[Viking Conquest] best way to deal with skirmishers?

So my general battle strategy in VC is to make a mixed shield wall of swords and spears. I try to hold a hill and provoke an attack up it or, if that's not possible, slowly march in tight formation to the enemy. I hold fire until in range then unleash a hail of javelins before the shield walls clash.

With this strategy I absolutely destroy Norse Saxon angle frisian and Briton armies.

But the Scots and especially the Irish are just savage. The irish armies will typically have as much as half of their army as skirmishers that will stretch out in a long line. And unlike the other armies who use arrows, they use javelins. When their shield walls hit mine gets absolutely devastated by javelins coming in from the sides. The Scots do the same thing with crossbows which isn't nearly as bad but still hurts.

What's the best strategy for stopping this? I've tried cavalry and it helps but they die so easily. Using my own skirmishers or archers they seem to lose out. The best strategy that I've found is to basically hide behind a hill and force them to come to the top so that they can be engaged in melee, but that's not always possible with the terrain.

Anybody have any good ideas?

Also note that this is on basically max difficulty, top combat AI, fast combat speed, full damage etc. Not "insane" damage though, just full.

Submitted October 28, 2017 at 11:16AM by prime_meridian http://ift.tt/2gJ7ZjV