Well, part of the issue was that my 2 armies were *completely* surrounded by Egyptian stacks. So I couldn't withdraw from the battle anyway.

Basically, I had 2 generals, each leading a "stack". The problem was, I had one strong army and one weak army: the weak army consisted of my general and maybe 4 merc units: numidian jav and some camels. The strong army, of course, had a bunch of hastati and a much more balanced force (I was very early in the game, so I don't think I could even train principes yet). When the AI attacked, it attacked my WEAK army (smart move actually). On the pre-battle screen, I think it said my other army would show up as reinforcements. I chose to have them AI-controlled because they'd show up all at once & I'd just have to delay with my crappy army until they got there.

So the battle starts up and I set up my puny forces. Now, probably what happened (can't really remember) is that I probably got a message right at the beginning of the battle that said "Reinforcements Delayed?" -- it basically means that your reinforcements won't be showing up after all.

So I was trapped with my general and 4 merc units, facing an army of the Golden Peasants from Hell with no reinforcements. This was before I really respected the Golden Peasants from Hell, so I figured I might be able to win the battle anyway (this was H/H, large unit sizes). Boy, was I wrong. My camel archers didn't even hardly touch them, and the rest of my units were so scared by being so outnumbered. My general died in a headon charge into pitchforks.

When I returned to the campaign map, I noticed that my OTHER army, the strong one, was gone too. So, somehow, the mechanics are such that..... well, you get the idea. To frustrating to talk about anymore...

CountMRVHS