What's the toughest battle situation you've faced(and won)?

[smooth_operator]

Every general must be versatile and ready to face different situations yet still maintain his cool and win. What's far by the most challenging battle you've fought? And how did you win? Videos would be very appreciated.
:no::help:

[Motep]

Hmmm....

I would have to say it was when I was defending the town of Thermon as the greeks in RTW against the mecedonians and their brutish allies. I had two undersized units of hoplites, one unit of archers, and two egenral units. They had two stacks, all told. (1.5 for the brutes, .5 for the macs)The mecdonians had a smaller army, so I boxed them in their on opening (only one ram) on one side of the city. When the brutes knocked in the other gate, I ate at them with my archers, and used hit and run tactics with my generals. Which is to say, I hit a flank, they would rout into their buddies, and I would retreat. That led them to my center. My hoplites were holding, miraculously, and through sheer effort of will I was able to cut the romans down to size. They led me around teh city, and my leading general was killed in the fray. My hoplites ran, and were slaughtered, but by that point they had lost enough men that I was able to pick them off with my cavalry and archer charges. I had like 23 men left at the end of the battle.

[TosaInu]

Tough question Lord Michael,

There have been quite some challenging ones, each with their own difficulties, both in single- and multiplayer. I recall a battle in STW that lasted nearly 90 minutes (not because of the lag). Most of the time was used to 'stare' at each other, the real fighting was over in a matter of minutes.

I also recall an online 1 vs 1 were both sides destroyed each others armies completely, except for a fistful of totally exhausted men.

A very difficult single player battle I fought was from a setup I edited myself. I lost it, I lost it and I lost it again. There were loads of strong enemies coming in from all sides and my army wasn't in a very good position. I wasn't new to the game then.

Finally I gave it another try and had to move away from my keyboard. I came back after a while, the battle was still running and I just had to clean up the last bits of enemies. Sometimes it's better to do nothing: a tactic that can be used in MP too (am not talking about camping and/or letting your allies suffer, but anvil tactics).

[Yoyoma1910]

The eternal struggle against the unnameable weight that lies at the center of man's heart.

[Beggarman]

This goes back to one of my early Greek Cities campaigns in Rome: total war. I was going up against the Macedonians, and I had a good sized army of hoplites(lots of militia hoplites in there) with almost no cavalry or supporting troops, just hoplites. Lots, and lots of hoplites. The Macedonian army out numbered me, and most importantly had about 8 units of those ever so annoying Macedonian Light Lancers. I was absolutely terrified by the battle's prospects. As my best friend watched, I formed a strange pentagon shaped defensive ring. This was about 2 years ago, so i'm sketchy on the details. But I basically ended up slaughtering the macedonian field army, and oppening the path to take Larissa and Thessalonika. Was alot of fun.

[Fisherking]

There I was surrounded by Mongols. About 9 stack of them!

I think I ran out the clock and lived...

[TosaInu]

~:) The one I described was with Mongols too. Loads of them: heavies and light cavalry.

You use the clock Fisherking?

[Mithrandir]

Toughest battle was one in MTW in the end game where both the AI and I had thousands of troops... it was tough because it became boring to after an hour or so... and then it lasted for several more hours I think before the whole field was cleaned of the pesky ai troops who kept hiding everywhere...

[Prince Cobra]

MTW/Late Byzantines. The battle was in Hungary. 16 units (arbalersts, spears, pronoiai, 1-2 units of Byz inf. and 2 mercenary billmen + 1 bribed unit of unexperienced chivalric men at arms who did not survive the battle) against two full stacks of Polish and Hungarians (allies). Many knights, several good units of chivalric men at arms. I wonder how I defend Hungary against such odds. I had 6 starred general, the two Kings were about 4. The battle was close to defeat but I managed to kill one of the Kings (the Hungarian)and rout his army. The Polish had a 5 valour unit of chivalric men at arms so it was very hard to kill them with my arrows. GAH! The billmen and the pronoiai saved the day. The pronoiai and the spears were almost decimated after the battle... And there was no more Hunagarians after the battle, too...

My main advantage was a small hill with a tiny forest which helped to reduce the threat of the knights. A heroic suicide mission of a Pronoiai unit that hit one of the reinforcements of the enemy and bought was the other key. And yes, billmen vs. knights worked just perfect. There was a single high valoured unit of pronoiai that also played vital part in destroying the enemy flanks. At a high price.

P.S. I am a very pious ruler so you won't see any soldier who has not been on a sermon before going to war. It helps. :balloon2:

P.S. No Kataphraktoi. Unless they come with a prince, I see them as a waste of money. Too slow for my style of play. I have a very high opinion of the plain spearmen. They are usually the backbone of my armies at Late.

P.S.3 Heavy cavalry vs. infantry does not always work. In late I've witnessed pronoiai to lose a duel against the chivalric men at arms. But I rule the Byzantines and hate duels and that's the reason I win. :beam:

[Togakure]

1v1 STW MP vs. Mimesaka Akechi. How did I win? By not giving up after losing many times. What was my strategy? Doing wild and crazy stuff that made no sense, because if it made sense, he'd guess my intent.

