Insanely good units

Okay, so I was playing RTW tonight (Goth mod, Saxons) and I just started to attack the WRE. The first battle went relatively easy and I began to siege a large city. The next turn the Romans get reinforcements. I had something like 1152 men (4 star general) against 2200 Romans (5 star general I think). I thought about retreating, but decided against it in the end. I went into the battle and found that the majority of the enemy were coming as reinforcements as were quite a distance outside of the city, good news. Now for the bad news. I accidently pressed the 'start battle' button without realizing that the AI had chosen the most rediculously stupid units for the siege equipment. Three units of archers had ladders and were almost at the walls before I noticed, and my sapping point was over by the enemy reinforcements.

I sent 2-3 units of Gesithus (scary axemen) over to the sapping spot and had one work on it while the others just held off the enemy. I thought I might be able to get in the city and take it without having to deal with the 1600 reinforcements ... boy was I wrong. The guys inside kept sallying out of the front gate to try and harrass me, but one melee unit and my 4 archers quickly dealt with them. Meanwhile, I got 2 ladders up and 2 units of Gesithus inside the walls. They went downstairs to deal with skirmishing and at the same time all three of the units that were holding the reinforcements at bay collapsed. They were totally surrounded by heavy cavalry and mashed to bits. Next thing I know I'm having my general and a 3rd unit of gesithus climb the ladders just to make sure they stay alive a while longer as my four aracher units (1 huntsmen, 3 chosen archers) hold off the enemy. Well, that worked okay until they all ran out of arrows. The enemy fought stupidly and had half of the army just sit there while 3-4 heavy horsemen units would charge in at a time, thus did my archers take a good 5 minutes to die!

All of this time I have my three axemen units and my general marching towards the town square (well, once I had gotten rid of the skirmishers). The time was about 2/5 of the way up and I figured I was going to die, but would give a good effort at winning. Several junky units plugged an entranceway and we were forced to spend a long time fighting them head to head. Then all of a sudden a unit of heavy infantry appears out of a side street and flanks us. I thought it was over, but we held and were doing well ...until the enemy reinforcements came. We were surrounded on 2 sides by 4 units of heavy infantry, 1 side by light cavaly/light infantry, and the other side by heavy cavalry. To my amazement we just kept hacking away with out backs to one another until the enemy had nothing left to send against us. About 150 of the 300 men were still alive and marched to the town square to deal with the last 200 enemy with only a handful of minutes remaining! It was the craziest battle I've ever seen.

And here is a pic to show the effectiveness of Gesithus!
https://img226.imageshack.us/img226/7171/awesomecn2.png

Us
Men Depolyed: 1144
Kills: 2204
Remaining: 273

Them
Men Deployed: 579 + 1685
Kills: 130 + 792
Remaining: 0 + 0

So then, are very many other units surprisingly amazing in some situations?

IMO, I believe it's not the units, it's the Insanely Stupid AI.

Or my extremely good keyboard and mouse button pressing skills. :laugh4:

Sounds like a really fun battle. :2thumbsup: Goth mod can give you some excellent ones.

On those troops, from the unit card picture, they look pretty elite - sort of like prototype Huscarls. (And they are experienced with some upgrades.) Making half your army consist of them will probably guarantee insanely good results (especially when most of the rest are chosen archers or elite cav). If you fight with more historical armies (ie more low grade units), you may find the mod even more fun. I'd be inclined to take just 2-4 of these chaps per stack to represent your hardcore.

My other units were not as experienced and as you can see, did not fair so well. What amazed me though was that the enemy army consisted of a lot of elite units, too. I don't use cavalry as the Saxons, I've only had 2 horse units so far and those were mercenary missile soldiers that I had to hire when I was in a pinch against the Celts.

I've been recruiting as many of these 'elite' units as I can because it help to regulate my income. Without them I'd probably have 100,000 by now.