Battlefield tactics and unit types
The most important and complex phase of Lionheart: Kings’ Crusade begins when you lead your armies into real-time battles. In this part of the strategy guide you will read some tips regarding unit formations and we’ll also share some ideas about how to use your archers, heavy infantry and knights in the battles.
Note: I demonstrate the tips in the screenshots and show the results. It was 4 archers, 3 heavy infantry and 3 light cavalry versus 4 archers and 8 infantry of varying types. -Chris
Horde formation is not only the most basic formation in the game, it is probably also the most important. If you march into the range of enemy archers in close formation, you can expect heavy casualties and sky-high replacement costs. It is best to keep your units mostly in horde formation and only change to a tighter formation just before you enter melee combat. Needless to say, you don’t want to fight archer duels in close formation either.
Archers can be the core unit of your army. They can annihilate the hostile light infantry as well as spearmen and they can also weaken the heavy infantry units enough to give an edge for your own melee units. More often than not, however, archers have to fight enemy archers first. In most cases the AI will surround the archers with other units and keep them together all the time, so you will have to deal with them first. After you successfully destroyed the enemy archers, your next targets will likely be spearmen since they can cause trouble for both your cavalry and heavy infantry. There is usually not enough time to kill the light infantry as well, but you don’t really have to worry too much about them anyway.
