Your longest battle

[Despot of the English]

What's your longest battle?
I had one against the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kiev where I faced 8,000 Mongols and the battle lasted for the entire duration of the clock, which was at least 4 hours I think http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif . In fact it was because the clock ran down that I eventually won the battle All I had at the end were a number of Boyars and I was giving the Mongols the run-around from forest to forest until the clock saved me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif . What was satisfying was that I killed the Khan and after the battle the Golden Horde became rebels http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif .

[Chimpyang]

Has to be GH again, the Russian heirs have pretty decent stats and with the valour bonus from the gen the boyars can whip all the cav that's thrown at you. I basically destroyed wave upon wave of mongols who were popping out of the forest with my halberdiers doing most of the killing. They came in strength and I had to careful withdrawing of my archers to keep my halberdiers happy. The halberdiers were postitioned on the dge of the forest so that they would keep their shape and the GH cav recieved the penalty for being in woodland. Oddly enough my Steppe Cav was able to kill at least 5 units of GH warrior in the same wood.

[Blodrast]

well, i'm not particularly crazy about long battles, even though my longest one was like 180 minutes or maybe 210, something like that...
I was French and the silly Danes attacked me with a horde of vikings in Flanders...oh yeah, and it was winter, you'd think that would have favoured the Danes...but it was the most annoying and boring battle I've ever fought. Here's why:

- I only had one full stack, no reinforcements to be worth mentioning (unless you count peasants...), but decent troops, unfortunately not enough missile troops, and only 2 cav.
- They had some 4-5k troops, the overwhelming majority of which were vikings...and lots of missiles and some sergeants (not too many, and mostly feudal), with 2-3 RKs...

Since I was defending, even though the ground wasn't great (really really flat, and me w/out enough cav), I just camped at one edge of the map, to make them walk longer.
I broke the first wave, not very spectacularly, and from then on, the entire battle was like this:

Danes bring some reinforcements (not just 200 troops, no, they would bring reinforcements, regroup, and attack full force). Danes come close to my formation. I shoot Danes, strut my cav around for artistic impression. Danes have crappy morale. Danes troops panic and start running away.
Danes really only lost to missile casualties, and a bit from my swordsmen who could flank them w/out having to walk too far and get too tired.
My troops do not follow Danes. Danes run like chicken for 200 metres, realize are not being followed, morale goes above threshold of being chicken. Danes regroup and attack again.
Rinse and repeat.
So I continuously kept chewing at them for some 3 hours and some, running my cav through them whenever they recovered some of their fatigue lines, and just speeding up time to 100% the rest of the time, since they usually routed and fled before actually engaging my troops, only from being under missile fire.

Incredibly boring, had I known it'd be like that, I would have definitely autocalc'ed. Actually, I had, once, and the computer lost utterly.
Gah.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Must have been like 85 minutes in MP...

Quite long, when you can't get to accelarate time.

Louis,

[foop]

I had a long and tedious battle against the Spanish last night. I'd whittled them down to one last province on the Iberian peninsula, and was going in to take out three stacks: mixed jinetes, royal knights and mediocre infantry.

It started off well - after jostling for position, I was on a hill above him. Then the trouble started. His main body of troops, including the king, moved off out of range of my pav arbs. So I followed a bit. And he backed off again. This went on and on an on. As some of my army came from abroad, it was a beach map. It ended up with my pav arbs slowly shuffling along to catch up with his king, who had holed up right in the far corner of the beach standing in the surf. A couple of units of MAA, some jinetes and knights all wandering around by the seashore.

As if that wasn't bad enough, once the king was dead and his entourage scattered the inevitable hordes of peasant, MAA and missle reinforcements started coming on at the opposite corner. Time to about face and shuffle back again. At least I had some mounted sargeants who could trot over and start breaking the backbone of the peasant units. It still took ages.

The end result: 1200 or so dead, a couple of hundred captured for the loss of 114 men. And control of Spain.

[Darth Binky]

I had a bridge battle in Valencia against the Almohads once, my 2000 or so nicely kitted men against over 13,000 Elmos. I forget which faction I was; I think I was Italy.

It took a good part of the afternoon, despite frequent speeding up of the battle. They just had a monstrous horde of peons, AUMs, desert archers, and other, crappier units... it took a long time to kill them all, especially after I ran out of ammo with my PArbalesters- this was before I discovered the 2.1 patch, so the reinforcement PArbs came up dead last.

