What I’ve always seen that works is closing in with archers and taking out a couple dozen. Once they start charging you can retreat your troops back to a section and let them roll into your troops. If you do end up blind sided by the reinforcements and can’t get your troops away fast enough you can retreat out of the battle and try again.
It happens as you are the attacker.
The AI tries to look for a suitable place to defend and sometimes they spot a good place behind map borders, but since they can't see them they just sit at the edge of the map.
To get them rolling to you, approach them with your archers and shoot. They should engage you if they start losing archer exchange.
Then you can back off yourself if needed.
Happens on highest difficulty too. Only time they don't do this is when they have the advantage. Not raw number advantage but the strength calculation that factors in tier level of troops. It's the colored bar when you talk to the enemy.
They may also do this if they have no commander. Troops without leadership I’ve noticed to extremely basic stuff like stand line formation at the spawn location or full charge
When they lose their commanders they'll charge in blindly much like your troops do when you go down and when they lose moral they'll break and retreat.
Target their commanders and high tier units and they'll eventually start charging your troops but the downside is that the enemy reinforcements can still come in from the side and pincer you.
I usually just ride through picking off their horse archers and flag bearers, often times they get frustrated and charge.... though maybe like someone else suggested, I took out their commander
Another trick that seems to work is stationing a shield wall that the edge of archer range. Sometimes they charge after running out of arrows
If you have an absolute beast of a PC you can get a lot of troops on the field at once. Otherwise, unless you're playing the Beta, you don't have any more control over troop movements than you do on console.
Be weaker than it. When you have the advantage the enemy will fight defensively. If the AI thinks it has the advantage it will be more aggressive.
In general, if you're having to chase down and corner it on the campaign map then on the battle map you will have to do the same.
This is because you are the overpowered aggressor at this point. They won't do this if they think they have the advantage. At some point, you're the big dog, and you always have the advantage.
There's no easy solution, but it's not an impossible to counter tactic. If you note where the enemy starts, you can set your infantry and archers watching their spawn point, and then use cavalry charges (not putting them on charge, telling them to charge across enemy positions on the field), and horse archers (again, not in their normal manner since they'll get caught up with an enemy that's positioned on the edge of the play field, instead put them in firing range and leave them stationary until the enemy starts moving). If they maintain position they'll take casualties and start getting reinforced, for those reinforcements the standing order will be to walk to the formation, which will leave them vulnerable to the already positioned archers. If the enemy switches to charge (which they absolutely will), then you can use the cavalry and horse archers to harry their advance while your infantry slowly falls back in shield wall formation with the archers leapfrogging backwards to support them during the fallback. Once you're safely on your half the field you'll have the numbers advantage and have baited them into the kind of costly charge you got accustomed to abusing when you were the little guy.
And yes, it is irritating, but the fact that once you are cruising around with 400 top tier noble cavalry at your back pretty much everything folds without a real battle, even 900-1000 troop armies.
What I’ve always seen that works is closing in with archers and taking out a couple dozen. Once they start charging you can retreat your troops back to a section and let them roll into your troops. If you do end up blind sided by the reinforcements and can’t get your troops away fast enough you can retreat out of the battle and try again.
It happens as you are the attacker. The AI tries to look for a suitable place to defend and sometimes they spot a good place behind map borders, but since they can't see them they just sit at the edge of the map. To get them rolling to you, approach them with your archers and shoot. They should engage you if they start losing archer exchange. Then you can back off yourself if needed.
Happens on highest difficulty too. Only time they don't do this is when they have the advantage. Not raw number advantage but the strength calculation that factors in tier level of troops. It's the colored bar when you talk to the enemy.
They may also do this if they have no commander. Troops without leadership I’ve noticed to extremely basic stuff like stand line formation at the spawn location or full charge
When they lose their commanders they'll charge in blindly much like your troops do when you go down and when they lose moral they'll break and retreat. Target their commanders and high tier units and they'll eventually start charging your troops but the downside is that the enemy reinforcements can still come in from the side and pincer you.
I usually just ride through picking off their horse archers and flag bearers, often times they get frustrated and charge.... though maybe like someone else suggested, I took out their commander Another trick that seems to work is stationing a shield wall that the edge of archer range. Sometimes they charge after running out of arrows
It matters a LOT if you're playing on console. As someone who also plays on console, I can testify to that.
How so? Do the troops behave differently on console?
Check out PC videos of larger battles. Never mind the mods, I would be happy for more strategic and tactical control of my troops.
If you have an absolute beast of a PC you can get a lot of troops on the field at once. Otherwise, unless you're playing the Beta, you don't have any more control over troop movements than you do on console.
Be weaker than it. When you have the advantage the enemy will fight defensively. If the AI thinks it has the advantage it will be more aggressive. In general, if you're having to chase down and corner it on the campaign map then on the battle map you will have to do the same.
This is because you are the overpowered aggressor at this point. They won't do this if they think they have the advantage. At some point, you're the big dog, and you always have the advantage. There's no easy solution, but it's not an impossible to counter tactic. If you note where the enemy starts, you can set your infantry and archers watching their spawn point, and then use cavalry charges (not putting them on charge, telling them to charge across enemy positions on the field), and horse archers (again, not in their normal manner since they'll get caught up with an enemy that's positioned on the edge of the play field, instead put them in firing range and leave them stationary until the enemy starts moving). If they maintain position they'll take casualties and start getting reinforced, for those reinforcements the standing order will be to walk to the formation, which will leave them vulnerable to the already positioned archers. If the enemy switches to charge (which they absolutely will), then you can use the cavalry and horse archers to harry their advance while your infantry slowly falls back in shield wall formation with the archers leapfrogging backwards to support them during the fallback. Once you're safely on your half the field you'll have the numbers advantage and have baited them into the kind of costly charge you got accustomed to abusing when you were the little guy. And yes, it is irritating, but the fact that once you are cruising around with 400 top tier noble cavalry at your back pretty much everything folds without a real battle, even 900-1000 troop armies.