What's the toughest battle situation you've faced(and won)?

[Prince Cobra]

Also, I agree with Tosa. Clocks tend to hurt me.

I always use the clock. There is plenty of time to launch a successful attack and plenty of time to be defeated if you are not careful enough. And long battles just hurt my eyes, my day and etc.

Clock is historically accurate, I think (hehe, with some imagination from my part ). First, the defender always had some advantage because the attacker suffered supply problems. In addition, if the battle continued too long, the two sides often pulled back to rest and continue the fight the other day (when situation can be quite different if say reinforcement arrive...)

I admit I rely on cavalry as the Byzantines and it is never hard to hunt down the enemy. The early attacks on the Turks (High/Late) are a bit challneging because of the units of horse archers in the Turks but fortunately, the general and the princes are vulnerable. Kill the royalty and you don't really care about the battle. And although horse archers are perfect for chasing the routed enemy and hit-and-run tactics, their morale is a bit fragile. But if I lose by time, this still counts.

On a different aspect, a certain battle against the Mongols was almost lost because I relied on halberdiers as mercenaries to slaughter the Mongol Hordes (High campaign). My plan was to press the enemy at the end of the map and to slaughter the reinforcements (battle map Georgia). Even the immortal Varangians failed me. The day was won by the numbers of spearmen and other crappy units that I took "just in case". They were staying on the hill, suffering great casualties for the fatherland (hey, these were low-ranked common people but they defended their farms!). The Mongols withdrew their missile infantry after they had run out of ammo, and then wave after wave. At the same time, the spears pushed out any unit (mostly cavalry) that dared to engage at hand to hand (though there were moments when my spears were on the edge of rout when the new reinforcement were late; my general fled the field after the failure of his aggressive defence; this was effectively the end of his so-far brilliant career if we didn't count the conquest of Cyprus several years later). At the end (btw, this could have been his last reinforcement), time ran out and the battle was delayed. From this day, the halbs are mostly ignored as mercenaries and spears are highly valued troops.

Forgive me the long lecture...

[Togakure]

I turn the clock off. Nothing more frustrating that to defeat the main army and have a couple of enemy horse archers runaway, but not flee the field, while I have ten times the number of men on the field, just not any fast enough to catch them, have the clock run out, and the province remain in enemy hands.

[TosaInu]

I tend to agree with that Prince Cobra,

However I'm really slow, so often the clock is already tight for me. But it's especially cases like Togakure posts that made me decide to turn it off.

[Fisherking]

To me the clock matters more in some of the games than in others. I hardly remember it in the early games. I just remember it was there.

In ETW and NTW I often play with just a 20 min. time limit but if it is a siege I may turn off the clock all to gather.

Remember you can also slow or stop time in the battle and give some limited orders, depending on which TW you are playing.

Particularly in the Naval games I find the clock to work to advantage. If all you have is a small fleet vs. a huge one you can never get troops anywhere without being attacked. Running away for 20 min and accelerated time is better than losing and army and ships to a full stack of pirates. Just remember to use fast ships.

[PershsNhpios]

MTW has given me the hardest fights, without question.

The hardest in memory is one against the HRE as Bohemia in XL 3.0 when the entire empire decided it would bring all the might it could muster down on my little province.
I had a couple of javelinmen units, some 'Bohemian Bowmen', some urban militia, spearmen and two BG units against something close to 2500 HRE troops.
I learned to respect javelinmen that day, as it was their missiles sparingly used as the enemy militia surged uphill that won. No one dared invade Bohemia again!

But there must be tens of similarly difficult battles which I have fought against the Almohads as Castilla, and the Byzantines as the Turks... I can't remember the details, sorry!

I also used the clock for historical accuracy until in my current Byzantine campaign I came about 10 seconds close to losing a very difficult fight because one Turcoman horseman refused to leave the field! The clock was off forever!

[Brandy Blue]

I don't remember most of the battle, but at the end I had one horse archer unit left and the AI had one Boyar unit left. The Boyars opted to stand off and shoot arrows, trusting to their armor to pull them through. To my surprise, my horse archers were winning the shoot out, probably because the Boyars had received casulties earlier in the fight. My HAs were losing as many guys, but they could afford to. Then the Boyars charged. I supposed logically I should have ran for it, but at an impulse I counter-charged and got lucky. The Boyars lost, the enemy Tsar was cut off in another province, and next turn I closed in on him for the ransom.

I leave the clock on, even though I remember "losing" a battle because three guys rallied and hid in the woods and I never found them. I accept the occaisional ridiculous defeat as the price of keeping the clock on.

[gollum]

Clock is always off for me. The AI with it tries to win battles by it, and also he cannot bring his full force to bear if the clock is on, when he invades with more than 1stack (that happens often at the lower unit sizes, as there are many stacks around). Also, as many others said, teh clock is ultimately annoying in deciding battles at a point when they should have clearly gone the other way, both when you ought to have lost or ought to have won.

Too many good fights that i won on the edge to remember and list. Too many also that i lost on the edge, equally fun and satisfying despite - or because - of the loss. I feel the game has much more worth, when i lose fair and sqaure after a tough fight, and the total war AI of STW and MTW have surprised me in this way many times. RTW and M2TW - sometimes do, but far less consistently and spectacularly.