And in the end, I lost about 200 men, they lost about 10,000. The survivors attacked again the following year, with friends, for about 9,000. And they too were slaughtered. But that didn't take as long as the initial massacre.

Man I love bridge battles...

Cheers
DB

[Spartiate]

I love bridge battles as well whether attacking or defending.My other fav is when i'm half way up that seaside mountain in Granada defending against the Almohads.They NEVER learn.

[Inuyasha12]

I was defending this bridge in armenia(i think) i was the Armenians(BKB supermod) and the mongols were attacking. They had like 3 stacks and i had one.
I positioned my pikemen right on the bridge and crossbows on a near hill. They kept throwing everything they had at me, steppe cavalry, horse archers(on charge) and Mongol heavies into the bridge. They were wiped out. I think i took like 2 hours for their whole force to die. When they ceased to attack, i chased down the remaining mongol warriors through the field. I lost like 300 men, while they lost more than a thousand. It was long as well as pathetic. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif

[The_Emperor]

Longest battle...

it was a bridge battle in Kiev against the Horde (surprise, surprise)

It lasted over four hours and after I ran out of men my forces withdrew to a small patch of woodland to continue the fight.

Around 9,000 Mongols were fought in that battle... and 3/4 of them didn't return home.

[HicRic]

I fought my longest battle today. The Egyptians thought it would be a good idea to attack my 5000 men in Egypt with 4500. I introduced them to my longbows, billmen, and knights. They walked way with 3500 of their army dead, and I lost something like 1200 (my heavily armoured troops in the desert got exhausted very fast-an oversight on my part).
Took about two hours to complete-but a lot of fun

[octavian]

3 1/2 hours http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif and btw, i believe the campaign clock only runs for one hour, not four http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Rufus]

It was either the one discussed in this thread (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=19085) or a Papal re-emergence later in that same HRE campaign that I started around 2 a.m. (it was one of those just one more battle nights) and saw the sun come up, or one of the Horde bridge battles in Kiev a lot of others have mentioned.

The last two were particularly tedious and boring. In Rome I had arbalesters parked on a couple of hills, the Pope's boys come marching through, get picked apart with arrows, get routed by my CMAA and/or cavalry if necessary. Like Blodrast said, rinse and repeat. Like, 50 times. I wish there were a 1000x speed button for a battle like that - I never had to do anything except when some units got too impetuous and chased the routers too far.

I think my computer was about to collapse from exhaustion after these battles ...

[HARALD THE RUTHELESS!]

Quote[/b] (Blodrast @ June 28 2004,13:26)]...run like chicken for 200 metres, realize are not being followed, morale goes above threshold of being chicken. Danes regroup and attack again.
Rinse and repeat.
So I continuously kept chewing at them for some 3 hours and some, running my cav through them whenever they recovered some of their fatigue lines, and just speeding up time to 100% the rest of the time, since they usually routed and fled before actually engaging my troops, only from being under missile fire.

Incredibly boring, had I known it'd be like that, I would have definitely autocalc'ed. Actually, I had, once, and the computer lost utterly.
Gah.
Yeah know that feeling. When you've brought very little cav to the table and the AI continually seems to rally its troops (even though its a 0 star general http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif ). I had one unit of 4 faris() come up to my line after a big battle, fire a couple of shots, rout realising it might not be such a good idea, then, 'what the heck' rallying to shoot some more, rout... i mean, this went over like 4 times before the damn horses ran of the map. Annoying &%¤# AI. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[desdichado]

longest battle recently was against Russians (playing MeDMod). bridge battle against 6 thousand Kopya spearmen & Peshtsi - took about 3 hours and needless to say game crashed right after battle so had to do it all again and cause I was bored I nearly lost the battle second time round Had about 100 men left and my general on his lonesome after a reckless charge against what I thought was last wave which wasn't

[Despot of the English]

Quote[/b] (octavian @ July 01 2004,21:05)]3 1/2 hours http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif and btw, i believe the campaign clock only runs for one hour, not four http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
How long the battles are depend entirely on how many troops are participating. The clock runs quicker when there are only two armies of 400 each fighting. But when there's thousands and thousands it could be a matter of hours.

