What is the most embarassing smackdown you ever experienced?

[Auctoritas]

Here's my most humbling experience (to date mind you, I never underestimate my ability to screw up...): [playing on hard/hard]
I attacked the last Carthaginian citadel with a relatively balanced army of ~1450 men. The Carthaginian general is holed up behind stone walls with only about 550 troops. The one wild card, I am attacking with a no star general, he is defending with a 7 star general.

What happened? Do the words "crushing defeat" ring a bell? I lost nearly 1100 dedicated roman troopers and the rest fled all the way back to the ship.

Clearly, I still have much to learn.....

[CMcMahon]

VH battle on normal size in my Julii campaign. I had 400 men, mainly hastati with a couple principes, a young general, five equites and a barbarian cavalry, and some velites; the German horde had 700 men, mostly spear warbands, but also a general, two supporting units of cavalry, a couple groups of axemen, and 20 or 30 screeching women. Now, had those spear warbands been regular warbands, this would've been cake, but they weren't, so it was more like a burnt apple pie.

Now, they're on the attack, so I set my line up three men deep, with the principes in the center in the velites on the back. I send all of my cavalry out into the woods to hide, except for my general, who i put behind the velites.

I start the battle, and send my cav back around behind them, thinking "easy rout". I thought wrong. As my cavalry comes out of the woods, half of the spear warbands turn around and start coming my way. I separate my units, and have them flank the warbands to face them the wrong way, and send my opposite side cavalry in to take them out. This works.

What doesn't work, though, is when the axemen come rushing in along with the cavalry, routing all of my cav; at least I managed to kill off half of their spear warbands, half of their cavalry, and their general.

So my cavalry runs away. My general is in the back now, with his best cavalry running like hell, and some undermanned infantry forming a single line in front of him with a slight numerical advantage but not enough to make it decisive.

The hastati and principes throw their first pila at the oncoming phalanxes. Then they throw their second. They still barely outnumber the opposition, who has their remaining cavalry running in from behind, and screeching women flanking on the side.

The phalanxes hit my soldiers as I try to manuever them around, and the cavalry comes in from the left, routing a unit of hastati. My velites back up in skirmish. Both of my principe units rout from the three warbands hitting them. My right side hastati routs as a phalanx and the women hit them simultaneously. I run my general around back and rout a single phalanx, only to have my general rout and barely survive with three of his men as the axemen come back. My remaining hastati rout as the now numerically superior Germans beat the pants off them with their phalanxes. And the velites, they get eaten up by the cavalry.

So far, in my campaign, that was the only battle I haven't been able to win. So I'm going back to hit them with two armies right now, with seasoned hastati and some freshly trained archers.

[Mongoose]

I once lost a battle where i was out numberd 5:4...


Hasn't happnded again in months though.

[BrutalDictatorship]

VH battles are not the hardest...it's actually the opposite, they're the quickest and easiest.

[Auctoritas]

Can someone explain how very hard/very hard is the easiest in terms of battle resolution?

I have been playing on hard/hard for about 3 weeks and I still lose the occassional battle even when I have a numerical advantage. (Usually when they have an uber general.) Any input....?

[Mongoose]

Can someone explain how very hard/very hard is the easiest in terms of battle resolution?

I have been playing on hard/hard for about 3 weeks and I still lose the occassional battle even when I have a numerical advantage. (Usually when they have an uber general.) Any input....?

Because, like many things in RTW, it is bugged.

[KSEG]

Because, like many things in RTW, it is bugged.

So what is the most difficult setting?

[vale]

my worst defeat ever was in carthage when I had all the wall capture except that I had modded the export_descr_unit to make all the unit in the game more stronger in mental ability. Send two of my urban to take the wall, once it capture got three legion cohort in. However, to my surprise is that carthage elephant start step and hurling my man into mid air. The ele routed my roman legionary and again and again until I lost all my general.

[Zakor]

There was one two-star general (24 men) who had ZERO ranged weapons.

He was sieging my city.

I had 4x80 archers, 2 cataphract archers, 1 spear/mercenaries and 2 peasants.

I did autoresolve.

I lost.

[spacekraken]

Right when I first bought the game, I started a Julii campaign and conquered the city just north of their starting province. So I sent one of my generals off by himself to govern it and walked right into an ambush of at least 100 Gauls. I tried to fight but it was just sad. I lost a family member right at the start of the game.

[Dutch_guy]

There was one two-star general (24 men) who had ZERO ranged weapons.

He was sieging my city.

I had 4x80 archers, 2 cataphract archers, 1 spear/mercenaries and 2 peasants.

I did autoresolve.

I lost.

yeah I know what you mean, if I lose a battle it's on autoresolve, had the same thing a couple of times.

I really hate the game when it does that.

[Viking]

The worst battles I have is the siege assaults where I manage to kill my general and loose 1000 men only `cause of that.

Also I had some horrible battles in a Carthage campaign on VH/VH where I lost more than 2000 men in two battles because of the morale bonus the AI got. That was indeed embarassing and horrible smackdowns.

[Siris]

Autoresolve sucks...

Every time I try that out, I lose, but if I go in & fight, I get a Crushing Victory?