While most of my battles are only 3-7 min long; I did have a 54 min battle that brought back a lot of old great memories. No bugs or anything like that it was a real struggle the full 54 min. I had sieged a city with about 4500 troops, I had 2300 maybe. Anyways the story goes like this
I deployed on their main gate where I shot down (I had 3 units of ballista) a siege tower that I thought could really hurt me. After a few shots I noticed that the reinforcements were coming by boat, and couldn't land in the city because there wasn't enough room. They had to land to the left side and run in through the main gate. So I turned my ballista towards them and started shelling them with explosive shot. This goes on for a while and I end up getting around 225 kills average with each unit of ballista. First person ballista mode is fun as balls by the way.
At this point however, I was really low on ammo. I was thinking because destructible walls act a little differently in Rome 2 maybe the gatehouse will have a special animation / texture / graphic. It doesn't. With my batista's on empty the only opening into the city was through the gatehouse. Luckily though, I had shot down any towers that would give me a headache, so meaningless casualties from them wouldn't be a factor. There were some ranged units on the tower walls, but all in all with my Spartans they shouldn't be a factor. I get my troops into position, and begin my death march into the city.
My first two or three units of men manage to get past the gatehouse, but once the ai sees what I'm doing all 4,000 of them set up on the other side. This would result in a 45 min tug of war for the gatehouse.I tried a many different tactics, and this actually looked really cool... like setting up 4 spartan hoplites (the core of this army), on my side of the gate outside in square formation kind of close together. The idea was that, I would pull out my 1-2 units (Perioikoi spearmen and hoplites) and run them through the squares, hoping that the enemy would give chase. Don't do this by the way. Because of unit mass they screwed up the square formations. It kind of worked, but in a 20/80 sort of way.
Once my Perioikoi Spearman and Hoplites were out of the way I decided to send in the wreckers (Spartan Hoplites. If you're playing as Sparta... You know what I mean ;) ).I went easy by sending in 2 units for 2 reasons. #1) Ease up on the fps. Even though this battle was fun I was getting a lot of chop. #2) In theory I was thinking... Taking mass into consideration : Less # of men in a very small confined space (Arches of a gateway) = more space to move around right? It might have worked. I would have to replicate the experience to get more substantial evidence / results, but between the 2 units they got 900 kills (a 700/200 split) before routing. Those men go down as heroes in my book. Even though we gained very little ground in the swing of things they were a virtual meat grinder, and if you were a light unit caught between them and the swordsmen you were on death notice.
Once it became clear they were not going to punch through, and their numbers started to wane, I decided to send in 2 more Spartan Hoplites and my General. Quick side note if you have a Spartan General with enough Zeal they are a supreme fighting force, and can easily take on 2-3 units at a time. These three combined started making a little headway. Which was really cool to watch because my general was out on the front line. He was easy to spot with that big corinthian helm. At this point I was pretty confident we were going to punch through and get the numbers in our favor
.
That's when the cavalry charges started to happen. Periodically the enemy would take all the cav they had, and just charge at the gate. Sounds like a dumb idea in theory, but again because of mass they would push me back. And not only that but they would separate individuals from formation and pick them off. At this point I gave up on my less is more strategy, and I did everything possible to get my Perioikoi Spearmen back into the fight.
It took a good 5-10 min for them to reach the front line with all the pushing, and shoving. We lost about 50 men in the process, but once they got there they were able to pick off the Merc Cav and Camel Riders that were starting to give me headaches. Once the cav were out of the way the battle strength bar was finally in my favor, and my Spartans whittled down the remaining swordsmen.
And then I had my favorite moment of the game so far. The enemy broke, and went into full retreat. Spartans started flooding into the city like a tidal wave. I give the order to chase down the fleeing cowards, and hit the insert key. What I got was a view of thousands of Spartans all running and cheering in joy with the sun bright in the sky and a destroyed Gatehouse in the background.Screenshot It was surreal almost.
incredible.
The Rome 2: Screenshot thread.
Originally Posted by North Korea
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks