Some things I learned recently about army composition

Mostly involving ranged units + meatshield.

I lost some games recently using bad combinations of units that I thought were good.

1. Against Portuguese organ guns + halb 1 v 1 I was Koreans and had been using war wagons in late castle age. I had relic advantage so I figured I'd add halbs to protect my wagons and then onagers and upgrade them as the gold came in. My opponent went organ guns and halbs. I lost badly. This was kind of unexpected because war wagons do decently against organ guns, and our halbs were the same.

Why did I lose?

War wagons are much worse against halbs than organ guns. I couldn't maintain any kind of meatshield at all so the halbs were just killing my precious war wagons and onagers and preventing me massing army.

A better option would have been onager and arbalest, despite the fact that arbalest lose to organ guns.

1. Against Mayan plumes and eagles. Same thing happened when I went champions and cav archers against Mayan plumes and eagles. Cav archers do ok against plumes, and champions beat eagles, but I still lost: plumes shred champions before they can kill the eagles but the cav archers can't attack the plumes with eagles in front. I should have used rams and handcannons

TL, DR: when using a meatshield, make sure it's resistant to whatever ranged units you're fighting otherwise there's no point.