Greatest moments in YOUR gaming history!

[Monk]

We've all been there. It's 2 am and you're down to your last life. Your family has long since gone to bed and it's just you and the boss... you're staring that pixelated fiend in the eyes and one of you is going to flinch. You persevere and against all odds come out on top, its something we've all been through. Beating the living crap out of the games we pay money to use to relax, with phrases like "I can't stop, or the game will win." Or "The game cheats, i swear!"

These are moments that define us as gamers more than anything imo, it's in these moments when pushed to the brink we let succumb to baser emotions, because let's face it, you can't let the game win.



Okay, enough dramatic openings. I want to hear from my fellow .Orgahs, what's the gaming moment that stands out most in your mind? If you can't settle on one (and I know there's dozens for me) then just give us some that pop up in your mind. Feel free to indulge as much or as little as you see fit.

Seeing as this thread was my bright idea, i'll get it started right with one of my more recent ones. And this one, believe it or not, comes from CoD:WaW. I know!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There were two moments in actuality, and not surprisingly they came while I was achievement hunting. The first was The Sum of All Zeros. In short, you're manning a twin .50 cal turret onboard a plane in the pacific and you've got to shoot down 45 enemy planes. Sound simple right? Wrong! The plans move so fast and the turret is so hard to get used to (it might be the controler) I kept glaring at my TV in frustration. Attempt 1 went by, no go, attempt 5, still nothing. The tenth try? I missed it by three kills.

I nearly shut off the game right then and there but there was no way I was letting this game, of all games, get the best of me. I grabbed a soda and strapped in for another go. By the mid-point i had 32 kills. I was doing great. I kept pushing, pushing and when the final plane hit the ocean and that little achievement box popped up, I sat back with a heavy sigh and let the controller drop to the ground in exhaustion. Looked up at the clock, 3 am. Didn't care. It was over.

The day before I had gone through similiar agony attempting to get The Professional. It comes in the first soviet stage in which you're handed a rifle and told to snipe some soldiers standing about. You've got 5 bullets to kill 8 enemy troops with while at the same time not alerting them to your presence. So you've got to be quick, be precise and be timely, a missed shot, or even a badly timed one and you missed your chance. It took a long time for me to get this down, but I got it. It didn't give me as much satisfaction as Sum of all Zeros, but it was close.

Well? What are some moments that stand out to you, as either moments of videogame triumph or utter frustration?

[Hooahguy]

my best gaming moment was probably in Company of heroes: opposing fronts.
i was playing the german campaign, and i was in the process of getting all the medals. but there was one mission where i just could not get the medal. i had to defend a road from the brits, and to get the medal i had to control all the control points on the road. i always fell short of the last control point, and i got so frustrated. what would happen is in the last 5 minutes before i won, the brits would throw everything they had at me. everything. arty, heavy tanks, MGs, the works. so naturally my forces were shredded near the end. i was playing on hard, so it makes sense. after about three tries i was ready to give up.
but i decided to try once more. with fifteen seconds left on the clock, and arty raining down, i managed to take the last point. i sent all my men and tanks to defend it, and i got the medal.
best moment of gaming in my life by far, only nearly matched with when i beat the "one shot one kill" mission on COD4 on veteran.

[White_eyes:D]

I recall playing a game of Empire:Total War as the Orange guys in India. Started out good....but was turning into frustration half way thru, when a Large Muslim Stack hit my fort city (The province just above the Capital). I recall I wasn't too good with Navy stuff and didn't build much of a fleet, so flanking was out of the question. I had only two units of Hindu Muskets (With no baynet tech upgrades...). I knew I was going to lose if I Auto-resolved but was unsure of what I could do, even if I commanded the battle. I took a chance and figured I could win if I had some high ground or something. Turn's out I was right, and as a bonus the artily was fixed so my guys were out of there range. I took the high ground and then charged downhill when they were close...to my surprise, I lost only 8 men in the charge and they killed around 120=60 men apiece from there downhill charge with no bayonets. After that the Muhgal gave me no trouble

[seireikhaan]

I'd say one that stands out was a battle during an Armenian campaign in MTW with the XL 2.0 mod. Fought two separate, allied armies each equal in number to my one at the same time and won a decisive victory.

