Which Total War factions are your favorites?

[Darth Wong]

How do you do this? Attack them with archers on the field then withdraw when they come chasing at you or? I'm not sure what you mean by that as well, barbarian cavalry makes short work of archers and they are fast.

When you start a battle by attacking a besieging army, it will do one of two things:

1. It will remain in place.
2. It will reposition itself, usually off to one side.

I find that an attacking army almost always chooses option #2. When they move from their starting position to their finishing position, parts of their army often stray too close to the city walls, thus allowing strategically placed archers to pepper them with arrows (and arrows are much more effective when they hit enemy troops from the side and back, as opposed to their well-armoured front).

This is particularly important with horde armies, because they usually have one or two reinforcing armies, which will either move to join the target army or can be goaded to do so. Either way, they'll typically end up wandering around the walls of the city in order to link up with the other army, taking fire from the wall towers and your archers all the way.

Or do you do a sortie or something?

Actually leaving your city walls with foot archers is a bad idea. But you can sometimes use your cavalry to goad a second or third army into entering the field of battle rather than sitting there on the edge. When they do this, they will usually join the target army even if it's on the opposite side of the city. This means bonus kills for you, and a weakened enemy army. Every kill is worthwhile because otherwise, you are simply letting him besiege your city at no cost. If he's taking at least 10% to 20% casualties each turn (which can be easily done using these methods), then he can't really afford to wait forever to attack your city any more than you can wait forever under siege.

I have read that people have had Constantinople sacked and raped early game and the only reason they survived was they relied on the cities on Asia Minor and held on Antioch and fought back the Sassanids. I played the game on VH/VH and well, I have dared to fight the barbarians on the field once and lost 1/2 my field army in each of 2 battles. I destroyed the Huns largely by assasination and hunting down small bits of their armies. Was quite poised to annihiliate the Goths but their rampaging cavalry is really hard to deal with on the field even with Kilibani and Cataphrateoi and Scholari Palantini which I think fairs better against the Barbarians.

The best army against the barbarians is an army of Generals. Seriously, you put >10 Generals' bodyguards together as an all-cavalry army and you can massacre barbarian armies. Their footmen are generally weak, and their cavalry melts away before the onslaught of a dozen generals' bodyguard units. All you need is a few cities with Circus Maximus structures in order to build those generals. The nice thing is that they automatically replenish losses per turn too.

[NRS Guardian]

I use a similar tactic when defending my cities, but I almost always have my cavalry sally from one of the gates that doesn't have an army in front of it yet is still close. First they can usually lure portions of an army closer to the city as parts of their army redeploy to face towards your cavalry. Second when the army withdraws you can have the cavalry annihilate units weakened by your archers.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

@Darth Wong

Thanks for the interesting idea, though I avoid fighting sieges, preferring to destroy armies in the field rather than letting them march right up to the gates.

[The Dark]

Shogun: The "green" faction on the western island. Being far away means enough time to fight rebels and get a Legendary Swordsman event, allowing training of the no-dachi. Then it's about pinning with monks, flanking with no-dachi, and pursuing breakers with cavalry. My favorite was using 4 kensai and 24 battlefield ninja against a ~600-man army. I lost 2 ninja. 3 enemies escaped.

Medieval: The Byzantine Empire or the Italians. With the Italians, keep the Holy Roman Empire as an ally, steamroll the boot with an amphibious invasion, and build up trade routes. Some games I go the crusading route, usually against the Byzantines or the Egyptians, since they're the strongest crusade-eligible factions (IMO). Others I overthrow the Papacy and then wage war on "fellow Catholics."