I did finally "give up" though--got tired of losing most of the time, and it was time to learn from others.

[Fisherking]

~:) The one I described was with Mongols too. Loads of them: heavies and light cavalry.

You use the clock Fisherking?

you bet I did!

[seireikhaan]

MTW, with the XL mod, playing as the Armenians. Tried to get an early invasion of the Turks to knock them off balance, and by the next turn, they'd secured an alliance with Egypt. Had to fall back to my most developed province, got pinned down, and they went for the throat with a bit over 2000 trained, allied soldiers to bring simultaneously against my 700 or so.

https://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x246/greaterkhaan/herecomesthehorde.jpg

However, judicious use of a modest hill, criss-crossing mounted crossbow fire, well timed cavalry charges, and a lucky, early shot to the heart of the Turkish commander sent the saracen running for their lives. :beam:

https://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x246/greaterkhaan/twoonone.jpg

[TosaInu]

What was my strategy? Doing wild and crazy stuff that made no sense, because if it made sense, he'd guess my intent.


~:)


you bet I did!

I used the clock in the past, it was on by default iirc. But it worked more against me than for me, because I am a slow attacker.

[Motep]

Oh. This reminds me of the longest battle I ever fought. Mongols had eight stacks or so. I had like twice that number of cheap crusade units mixed in with legitimately good stuff (but only about two stacks worth of that). There was a bridge...one bridge. The battle took a very long time, something like 24 hours, I think, as it was lagging pretty fiercely, but I was the victor at the end. I was watching pretty eagerly at first, but then I realized that half hour breaks didnt lead me to miss much.

Also, I agree with Tosa. Clocks tend to hurt me.

[Prince Cobra]

Also, I agree with Tosa. Clocks tend to hurt me.

I always use the clock. There is plenty of time to launch a successful attack and plenty of time to be defeated if you are not careful enough. And long battles just hurt my eyes, my day and etc.

Clock is historically accurate, I think (hehe, with some imagination from my part :beam: ). First, the defender always had some advantage because the attacker suffered supply problems. In addition, if the battle continued too long, the two sides often pulled back to rest and continue the fight the other day (when situation can be quite different if say reinforcement arrive...)

I admit I rely on cavalry as the Byzantines and it is never hard to hunt down the enemy. The early attacks on the Turks (High/Late) are a bit challneging because of the units of horse archers in the Turks but fortunately, the general and the princes are vulnerable. Kill the royalty and you don't really care about the battle. And although horse archers are perfect for chasing the routed enemy and hit-and-run tactics, their morale is a bit fragile. But if I lose by time, this still counts. :wink:

On a different aspect, a certain battle against the Mongols was almost lost because I relied on halberdiers as mercenaries to slaughter the Mongol Hordes (High campaign). My plan was to press the enemy at the end of the map and to slaughter the reinforcements (battle map Georgia). Even the immortal Varangians failed me. The day was won by the numbers of spearmen and other crappy units that I took "just in case". They were staying on the hill, suffering great casualties for the fatherland (hey, these were low-ranked common people but they defended their farms!). The Mongols withdrew their missile infantry after they had run out of ammo, and then wave after wave. At the same time, the spears pushed out any unit (mostly cavalry) that dared to engage at hand to hand (though there were moments when my spears were on the edge of rout when the new reinforcement were late; my general fled the field after the failure of his aggressive defence; this was effectively the end of his so-far brilliant career if we didn't count the conquest of Cyprus several years later). At the end (btw, this could have been his last reinforcement), time ran out and the battle was delayed. From this day, the halbs are mostly ignored as mercenaries and spears are highly valued troops.

Forgive me the long lecture...

[Togakure]

I turn the clock off. Nothing more frustrating that to defeat the main army and have a couple of enemy horse archers runaway, but not flee the field, while I have ten times the number of men on the field, just not any fast enough to catch them, have the clock run out, and the province remain in enemy hands.

[TosaInu]

I tend to agree with that Prince Cobra,

However I'm really slow, so often the clock is already tight for me. But it's especially cases like Togakure posts that made me decide to turn it off.

[Fisherking]

To me the clock matters more in some of the games than in others. I hardly remember it in the early games. I just remember it was there.

In ETW and NTW I often play with just a 20 min. time limit but if it is a siege I may turn off the clock all to gather.

Remember you can also slow or stop time in the battle and give some limited orders, depending on which TW you are playing.

Particularly in the Naval games I find the clock to work to advantage. If all you have is a small fleet vs. a huge one you can never get troops anywhere without being attacked. Running away for 20 min and accelerated time is better than losing and army and ships to a full stack of pirates. Just remember to use fast ships.

[PershsNhpios]

MTW has given me the hardest fights, without question.

The hardest in memory is one against the HRE as Bohemia in XL 3.0 when the entire empire decided it would bring all the might it could muster down on my little province.
I had a couple of javelinmen units, some 'Bohemian Bowmen', some urban militia, spearmen and two BG units against something close to 2500 HRE troops.
I learned to respect javelinmen that day, as it was their missiles sparingly used as the enemy militia surged uphill that won. No one dared invade Bohemia again!

But there must be tens of similarly difficult battles which I have fought against the Almohads as Castilla, and the Byzantines as the Turks... I can't remember the details, sorry!

I also used the clock for historical accuracy until in my current Byzantine campaign I came about 10 seconds close to losing a very difficult fight because one Turcoman horseman refused to leave the field! The clock was off forever!

[Brandy Blue]

I don't remember most of the battle, but at the end I had one horse archer unit left and the AI had one Boyar unit left. The Boyars opted to stand off and shoot arrows, trusting to their armor to pull them through. To my surprise, my horse archers were winning the shoot out, probably because the Boyars had received casulties earlier in the fight. My HAs were losing as many guys, but they could afford to. Then the Boyars charged. I supposed logically I should have ran for it, but at an impulse I counter-charged and got lucky. The Boyars lost, the enemy Tsar was cut off in another province, and next turn I closed in on him for the ransom.

I leave the clock on, even though I remember "losing" a battle because three guys rallied and hid in the woods and I never found them. I accept the occaisional ridiculous defeat as the price of keeping the clock on.

[gollum]

Clock is always off for me. The AI with it tries to win battles by it, and also he cannot bring his full force to bear if the clock is on, when he invades with more than 1stack (that happens often at the lower unit sizes, as there are many stacks around). Also, as many others said, teh clock is ultimately annoying in deciding battles at a point when they should have clearly gone the other way, both when you ought to have lost or ought to have won.

Too many good fights that i won on the edge to remember and list. Too many also that i lost on the edge, equally fun and satisfying despite - or because - of the loss. I feel the game has much more worth, when i lose fair and sqaure after a tough fight, and the total war AI of STW and MTW have surprised me in this way many times. RTW and M2TW - sometimes do, but far less consistently and spectacularly.

[edyzmedieval]

Waterloo in NTW, I was down to 18 men from a unit of Old Guards, the rest had died. Luckily, I only had to deal with a half depleted regiment of artillery left who smashed 9 men before they were cut down.

I won Waterloo with 9 men left.

[Samurai Waki]

MTW: VI

Me: Scots, 3 highlanders + 2 Archers, + 4 Peasants
Enemy: Vikings, Full Stack +5 Star General.

Had the peasants as cannon fodder in the open field, forests on either side of the line, Peasants held long enough for me get my archers and highlanders to get behind their line and take out their general. Chain routed the vikings, 6 highlanders left.

[Swoosh So]

Facing the elite clan in the shogun clan campagin on the slopes of bungo, that hill is like \ and very hard to attack vs experienced players. i was delighted that we won that battle in the camapaign and won the mighty province of bungo!

[DthB4Dishonor]

Played some hard 1v1 tournament battles and some great Clan War Belt Battles back in the day when I played this game and ran with RTK as RTK3Paul. However, my favorite battle had to be vs 7bear7Kuma I think not positive. Anyway he was defending and had the Byzantines in MTW1. I was Either German/Italian/French not sure but they were almost interchangeable. It was a heavily wooded map with large islands of woods.

He had the much better army for this as his Vanguard and other units were excellent melee units and would obliterate my cavalry or spearmen in the woods. He also had his entire army which was foot heavy in the woods with only his archers out of the tree line. During the initial archer shootout I had an advantage and rushed with some light cavalry to one of his archers and couple of times with attacks from both sides. Him protecting his archers sent his cavalry managed to get a couple of cavalry units from both of us engaged in open territory and sent in a couple of spear units which I knew were going to be carved up.

Now as the battle was going on I kept allowing him to have the advantage but forced him to commit more and more troops in the center to keep the advantage or he would risk losing a few units. Now the trick was to make him commit more and more outside of the woods. when enough units were engaged I rushed heavily FORCING him to send in his entire army or sacrifice about a 3rd of his army and have a good probability of defeat in long term.

While we were engaged he was winning but I was able to setup in a way to hold for a good amount of time. During all the other skirmishes I had managed to sneak 3 heavy cavalry units around from woods to woods and they were now directly behind him. When he finally saw them it was to late and I was able to take out his engaged general and route one flank causing mass route and cleanup duty.

[gollum]

Sounds like a great battle DthB4Disonour. Sometime being on the ropes at first makes you think sharper, while winning at first makes you loosen concentration or get attached to the favorable situation and being unable to adapt to any change that happens.

[Napoleon The Emperor Of Europe]

The Toughest battle I fought ,was when I landed my Selceduid army to attack rome.

The

It was very tough,with only leaving a very little,i think I won,but I'm not sure.

Then,this was my other army,Carthage vs Rome,and I defeated the romans easliy on the hardest settings.

There Cavarly attakced from the back,I sent my Cavarly to deal with them ,the Romans outnumbered me,But I HAD THE sacred band,and the phoen inf,and some others.

One thing the romans kep t on doing,was charging my phalanx!I dont know why they fired those arrow shots.they kept on charging at me,and I was winning,the cavary dealing was done,the romans were retreating.

[Mithrandir]

We had some good times in MTW online Paul :).

RTK was a great, friendly clan...

I think I went by the name Glorfindel in the online games...you'd recognize me by my camel armies :)