Also, a Texan occupation of London.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[]

[Beirut]

Best gaming moment? Playing a downloaded custom mission on the original MS Combat Flight Simulator. I was in a flight of Spitfire MKIs and our flight was up against a gaggle of Me-109s. The guy who built the mission gave Simpsons names to all the planes. So if your wingman flew past you, you'd see a tag above his plane that might say Homer, something like that.

Anyway, I'm slugging it out with an Me-109 and ahead of me I see another -109 tear up a Spitfire and send him smoking into the ground. The tag above the Spitfire read "Krusty". I think I actually said aloud, "You killed Krusty the Clown!" I got mad. Really mad. I tore through a cloud of enemy planes, hunted the SOB that downed Krusty and shot him to pieces. Nothing left but airborne debris. It really felt great.

Talk about immersion.

[Jolt]

No competition in it? Ah well, guess I'm the first. The national ETL (Enemy Territory League) Cup was held in Lisbon some years ago (Ugh, 2005 I think), and as one of the major national clans of ET, my clan was thus direct invitee into the tournament. It was my very first LAN.

I might add that all competitions of ET are done in Stopwatch, which the attacking clan has a set timelimit to accomplish a number of objectives, ending the map, after which, the defending team switches to the attacking team and must beat the time set by first attacking clan. Two maps were played per match. In case both teams managed to prevent the other team from accomplishing the objectives during the game's max time limit for the map, in both maps then it was considered a tie. The matches order of play, concerning who attacked and defended was done in "AB-BA" form.

The Group Phase was a piece of cake, except for the war with another of the top-favorite clans which also was placed on our group. I don't quite recall that match as it was the only one I didn't participate in it (It was our opening match), but I think it was a tie in both maps. In any case, we advanced to the quarter finals, quickly dispatched the team and went to the semi-finals. They won the first map (Gold Rush) - They attacked first, and managed to finish the objectives, while we didn't manage to finish the objectives in the time limit they did. On the second map (Supply Depot) we attacked first and we made an average time, and they attacked, and we basically control the match pretty well, but I still remember the defining moment of that match. My entire clan was dead save for a Clanmember of mine who was in the Crane Controls room (Building the Crane controls is an objective of the attacking side) and he killed two engineers with his SMG and Pistol in the Crane Controls room, who were there constructing the said obj. Thing is, he didn't gib them, but he had no bullets left and the medic was coming fast to revive the killed engineers, and still remember it clear as water, that clanmate giivng them with his knife, then the medic appears from behind him and kills him, reviving the two engineers, who proceeded to construct the crane controls, which puts the gold into a truck and then the attacking side must escort the truck to an exit outside the base. Thing is, if he managed to gib both engineers, we would spawn shortly afterwards and retake our defensive positions, effectively winning the map and forcing the game to go on a decider map, which we might have very well won.
But that is not the entire story. True to our skill we attempted everything to slow down their advance with the truck, and in the end we were extremely frustrated as they were able to accomplish their objective with 4 seconds left on the timer. They won over 4 seconds. ...Man. ...It sucks to lose like that.


Other than that, my prime time in gaming history is reaching the 3rd spot in Populous 3: The Beginning multiplayer rankings, effectively making me a living legend of Populous

[Crazed Rabbit]

Hmm. I'm terrible at remembering things on the spot, but here's one from L4D:

I joined a versus game in the Dead Air finale. We started out as usual, running to the finale trigger. But one guy got attacked by a witch on the way. Me and another guy stay to help him. The final guy goes on to the refueling truck. Now, as I'm trying to whack zombies and rescue the downed guy, I see the final guy out of the corner of my eye approaching the radio, which will trigger a horde of zombies.

Surely he can't be that stupid, I think, and turn my attention again to the zombies around me. The downed guy gets killed by the zombies around him, though. And then idiot number two sets off the horde. He promptly gets pounced by a hunter zombie.

