What Battles have you been Owned in???

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

What battles have you been completely confindent of winning, then suprised as the AI uses a trick to send your soldiers mass routing, or a fluke makes them brake through you lines and flank your best soldiers.

My story is when i was playing as England, i launched an attack on Scotland, the numbers were pretty even, but i was counting on my general to stop my men from routing and using flanked attacks to demolish the enemy. I rushed my spearmen in too quickly and forgot about the enemies reinforcements so sent my cavalry to kill them, but my spearmen were almost dead by the time my cavalry arrived and the enemies reserve spearmen came in and slaughtered my cavalry, Paul, Prince Roberts son, died along with the majority of his men. The main purpose of this battle was to lower my army count as my money was close to -4000, (my army was large and my economy sucked)

The Ransom amount was close to 2000 gold, but still, i managed to kill Edmund of Canmore, and King Phillip of Scotland So it wasnt all bad.

This was probably the worst, if you dont count the slaughter of Christendom at Jerusalem, many good men died there...

[Rhyfelwyr]

I've been pretty much insta-routed about a dozen times over several campaigns by the Timurid elephants and their dread Generals.

Assaulted Milan once as the Turks on Jihad, and got a large army wiped out when assaulting the walls by a pretty small number of Dismounted Feudal Knights and Pavise Xbows.

And some embarassing defeats in the New World with Scottish and Venetian armies. Sorted that since going the Byzantines though.

Thats about it...

[Eikon the Magistrate]

Playing as scotland the moors ransacked my front line of pikes with their heathen horsemen. Unfortunately the front line was engaged and could not turn...soo..the slaughter began...this was the last time I created a pike heavy force for a field battle. It was disgusting.

I had a win that was more like a loss but it was in MTW..against my arch nemesis the moor. In one of the crazy cross africa battles that were so common then. My entire 1st force was wiped out except the general and 1 swordsman unit. It was quite the sight to see the general and the sword hold on in the midst of their hundreds of fleeing/screaming bretheren..due to the superior reinforcement options in mtw i set the gather for the rest of my army to be in the center of that whole mess. complete devastation...was like 2300 of 2500 dead on my side... but i "won" somehow... pavise arbalesters....ahh how sweet

[Vladimir]

Tried to stop two Mongol armies from crossing a bridge with a full stack, medium, fire support army. Doesn't work so well when you don't have a lot of room to run around.

[Ramses II CP]

Okay, I didn't expect to win this battle, but I expected to pin at least a few more losses on the Mongols. I sent a stack of tier 1 javelin infantry against two partial stacks of Mongols, but the javelins just couldn't get through the Mongol general's armor. Worst loss ever for me.

Another battle comes to mind from my Danish AAR against the Timurids. In setup I made some very neat, looong lines of Swordstaff milita supported by Norse Archers, militia spearmen, and my first serpentine for use in the field. They are good, strong defenders, those SS militia, but I spread their lines so thin making my nice pretty formation that the first Timurid heavy lancer charge broke right through. My general warped back and forth from side to side trying to hold it all together, but in the end my men were slaughtered and routed and my serpentine crew was killed to a man.

Totally winnable battle too, I went back and played it again after writing it up as a failure, and I could've won it pretty easily. This wasn't an elephant Timurid stack.

I can think of a few more, but that's enough for now.

[Zim]

Okay, I didn't expect to win this battle, but I expected to pin at least a few more losses on the Mongols. I sent a stack of tier 1 javelin infantry against two partial stacks of Mongols, but the javelins just couldn't get through the Mongol general's armor. Worst loss ever for me.

Ouch. Don't most javelin units in BC not have the armor piercing attribute? That might be part of the problem.

Sadly, although I'm sure I've had many pathetic losses, I can't remember them right now. I lost an autoresolve battle in a hotseat game against rebels recently, with 2:1 odds in my favor. At least I could blame the crappy autoresolve for that one.

[Yoyoma1910]

Ah my friend, I will tell you the greatest battle I always loose, is the one for my heart.

Always I am ready to win, but never does it happen. I am like silly putty to the women's funny pages. They tear me from my egg and shape me into all sorts of silly things, and always I wake up in the morning with a new spiderman tattoo on my face.

ahhhhh.... but at least I am not a dried up clump of old Playdough.

[PrestigeX]

People always say this and that about how 'pikemen' get owended but, I don't really agree with that. i found pikemen extremely effective, they are defensive troops, not to mention you have to be able to take them off spearwall , run them into formation, stop them, put them into spear wall and defence mode.
I think a lot of people just don't know how to use pikemen in this game and expect that the pike units will just do it all by themselves.
I'm on v 1.2 and i noticed that using pike units allow me to f---ing OWN..

[Askthepizzaguy]

There are known bugs with two handed weapons and pikemen in the unupgraded versions of M2TW.

Once these guys switch to their secondary weapon, their pikes become useless, and they are no more effective than peasants. Perhaps someone can explain it better.

True, you can use them in battle, sometimes even effectively, but when they switch to their little dagger in melee, I'd much rather trade them for pitchfork wielding peasants.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

I can remember my Crusade battle pretty clearly now..

I had just ported loads of crusaders from England, they werent in the best mood, but i dont particularly care, they had lost men due to deserters, but enough to take a wall pretty quickly. As soon as we docked, my men went to Jerusalem, and then i noticed a huge egyptian army outside jerusalem, with an equally large army garrisoned, distraught, i charged the the large army patrolling the area, when the battle started a huge army of archers ran from their lines to shoot at mine, i thought that they were simply stupid, then i realised they had four units of cavalry ready to flank, so i sent my horses after them, but forgetting to put infantry in loose, the infantry took heavy casualties chasing the archers, then i looked at my cavalry and they routed, and my infantry continued to chase the archers, by then the enemy cavalry went to flank my soldiers, and the enemies infantry engaged my infantry, my spearmen were quickly surrounded and morale dropped instantly, although they could have won the battle if they had continued to fight they decided to rout and most of the soliders were captured, and so ends the battle. I believe that the egyptians executed around 800 soldiers, including my general.

[Motep]

The Timurds....

I was playing as the english and had a full, balanced stack with two family members. I was assaulted by the timurdian stacks. ...
They got me...I lost all of my men (four were taken hostage, but I declined to save them), but at least I killed their leader and about another stack and a half.

That screwed my crusade all up, and hungary got it instead...

[Genaral Julis]

I can remember my Crusade battle pretty clearly now..

The AI does have its moments of genius doesn't it?

[TinCow]

I've had several. Most of them were against the Mongols, but I also got wrecked the first time I attacked a city with cannon towers. I wasn't aware the city had them, didn't know what they would do even if I had been aware, setup close to the enemy walls, and relied on towers and rams to take the city. It was a massacre and I ended up running away about 5 minutes into the battle just to save as many men as I could.

[Pater Familias]

Ireland v. England in Kingdoms ... I'm outnumbered slightly, on the defensive and have (unusually) pretty crappy units, but my king has about a four-star advantage. The English have two low-level generals with decent-sized bodyguards and a lot of heavy infantry. My plan is to let my artillery beat up their shock troops, who have a long, long hill to climb, then hope a quick downhill charge will suffice, as my militia army isn't built for a slugfest.
I didn't even see their trebuchet until it fired, at maximum range. It bracketed my artillery, which seemed to be its target, left then right. The miss to the right, did, however, cream my general.
So, no general = no morale + weak-kneed militia units vs. heavy infantry, two generals w/ bodyguards and better arty ...
If I had been smart, I would have fled instantly, instead of waiting to lose over half my troops, then trying to flee. Carnage. Woe. Disaster.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

ouch, unlucky pater familias!

In my current campaign as Scotland, i did a pretty stupid thing, the enemy were spread right across the field and i sent heavy infantry into the middle of them, they were instantly flanked, and i had no other infantry to use but heavy cavalry, and the flankers were spearmen, but dispite this, i had to show these english scum that scottish rule, so i charged perhaps 200 cavalry into the flank of the spearmen. Perhaps 200 dismounted feudal knights died, but perhaps 500 spearmen died, so not much ownage but meh

[Brave]

Every move I make is studied before hand. I am a machine-like warman.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

Yes, but if you did this, then it would be different, there were chinks (gaps) in the enemy formation that i was looking to exploit, i charged into them, expecting to rout them on contact then just a chain of mass routs, but i was wrong, the enemy held firm, and then i was flanked, i guess medieval tactics dont work these days

[Brave]

you speak words of truth.

[Pater Familias]

ouch, unlucky pater familias!

The part that hurt was the cutscene: "Our foolish general has thrown his life away." He bloody did not. He was just sitting there, admiring the scenery and waiting for the battle to start.
Oh well, as they say, he never knew what hit him ... happy to the end ...

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

He never knew what hit him.... I do, it was a tonne of ignited rocks!