The " 0h-$#!% " moment

[Holy Kaiser of men]

I got one Im playing as the HRE and it is turn 125 I have a full stack are with forlorn hopes gothic knights some cannon and a but load of infantry .
I move the army in to frence treeitory who im at war with,(next turn) In a surpriing move that ignores decades of history england and france for an alliance. (wtf yes i know) so i prepare to attack and army that is about half my size but my move ment points run out right as i get to the red space of attack.(englands turn) Engkand happens to have a full stack army full of retinue longbowmen and armored swordsmen close by . (frances turn) the medium side army attacks and because i cant withdraw due to no movement points i must fight. I must say i was historic to see english and french forces crush my army into little pieces. now with my largest army gone i am fighting a losing battle to hold on to my western territories.....

[Abokasee]

I got one Im playing as the HRE and it is turn 125 I have a full stack are with forlorn hopes gothic knights some cannon and a but load of infantry .
I move the army in to frence treeitory who im at war with,(next turn) In a surpriing move that ignores decades of history england and france for an alliance. (wtf yes i know) so i prepare to attack and army that is about half my size but my move ment points run out right as i get to the red space of attack.(englands turn) Engkand happens to have a full stack army full of retinue longbowmen and armored swordsmen close by . (frances turn) the medium side army attacks and because i cant withdraw due to no movement points i must fight. I must say i was historic to see english and french forces crush my army into little pieces. now with my largest army gone i am fighting a losing battle to hold on to my western territories.....

Oh dear, thats why you should always take atleast 2 large armies with you.

My OH-$#!7 moment was as lithuianian in stainless steel 5.1, (downloading 6.0 now) when after a mere 9 turns a crusade was declared on me, I thought: "No factions usually join the crusade until late game, I'll be fine", then the following joined 4 turns later:

Poland
HRE
Milan
Venice
France
Aragon
Spain
Portugal
Sciliy
Hungary
Denmark
Norway

I immeidatly began a new game when I saw all the factions bring full stacks right on the door step of vilnius

[Duke Bart]

just checking up to read some of these stories, and i gotta say some great stuff in here.

i particularly liked the one with a french and english alliance, it was as if unstoppable forces allied against you there!

Although im still not playing, i like reading about all of these moments

[Michlos]

I beat the first wave and my general went off to collect some routers and then returned to meet the second wave. Of course being wise I made sure my general was WALKING towrads my stake defences. I then set about reorganising my yeoman archers and DFK to meet the second wave. Having given them move orders I automatically hit ctrl+A and then run to get them in position quickly.... just as my general hit the line of stakes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Aww man.. this was good enough to make me register just to comment about it. Bet the archers were wondering what the heck your General was thinking...

[gardibolt]

Had one in the France game I'm playing. I called a crusade on Acre, and figured I would be well set with the four stacks I was sending there. Imagine my surprise when I land and find 30 full stacks of Mongols waiting for me in the Holy Land. Kind of wish I'd let the HRE get there first....

[Quickening]

I had a really annoying moment recently. I was playing as England in the Grand Campaign and the Scots were putting up a surprisingly good fight which made things difficult for me since I was already stretched fighting France and Denmark.
Anyway I always wean my generals to be ultra chivalrous and I had my most honorable general in the North fighting the Scots. He had just smashed a full stack and the battle was won, all that remained was to break a few scattered units when suddenly I am informed of his death A unit of five crossbowmen had been firing wildly into the air from the side of a hill and by some miracle one of these wayward bolts had picked out my general from amongst his full unit and killed him instantly

The loss of my favourite guy in such a rubbish way crushed my heart and I lost interest in the campaign. Gutted.

[Scribble]

Playing as France in SS6 and had a young lad come of age with some great administrative traits. I had big plans for him as the new governor of Paris. Alas he did'nt. After finishing university he ran off with some Spanish floozie . he then refused to die and cost me the lives of my 5 best assasains. Then the Spanish declare war on me because of all the failed assination attempts. And finally just to polish things off 2 Inquisitors turn up and start burning my family members and I could'nt do anything about it as I'd had'nt made any new assasains. Ah well, if it was easy I'd have stopped playing ages ago.

[seireikhaan]

Stainless steel 6.1. Playing as Lithuania in my first attempt with the mod. Needless to say, I didn't quite realize that a certain faction was going to emerge right on my doorstep when I had 80% of my forces over in Scandinavia fighting the danes and norse.

[Prussian to the Iron]

in a Third Age: Total War Harad campaign, I once had a battle go horribly wrong, basically ending any attempt at another offensive for the next 20-some odd turns.

full stack army: 2 catapult units, 3 Mumakil units, a general, and the highest heavy cavalry unit i can get. i think i had 3 units of southron archers and 10 southron spearmen. vey high quality army, with many chevrons. I decide to mount an offensive to help my ally, gondor, in reclaiming ithilien and osgiliath, then relieving the siege of minas tirith. I move up, and meet almost no opposition in ithilien. East osgiliath was an easy target for my catapults, and once my mumakil trampled in the gates, i had basically won.