At this point I'm wondering if I should just rage quit because, seriously, how are two people going to survive a whole finale zombie horde? But I persist, as does the only other guy alive (we didn't fight hard to save idiot number two).

So we huddle under the plane wing, fighting off hordes of zombies, bashing away special infected. And when the tank comes, we run around, staying just out of reach and slowly killing him. And then we do it all over again.

At the end of it, we've both somehow survived. And we both type the same thing in general chat; "We rock." Because we do.

CR

[Martok]

For me, there are two moments that stick out in my head....


1.) Back when I first started playing Birth of the Federation, there was a(n extremely short-lived) period where I was a member of a BOTF clan and played a couple of MP matches. It was during one of these matches that I ended up playing with a very unpleasant fellow from another clan who mercilessly mocked my newbie status, and -- by extension -- my playing skills. He was so rude that even his clan-mate (we were playing a 2-vs-2 match) was embarrassed by his behavior. (Note: He was playing as the Federation, and I was the Romulans.)

Anyway, the jerk kept on me until I finally lost my temper and I made a disparaging remark about him being Hitler's love child. Not surprisingly, he took exception to my comment -- it probably didn't help matters that he was Austrian -- and immediately launched a massive attack on my empire. What was delicious, however, was that luck (or perhaps providence?) had arranged matters so that I'd just *happened* to have a large fleet of cloaked warships sitting near his invasion route (which he couldn't see), and I was able to intercept him with it. To make a long story short, his armada was wiped out completely, and he raged-quit shortly after that.

Generally speaking, I'm not a very petty person (at least, I don't think/hope I am!). However, I cannot deny that I took enormous satisfaction at getting my revenge on the guy for being such a tool.


2.) I know I've mentioned this one before, but my other greatest gaming moment occurred when I was playing vanilla Medieval Total War: It was when my small Spanish army of around 450 men faced a huge Almohad army out-numbering them by nearly 3-to-1....and defeated it. It was significant for me because it was the first time in either MTW or STW that I'd defeated a massively superior force which *wasn't* a bridge battle. The victory was also all the sweeter because it was one of those truly critical battles where my kingdom's very survival had depended on my being able to win it -- if the Caliphate had won, I had nothing left which could've stopped them from overrunning all of northern Iberia.

What made it even more exhilarating was that the battle really could've gone either way; the momentum swung back & forth between the two armies several different times. I can still remember that I was so nervous about whether or not I could pull a victory out of this impossible situation, that my hands were actually sweaty! Ah yes, good times, good times....

[Monk]

The mentions of MTW and of epic battles made me remember about one of my own epic fights in the TW series. It took a long time to track down but i was amazed when i found the post that detailed everything, with screens still intact!

I give you, 13,000 danes vs 26,000 Mongols, the Battle of Khazar, 1231 AD.

I had nearly forgotten about that fight and now that I think of it it's the single longest battle I ever took part in. It's without a doubt a moment that defined the TW genre for me and stands tall as a reason why MTW is and will always be one of my favorite games, all time.

[Vladimir]

Just a quick one:

I remember a little about a battle I had as the Spanish where I was reduced to using depleted and exhausted units of pavaise crossbowmen in defensive flanking maneuvers verses an Elmo horde. True, once you break the first wave the rest is easy, but it was very close.

[TinCow]

Beating the final bot in the Quake 3 Arena single-player tournament on Nightmare difficulty. If you've played it, I don't need to explain why. If you haven't played it, there's no point in explaining, because you simply wouldn't believe a game could be that hard.

[Jolt]

Beating the final bot in the Quake 3 Arena single-player tournament on Nightmare difficulty. If you've played it, I don't need to explain why. If you haven't played it, you can't possibly understand how difficult that is.

Also did it. It's actually easy provided you have the necessary aim and know what to do. ^^

[Warmaster Horus]

Also did it. It's actually easy provided you have the necessary aim and know what to do.

Yes, but if half your hand is in a cast and you're tired to the point where you don't know what you're doing... It can be pretty hard.

[Samurai Waki]

I don't think a lot of you are quite old enough to remember a fantastic (and agonizingly hard) Graphical Adventure Game called The Dig.

