You're Worst Victories

[Prussian to the Iron]

What are your worst victories/best defeats? an Example of a worst victory would be this occurence today:

Playing Stainless Steel, as Crown of Aragon (one of the Spanish factions) besiegeing a Moorish city, I was suddenly ganged up on by 3 moorish armies, with a combined strength of around 3500 vs my army of about 1200.

Obviously i was horribly slaughtered, but not before routing the enemy and retreateing my next-in-line prince.

so i took out 3 moorish armies, but only full of medium spearmen and completely depleting my high-tier army of heavy infantry.

a best defeat would be like Thermopylae. lost, but took out a hell of a lot of guys down with you.

ive also had sieges where i should have lost a max of 60 men and ended up losing a few hundred due to choke points.

[Beskar]

All my seige weapons misfired killing my high star general and half my army in the beginning.

However, I still won, all the loses to my side being caused by this malfunction.

[slashandburn]

2000 high-end troops in my first fight ever against the mongols, lost almost 75% of my infantry and all of my archers and cavalry including my 10 star barely 30 general.

[Khorak]

My best defeats are always to the Mongol Hordes; there's sometimes basically nothing you can do to stop three or four full stacks of unbreakable cheating bastards taking a settlement.

So obviously, you fill the place with longbowmen, ram stakes down at every avenue of approach, and stand in the courtyard firing at will until the bitter end. The piles of dead horses get so big that they somehow render the first couple rows of stakes useless, so remember to seriously overengineer your manipulation of utterly mental game mechanics. I hate the Mongols. I hate them with a passion. They're an arbitrarily awesome brick wall of horse and man operating in a way utterly anaethemic to the real Mongol Horde because the AI is so pants they can't actually do it right. It's an incomparible joy to me when I send over a Spy and watch the tattered, leaderless remnants of their stacks limp away from the now-rebel castle out in the bumhole of Russia that had zero use to me and couldn't even build anything better than the first level longbowman. It's somehow more satisfying than watching their irritating hordes begin an attack on a Huge city rammed full of Varangian Guard. Yeah, I've got the two handed weapon fix. I make sure the towers aren't manned before the ram gets to the gate; wouldn't want all those victims milling about outside now, would we.....

[vorius]

Playing as england, I was attacked by a Danish army and I had one stack as reinforcements. They had about 500 men and I had about 750. But I wasn't expecting their attack and was not organized, they attacked a small stack I had of a few longbowman and a swordsman. The other stack was almost all archers. The Danes had a well balanced group of infantry, archers and horsemen.

When battle started I had a nice monastary on a hill I thought I could make a good defense on while reinforcements arrive but the enemy started too close and my reinforcements too far so they stormed by little stack of defense and routed them and then ran around picking at my reinforcements who had no cover at all.

It was a mess. The whole minimap was littered with green and red arrows because guys were just running around like headless chickens all over.

I did manage to win mainly with my bodyguard cavalry and because the english archers are so fast on their feet, they just fire a few and run away while I micromanaged the bodyguards to mow down anything retreating or otherwise weak to cavalry.

I lost about 650 of my men but some came back due to being healed.

Ugh that was a nasty battle and a bad blunder

[PBI]

Had some pretty Pyrrhic victories against the Russians in Stainless Steel. Basically boiled down to having whole stacks of elite archers, foot knights and heavy cavalry ground down to almost nothing by small bands of insanely well-armoured, universally armour-piercing Russians. Additionally, I find that pretty much every siege battle against a substantial garrison in a decent fortification tends to be one of these if I don't have any decent artillery.

As for "best defeats", generally any battle where I make a significant dent on the Mongol hordes before being inevitably overwhelmed; like Khorak I have no shame in wheeling out whatever cheesy tactics I can muster against the Mongols. My absolute most successful defeat however, would have to be when I decided to go on a suicidal offensive with all my family members as Denmark, just because I was curious to see what happens when you lose a campaign. It turns out that it's actually pretty hard to get your generals killed by town militia and peasant archers, and since the bodyguards respawn between battles, you can fight off repeated small stacks of militia more or less indefinitely. I'd conquered most of the HRE before I finally managed to get them all killed.