[Tyr, Binder of Fenrir]

As with many of you, my longest battle was against the Golden Horde. I was playing as the Turks,and in preparation for the Horde, I had massed a large army of Saracen Infantry, AHC, JHI, and assorted crossbowmen/arbalesters.

The battle raged for hours, and with no more reinforcements to call on, I made my stand in the woods with my eight star Ghulam Bodygaurd General and five severely depleted units of JHI. The end saw the Mongols throw wave after wave of MHC and MHA into the forest, only to have them gallop away in terror moments later ( the units of JHI had an average of eight valor each, by that time.)

At the end of the battle, the tattered remains of my army were still standing, barely, and the mongols were no more, as I had killed the heirless Khan at the outset.

All told, I captured over 3,500 prisoners, killed over 12k, and the rest ran off the feild. As I looked up from the computer screen, I saw the sun was shining, and my clock said it was just after five in the morning...

I was rather grumpy at work that day.

[Tyr, Binder of Fenrir]

Oops, I just realized I forgot to say how long the battle was. It began at just after 12 in the morning, and ended just after 5, so approximately 5 hours.

[Despot of the English]

Wow 12,000 dead. Well done http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif .

[The Wizard]

Well, our friendly story-telling patron Monk had a battle lasting a full two days...

My longest one lasted 30 minutes against the Horde in Georgia as the Byzantines, and it was really tedious as when my archers ran out of ammo, all I could use was some fast cav (not kataphraktoi) to attack their horse archers... so I quit. Auto-resolve got me a minor loss when playing the battle for me would've bagged me a win, but I go for fun, not endurance gaming. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif



~Wiz

[PseRamesses]

Defending Khazar with 12.000 russians I encountered well over 40.000 mongols. The first hour I fought on normal speed and then I set game speed to max 100% and posted my troops in the woods. The game went on for another 3 1/2 hr so I don´t know how long the battle would have lasted on normal speed... it was quite tideaous.
BTW, the clock is set after the total amount of troops engaged in the battle. The more troops the longer the battle.

[Malachus]

My longest battle has probably been two hours, though I can't remember who I was playing as, and who I was up against.

[Tethlis]

My longest has to be a battle in the Viking Invasion. I was the Vikings, and ruled Britain. While I was subduing the last remnants of resistence on the mainland, I sent a prince with a thousand men (huscarles mostly) to create a beachhead on Ireland. You see, the Irish had thousands of troops, and I wanted to try beating them as soon as, so the island would be clear for my main army.

So I sent this prince, a real veteran, over with his boys. They landed, and the battle started. The Irish had 4500 men, roughly. The battle lasted 2-3 hours. By the end, I had the prince, and about 4 huscarles standing at the top of a hill on the edge of the map, surrounded by bodies. I killed 4000... The prince got that virtue when you kill thousands in one battle.

I promptly moved the prince off the island, and back to Wales for a rest...

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

One of the greatest battles i had was in the fall of rome mod as the western empire vs the east at the battle of bulgaria. 2500 men under a veteran army under one of my sons vs over 4000 men under there emperor.

Death and destruction, and at least 4 hours to finish, at the end, i lost over a 1,000 many loyal sons of the west but killed nearly 3,000 and the death of there emperor began the collapse of the eastern empire and the rise of mine http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-2thumbsup.gif

[BigCheese]

Probably about two hours, But that was using the accelerator slide thingy. I was playing Byzantines with a five star general vs Egyptians (think they had a three star general) Had to fight 3+ stacks, only scraped through by knobbling their General.

[RedKnight]

My longest battle was 10 hours realtime - 10 pm to 8 am the next day. It did include some accelerated time - but also lots and lots of pausing. I don't play with the timer set on.

It was in Khazar vs. the Horde (surprise, surprise). I was England and was waiting for them - and took out the entire Horde (it only showed in this one region) that very turn, when it showed up.

I had several Chiv Sgts, a dozen longbows, and 11 billmen units. The Chivs screened the bows which were used up pretty quick, then the Chivs and bows withdrew - but I did take out their leader, which reduced the stats of everybody else.

