The King of England

[Demon of Light]

http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin....;t=9348

I'm posting because of what I said in the above thread but I'm getting curious about Apache.

ArseClown: Remember what I said? It's THIS thread.

[Cazbol]

I'm bumping this as it's back on track. This should probably be moved the throne room.

[Cazbol]

1318
It is the year in which I, Henry II, have become the king of England at the age of 19. My ancestors have conquered most of Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. I see it as my task to complete this conquest. Our current and future opponents are:
- the Vatican who hold all of the Italian peninsula with reasonably strong forces.
- the Italians who hold Corsica and Sardinia with a very large number of high quality troops.
- the Sicilians who hold Malta with a large number of royal knights.
- the Byzantines who hold Crimea and Crete. The force on Crete is weak but the Crimean force is formidable.
- the people of Novgorod hold two provinces on the steppes with fair strength. There is a state of war with Novgorod.
- the Mongols similarly hold two provinces but are greatly weakened with little heavy cavalry left. A small number of Mongols is under siege in Muscovy.
- the rebels control 7 provinces, usually with large but old fashioned forces. Rebel forces in Livonia are however failry modern and include a large number of Halberdiers which could cause serious problems. English troops are under siege in 4 of these 7 rebel provinces.
I've taken over vast forces but most of them are totally outdated, with ordinary spearmen and urban militias forming an alarmingly large part. There are also troops of better quality but my main concern is the limited number of quality cavalry. Our troops are strangely evenly distributed across the lands.

Based on the current situation I've drawn up a long term strategy.
Year 1: Lift all sieges and conquer all rebel provinces. Take Kiev from the Mongols and charge the castle in Muscovy.
Year 2. Take the last Mongol and Novgorod lands.
After that we can turn on the Byzantines without fear of excommunication. Next it'll be the Sicilians' turn as we should be able to finish them before the pope can intervene. The Italians will be second from last and seem to pose the greatest challenge, due to the size and quality of their forces defending only two islands. I'll save the Vatican for last.

..........

Having carried out the first phase of my plan I can only claim partial succes.
Province: Sweden
English: 3.676 troops, 293 lost
Rebels: 2.600 troops, 1.066 lost, 578 captured
Outcome: Victory
This was an easy and uneventful battle where the rebels never stood a chance.

Province: Muscovy
English: ca. 800 troops, no losses
Mongols: 7 steppe cavalry, 7 losses
Outcome: Victory
Impressively our artillery slaugtered all the defenders without any of our troops having to get within range of the castle defences.

Province: Livonia
English: 9.691 troops, 474 losses
Rebels: 2.331 troops, 1.293 lost, 478 captured.
Outcome: Victory
An overkill, is what describes this engagement best. The rebel force of halberdiers really had me worried so I kept on adding to the invasion force without realising I had assembled almost 10.000 tropps. As it turned out I only needed a few units of reinforcements. The easy victory was mainly due to our 9 star general.

Province: Ryazan
English: 1.577 troops, 134 losses
Rebels: 61 troops, 59 lost, 2 captured
Outcome: Victory
The rebels fielded half a unit of Mongol heavy cavalry and a full unit of Mongol horse archers. My force mostly consisted of spearmen, but with two units of Spanish Jinettes and two of Turcopoles. Understandably, we lost many a spearman to the mongol troops whose job it was to hold them back while the jinettes and turcopols killed them with javelins and arrows.

We attacked the Mongols in Kiev with superior numbers and the Mongols retreated to Pereyaslavl.

Province: Pomerania
English: 2.540 troops, 265 losses
Rebels: 2.420 troops, 1.004 lost, 762 captured
Outcome: Victory
As uneventful as Sweden.

Rebels in Silesia retreated without a fight.

Province: Bohemia
English: 2.514 troops, 1.334 losses
Rebels: 2.520 troops, 1804 lost, 369 captured.
Outcome: Victory
This was a near disaster. The rebels were very dispersed on the field and we allowed our forces to disperse too. Our army consisted almost solely of spearmen and some urban militia. Before long the rebels had managed to kill our inexperienced general and our dispersed troops quickly lost heart. Most of them managed to rally and regroup after which they went after the remaining rebels who by now were mostly peasants. Strangely enough our men routed again just after engaging the peasantry and fled the field for good this time. Our last reinforcements, some 8 or 9 units formed a two line formation and were just barely able to rout the remaining rebels, thanks mostly to the fact that they were still dispersed after chasing down our fleeing troops.

Province: Franconia
English: 2.130 troops, 1.388 lost, 543 captured
Rebels: 1.820 troops, 239 losses
Outcome: Defeat
This was a total disaster, as can be seen from the bodycount. Rarely has a commander lost so decisively. In hindsight, it was unwise to go ahead with the attack. I had mainly focused on assembling a large invasion force from the neighbouring provinces but had failed to pay proper attention to unit quality. My troops were therefore mainly spearmen with limited urban militia back-up. No proper generals had been available either. The rebel army consisted of feudal sergeants, hobilars and some archers. We had to engage them uphill and they just ran us down.

The loss in Franconia has dire consequences. The retreating and fleeing rebels from Silesia and Bohemia have now made it to safety in Franconia, where the rebels number 6.772 men.

[Cazbol]

1319:
Continuing my plan, I decided to attack the rebels and the Novgorod forces. It was however decided to postpone the final battle with the Mongols and focus our troops in the east on the Russians.

.........

Our attack on Smolensk resulted in a Russian retreat to the castle.

