Worst Defeat

Back when I was young and stupid, and rome was new and shiny, I played. I was happy, you know, for picking the Brutii. And I was kicking some serious rebel butt. I was very confident in frontal cavalry charges. Well, I came up against the macedonians, and, being a stupid, I charged my favourite general (who was my heir, and an 8 star general) right into a phalanx, assured in victory. Well, he died. All of his men died, as well. A battle that should have been (adn would be nnow) easily won was lost to stupidity.

I have written already my worst defeat in RTW in an old thread there was here some time ago. Since i didn't had a yet more humiliating one, i will repeat that here :)

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Originally posted by gollum
Macedonia, hard/hard.

After years of war, the Thracians were history so were the Greeks, the Brutii and the Senate. The SCipii had their holdings in and around Carthage left and the Julii Medoilanum. In the east pontus had gotten a beating out of Asia minor and all the coast from Nicomedia to Lycia was occupied at which point the Egyptians, that i havent faced before, enter the scene. They do an initial push all the way to the coast with (i guess) what mucst have been their early stacks. Easy peasy, they get crushed, and afterwards i replenish and fortify the area and prepare a killer stack that will conquer the east in an Alexander like campaign, delivering defeat after defeat to the opulent, insolent easterners - or so i plan.

And by Zeus! the candidate general appears. He is a newly born military genius with the plus four stars that goes with it and potential for many more after a few victories.

Overjoyed, i pack his stack with all thats fair and good, royal pikes, macedonia cavalry (companions were not available yet) and of course phalanx pikes, archers and peltasts.

Initially all goes well. In a couple of battles the, lets call him, *Alexander* blasts off the static Egyptian troops with arrows before advancing fo the kill - i kinda get a bit excited and a bit bored. And yet somewhere in Galatia along the road to Tarsus a stack with a senior multistar Egyptian family member appears. He has pharao s bowmen and guards in the mix as well as a second family member.

The hell with it - this will be Issus or something - and i decide to pursue. The egyptians park their lot at the root of a local mountain and i doscover that indeed this gives them a considerable height plateau to deploy in the tactical map. Still not alarmed however *Alexander advances* his army that is greeted to a hail of arrows at the approach and quick redeployments when i try to rush the phalanxes in off phalanx mode to meet the enemy line. Finally after plenty of casualties, as the lines are about to meet, the Egyptians throw their line to engage the front and their two generals chariots' in and behind. Naturally i try to protect the rear of my troops from these horrors and so i launch the two macedonian cavalries and generals BG at them... None survives. Whoever managed to escape the melee fury of the chariots, was goten by the charioteer archers...

Numb and sorrowful i mourned the lost genius and learned the lesson! Chariots own cavalry - period.

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As the Seleucids i rush the Egyptians and this is relatively feasible when they have early stacks. However, by the time i encountered them as the Macedons, they had already pack their stacks with their better troops. I should have prepared for a long war of attrition and instigate a slow and steady advance - rushing was not feasible anymore. But, i was taken by the idea of the geniuos general making a victorious stroll and... got what was coming! :)

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Originally Posted by gollum

I have written already my worst defeat in RTW in an old thread there was here some time ago. Since i didn't had a yet more humiliating one, i will repeat that here :)



As the Seleucids i rush the Egyptians and this is relatively feasible when they have early stacks. However, by the time i encountered them as the Macedons, they had already pack their stacks with their better troops. I should have prepared for a long war of attrition and instigate a slow and steady advance - rushing was not feasible anymore. But, i was taken by the idea of the geniuos general making a victorious stroll and... got what was coming! :)

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we all have to learn sometime. Archers, however, can tear things up. Set to loose and told not to run, by god.

Some defeats are more glourious than victories,Mine is :81 spartans(82 with general)full Exp and armor on CB,vs Parthia(Persia)they had 1233 men cavarly,infantry,elephant and archers My men fought until their last breath they crushed the Elephaunts and the Infantry but those guys had archers you constatly kept their distance and when they killed most of my men their cavarly crushed my men like beetles in the end only my General was standing but An arrow shot him while he was surranded (sry but IM BG and I forget some Eng words)An arrow shot him he was standing next to a spartan like in the position of a Cross right in the middle of a circle of Persian troops and right before he died he took out the Enemy General's life showing that the Strengh is not in Numbers but in Brave,Noble and Courageous Loyal Soldiers who would gladly give their life for their King,Country,Lands,Women and for their Fellow Strong Greeks and in the end My men had killed 683 men of the enemy and they took out my whole army but 82 vs 1233 who has Elephaunts.Hope you like how I crafted the story.PS:I really Respect the Greeks but they hate us but I dont know why we never fought with them even in the Ancient times,Even in the Dark ages,Not Even in the World Wars however Hate is the most Common thing in This Realm of ours.

One of the defeats I had,was the invasion of Rome.My selecuid Empire covered most of Asia .the egyptaians were destroyed,although the armeains and parthians still harassed Seleuicd Trade,my navy was growing powerful,although the bruti still had lots of navy,it took a long time,the invasion,we arrived in Rome's land,but unfortunate we had a tough fight with SQOR army.their army let flinging javelins at us! Although I cant remember...:(.Aslo I had a large army that wad conquering Byzantium from the Brutii,and only 2 hastati were there,amazlingy they managed to keep
My troops away,in the end,after a tough fight,we killed them ,the commander of the hastati was given millitary honours ,I sendied him back to Rome.

So you gave honours to the enemy commander for fighting you so hard and spared his life?

I can't recall any specific defeat as being the worst. Any time I lose a battle playing with a large army is a hard moment, to be sure. There are certain conditions that can develop in the course of a battle that can almost guarantee defeat if you don't counter them. Charging uphill into an enemy line is a bad move in almost any circumstance, even if you have the better troops. It's important to get the high ground on an opponent, or to do the best you can to neutralize their high ground advantage in some way. It allows your missile troops to fire for better effect. And it gives your line more weight of effect charging into an enemy.

Probably my most disheartening defeats come when I'm fighting with a large army and am badly outnumbered by an enemy who has some long range missile troops, chariots and masses of infantry. The trick to surviving is to try to keep some sort of line cohesion, protect your flanks and rear from enemy units getting in behind you to disrupt your archers or slam into the rear of your infantry. If you let your units chase after individual enemy units, or routing enemy troops, you will leave gaps in your defense that the AI will exploit. Your units giving chase will also get surrounded and destroyed. Inevitably my worse defeats come when I lose line cohesion and the battle becomes chaos. Or, I let my cavalry get too far afield from my infantry, so that my infantry become vulnerable to flank and rear attacks. :no:

I've found that it also helps to keep your cavalry all together, or at least in groups of two and three units, so you can bring a weight of charge against the rear of the enemy units engaging your infantry. If you can neutralize the enemy cavalry early be ganging up on them with multiple cavalry units, it leaves the enemy infantry more exposed to your counter punches with cavalry as the battle progresses. Their flank protection has been destroyed!

I guess the key is - line cohesion! Don't let your units get spread out all over the field. If they start moving off, bring them back quickly to your original position if possible, and then reset your line as best you can. It doesn't have to be perfect. Your units just need to be close enough to provide some kind of 'shield' to parry an enemy strike and/or give some kind of mutual support to each other. Also, I tend to turn off skirmish mode on my archers, slingers and peltasts that are stationed behind my main line. I don't want them fleeing away when the enemy approaches. I may suffer a few casualties because they're standing under some enemy missile fire, etc. But it could be much worse. They could be fleeing away behind my line and get zapped by roaming enemy cavalry units or generals. Best keep them close to the line where your infantry can shield them from enemy cavalry and you can bring you own cavalry into close support. Just a thought. :idea2:

Make the enemy come back to you rather than you running off after them. Eventually, they will get worn out running all over the field. Tired troops are much more vulnerable and will rout more easily. If I let my cavalry get too far away from my infantry, I'm asking for trouble. Once the last enemy unit has routed you can turn loose a fullscale pursuit. But if enemy units are still regrouping and returning to the fray. You need to protect your infantry. The less you move around the field, the less tired your own troops will be. The AI can control its units better than you can control yours.

I fault myself in most battle losses to one or both of those issues - poor choice of ground to fight or allowing my line to disintegrate into a bunch of single unit chases. In that, RTW combat is more true to life than one might expect from a game.

Indeed it is unity of army is key. There was a quote from Sun Tzu the STW1 advisor would say:

"It is the unity of an army, not its numerical strength that ensures victory over an enemy"

In terms of TW, each army component ie melee infantry, cavalry, missiles is a bit like what arms, legs and pelvice are to a martial artist. Success lies in their skilful combination in action.

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Originally Posted by gollum

Indeed it is unity of army is key. There was a quote from Sun Tzu the STW1 advisor would say:

"It is the unity of an army, not its numerical strength that ensures victory over an enemy"

In terms of TW, each army component ie melee infantry, cavalry, missiles is a bit like what arms, legs and pelvice are to a martial artist. Success lies in their skilful combination in action.

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Sound wisdom Master Gollum. Gawd! I love this game. ;)

One important bit is how you control your army. In RTW gameplay is quite fast both in terms of speed and combat resolution. It can be slowed down to allow more control by home moding the terrain modifiers. Most major (and minor) mods do that.

Another potential way is to give high defence values on average but that takes too long for home modding to balance the game.

Another way is to play in the highest unit sizes - that slows combat resolution and gives you more time in the heat of the battle for maneuvers.