But then I move on to make a pincer move on west osgiliath with my main army, plus an 18 unit army coming up from the south. the 18-unit army was wrecked, so I merged them into my main army and left the leftovers garrisoning osgiliath.

My newly replenished main army moved on to liberate the siege of minas tirith, which was being held down by a large modor army with a couple mountain troll units. no biggie.

Right before I attaked, 2 more armis showed up to reinforce them. i could no longer retreat, because of a triangle they trapped me in. I was already F****d.

So I array my troops into the 1 corner they weren't pouring out of, and waited. to my horror, 5 units of olog-hai and 7 of mountain trolls rise above the thousands of uruk archers and warriors.

instead of sending out my mumakil to strafe them like i should have, i let them sit. my catapults and archers began firing at the trolls, but then auto-acquired uruks again. kept catapults firing at grouped up uruks.

trolls make contact with my line. uruks follow soon after. mumakil charge through my line, and begin to kill the trolls.

my main line begins to rout. despite constant rallies by my general, my main line falls almost at the same time.

trolls atack my arty and archers. mumakil remain strong with only a couple casualties.

general and cavalry run. only thing left is mumakil.

mumakil put up a valiant fight, and kill many uruks as they fall.


Now, I have no main army left, a rag-tag group of men sitting in west osgiliath, minas tirith ready to fall, and miniscule garrisons in my other cities.


luckily for me, i managed to train a $*^&-load of mumakil before mordor could move south of my main river border. my capital launched an immense attack of mumakil against trolls, an epic battle indeed. however, i still was crippled until about 30 turns later when i recovered my lost possessions and got my $*^& together.

[SultanWilliam]

In kingdoms i was playing as novgorod, and I was going very good. I was killing the teutonic order, had already defeated Norway and took most castles of Denmark. I had an alliance with Lithuania and the Mongols.

Suddenly came denmark with an enormous army at one of my cities in the middle of my empire! Within 3 turns there was a big gap in my empire, and just when I wanted to reinforce the regions surrounding it, Lithuania and the Mongols declared war and began attacking me at the south!



everything is getting better now. Lithuania occupied 2 cities, but those were soon reoccupied. They are dying now XD. The Mongols couldn't get a single citie, with thanks to my towers and oil (oil destroyed all the rams, and because theyve mostly horse archers i could cut them down). Mongols are still strong though and i still lose some open battles against them. I kinda gave up Norway/Denmark.

everything will be allright soon

p.s.
when i defeated Norway, i couldnt play them in the grand campaign. isnt it possible to become a faction when you destroy them?

[Seleucid King]

I've had an "Oh, Sh*t!" moment before(forgive me, it wasn't in M2:TW)

I was playing the ERE in the BI expansion for R:TW and I was following a Strategy guide tip; get every Comitatense and Eastern Archer unit in one army and ship them offf to an enemy stronghold and I decided to crush the Goths....bad move.

When I sent my army into battle, I decided not to take any chances and Played it out. I was doing really good at first; My archers flaming everything he sent at me, it all went to hell whe I moved in my Infantry.....

I had about 12-14 Comitatense units including 2 Mercenary ones. They all marched up the streets of the wall-less city and confronted the enemy, and my archers literally provided Covering "Fire", as in Flaming arrows. At the same time, my Cavalry(1 general and 1 Scholae Palatinae) charged up another road to flank the enemy, and my general got killed in the charge!

After that, I saw a bunch of Purple banners flashing white and the enemies practically ran over probably 1,000-1,500 soldiers in just a few seconds,() and that's when I said "Oh, Sh*t!!!!!"

[oz_wwjd]

In MT2,Vanilla Mod I was playing as the Byzantines and was at war with both the Venetians and the Egyptians as once,and had bribed the Mongols some huge amount of money to ally with me,because I wasn't really looking forward to a 3-way war,esp with the mongols.

Anyways I had my two armies one up besginging Zagreb and the other at Alexandria,when the Timurids rolled into the scene and allied with the mongols,who proceeded to break the alliance,and both the mongols and the timurids after crushing the Turks,proceded to roll up the rest of my empire,in very short order,as I wasn't exactly expecting both of them to attack me at once..

[Seleucid King]

[Prussian to the Iron]

In MT2,Vanilla Mod I was playing as the Byzantines and was at war with both the Venetians and the Egyptians as once,and had bribed the Mongols some huge amount of money to ally with me,because I wasn't really looking forward to a 3-way war,esp with the mongols.

Anyways I had my two armies one up besginging Zagreb and the other at Alexandria,when the Timurids rolled into the scene and allied with the mongols,who proceeded to break the alliance,and both the mongols and the timurids after crushing the Turks,proceded to roll up the rest of my empire,in very short order,as I wasn't exactly expecting both of them to attack me at once..

did they take constantinople? it should be safe no matter what; you can put a fort next to it, and then garruson the fort and the city.

i hope you drove those bastards back eventually.

[oz_wwjd]

They didn't manage to get to constantinople,as I had posted not one,but many forts along the route,all filled with the best troops I could muster on such short notice. The campaign's still in progress,working on repelling the Mongol scum from my lands,but the Timurid elephant stacks just don't want to die in battle,without crushing many of my troops under it's feet...

[Ashen]

Happened in my current Sicilian campaign; Had commissioned a crusade to take Venice, took it, and was under siege. I figured nearly a full stack with a 7* general would be fine, and didn't look properly at the Venetian troops when he attacked and I had a stack of Pilgrims trying to stand toe to toe with a bunch of dismounted knights and the like.

Worst bit being I had my own troops to counter...and could have done, but lack of attentian cost me Venice, then domino affect spread to Bologna and Florence. I wasn't happy.

[Galain_Ironhide]

This was a while back. Playing as Gondor, early into the campaign. All is going swell, I had just taken East osgiliath away from the Orcs, so I thought I'd set up a watchtower up ahead to get some early warnings of any invasions. I send Lord Denethor by himself out to do the job. Then BAM! He gets ambushed by 1600 orcs that were hiding in the woods. There was going to be no escape for poor old Denethor, so I decided if he was going to die, he would do it taking as many orcs as possible with him.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

" 0h-$#!% "


I mercilessly charged him into the lines of the orcs ,then would retreat, and then charge again. Hacking down hundreds of orcs. Missle fire was obliterating Denethors unit.


Until finally Lord Denethor finally succumbs to missle fire himself.


He did pretty good really. Killed about half of those filthy orcs. I love the strength of these General units in TATW.



"No tomb for Denethor. No long, slow sleep of death embalmed. I shall burn, like the heathen kings of old."
Well not really, I would say the orcs would have ripped poor Denethors body apart and used his head as a soccer ball.

I was quite dissappointed losing Denethor so early in the GC but there has been so many battles and so many of my Generals die in this GC (Which I am still playing) he probably would of died eventually anyway.

[IncubusDragon]

Wow, Denethor didn't half kick some orc butt on his way out!!! (Looks like an awesome mod too)

Loved reading this thread... I was really gutted to discover today that my internet connection isn't fast enough to play multi-player, but reading these posts has enthused me to stop moping and get stuck into a single-player campaign.

I've got a "vanilla" set-up (not tried any mods)... hmm, I used to devastate my enemies in VI with an uber Hungarian army... what are the odds I'm going to have my own story to post here within three turns? hehehe

[GrandInquisitor]

I've enjoyed this thread, so I'll throw one in here. It's more like a series of 0h-$#!% moments.

My first "successful" Turk campaign, back in Vanilla 1.2 before I used the Vanilla Mod. I conquered the Middle East, Balkans, and North Africa. My two veteran armies in the Balkans marched from Zagreb into Italy to finish the game. Well, I'd never seen the Papal Empire before, having previously played Catholic Venice. He controlled Italy with an iron hand and thousands of nasty troops, plus allies. At a high cost, I captured northern Italy and planned to march on Rome. Then the Black Death hit. 0h-$#!%...

My economy collapsed, so reinforcements were impossible for a while. And even so, my nearest castle was in Dalmatia. That's when the Pope called a Crusade against Venice. It was pretty amazing to see: stacks of allied European Crusaders and non-Crusaders marching across the Alps, while the Pope himself rallied his southern Italian armies against me. All this happened ONE province from victory. I retreated from Italy with the shattered remains of my armies, burning down the cities I'd just conquered as I went. I thought I'd regroup and invade later.

Wrong. The Timurids showed up -- my first experience with them -- and marched through my lands to Antioch. Still recovering from the losses I'd sustained from war and plague, I couldn't stop them gutting my empire. They captured Antioch after several epic assaults, dealing a severe blow to my economy in the process. Meanwhile, the Europeans were rolling through the Balkans and North Africa. At that point, I couldn't muster the strength stop the Timurids AND the huge western alliance bearing down on my poor empire.

I'll never forget being that one, single province from victory -- only to have it turned to catastrophic defeat.

[Yesugey]

Once while i playing with Egyptians on Crusades Campaign.

At the first minute of the battle, my Hero Salahaddin Eyyubi charged a unit of rebel peasants and get killed on first impact... I got soo angry and closed the game swearing.