Then I retreated into a forest in the corner with my billmen. This shielded me from their many arrows, and gave the bills a bonus against cav (like they need one). I set them up in an L along the edges of the corner of the map. Often I feinted to draw in some mongol cav (exposing the butt of a unit). When they came after me, the decoy would run into the L and I would close it and pincer them. It was beautiful - but INCREDIBLY tedious to do for hours and hours on end, never knowing when it'd stop. It's like, 3 am and I'm thinking man, this has to end soon. Then it's 4:30 am and I'm thinking come on, they're still coming?? You get the picture... It didn't end until 8 am. (I wish there was some indicator of how many reserves the enemy has Just some general indicator.) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-zzz.gif

The Horde's many bowmen (HAs and MWs) would shoot their arrows ineffectually into the forest, then withdraw when they ran out of arrows - so I rarely fought them per se.

I would cycle my bills to the back if they were getting tired. At any given time I had 3 or 4 units in each arm of the L.

In the end my billmen were down to about half-strength on average. Each gained 2 to 3 valor. I killed and captured tons - they would often Run Away at half strength with their general dead - then, when the battle ended, I captured all the rest, because they had nowhere to go, since they hadn't taken anything the turn they appeared. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

That was one for the books This was with the old MTW... a medium difficulty game probably. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[Papewaio]

Did you save the replay... could make a great screensaver http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

[ah_dut]

ahhhhhh, had a battle last about 6 hours before, guess what the horde... 20,000 of them and 10,000 of my warriors, i introduced them to the glories of scots pikes and welsh longbows, with an appetizer of v6 billmen. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[katank]

I like that. are those v6 bills without the general valor and these are inherent valor points?

[RedKnight]

Pap, I did save it (and a bunch of screenshots over the course of the battle), but it's in vanilla MTW and I haven't been able to play it on my MTW/VI. (Is there a way to play it? Am I doing something wrong?) If anybody wants it, let me know

The final screenshot says I killed 4,285 and captured 2,858, while losing 449 (much of that, the Chivs that screened the bows at the beginning). Then when the game ended, on the strat screen it said I captured 8,624, including 32 nobles. My single best bills killed 252 and captured 470 - while only losing 11 men (But one bill unit was down to 15 men.)

Yeah when it was over they were all v6 or 7 billmen... but they weren't when it started I guess they all came from Mercia, but that game was over a year ago... I've forgotten a lot of details. It was with a 7* general.

[Ludens]

RedKnight, you cannot play MTW replays on VI, because the VI replays are saved with another extension. It is possible to view MTW replays on VI by changing their extensions from '.mrp' to '.vrp'. However, I've only tried this once, and I do not know if it is safe. During one replay MTW chrashed and when I restarted my computer later, Windows said an irreparable error had occured. So far, nothing seems to be malfunctioning though.

[Tozama]

Same as most people: Me vs. the Horde for about 4 hours.
15,000 Mongols vs. 6000 of whatever I could gather up to confront them.
Its getting late into the evening and I have to work in the morning but I am not paying attention to the year in the game. 1230 hits and the Horde appears all in Khazar (which I control).
For a split second I considered saving the game and going to bed to fight the battle next day.
Nahhhhh........I ship every able bodied warrior and my best General who's in a port province to Khazar for the showdown.
By 2:00AM I am falling asleep at the keyboard and dreading getting up at 6:30 for work as I call on more reinforcements to rundown those frikin horsearchers for the umteenth time.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-furious3.gif

[katank]

I love waves of arbs.

outranges everything they have. as long as it's a bridge battle or something and you can hold their cav, your arbs will destroy them all.

halb plug + massed arbs = mongol carpet. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[KillerKadugen]

I too have had massive battles against the Horde in Khazar, but my most recent long battle was as the Almohads against the Egyptians in Egypt. I had taken the province about twenty turns prior to the battle and was using it as a border/trade province. Needless to say, the Egyptians probably saw the several thousand florins I was raking in each turn from their former land and got angry

Well, they proceeded to launch an attack of 5000 men against my 3000 defenders. About three hours later, after countless routings and pursuits from my saharan cavalry and faris, I managed to kill 3000 of their men and lose only 300 some of mine (mostly ghazis in suicide charges). My general is now considered a butcher, which pleases me to no end http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/ceasaryes.gif

[ah_dut]

Quote[/b] (katank @ July 05 2004,10:49)]I like that. are those v6 bills without the general valor and these are inherent valor points?
yup they are loads of fighting for my boys http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Blodrast]

Quote[/b] (Ludens @ July 06 2004,14:11)]RedKnight, you cannot play MTW replays on VI, because the VI replays are saved with another extension. It is possible to view MTW replays on VI by changing their extensions from '.mrp' to '.vrp'. However, I've only tried this once, and I do not know if it is safe. During one replay MTW chrashed and when I restarted my computer later, Windows said an irreparable error had occured. So far, nothing seems to be malfunctioning though.
Ludens, I've tried it several times and it works just fine. Occasionally the game does crash, but it didn't crash Windows, just the game itself. However, most of the time the replays work just fine. At least that's my experience.