Theres a certain section in it where you have to rebuild the entire skeleton of a turtle like creature, this isn't like 1 or 2 pieces, it was a lot of freakin' pieces and you almost needed a Degree in Biology get this thing right, because it had to be exact. After about a hundred tries, and hours upon hours of frustration I finally got this thing rebuilt (and reincarnated) and I was so happy I just about cried in relief. I have never gotten so emotionally attached to a game as I did to The Dig, and I probably never will. I was actually sad when I finally (about a year later) beat the game.

[frogbeastegg]

In X-Wing: Alliance I once took down an Imperial class star destroyer on my own. In an A-wing. I had to shoot out its engines because it tried to escape me once its shields failed.

[TinCow]

Oh my god, I had forgotten about the X-Wing games. TIE fighter had some absurd missions, but few were as bad as the one where you had to clear the minefield in a T/I. The only consolation was that they really were trying to get you killed. Playing that without dropping the difficulty level down was extraordinarily frustrating.

[Togakure]

For me, Shogun MP, of course. It was a rare 4v4 that didn't lag, a lightly foggy battle on the Horselands map, with talented players on both sides, and two of my 47Ronin buddies teaming with me. I managed over 1500 kills, the most I ever got in a MP game, as we repulsed a very nasty attack which caught us off guard in the fog, and turned it around. I think I had less than 200 men left at the end. It was an extremely exciting game; at several points it seemed one side would win, but then someone would do something epic and the tide would turn. Ah, the glory days.

Runner-up was a neighborhood competition among friends, playing the original Soul Calibur on the Sega Dreamcast. There were 16 of us, all caught up in the SC thing that was the craze when it first came out. Most of them hadn't seen me play, but I'd seen most of them play (I'd hang out after work and watch; but often declined to play because I was so tired; I observed closely though ...). Using Mitsurugi, Taki, Siegfried, and Cervantes, I blasted my way into the final match. Then I played my hidden ace, and won the competition with my favorite freak. "VOOOOOLDO WINS!!," heh. It was quite a fun weekend.

***

The most shameful moment was in 6th grade. I had a ~200 wins, 20 losses record on the chess team. Ten of those twenty losses were to one other player, our second ranker. Our school arranged a tournament with a nearby elementary school. I was defeated soundly in two games back to back and eliminated early in the match by an extraordinary player from the other school, their number one. It was so embarrassing. He just stomped me. I didn't play much chess after that.

[Martok]

The mentions of MTW and of epic battles made me remember about one of my own epic fights in the TW series. It took a long time to track down but i was amazed when i found the post that detailed everything, with screens still intact!

I give you, 13,000 danes vs 26,000 Mongols, the Battle of Khazar, 1231 AD.

I had nearly forgotten about that fight and now that I think of it it's the single longest battle I ever took part in. It's without a doubt a moment that defined the TW genre for me and stands tall as a reason why MTW is and will always be one of my favorite games, all time.

Good grief, that really was a bloody slaughter. Are you serious that only ~300 of your men survived??!

In X-Wing: Alliance I once took down an Imperial class star destroyer on my own. In an A-wing. I had to shoot out its engines because it tried to escape me once its shields failed.

You took down an Imp-class with a single A-wing?? That's incredible -- fast as they are, they're essentially armed with pea-shooters in my experience. That must've been one heck of a ride!

[Hooahguy]

The most shameful moment was in 6th grade. I had a ~200 wins, 20 losses record on the chess team. Ten of those twenty losses were to one other player, our second ranker. Our school arranged a tournament with a nearby elementary school. I was defeated soundly in two games back to back and eliminated early in the match by an extraordinary player from the other school, their number one. It was so embarrassing. He just stomped me. I didn't play much chess after that.

thats not so bad. i once went on a 12 death streak in BF2142. the worst part about it is the average death streak was 5-6 and the fact that i got the 12 death streak is displayed prominently on my stat page. plus i got 6 purple hearts, which means you got a .25 kdr in a round. shame on me.