Generally its best to control your army by groups. One for melee infantry, one for missiles, one for cavalry and one for the general. Unfortunately in RTW groups are fixed in space, so every time you pick them they arrange themselves in the way they were when you grouped them which may be actually not good if they have taken casualties or some are missing due to have routed etc.

For major strategic moves of army components, using the groups is best as they moving together ensure that units don;t get isolated numerically and so they don't suffer morale penalties, and also in this way you don't really have to see all units on screen to know what they are doing - you know they are in the group and move with it. You can micromanage them as action happens from the screen - say for oredring a charge etc. Again slowing down the speeds helps with that to have a better experience due to the pace as you can command most or all of your units during the height of the action.

I remember a particularly crushing defeat when playing Rome... I had left it unpaused and just nipped to the lavatory...

lol

To this day I still blame myself for their deaths...


Ok I'll shut up now...

heh, whom you where playing? (just to know what sort of god will get you)

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Originally Posted by gollum

So you gave honours to the enemy commander for fighting you so hard and spared his life?

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Yes.

That's very honourable of you Emperor :)

Sounds like you had a great campaign.

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Originally Posted by gollum

That's very honourable of you Emperor :)

Sounds like you had a great campaign.

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Thank you,yes I did.

It is the way of Emperor's to be honourable.:book:

heh - yes it certainly must be.

How can you pick just one?

Usually it ends up being something like: Everything was going great and victory was near, when suddenly my General (who was doing "X" - and the more simple or unneccessary a task X is, the more humiliating) dies. (This is most annoying when he is one of the first or only casualties in his unit). Within seconds the battle has turned and all our flags are flashing white.

This happened to me yesterday as ERE holding off the remnants of the Huns in a bridge battle (VH/VH). Computer said even odds, so I expected easy victory. Everything was going smashing. Took out 2 of his 4 warlords, swamped his general with 4 spear units, my general and 2 cav - knocked him down from 45 to around 9 - my general still had about 28 of 35. I expected to kill his general within 5-10 seconds. Instead when the General killed animation comes up, it is mine that falls. Everyone just broke and ran at that second. I didn't even getting the satisfaction of killing his faction leader...he still had strength of 9 when the battle ended.

Shame, shame, shame.

Honorable mention: Almost everyone has a 1st time fighting Clibonari/Immortals story from RTW:BI. You know, you kill everything else, are at 99% strength and throw everything you have at them and still lose. They are nasty until you learn how to handle them.

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Originally Posted by dakar97BG

Some defeats are more glourious than victories,Mine is :81 spartans(82 with general)full Exp and armor on CB,vs Parthia(Persia)they had 1233 men cavarly,infantry,elephant and archers My men fought until their last breath they crushed the Elephaunts and the Infantry but those guys had archers you constatly kept their distance and when they killed most of my men their cavarly crushed my men like beetles in the end only my General was standing but An arrow shot him while he was surranded (sry but IM BG and I forget some Eng words)An arrow shot him he was standing next to a spartan like in the position of a Cross right in the middle of a circle of Persian troops and right before he died he took out the Enemy General's life showing that the Strengh is not in Numbers but in Brave,Noble and Courageous Loyal Soldiers who would gladly give their life for their King,Country,Lands,Women and for their Fellow Strong Greeks and in the end My men had killed 683 men of the enemy and they took out my whole army but 82 vs 1233 who has Elephaunts.Hope you like how I crafted the story.PS:I really Respect the Greeks but they hate us but I dont know why we never fought with them even in the Ancient times,Even in the Dark ages,Not Even in the World Wars however Hate is the most Common thing in This Realm of ours.

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Are you sure your Spartan general's name was not Leonidas, the enemy general was not Xerxes, and in that battle your Spartans were not a scaled-down version of what actually should have been 300 Royal Bodyguards? Anyway, THAT is what I call a glorious fight indeed--win or lose. Hawooh.

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Originally Posted by wumpus

Are you sure your Spartan general's name was not Leonidas, the enemy general was not Xerxes, and in that battle your Spartans were not a scaled-down version of what actually should have been 300 Royal Bodyguards? Anyway, THAT is what I call a glorious fight indeed--win or lose. Hawooh.

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Probably playing Dacia - was attacking Capua (Held by Scipii) - Lost 780+ out of 1000 for about 50 Casualties. This was quite late on.
Tried again a few turns later - Same result. Eventually I starved them out.

The AI has had a few bad results - I was wondering how to deal with two stacks of Julii (based in Patavium) and left a small army (4 units) of Spartan Hoplites on the bridge. During the Julii turn the AI attacked with one stack - losing about 900 of 1000, and then attacked the same turn with the other stack - again losing 900 out of 1000. Problem sorted.

Playing Parthia ATM : NEVER let the computer auto-resolve: have lost 75% of troops on an autoresolve when playing it myself it was a comfortable win. Also: if attacked by superior forces, DONT retreat. Kill lots with your HAs and then withdraw. That way you get two bites of the cherry.