[Braden]

Worse Victory.


Brittania campaign playing as Scotland. Faction leader and my main army attack a Norse army which as a unit of Ballista.

The opening stages and I'm moving my Faction leader to my right flank only for the enemy Ballista to oepn up and ON THE FIRST SHOT kill my King in flaming death!! :furious3: :dizzy2:

FIRST SHOT of the battle...King dead...Just him mind, not any of his bodyguard. :oops:

So it seems artillery are "General-Seekers" just like in M:TW

[_Tristan_]

See that (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=82206) thread

[oz_wwjd]

My best defeats are always to the Mongol Hordes; there's sometimes basically nothing you can do to stop three or four full stacks of unbreakable cheating bastards taking a settlement.

Actually I've had some truly epic defeats vs the Timurids,beating 3 stacks of those elephants artillery things when they seem unfased by the fact that every archer I have has been spamming with them with mass fire arrows in there appraoch to the gaping holes in my walls. Not even the might of a massed horde of Varangian Guard seems to stop them for stamping everything underfoot,literally,where I was able to actually stop 3 stacks of the Mongols with a cityfull of Varangian Guard,but only until the next 4 stacks attacked..

[Zild]

I was besiging Venice (the faction) in Venice (the city), when they sent a releiving relieving supporting army comprising largely of Pavise Crossbowmen. I had a nice collection of artillery, and enough foot and horse to defeat both armies, even if my massed Mercenary Crossbows were a little superfluous.

I was a little surprised when the battle map contained not the venice cityscape, but rather a nearby bridge, but I quickly realised what had happened - it was an attack on me rather than a sally from the city. No problem, this only strengthens my position.

Thus my army stood waiting (or firing, in the case of the artillery and missiles) as the foolish garrison sat in range on the other side of the bridge, waiting for reinforcements. Reinforcements which were still a long way off, for I could not see them.

As I rained death down upon my foes, I noticed that one or two of my men were being hit. You just can't get the staff for ballistae these days, I though. It took perhaps a minute more to realise that my friendly-fire casualites were becoming increasingly severe, all the while wondering where the enemy reinforcements were...

Imagine my horror, whilst I pulled the camera back just a little further, as I spotted the massed reinforcements of my enemy unleashing hundreds of bolts at a time into the back of my army!

I had read the map wrong and had not realised that they were approaching me from behind. My bridge was useless, my army facing the wrong way and already severely softened up, and the bulk of my cavalry was off on the other side of the field chasing the routing garrison troops.

I won the day - and the city - but at the expense of many of my most experienced men. I now see Venetian (the city) operations in a whole new light...

[Diamondeye]

Best defeat must be as the Milanese. Their Crossbow militia with pavise shields are so difficult for the AI to handle when they stop their entire army to use their archers ammo. I massacred a good thousand men with my three hundred militias and a couple of ballistae. Among the thousand fallen enemies were several generals.

After the defeat, I sent a diplomat to them (Germans) and they gave me Bologna for peace. That'll teach 'em.

[sbroadbent]

Worst Victory

Can't remember which faction I was, but I had a small garrison in Venice. The Sicilians came and sieged. It was a much larger force and I figured I was screwed. I can't remember if they waited to attack as they had catapults, before they had a chance to attack, I figured I'd lose the battle, and rather than handing over a decent city, I sacked all sackable buildings, including the church (which the pope didn't like, and of which I realized I should've just let it stay standing...)

Then the unthinkable happened. They attacked, I managed to rout their forces, and won the battle. The battle is over, I'm left with a devastated city. Ended up selling or giving Venice away to someone after that ;)

[Zild]

Ouch!

At the moment, I'm thinking any battle where I can destroy the Mongol's damnable Rocket Launchers so that they cannot obliterate my next's city's walls would constitute a Best Defeat!