[Boohugh]

Hmm quite difficult to say. One of them would probably be killing Kael'Thas for the first time in World of Warcraft. At the time he was the hardest boss in the game and even now is widely considered as one of the most epic fights designed. My guild spent several weeks learning the encounter and killing him was a great feeling of satisfaction, the culmination of months of teamwork.

We did have a movie of it (with ventrilo recorded!) but it seems to have died with Stage6 sadly

[caravel]

TIE fighter had some absurd missions, but few were as bad as the one where you had to clear the minefield in a T/I. The only consolation was that they really were trying to get you killed. Playing that without dropping the difficulty level down was extraordinarily frustrating.

Been there and done it - without dropping the difficulty level down - don't intend to try again. That was in the days when I still, just about, had the reflxes of a hyperactive teenager.

As for greatest gaming moments I'd have to go with my first few campaigns in STW or any of those early MTW1 campaigns as the Turks defending Georgia/Armenia/Khazaar against the Mongols.

[econ21]

I'd also pick MTW for my greatest moments - it's funny how so many people pick that game. It really had that phenomenon of the AI going for your jugular that subsequent TW games have sadly lost.

One MTW PBM in particular stood out - when I inherited a mid-game Almohad faction:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...20&postcount=5

For some reason, I think my King started out of communication with most of the Empire, so there were mass rebellions and faction respawns all over the place. It was hair raising trying to keep on top of them.

But the most memorable feature was that the map was half orange and half purple[1], so that ten years later a similar thing happened but this time prompted by the Byzantines surging east (their navies messing up my lines of communication). I was caught unprepared and for some turns, their massed heavy cavalry led by an eight star general simply overran my AUMs and weak spears. I only gradually clawed back victory by attrition - trading losses until they had little heavy cavalry left. It was like playing the Soviets in a grand strategic WW2 game and having to wear down the German panzer thrusts.

[1]I suspect that is a large part of the problem with subsequent TW games - slothful campaign AI means that no AI faction emerges mid-game as a superpower to rival the player.

[pevergreen]

I have the ability to quickly forget moments of triumph.

I do remember 2 good parts to Medieval 2: Total War and RTW though.

1. Britain, defending a castle. I had just gotten Feudal Knights on foot, so I put them in the front line, my longbows on the wall. Repulsed the attack, had about half the force. Get them retraining, but get sieged with another group same size. Just manage to get that one off, holding in the square and just breaking them before I lost all my troops.

Then sieged for a third time. I had about 40 men left. (medium sizes) and I somehow held off a third set of attackers. It was an epic 3 hour long set of battles.

The other one was playing an Invasion of China mod. I was holding an Egyptian city, when I was besieged by 4000 egyptians. I had 120 militia, 120 base infantry, 200 crosbows and 40 chariots. I thought "bugger it, im going away" so i left it on AI.

The ai smashed the egyptians.

[Monk]

Good grief, that really was a bloody slaughter. Are you serious that only ~300 of your men survived??!

Quit serious! Casualty rates in that battle were absolutely insane, few of my troops actually routed (from what I remember). I had brought such high morale, disciplined troops, and my leader was so good, that many units were utterly destroyed or reduced to ~ten men before I pulled them back or let them die.

I honestly cannot remember what MTW mod that was, it might've been the old XL mod. It's a shame cuz i'd really love to play that again.

[Vladimir]

Oh my god, I had forgotten about the X-Wing games. TIE fighter had some absurd missions, but few were as bad as the one where you had to clear the minefield in a T/I. The only consolation was that they really were trying to get you killed. Playing that without dropping the difficulty level down was extraordinarily frustrating.

I don't want to think about that whole game. Too much fun.

[frogbeastegg]

Oh my god, I had forgotten about the X-Wing games. TIE fighter had some absurd missions, but few were as bad as the one where you had to clear the minefield in a T/I. The only consolation was that they really were trying to get you killed. Playing that without dropping the difficulty level down was extraordinarily frustrating.

The betrayal was time based, so you could ignore the mines and still progress. I never knew that until I saw it on the internet, years after I last played the game. I nearly wept - all those deaths for no reason!

