls help compensate for the giant infantry troop density issues (one extra body+ one extra attack per square), and unlike HI they can keep up with the giant's movement rate.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Thilock_Dominus:
I would not say light Infantry sux. Ex. C'tis light Infantry armed with spear, javalin and shield can be quiet useful. An unit with 30 or more with light infantry can block off a heavy cavalry when its charging.
The light infantry can take out the heavy infantry if it gets its chance to hurling the javalins, the same goes against archers.
That's my experience with C'tis light infantry plus they are cheap

Javelins are quite nice, if you can manage to micromanage them so that your Javeliners can repeatedly target opposing HI while a small band of your HI pins opposing HI and distracts archers.

This strategy is very easy to disrupt however, and only really works against independents. Still, this alone saves Pangaea from completely sucking.

[Jondifool]

Well as the statements as I read them are that light inf isn't totally useless, but neither any particular good, it raises some other questions ( at least for me)

first
Is light infantery to expensive? In gold cost? should they be cheaper or recive a upkeep discount, to be more used/usefull or are the avarage 10 gp a fair price for a fooder unit?

Second. I am not experienced enough to know if there low encumbrance/fatique adds up something significant usefull in more than rare conditions. Does it and is this just situational or can you actual base a strategy around it?
I have found it difficult enough to force the AI to cast spells like curse of stones, just to learn more about fatique

so can you base a strategy around Light Infantery( besides flagellants) and if so how ?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
I use always a good amount of LI huskarls when playing Vanheim & Utgard Jotun.

With Vanheim I use them both for early expansion, and as a quick response force once the game advances thanks to their strategic move of 2: huskarls & mages can quickly be re-located, while the slower HI follow up at a slower pace.
Default Vanheim can also easily pull many trooper buffs that allow the humble huskarls to stand up on equal terms vs much heavier troops.

Same issue with Utgard-Jotun: the huskarls help compensate for the giant infantry troop density issues (one extra body+ one extra attack per square), and unlike HI they can keep up with the giant's movement rate.

Good point about the strategic move; many of my thoughts are holdovers from Dom 1, and noticbly the HI that I have been using is strategic move 2.

I'd assumed that Huskarls were move-1 for some reason. They're as well equipped as LI comes, especially considering that Hirdman are IMHO subpar HI.

Do you find the (strat-2) skinshifters usefull? They look weak to me, but I haven't tried them.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Jondifool:
Well as the statements as I read them are that light inf isn't totally useless, but neither any particular good, it raises some other questions ( at least for me)

first
Is light infantery to expensive? In gold cost? should they be cheaper or recive a upkeep discount, to be more used/usefull or are the avarage 10 gp a fair price for a fooder unit?

As near as I can tell unit cost is based entirely on a unit's stats, and Illwinter seems very reluctant to change this.

IMHO, rather than reducing their cost and making them better fodder, they should instead be improved in a manner similar to how they were used Historically.

For example, what if they were dispersed and so took fewer missile/spell casualties? What if they could fallback before contract, or fire for 2 rounds then backup? What if a victor's fleeing units didn't leave the province? etc.

Then they might be usefull in small numbers, which IMHO is about right.