Re: oh no... is it really this easy?
I just had the most intense and critical battle of any TW campaign I've ever played.
After finally taking back Burdigala after a long campaign, the Vandals horded again and went south into Iberia. They beseiged a WRE Rebel city, which went gray Rebel after several turns. The Vandals then turned right around and marched back to Burdigala with their four remaining stacks.
I had since built stone walls and the city was garrisoned by my reconstituted frontier legion which was a medium-size, high quality force. I sent three heavy Sarmation cavalry units and a very good general to help in whatever way they could. These units came from a northern Gaul town I had conquered several turns before and they left that town with only a weak defensive force. The turn after my cavalry reinforcements left the town, the Franks declared war and beseiged it. At the same time, my allies the Goths turned on me and attacked my cavalry force in the field. I withdrew, but they pursued and slaughtered all four units to the last man. I now had three enemies with a total of seven strong stacks in Gaul, and the only sizable military force I had in the area was the one being beseiged by the Vandals. With attacks in Africa by the Berbers and around the Danube by the Allemani (they moved east) it would have been impossible to rebuild a new Gaulic Legion and send reinforcements to these two other fronts as well. Losing Burdigala would probably mean losing all four of my cities in Gaul, which would essentially have erased 2/3 of my gains since the start of the game.
The assault came after two turns of siege, and once again I faced four stacks at once. It was my force of 1834 Romans against 7473 Vandals and I was playing a campaign with no time limit in battles.
When the battle started, I saw to my horror that the Vandals had been busy while they were in camp. They came with two rams, two towers and worst of all, four unburnable ladders. The arrangement was, ram in on the door, two ladders on each side of the ram, one tower on each side after the ladders and the second ram preparing to make a dash for a second gate Notice where all four armies entered from on the minimap.
I positioned my three archer units so that one could target the main ram, one could target the east tower and one could target the west tower. I placed ALL of my infantry in front of the four ladders. I didn't feel that I had enough units to cover six wall entry points, so I gambled on the archers being able to burn the towers. I had three generals and a light cavalry unit available to defend the door in the unlikely chance the ram did not burn. However, this would be a suicide force, since a breach of the door would allow all 22 enemy cavalry units to storm the city, a force that I could never have countered. I had to stop the enemy on the walls or the army, the city, and all of Gaul was lost. I hope you see now why it was an intense battle.
It started predictably enough, both rams went up in flames quickly, but to my dismay the towers closed on the wall without igniting. All the infantry units on the entire map now closed on the ladder area. The ones that had to run around the walls took about 1/4 to 1/3 casualties from towers, but most of the other three armies were cavalry heavy anyway, so this didn't help much. The 22 cavalry remained stationary waiting for the gates to open.
I was annoyed with the towers getting to the wall on the flanks of my infantry that was now heavily engaged at every point along the wall with thousands of Vandals pouring up the ladders. I expected everything to be alright though, since I had placed my anti-tower archers so that they could continue to hit the towers while they loaded up. The infantry were barely holding on the wall and in a few points gaps opened in my units. At one point I had three groups of 40+ enemies grouped in different areas of the wall, having split my units apart. I orded all infantry units into the wall battle to push back the ladder climbers, not imagining that my archers could fail against the towers. Yet, volley after volley of fire arrows failed to burn them. Eventually the towers disgorged their troops on both my flanks at once. At this point, the I knew the town was lost. Half of the tower units were now on the walls at my flanks and more were ready to climb and reinforce the flankers once the first units were clear of the tower.
Then, the miracle happened. Both of my archer units were on their very last volleys. I paused the game in despair to watch the western unit loose its last shot, taking all hopes of victory along with it. The arrows flew, hit, and went out. I turned back to look at the front, wondering how long it would take until my men finally failed. When I turned back to the western tower, it was smoking! The last volley had ignited it! It burned quickly and collapsed, killing the 1/3 of the unit that remained inside. I could hardly believe my luck. I paused the game again and looked at my eastern flank. I checked the minimap because I thought I was looking in the wrong place... the eastern tower had burned and collapsed as well! Both archer units had burned their towers ON THEIR VERY LAST VOLLEYS. While I had a 2/3 strength Chosen Swordsmen unit on each of my flanks, the threat of further flanking reinforcements was gone.
All was not safe though, my infantry were making headway on the ladder hordes, but they would need several minutes to secure the area before the outermost units could turn and engage the flankers. I charged my arrowless archers into the flankers, hoping that they would die slowly enough to stall them. At the same time, I took my light cavalry and stormed out the front gate, hoping they could cut down some of the men at the bases of the ladders. This turned out to be pointless, since my unit refused to engage any unit that had at least one man on a ladder. They reacted like the men were inaccessible. The main army cavalry came after this expeditionary unit and destroyed them, though losing a substantial number of their own to the wall towers.
The a couple minutes passed and my archers died quickly, but their fight to the death lasted long enough for me to defeat enough of the ladder climbers to allow me to disengage the units on the ends of my line and turn them on the flankers. Slowly, ever so slowly, the flankers were themselves flanked and eliminated. After a while, the stream of men up the ladders began to dissipate. Eventually I watched in disbelief as the last enemy infantryman climbed to the top of his ladder and was dispatched by the waiting legionary. With this, the 22 enemy cavalry units turned and retreated, having no possible way to enter the city. I had lost half my army, but I had prevailed and my forces would survive to be refitted. I now had a chance to deal with the Goths and Franks and save my Gaulic provinces.
The end results show the absolute carnage that my infantry had to endure on the Wall of Slaughter. I was reminded of the speech line, "tomorrow, our sword arms will ache from overuse!"
Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, was a battle! I love this game.
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