The series was brutally hard. That's why I'm not jumping for joy over the hints it will be re-released. I have memories of being an ace pilot; it would be crushing to go back and start again from the bottom of the skill curve. Dearly as I loved the games, I think it would destroy my memories of them. Once upon a time I knew the game so well my friends said I flew like a jedi. Now I'd be a pretty explosion.

The final missions of X-Wing Alliance were horrifically difficult. Flying through the second death star's structure under constant fire, slipping through spaces with no margin for error at all. I didn't think they could make anything nastier than the trench run mission in X-Wing; I was wrong, so very wrong.

You took down an Imp-class with a single A-wing?? That's incredible -- fast as they are, they're essentially armed with pea-shooters in my experience. That must've been one heck of a ride!

It took something like 40 minutes. I shot off the shield generators first, then all 6(?) of the engines - it nearly reached the jump point to escape so it was a close call - and finally chipped the hull away. I can't remember why I decided to do this; the mission was successfully completed. Once I knew I could do it, I took down a bunch more in later missions.

[Whacker]

You took down an Imp-class with a single A-wing?? That's incredible -- fast as they are, they're essentially armed with pea-shooters in my experience. That must've been one heck of a ride!

/prideful mode with a dash of bragging on

(I should mention that of all the PC games I've ever played and honestly dedicated myself to mastering, TIE Fighter would be top of that list. I had a Hard-only save that was near perfect, I only missed 1 tertiary objective across all 13 campaigns.)

It's honestly not hard at all. In fact, the only thing that saved cap ships from ME in X-Wing and TF were if A> I didn't have ion cannons and B> they ran like heck once you drop their shields or their hull gets to a certain %.

TIE Fighter was far, far, far easier. The main reason for this was that you could shoot off the missile launchers and turrets. Another thing that helped immensely was you could use the mouse to fly and make very small adjustments for perfect aiming. I flew with a gravis gamepad and a trackball. I ate Calamari Cruisers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

That mission that was just discussed, B5M1, wasn't honestly all that hard. Taking out mines was a science that wasn't hard at all once you get the hang of it, even in an unshielded craft. Also what FBE said was true, you could blow away your wingmen immediately with no repercussions. The rest of the mission was just trying to inspect that shuttle in between blowing away fighters.

/prideful mode with dash of bragging off

It does pain me to admit that I no longer have the same edge I used to. About 2 years ago on a lark, I got into my closet and put together a box that could run DOS from old parts. It was fantastic, I had Mech2, Dark Forces, Doom, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Wacky Wheels, Ultima 7 and 8, and a slew of other games on there. To cut to the chase, those old hard missions kicked my behind thoroughly, I have no idea how I did them back in the day. The one that game me the most trouble by far was the 2nd to last mission in battle 1, where you had to take out the CRL's fighter screen. Several of the wings had adv. missiles which always, always rocked my world. I just couldn't hack it. The other ones that game me trouble where the missions in battle 5 where you were in a gunboat against T/A's with Adv. missiles yet again. Just couldn't hack it anymore.

[johnhughthom]

I have two, the first was the original Medieval. My Spanish Crusade through the Almos territory (did anyone else think that was a slight exploit? You could send a Crusade blitzing through their lands and other armies following behind could claim the region) came up against a massive Egyptian army with the Faction Leader (Sultan?) and three or four princes. The battle came down to the Egyptian FL against my Prince one on one with everybody else either dead or routed and my Prince cut him down. Luckily enough I had an army one region back to reinforce my Crusade.
The other was on Football Manager 2005, soccer not american football. I managed to take Leigh RMI, in the conference at the time, to the FA Cup Final beating Blackburn and Spurs along the way. We lost 1-0 to Liverpool but were in Europe the next year and made millions from the run. I had many tough team selections late that season as we were also pushing for promotion, which we won on the last day of the season, and my star striker (David McNiven, I still check up on his career) was injured for the last month.

[Ramses II CP]

Many, many moons ago I took part in one of the first Myth: The Fallen Lords tournaments. One of the things that made TFL special, IMHO, was that many of the maps were deliberately unbalanced by having five starting positions with one player in the middle. That player generally had to get out and attack one of the other starting positions, which prevented stalemates but also resulted in a tough time for the edge player so attacked.

