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I have normally been a pretty successful general in the past, and have learned to manage battles of a decent scale fairly well. I have been able to keep most of my main, initial force on the board and withstood enemy assaults of several waves of reinforcements, with rarely calling on my own reinforcements.
However, last night, I took a chance and went all out for my first big scale battle. I am the English and invaded the Spanish King’s last mainland Europe territory of Hungary (outside of Spain). Both of our armies had over 3,500 men, and the Spanish King and two of his heirs were there...and I had 46 units waiting to reinforce my troops. So, I was feeling pretty confident, as the Spanish had a lot of peasants, regular archers and urban militia in their ranks.
For my initial 16 units, my general was 96 Swiss Pikemen, with 2 more groups of 96 Swiss Armored Pikes (I have owned Switzerland for a little while now...), as well as 1 Royal Knights, 1 Chivalric Knights, 1 mercenary Mounted XBow unit, 2 units of Longbowmen, 3 gold shield units of billmen from Mercia, 1 Chivalric Men At Arms unit, 1 Alan Mercenary Cavalry, 1 Mounted Sergeants and 1 high valor unit of Feudal Sergeants both with upgraded attack due to Metalsmith in Sweden, and 1 other unit that I seem to forget now…
I started off well, and wiped out the Spanish first wave pretty easily. Their king ran off the board after his other 20 knights met death at the hands of my SAPs and flanking billmen. But, the Spanish just kept coming on and on, wearing down my forces. And, if I tried to do a withdrawal of a unit of 13 billmen, or 6 chivalric knights, I would get a message that others were "worried about routing friends" and every unit that came on board would seem to run away pretty quickly. Heck, I had a fresh group of Royal Knights and 40 hobilars charge a group of Urban Militia, and then run away soon after that, even though they had killed a good deal of the UM.
But, the Spanish King ran off the board, my men had the high ground, the Spanish had to march across the board, and then up hill to get me, and, I had superior troop types, and, I had wiped out all the Spanish royal knights, knights of Santiago and chivalric knights, and I got beaten by peasant, urban militia and feudal sergeants? I lost a good portion of my SAPs to urban milita and feudal sergeants
Then, for the last hour, I had 16 almost full units on the board, with still another 11 to be called up, and I waited and waited for a full hour, no Spanish enter the screen, and I get the message that I lost?????
What did I do wrong? Any hints on managing large scale battles?
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It seems like your men were suffering from extremely poor morale. Did your general have some nasty vices like Bloodlover, Not so Bold or similar?
As for the loss you suffered, you were the attacker so you shouldn't let time run out while waiting for the defender to come to you. The Spanish may have won this losing battle with one unit of peasants hiding in some woods. Seeing that no Spanish units were attacking, you should either have sent your entire force forward or at least sent a scouting unit to search the woods.