[G-Con Daniel]

I come nowhere near any of the times you mentioned I simply can't believe 4 hours http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-dizzy2.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-inquisitive.gif

[katank]

four hours is the actual battle time but mostly we play on double speed.

no point in watching a missile duel.

only slow down when the MHC are charging you and you need to maneuver.

[G-Con Daniel]

The longest battle i had was 58 mins.

It was a custom battle with me as the English against the French. It took 50 mins to get them to come out of the forest and 8 mins to rout them all... Well i killed most of them woth my longbowmen lol http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/handball.gif

[Thomas_di_Montessi]

my longest battle was an unfortunate 5 hours and 30 odd minutes it was a siege, and the contributory factors as far as I could see, were the fact my culverins were of a low valour rating, the enemy had allied forces that kept arriving in the form of reinforcements from our rear, and in total, there were four different army's that were involved overall, two for each side. We still won, though I was extremely p**sed off and tired

[Inuyasha12]

Oh man i just had this sweet battle
I don't know how long it was but it was like 2-3 hours, i was plying as the prussians(napoleonic total war) and i attacked the austrians. To my dismay it turned out to be a bridge battle, so i prepared for the worst. I bega with a artillery barrage, the enemy was shaken but they held. The enemy general unfortunately, did not survive to see the bllodbath about to begin. I brough up my skirmishers/snipers of prussian jaeger infantry(60 men) and to my surprise they had the range to pick off enemies from across the bridge. So it went for hours i slowly but surely shot unit by unit to hell
There were 2 bridges and i decided to rout my regular infantry so my reinforcements(and more skirmishers) could show up. With snipers on both bridges the enemy was being bled to death. Finally they routed after my troops crossed the western most bridge, but not before recieving more fire from my skirmishers positioned on a hill.


Total aftermath
Austrians -2,122 men

Prussians(me) -208 men


Whhoooo That was the best battle i've had in a very long time

So how about it huh?
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

[misterphil]

I've just been invaded in Kiev by 18650 danes

I played it for around 5 hrs; fortunately for me, I was defending a bridge, had 10 units of gothic knights that I was moving through, and some high valour pav arbs. My forces totalled around 2800.

The danish king had died in the 1st wave - and once the first few thousand danish heavy cav were dead (3 hrs of royal knights lining up on a bridge in single file) they tended to rout before even engaging.

Did I mention that I had 2 serpentines guarding the bridge? A unit of 96 pike came over the bridge...CRACK 64 pike advanced, CRACK 31 pike routed

After 5 hrs I escaped out of it - it was getting too tedious, and I had managed to anhialate almost all the danish chivalry.

Final stats:
Killed: 7892 (including prisoners put to the sword)
Lost: 341

Even though it was a tactical defeat, it was a strategic victory, as the danes had no time to put together any more decent units before I amalgamated all my chiv knights and foot (+4D +4A each) and invaded along with a bunch of v5 serpentines ... skittles

Still, what is going on - an invasion force of over 18000?

[katank]

if the Danes survive and thrive, they can be quite strong and I've seen a PBEM thread in which routinely Danish armies got ransomed to Ireland and it looked like the Mongol arrival in Khazar.

[Inuyasha12]

Thats why you don't make the mistake the ai makes. You kill the danes in the first years as fast as you can. If you're the english or the germans they represent a real threat and their longboats can really batter anything you've got in ealry.

[katank]

they aren't much of a threat if you are the english.

BTW, ship stats don't matter at all as the combat system for naval battles is quite random.

even if it did, longboats have 2 attack and 1 defense while barques have 1 attack and 2 defense so they are pretty much even.

[G-Con Daniel]

The Danes are no threat, unless they start to expand The Germans only attack the guys they wanna attack and they are not the Danes No way

[katank]

the Danes are usually quite in my games due to me bribing into Sweden and Norway very early and then basically sit there for the game as a captive trade partner unless they take potshots at me in sweden or the Germans in Saxony.

