Tales of the unexpected

So there I was, almost a complete stack of Moorish miscreants about to disembark at the coast ready to make the relatively short haul north to capture an ill defended Zagreb from the Venetians. As my brightly colored fellas stepped off the boat, the fog of war (dam you fog of war) cleared to reveal a waiting, sturdy looking couple of stacks in claret hue....yes I know...should have checked first! Anyway, no problem I thought. At turns end (had run out of gas for this particular move) when the inevitable happened and my Venetian reception committee made it's move, I could 'retreat' and the AI would pop me gently back into the relative sanctuary of the boat moored not a hairs breadth to my rear.

End turn. Venetian turn. Venetian army made their move. I hit the 'run away' button and where did my army go? Northbloodywest! Up a windy coastal path, totally bypassing the obvious (only!) escape route of the boat I had just left. All the way up the windy coastal path in fact into the gaping jaws of a further two stacks of Venetians. Suffice to say, even without auto resolve (I was tempted...4 v 1....what's the point?) the ensuing battle (if you could call such a one sided encounter that) was not a pretty sight!

This or anything similarly excruciatingly or annoying ever happen to you?

Forward retreats happen so much they're a running joke. You can actually abuse them to get a small fleet past a larger one pretty easily.

The biggest shock I ever got was specifically head hunting the last Timurid Khan, killing him, and not getting the faction eliminated screen. One of the defeated, retreated stacks off screen had gotten an auto-spawn general between turns. He had 4 chivalry and one of those 'noble in battle' or something traits. Hilarious.

:egypt:

I tried to stop an invasion by attacking the fleet (one ship) that carried the invasion force. I defeated the enemy fleet but it escaped to wards their objective and out of my reach. The enemy landed its army the next turn. :wall: :wall: :wall:

most unexpected was when somehow the moors had managed to get into russia and defeated the mongol horde in 5 turns

My very first campaign of M2 was as the Byzantines (I modified the files to unlock them). When the Mongols appeared, they went after Russia, and I had not expanded past Iasi, so I held the bridges against them. When they declared war on me finally, they came en masse, and tried to force a bridge crossing with 3 stacks. I won the long and bloody battle, and when the campaign map loaded back up, the two stacks that were next to the bridge retreated back towards Kiev, while the remnants of the stack that actually attacked me retreated forward. Somehow, it made it across the bridge I was defending, past the reserve stack of troops I had there to help me out, and went nearly a full move into my territory! It took me about 10 turns to wipe them all out, because the two generals kept managing to get away and regenerate their bodyguard units.