So for this round of the tournament one of the maps was called For Carnage Apply Within, and we were playing a game called Flag Rally, in which each start has a flag and the first player to tag all five flags wins. You have to balance protecting your flag with defense against moving offensively to get opponent flags. I decided to be aggressive and moved out of my start towards center, leaving a modest guard of slower troops behind. Immediately I ran into the guy from center coming my way with what looked like his entire force and the high ground. We had a long, drawn out, bloody engagement during which I couldn't micomanage the units I had sent to attempt to tag other flags or follow what else was going on in the game.

Short form: I won the fight, but was losing the battle very badly. All four other players had tagged all four other flags while I had tagged none (Probably they had all noticed center fighting me and left light guards or traded flags deliberately). Which means all remaining troops, except maybe a few guards, were now headed directly for me. At least the center guy was mostly wiped out, but I was at half strength myself and looking at the percentages the others had at least six times my total troop count. I was in danger of a humiliating defeat, and since Myth is a 'you get what you get' game I couldn't build more troops and turtle.

Instead I went on the offensive, setting up a delaying defense at my flag with the idea of keeping it contested as long as possible. In the final two minutes of the game I managed five battles simultaneously at five different positions on the map with wounded troops against difficult odds, flipping the camera between them as fast as possible, and with under 20 seconds to go in the round I captured the last of the other four flags while my enemies were still fighting over, and keeping contested, my own flag.

It was the sweetest four "WTF?!" exclamations I've ever heard. From last place to first with 20 seconds left and 5% of my men remaining.

Single player experiences just don't compare to that kind of rush. I can remember so many great Myth games, especially some of the team games, but that one sticks out in my head because I didn't really believe it was possible for me to win but I was determined to try anyway.

[Motep]

Ah yes. Way back when, in RTW, I was holding out against five or six stacks of egyptians with a couple hundred elite hoplites with silver hued chevrons, one incredibly mediocre general, and two fresh off the line units of cretan archers. This is on normal unit size, one must note, with no time limits and the hardest settings to boot. I figured that my town of Tarsus was doomed to the hordes of egyptian warriors. Steeled in for my last stand, I let the fight begin. It was shaky at first, adn I didnt have enough men to hold the walls they were assaulting. So, I was contented to leave a group of cretans above the gate, and I set their ram on fire. And so that lone group of cretans used about half of their ammo before enough egyptians had reached the walls to retreat more than viable. And so I pulled back to the first gap in the street as the egyptians pulled their force forward, with reinforcements coming to replace their lost ones by the minute. After killing their infantry with my hoplites for a while, they finally had a force set up to go for some flanking. I pulled back quick as I could to defend the square, but lost a unit of hoplites in my struggle. After I had the town sqare firmly blocked from intrusion, I had my cretans use up the last of their ammo aiding the hoplites in thier task of routing any sizable force. I was taking few casualties, what with my general and the now bowless cretans to help out in tense situations, but eventually the battle rose to a cresendo due to the emergence of the egyptian leader, and I was forced to take drastic measures to insure my survival. I lost most of my hoplites in that push of theirs, and all of my cretans, but I was somehow able to hold my formations and watch as my stalwart and ridiculously mediocre general (so many losses against other family members...) slew their leader. After that, their army kinda fell apart, and it only took another 15 minutes for my quickly diminising force to mop up the mess. I think I only had like 60 men left, and I really wish I had a screenie, but I have no idea where it went to. One of my best.

Another time (Ill be brief) I was playing Medieval total war, and I was the Spainish. I Hoisted myself a crusade after a while, and sent it galavanting off towards russia before I turned it around and swooped down to get to the moors. By the time it got to africa, I had about fifty thousand troops at my disposal, adn I unleashed them upon the non christian world like a plague of locusts. And so I avoided the crusade target and devoured everything that was not owned by christians, and was even able to leave a sizable force at each city. And once the crusade was complete, I turned my now ridiculously vast armies homeward, adn no one could stop me...