[Tomassi_Rossino]

My longest battle was about 55 minutes. It was on Campaign and I was the English. The French had Brittany and rather cooly they only had 2 units of Fuedal Knights and 1 Peasant unit. So I got the unit from Normandy to go in to Brittany. Guess what the Normandy unit was? 2 units of Fuedal Knights and 1 Peasant unit. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-stunned.gif

[Lord Dazed & Confused]

My longest battle has been about 2 hours the Turks V the Golden Horde in Georgia 22k GH against my 15K Turks with Jedi 9 star Saracen Infantry general. I killed their khan in the first attack wave and then just spent the rest of the battle regrouping my troops brining on reinforcements and running down the now low valor GH reinforcements as they appeared I only lost a few thousand troops. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[AssasinsShadow]

My longest battle had to have been the time I was plaing as the Byzantines against the Eggys. I had taken Rum from the turks, and killed their heirs, so my only muslim threat was Egypt. I threw alot of guys, including my king, into Lesser Armenia, and then the egyptians attacked with about 5 times as many troops. I set up on a large hill as far away from the eggy reinforcement position as I could. However, I kept slaughtering the eggy reinforcements, and I got so bored with waiting for the next batch to reach me that I took my entire army and marched them up near the eggy start point. Needless to say, they fled the field, but not until they suffered 3000 casulaties and a 50 minute battle.

[Tricky Lady]

My longest battle was, just as the majority here, with the Byzantines against the horde. I had built up Khazar to citadelle level and my golden varangians just smashed all the Mongol horse and non-horse units. If I remember correctly the battle lasted for two and a half hours.

[CherryDanish]

I'm still pretty new to this game and am only on my second campaign (early, hard, elmos), but the most rewarding fight I have had to date (not my best, my best was last night routing the Hungarians at 2:1 odds with an 11:1 kill ratio, sniped the general early) was on my first campaign as the Danes versus the Eggys (early era and hard, which at the time the eggys owned more land than I did due to a slow start). The eggys had like 3k troops and I had barely over 1k and we were clashing in either Lituania or Poland. I replayed that battle 12 times and couldn't win, I couldn't stop all the AHC from ripping appart my spear wall. So one night I decide I'll try it again and juggle the troops I start with, almost completely passing on my cavalry (kept 1 hob cav with general in it, I had bribed him from a rebel welsh uprising and 1 mildly beat up unit of mounted sergants) and keeping a couple more catapault crews and an extra spear.

The battle lasted the duration of the clock (about an hour, I have yet to see more than 8000 troops, both sides combined, in a single fight in either campaign) with me routing a vastly superior force. I stuck my catapaults up and behind a hill top, surrounded by 2 circles of archers and arbs 2 ranks deep and an extra spear unit which allowed me to add another rank to all my spear units, the map edge was right behind me. I used my mounted sergants and my hobs to dice up lighter reinforcements before they reached my mass of archers, arbs and spears, concentrating on routing missle troops and peasants. My missle troops would run out of ammo and I'd withdraw them for fresh missle troops (I had like 5 total reinforcements, 2 of them missle, 3 cav). No enemy infantry reached my spears on the uphill walk, all routed due to missle attrition and even enemy HAs routed due to withering missle fire. I only used catapaults to break up concentrated formations that looked like they were going to charge as it seemed their units would try to reform, which delayed their assault, which gave my missle troops more time to kill them. My catapaults were particularly devastating to enemy HA units.

My missle troops eventually, including my reinforcements, ran out of ammo, as did the catapaults. Still the enemy AHC units stared me down intimidated by my practically unscathed spear wall and their total lack of infantry, which had been completely decimated by my missle troops and then after having run so far away, they were chased off of the battlefield by my surviving cav. Had the enemy commited their 8-10 cav units, mostly AHC, they likely would have won, but suffered horribly. I loved this fight. I lost 2 units of light/medium cav and suffered minor attrition in other units, but routed a superior army. I didn't have a single unit left with more than a single fatigue bar. When the clock almost expired, for some reason, even their AHC began running away. I chased them all down with exausted cav and archers (none of which had any ammo). I didn't take many prisoners as most of the damage was done with missles and my exausted cav couldn't catch units they were chasing down by the end. It was awesome fun. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif