Armageddon: Total War

[DensterNY]

I was discussing with a few other members about a nice build-up in Khazar to meet the Mongols in 1230 so I spammed out tons of men to encourage the Golden Horder to bulk up:



Cool... unfortunately the Mongols had a strong although measely response to my 40,000+ men awaiting them:



This was the following screen but it became such a hassle trying to arrange reinforcements that I exited and took out any non-elite troop except for longbows though so I ended up fighting them with almost equal numbers about 14k to 13k troops.



At the end of the day here are the results after nearly 9 hours of fighting:



The Khan stopped dead cold in Khazar... almost 80% of the credit goes to Arbalesters and Billmen (who should be simply called: Gruesome horse killers)

[Mithrandir]

Lol! Nice one...

but if the battle took you 9 hours, what was your timer set on?

[dgfred]

Very nice D . I wonder why they didn't have more? What if you
had been able to build stuff there before they arrived, what do you think
would have been different?

Cool stuff!

[DensterNY]

Well Mithrandir surprisingly I had the timer on but even with over 9 hours of fighting only half of the clock had elapsed which is good I guess since there were 30k men on the field.

As for Khazar there wasn't an armorer or horsebreeder's guild by the time they arrived so I guess with those they might have had slightly better troops. However, I had a 6 star general with skilled defender bonus behind my men and the Khan only had 3 stars which really showed in the battlefield. Plus, he fled the field in the first wave which didn't help their cause either.

My 3 or 4 valour Arbalesters were taking out 9 Mongol Heavy Cavalry a volley and their archers couldn't compete with the arb's range either...

Also, 3 or 4 valour Billmen the second that they touched these same cavalry troops you could see these horsemen were Losing Badly and they'd rout in 10-20 seconds.

All in all a fun Sunday morning and afternoon.

[Mithrandir]

And no cav in your army I see? Didn't huge amounts of mongols rally and charge and charge again ?

I never liked these kind of battles since once you've won the first wave, you've usually won the battle, no matter how outmanned you are...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

How do you guys get these battles, I play on hard and I'm lucky if the enemy deploy 1500 men on huge unit size.

Or is that my problem, the unit size?

[Mithrandir]

The amount of men fielded by the horde is determined by the amount of men in the bordering provinces, the more the merrier.


DensterNY had massed a huge amount of units there and so the Horde came with the entire family as well...

[m52nickerson]

The amount of men fielded by the horde is determined by the amount of men in the bordering provinces, the more the merrier.


DensterNY had massed a huge amount of units there and so the Horde came with the entire family as well...

Not always. In my current game I only had 120 men in Khazar and 200 in Volga-Bulgaria and the horde came in with 20,000 in Khazar and 8,000 in to the other.

[antisocialmunky]

Silly Horde, trix are for kids.

[DensterNY]

Actually I did experiment with the game as I saved it before the Horde arrived and I tried removing everyone except for one unit of peasants and still 12k Mongols arrived so I guess it really doesn't matter how many guys you have there.

Mithrandir, actually I did have Cavalry at different points of the fight its just that at the end these were the men I had on the field. One important thing about a large fight like this is that you have to take your time to set up your reinforcements. Its hard to gauge what type of unit you'll need to replace but set it up wrong and you'll have a lopsided army on the field which could be disastrous. I got lazy and paid for it because at one point I had 20 missile units back to back and stood on the field with a pile of arbalesters, my general and only 2 fighting units.

A human player would have charged me and routed my army but luckily the AI still didn't like getting hit with those bolts and didn't come in close.

[lugh]

Nice! My biggest battles against the horde never got much bigger than 10k a side.
It's a pity that the numbers don't increase more dramatically, but I guess it wouldn't be very realistic and also a little unbalancing, 100k army anyone? (I want to do a HRE crusade 100k strong under Frederick I though, hasn't worked out yet)

[Ironside]

Not always. In my current game I only had 120 men in Khazar and 200 in Volga-Bulgaria and the horde came in with 20,000 in Khazar and 8,000 in to the other.

Yep, my Russian campaign had about a 20k horde (15k Khazar and 5 in others), and I didn't even own the border provinces. Did actually get a few provinces around/in Poland too (4-5)... Still won that one

Aahh the good old days

Edit: had 120k as the Almohads once, won that battle

[ToranagaSama]

Well Mithrandir surprisingly I had the timer on but even with over 9 hours of fighting only half of the clock had elapsed which is good I guess since there were 30k men on the field.

Help me to understand. If you've got the clock on, how can the battle last for 9 hours? The clock isn't 9 hours long. I'm missing something.

[OlafTheBrave]

The amount of time on the clock varies by the amount of troops in the battle.

[Ironside]

Help me to understand. If you've got the clock on, how can the battle last for 9 hours? The clock isn't 9 hours long. I'm missing something.

They changed that from STW due to obvious reason.

[Arkell]

Damn.. how did you get all those lands/armies by 1230? I couldnt come close to that.... need to more bout campaign.. too soft me too soft.

[professorspatula]

I was planning on setting up a spam army for when the Horde comes to force them into sending a massive army. But if size of your army doesn't necessarily mean they'll send in x times more men, then I might not bother. Regarding the 12,000 men they did send against you though, if the Unit size setting was on huge, that number would probably be double: 24000 or so, which sounds more impressive, even though you'd have more men too.

[DensterNY]

Damn.. how did you get all those lands/armies by 1230? I couldnt come close to that.... need to more bout campaign.. too soft me too soft.

Well, this one game I played very very strategically and even had 2 pages of notes that I used to help me micromanage my empire and make my decisions. I followed a lot of Frogbeastegg's guide and got tons of advice from players on this board too but here are a few keys:

1. Take some time to learn kick-ass battlefield tactics for defense and attack.
2. Control as much of the seas as you can.
3. Pick a low income and non-important province and provoke rebellions to train up your generals.
4. Train your assassins and spies up with small missions to make them skilled.
5. Use your money wisely. Focus your money on building up superior troops in strategic provinces and anything you spend anywhere else is to make more money.
6. Don't ever autocalc wars because you lose too many men as you can't use tactics to your advantage.

Basically my approach to conquering another nation is to strip their king of influence as quickly as possible and cause a civil war. First, I use agents to cause mischief and instability. Second, conventional warfare as I take provinces and move in strong defensive armies. Third, as their king moves their forces to address mine I use my sea capability and drop a good offensive force in their backyard.

If you can make your enemy lose 4 to 6 years in a row most kings lose enough influence and loyalty that some generals revolt. I've had wars where my 3 stacks stand across the border from an enemies 3 stacks stalemated. I start a civil war in their lands and 1 or 2 of those stacks turn rebel and they fight each other leaving them weakened and depleted then I move in.