Province: Chernigov
English: 6.271 troops, 658 losses
Russians: 1.609 troops, 1.194 lost, 194 captured
Outcome: Victory
I had managed to assemble some decent cavalry units for this battle, which made me optimistic. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Russians could find a defensive position in a large forest where they placed many units of foot knights. We had limited success in drawing them out and ended up sending the infantry into the forest where they managed to rout the foot knights. Pursuing them out of the forest our infantry were however overrun by the Novgorod cavalry, who in turn were stopped by our cavalry on the other side of the woods. After much manouvering and advances back and forth they finally gave in and fled.

Province: Franconia
English: 9.782 troops, 2.739 losses
Rebels: 6.772 troops, 4.394 lost, 443 captured
Outcome: Victory
Despite the unavailability of an experienced general I decided to attack the rebel stronghold of Franconia. I could muster almost ten thousand troops, which should have been yet another overkill but it turned out to be quite a difficult battle. Our 1 star general faced a 4 star general who was a peasant, to add insult to injury. We had some initial succes in pressing them back but once their reinforcements arrived they all turned out to be hobilars. These hobilars overran our troops. It was painful to watch my full units of royal knights lose badly in a 1 on 1 versus hobilars, again and again. They also ran down our chivalric sergeants. While my men fled I assembled my reinforcements. These were also routed by the hobilars but the constant stream of reinforcements finally wore the riders down so I could regroup. Sadly my reinforcements quickly yielded little but spearmen which resulted in much difficulty, even against the low level rebel units that were now arriving . The rebel archers were also hard to counter due to exhaustion among our troops and severe lack of our own archers. Persistance paid in the end and the sheer weight of numbers finally won the battle. We still had about 70 units in reserves at the end of the battle.

I'm getting a reputation for going overboard when I assemble men for difficult fights. Twice in two years have I gathered af force af almost ten thousand men. Furthermore, I had sent even more troops to the border provinces around Franconia to strike next year if this attacked failed. The total number of the reserve attack force was.... well.... 19.791 man, not counting the survivors from this year's battle. Better safe than sorry. I think my military aides are giggling behind my back.

[Cazbol]

1320:
Seeing a that my father had made preperations for a crusade, I decide to make the Byzantine province of Crimea its target, which was understandably taken as a declaration of war. Sadly the crusade does not get much support, only 5 units sign up: 3 units of order foot soldiers, one unit of peasants and one of fanatics. These won't make that much a difference in taking the Crimea, but at least I can waltz the crusade over papal land reducing their forces before declaring war on them. This year's goals are the Mongols and the Byzantine island of Crete.

............

Province: Pereyaslavl
English: 5.792 troops, 622 losses
Mongols: 1.816 troops, 1.183 lost, 386 captured
Outcome: Victory
The Mongols only had about 4 or 5 units of heavy cavalry which suffered heavy losses from our longbows. The rest of their army wasn't much of threat. The Khan was captured and later executed so the Mongols have now been wiped out.

Province: Crete
English: 2.820 toops, 179 losses
Byzantines: 1.030 troops, 651 lost, 287 captured
Outcome: Victory
An uneventful bashing of inferior troops.

1321:
An uventful year in which we made do with manouvering our armies into position for future attacks. The besieged grand prince of Novgorod died without heirs so the Novgorod dynasty is no more.

1322:
Province: Crimea
English: 6.414 troops, 95 losses
Byzantines: 2.194 troops, 1.405 lost, 258 captured
Outcome: Victory
I had been woried about the 5 units of varangian guards and 5 units of kataphraktoi but that proved to be unecessary concern. The Byzantines defended at a river with two bridges. Simple baiting brought the Byzantines within range of my archers who wasted them. In the end the Byzantine general realised that attempting to defend the bridges was hopeless and retreated to new positions away from the bridges. We crossed the bridges and kept on firing at them until they attempted to charge us. That attempt was hopeless against our 8 star general. Any comers, whether it be varangian guards or kataphraktoi were quickly mauled by our chivalric sergeants and billmen. When the Byzantine emperor fell to the spears the rest of his men fled. An easy victory with minimal losses. The Byzantine empire has thus fallen.

1323:
The original plan was to conquer the Sicilians before the Italians. I have changed the order of conquest seeing that the Sicilians are allied with the Vatican. Furthermore the two Italians provinces have no from for castles or forts. Therefore, if I successfully take both provinces in the same year, the Italians will be destroyed before the pope can do anything about it.

To my great relief the Italians retreated from Corsica without a fight, which was most fortunate for they had many units of knights on Corsica while Sardinia is defended by lesser troops.

Province: Sardinia
English: 4.798 troops, 398 losses
Italians: 3.960 troops, 1.442 lost, 959 captured
Outcome: Victory
The only opponents that could pose a threat were 5 units of knights and one of halberdiers. Our arbalesters reduced their numbers considerably before the melee engagement. Once they broke there was no serious resistance.

The Italians retreating from Corsica were thus captured, including the Doge and his two princes. The Italians are therefore conquered and only the Sicilians and the Vatican remain.

[Demon of Light]

YAY England lives

[The Wizard]

Yes but it's written like the records of a mortuarium...

No offense Cazbol

Still nice tho...

[Cazbol]

Well in my day job I work a lot with statistics and dry reports.

There's no strategic danger, no threat of invasion, no need for diplomacy other than limiting the time of excommunication. For that reason my muse of inspiration has decided that she isn't needed and has left me to fend for myself with my report making skills.

My plan is to finish the remainder in three game years.

[Gregoshi]

Moved to the Throne Room forum.