Tiny, yet indispensable units

I was playing my Danish campaign (about 1180 or so) and I have been doing pretty well, the Poles are subjugated, Northern Germany is mine and my war against Hungary and France is progressing nicely, however, in my most recent battle I ran into a bit of a problem. I was defending against the Hungarians and had moved my army too far up, so I could take advantage of a hill. What I forgot was the Hungarians had brought two balistas to the battle. I didn't have any small, yet effective units around, except one Arab Infantry Merc who was hired at the beginning of the game (one man, don't ask why I hadn't fired him). So I sent him charging across the field, alone, to destroy the balistas. Despite being screened by a unit of archers, a unit of horse archers and a couple of depleted units of Szelkey he made it to the first. The crew ran away in terror and my crazed Arab merc made short work of the machine. Now, despite his willingness to charge the massed Hungarian army he was getting a tad scared of all the missiles and the large infantry force that was within a few hundred feet, but he charged the remaining balista anyway. He managed to bring the balista to 90% damage before succumbing to a final hail of arrows and falling dead, despite his bravery he was credited with 0 kills. I sent forward another small unit finished off the balista and then forced the Hungarians to charge my defensive positions. They were easily slaughtered.

Never again will I scoff when a single man charges a siege weapon, thank you nameless Arab mercenary!

Anyone else have incredible tales of tiny units (1-10 on large size or so) playing important roles in battles, or at least achieving great feats of martial skill or luck?

I would like to make this tribute to nameless Inbred-Lazy-Hedonist-Drunkard Heir--

Oh, nameless Inbred-Lazy-Hedonist-Drunkard Heir, it was you who were to inherit the throne. Then you were sent into battle alone. Despite the overwhelming numbers of enemy inside the castle, you charged the fortified gate bravely. You never saw that hot oil coming.

Oh, nameless Inbred-Lazy-Hedonist-Drunkard Heir, may you rest in peace.

DA

During my Spanish campaign I raised from a child a general who although never made it to the throne (that nephew bastard got in the way), found his home and princedom on the battlefield. Never bothered topping up his unit so after five decades of campaigning against the Almos (and gaining cool three stars in the process alongside "impressive scars", "expert attacker" and "skillful risky attack" traits) his unit was down to one man. V11, mind. During the battle you could almost hear him click when locking on a target. Few minutes later he would drown in a sea of dead. Seriously cool fella, him.
I only regenerated his unit after High rolled in so that he could get all the upgrades. If I had a choice I would still have preferred him to have stayed as a single knight tho. He was that good.
If I dig up that savegame somewhere I might take some pics of him cutting through units of FMAA and FS like there was no tomorrow.
If you tell me how I will also try and get to the unit log so as to see how many kills he actually had to his name (recently changed to Lord Rodriguez).
Share the tales of bravery fellow generals!
:bow:

I also had a blood thirsty prince who found himself with only a few bodyguards by the end of his career. He had impressive scars and had 11 valour, not much else to say ~:cheers:

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Originally Posted by Uesugi Kenshin

thank you nameless Arab mercenary!

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May he be nameless no more!

Assuming you have battle logfiles set to active, simply refer back to the logfile for that battle. Being a single-man unit, he is unit leader and his name will be given there. Being large files, just load into notepad, Ctrl-F for 'Find' and search for 'Arab'.

I frequently take an F2 screenshot of the end of battle kills/losses summary and that's another place you might find it.

I miss Kensai's :cry:

How do you activate them? (logfiles) Appears there will be a tomb to the unknown Arab soldier in Denmark of all places...

He was recruited there so it seems appropriate.

I just retrained my valor 8 7 star general because of high period, hopefully I'll get him up to 11 before Late sets in..

My favourite one-man unit is Harry the Hashishin assassin. Valour 12 harbinger of chaos.

I've used him to kill generals 3 or 4 times, by leaving him hidden on the battlefield for ambushing Generals within depleted units (as suggested in Frogbeastegg's guide). It's basically a lottery as to whether I correctly guess the opposing army's path of approach in defensive battles.

He has shot a 6-star Byzantine king in the head, and defeated a 4 star CMAA unit of 20 men singlehandedly. Needless to say, both armies did a very good impression of a snowflake in a microwave. He has accomplished many other mindbuggering feats of bravery.

Harry lives in Constantinople, enjoys long walks on the beach, killing cavalry in the forest, and getting stoned off his nut.

Hmm mabye my Arab was a relative of Harry, he certainly was as brave and maybe Harry taught him the whole arrow dodging routine?

@ Roark,

I'm still chuckling over some choice phrases there. I'm just trying to picture what an MBFoB medal would look like. ~;)


Kenshin-san,

there's a tickbox for activating battle logfiles, somewhere in the game menus. I forget exactly which one but suggest trying 'Game' sub-menu first.

Failing that, ISTR it being on the same page as realism stuff, ammo, morale, fatigue etc. ?

I've just leafed through both manuals and can't find any reference to it at all! I think it does get a mention in the VI readme file though.

I may come back and edit this post after my next game session, when I'll double check which menu it's in.

My Arab is nameless no more (although I did forget his name :embarassed: ). He is actually not an Arab, but a European of some sort, his name was Lord _____ ______. I checked it right before I logged on the Org, but I forgot his name and it's on the other computer, I'll try again when I get on later.

I'll check out thos log files as well, sounds intriguing.

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Originally Posted by Del Arroyo

I would like to make this tribute to nameless Inbred-Lazy-Hedonist-Drunkard Heir--

Oh, nameless Inbred-Lazy-Hedonist-Drunkard Heir, it was you who were to inherit the throne. Then you were sent into battle alone. Despite the overwhelming numbers of enemy inside the castle, you charged the fortified gate bravely. You never saw that hot oil coming.

Oh, nameless Inbred-Lazy-Hedonist-Drunkard Heir, may you rest in peace.

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Amen!

~D

I would like to make a tribute to ten Saxon Husscarles, who led the desperate charge of a ragged army against the Polish and won through to save many English women and children.

May you rest in peace my friends.

The starting unit of Naptha you get in Naples as the Byzantine once killed about 200 rebels over the period of 2 rebellions and 3 religious uprisings. They eventually got shot to death by Pope funded archers, but it did allow my 6 star general to start whipping the Huns since my ships were hugging the African Coast at the time.

The best small units I ever fought were controlled by the AI. It was my second campaign game, I was England and well into the invasion of Spain. The Spanish king had two stacks in Aragon and one in Valencia which held only two men. So I pitched the best of my army into Aragon and left a stack of "odds and sods" in Valencia to cut off the Spanish retreat. I auto-resolved the Valencia battle.

The two Spanish soldiers (Royal Knights, ex-princes) killed 155 men and routed the rest.

I was so shocked I replayed the battle properly, to see what these War Gods could do. Version two went a little differently. I sent in two units of (turncoat) jinettes, on set on engage and one on hold formation, and both knights went down in a shower of javelins. One of the pinning jinettes died, possibly hit in the back by his own side.

Anyone else seen such variance beteen the auto-resolve and a proper battle?

Auto resolve sucks unless you can't win the battle normally. If they were your knights, you would have never won, but Autocalc would have given you a great victory.

I only auto-resolve if I really don't want to deal with HA madness, or am feeling particularly lazy...

Otherwise I play the battles through, and if you have a large army those tiny units are great as shock troops.

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Originally Posted by Vladimir

This is mainly about a small but indespensable army which turned into a compilation of Tiny indispensable units..

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sorry

DE

I tend to end up with a unit of 10-15 arbalests who act as rangers, and flank around. They usually climb in valour very quickly (as I usually get them firing straight into huge masses), and I've seen them take out kings, high level knights etc. without too many problems.

This is mainly about a small but indespensable army which turned into a compilation of Tiny indispensable units:

I would like to brag about a particularly successful defensive battle I had against the Spanish in Navarre. I don’t remember the actual numbers but my incomplete, motley crew army of mostly archer types led by (I think) a two star CMAA outnumbered something like 3-to-1. My young general ended up with:

Butcher
Scant Mercy
Skilled Defender
Skilled Last Stand
+ 2 Stars

The battle almost never happened. I wanted to autocalc or retreat, and once in the battle I wanted to withdraw as my army was reduced to less than 50% strength (most of that damage taken at the beginning when I let the Jinetes flank me *doh*). Flanking with Pavaise Arbalesters and rear attacks with my Genoese Sailors defeated and routed so many of the low tech Spanish troops. I was also fortunate to have a unit of mercenary billmen there to accompany me. God I love defending on steep hills!

1 Kat...the king who was 1 star and quite pathetic, ok acumen and all but come on: he's going to produce crap sons. So I sent him into battle after battle after battle and conquered the whole steppe... shockhorror, he ended upas a reasonable king by the time he died :wink:

Combos between infantry and 1 ex-prince royal knight work well in killing off archers. All you havve to do is charge teh archers until they start fleeing and send your royal knights round the back. They flee from both the knight and the infantry and stop allowing the infantry to catch up at full charge and completely waste the cowards. I once killed 120 archers with 200 0 valour slav warriors and 1 royal knight using this method with 0 casualties, the slav warriors would win for certain, but the chances of doing this with 0 casualties are extremely slim. With men at arms or militia sergeants I always get 0 casualties.

In one battle i chased off 4 archers and used the same royal knight to "stop" the archers in each fleeing group. So 1 royal knight killed around 30 and saved 100.

Great thread.

My tale is from the Almohad PBEM game, and tells the story of how a lone valour 6 Ghazi staved off defeat in an epic battle against a Papal re-emergence

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To the south, following his butchery of the previous year, Prince Umar was confronted with 2000 Catholic troops led by a confident Pope Urban III. The day got off to a good start for Umar as 250 troops, meant for the relief of Rome, had landed in Southern Italy by mistake and so were absorbed into Umars army, swelling its numbers to 1260. The Battle of Capua Vetere was a violent, savage affair that swung one way, then the other. Seeing the fortunes of each side ebb and flow Umar ordered that all Papal prisoners be executed whenever there was a pause in the battle. This was a battle of survival between 2 cultures, 2 religions, it was not a place for chivalry. Chivalry would get you killed and your people and your faith exterminated. Eventually the Almohads managed to break the Catholic armies morale and began to chase them from the field. Though totally exhausted, the surviving Muslim warriors pursued their fleeing foes, the elation of victory, the joy of *survival* giving them the energy they needed.

But up ahead on a hillside there loomed 4 regiments of Mounted Sergeants at full strength, calmly sitting on their horses. As they approached them, a feeling of unease began to spread through the Almohad ranks. Why weren't these horsemen fleeing? Why were they waiting there? Then they knew. The Papal light cavalry charged the shattered, scattered Almohads, inflicting heavy casualties on men who moments before were rejoicing at still being alive. Now it was the Muslims turn to flee and be run down. Back at the original scene of battle a handful of men witnessed the turnaround in fortunes. These men were reinforcements who had been held back due to their poor quality or lack of numbers or both. Many were survivors of previous battles where they had seen most of their comrades fall around them. They had been good enough or lucky enough to escape deaths clutches then and now here they were, watching an approaching foe cutting down their fleeing brothers in arms. Seeing how flight resulted only in death strengthened their resolve. "If we do not stand now, we will not stand at all!" shouted a lone Ghazi, clearly a veteran of many battles, as he walked up and down the thin ranks of troops – men who had not expected to see battle this day except as a last resort. And now the battle depended upon them - they were the last resort.

The first fleeing survivors approached their ranks. "Stand and fight brothers! Stand and fight!" shouted the lone Ghazi at them, but terror had control of their hearts and minds and they wildly stumbled past the few Almohads preparing to make a last stand. Then they were gone and the Papal cavalry came up the slope. The lone Ghazi became more and more frenzied as they got nearer, banging his shield, shouting oaths to Allah and exhortations to the men around him to fight or die. And then he was off, charging towards the oncoming cavalry. The dregs of the Almohad army followed him knowing if they fled they would surely die, but if they fought, they might, just might live. Now the tables were turned, it was the mounted sergeants who were overconfident and tired from chasing routing troops across the battlefield. They had not expected to meet any resistance and now here they were fighting and dying at the hands of a handful of Urban Militia, some Bulgarian Brigands and a lone, crazy Ghazi swinging his axe like a madman. And suddenly it was over, the surviving Papal cavalry was fleeing and there was no one else left to fight. The survivors collapsed to the ground in exhaustion and sorrow and pain. Tears of joy and grief and utter exhaustion ran down their dirty, sweaty, bloodied faces.

Only 300 Almohads survived the Battle of Capua Vetere out of a force of 1200 and only 20 of them were on the battlefield at the end, the others having been withdrawn earlier or having fled to save their lives. In a battle that was the closest run thing the difference was the 250 troops who as a result of a mistake by an Admiral had landed too far south and so joined Umars army rather than Ismaels. Among the dead was Prince Umar who had fallen earlier in the battle leading a cavalry charge. His body was found under a tangled, twisted heap of horses and men, Muslim and Catholic. The lone Ghazi was also amongst the dead. No one knew his name and it was impossible to recover his body from amongst the piles of mangled and mutilated bodies - they were too great to identify. But it was his courage and leadership that inspired the ragtag remnants of the dead Prince Umars army to make one last stand. As his body was never found and no-one knew who he was the rumour quickly spread amongst the survivors that he was actually an angel sent by Allah to secure victory for his people.

The toll of Catholic dead was horrific. Papal documents showed the army that morning had a strength of 1971 men. The next day the Almohad army buried 1909 of them in the bloodstained earth of Capua Vetere. Round 3 to the Almohads.

But what of Pope Urban III? Survivors recall seeing his flag at the start of the battle, but after that his actions are unknown, no eyewitness could recall seeing him at any point during the battle. He was later captured trying to flee to the north and executed on the spot. The Papal rebellion was over.

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Good story Suribachi! Yet another excellent example of how Ghazis rule. ~:cheers:

I had a Prince who was in line for the throne, but his brother had better stats. I sent him to Lithuania, and he destroyed most of the Lithuanian rebel army by himself! This was a heck of a rebel army too. He died on the next turn in a seige. ~:cool: