Your Biggest Battles

[ArnoldLol]

i am the italians in my MTW campaign. its the late period and ive trained an elite punch army that i drop in enemy terrain to weaken their economy and to butcher armies. when i launched a counterattack into spain to free portugal which the almohads had taken i had to retreat before the power of their main force. 6000 man big. i retreated all my armies to regroup and ordered the already battered elite punch force to halt and cripple their advance.

i seriously never though i would win!!!! my army not more than 650 men fought off their main force killing over 4500 men. though the price was high only 89 men survived to say the other day.

i was so lucky that i held my stance in valencia and not leon or somewhere else. for the reason that the valencia map had a river...with 2 bridges. with some tactical tricks i defeated their elite waves with minor casualties. though after those waves my man were exhausted and couldnt perform the trick. so i advanced till the line where soldiers leave and enter the battlefield and made a stance. my general was almost killed he was the only in his unit to survive.

i thought please let this be the last wave when the message the enemy is routing popped up...my troops could held out another wave

this battle marked the end of Almohad supremecy. a few turns later civil war erupted and they were demoted into rebel factions...

tell me yours

[Csargo]

I was playing the English in Early and I was at war with the French and they attacked one of my poorly defended provinces with something like 1500-2000 troops and I only had about 750-850 troops mostly cavalry and archers and at first it looked like I was gonna be routed but my cavalry pretty much decimated there entire army. So it ended up being like me losing 100-200 men and the French lost or got captured was around 1600 it was a big win for me.

[matteus the inbred]

My most treasured battle has to be 950 Byzantines defending Naples on successive turns against 7,500 and then 6,000 French. However, I should point out that my troops were all elite with armour upgrades whereas the French mostly fielded vanilla rubbish, my general was an 8-star with defensive virtues, and my catapults dropped a big rock on the French king's head in both battles...still, casualties were about 2-3,000 for the French each time (mainly captured) and their faction went rebel after the second fight...I hate blowing my own , but I do still think about those fights and smile.

I recently attempted to defend Khazar against 11,500 Mongols with 1,000 Turks, but I lost, casualties about 450 of mine and 1,200 of theirs, including the Khan getting Doubtful Courage cos he ran away screaming like a little girl. This campaign is still in progress as I attempt to halt the Horde in Georgia...

[phred]

here are some other battles

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=56724

[Papewaio]

Biggest battle... with the wife to get time to play a game.

[Garvanko]

Just defended Lovisce as julii from around 5000 Brutii. I only had 8 units of Early Leg Cohorts and 6 units of Roman Cav. Brutii had Pretorians, Legionary Cohorts, Archers, three Generals, Seige equipements (inc. Onagers).

Just stuck to the centre and picked them off.

Eventually time ran out. The AI hasn't got a clue.

[cannon_fodder]

My 1 stack of Urban Cohorts, Praetorian Cohorts, and Praetorian Cavalry against 3 stacks of various early Roman units (attacking the Senate's army). One of the most fun battles I've had in RTW.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Playing the saxons, I wiped out the entire Mongol Horde. They had rams and seige towers, but when there rams were destroyed they kept sending infantry up the seige tower, but the infantry units had to run a long way around my settlement walls, which picked off more than half there men. When they got up the siege tower, only my best Saxon troops met them. I wiped out every single infantry unit like this.

Then however I had an idea. If I took out all the Mongol infantry, they will still have a whole stack of cavalry. Good cavalry at that. They wouldn't be able to attack settlements, but they would attack my armies in the field, and most likely completely destroy them, with that kind of cavalry power.

So what I did was retreat my Saxon infantry to the gate and let them take the main entrance. I put my Saxon keel in shield wall formation and put them right in front of the the gate. When the mongol horde cavalry ran through the gate, they were surprised to say the least...


I pretty much did the exact same things against the Franks, without trapping the cavalry...

[Antagonist]

Biggest battle, when I upgraded my PC a while back I wanted to see how what it could handle in RTW, and I made an 8-sided custom battle with 20 units each on Huge unit size. Resulted in a slide-show which almost blew up my PC, but it looked really good when paused. I long for the day when we can have 30 or 40 thousand soldiers in a battle with acceptable performance...

Antagonist

[Avicenna]

The historical battles :$

haven't played campaign on non-normal sized units yet.

[ArnoldLol]

im going to fight a battle as the byzantines vs the french

i have 1100 elites and they have 57000 men

OMG who thinks im going to win

[Martok]

im going to fight a battle as the byzantines vs the french

i have 1100 elites and they have 57000 men

OMG who thinks im going to win

Uh, please tell me you meant the French have *5700* men, right? Because about the only time I ever see enemy armies get in the tens of thousands is when I face the Mongols, and even that's usually not more than 20-25,000 troops or so.

[sprucemoose]

playing BI as the eastern faction,seige defence against the goths

they had 4 stacks about 5000 men verses my 1000,this 4 archers 4 horse and the rest legio.they had the dreaded gattling towers so i kept my men on the ground till the towers hit the wall,the sneaky sods also tunnelled under the wall in two places so i hit em with the cav and they ran-i followed up and routed there army 250+ of mine lost to 3000 of theres.happy days.then the next turn they hit again and poured through the breeches.just about managed to repel them but i was left with about 200 men and they dissappeared into the country side like a beaten dog!!

p.s i got heroic battle win but my general got nothing for it!!

[ArnoldLol]

nope 57000 men. and they have another 50000 in reserve atleast. but then again they own the whole world expet a few provinces.

the battle result is after i routed/killed/captured around 40000 french i got bored and scared away the remaining 17000 thousand

i killed 35000 french (executed the 30000 prisoners) and lost 188. i had only 1100 men

[Russiantsar]

nope 57000 men. and they have another 50000 in reserve atleast. but then again they own the whole world expet a few provinces.

the battle result is after i routed/killed/captured around 40000 french i got bored and scared away the remaining 17000 thousand

i killed 35000 french (executed the 30000 prisoners) and lost 188. i had only 1100 men

Now thats a huge battle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Martok]

Good god, Sun Glass, that's insane!

[Maloncanth]

In the spring of 1234, a mixed force of ~5000 Danish troops rushed into Muscovy against nearly twice their number of Golden Horde. It was a bridge battle, but it got iffy many times due to general oversights.

A 2:1 ratio isn't normally a hard win on bridge battles, so ex-Prince Knud strides to war confident that his six stars to Ogadai's four as well as terrain would carry the day. The battle started well with archers claiming numerous Mongol lives whilst Chivvy sarges held the line. That lasted until Knud found he'd miscalculated the rate at which both sides went through their reinforcements. Pretty soon, the Mongols were getting to their clumps of cataphracts and Knud kept getting nothing but and more Vikings whilst shear weight of arrowage chewed through his limited numbers of chivvy sarges and fyrdmen (England had been conquered decades ago). Most of the archers had run out of ammo by the second wave, despite being on hold fire most of the time so there were lengthening gaps during which no Danish archery answered the Mongols.

That was when he gave his famous order "Vanillavikings at the enemy, give them everything! :pissed:" At which point, hordes of screaming Vikings charged recklessly forth onto the bridge to meet waves and waves of Mongol cataphracts and to everyone's surprise, managed to simply overpower them whilst wading chest deep (literally) through corpses. For the rest of the battle, standard tactic was to countercharge every enemy charge with Vikings on the bridge, then loop drained Steppephracts around the other bridge to flank. The vikings held Muscovy and paid about 1000 lives for 4500 Mongol dead.

Here's some war photography using a 13th century Chinese camera.


I found these guys during the third charge when things started getting iffy for the first time. Dunno which company they were from but they looked like they were doing okay. Probably because Ogadai had already run screaming, possibly taking all the Mongol valor flags with him.


The Fyrdmen were getting creamed, so Knud carefully lined up the next unit of chivvy sarges right up behind them to make the transition as seamless as possible. It seemed to work, though no one will ever know if they really got that rank bonus.


A company of thralls made it into the unit roster at some point without Knud's knowledge and arrived in time to face the fourth charge. I'm not sure what these five brave ones were up to but they have a valour flag with them so they clearly knew what they were doing.


Things going terribly wrong for the Asian side just before the halftime whistle.


It really looks like these twelve chivvies are assault a Mongol bridge all on their own. They really weren't. Honest. But by then they had six flags on the Mongols so they were basically berserkers and could do as they liked. They did break eventually and slowed the horde a great deal as they walked sedately (totally exhausted and throughly invulnerable) back over the bridge.


Out of arrows and out of spearmen, the furious northmen fell back on élan as their last resource.

[matteus the inbred]

wow, nice shots Maloncanth.
take heed all ye sinners, for THIS is how to present your battle reports!

[Craterus]

Mountains north of Ancyra
256 BC
Pharnaces of Pontus vs. Tancogeistla of the Galatians

My army was backed up against the edge of the mountain, and effectively cornered by some angry Galatians. Lining up on a nearby hill, the few infantry units waited for the primarily-infantry enemy army to come. Pontic Light Cav and some barbarian cavalry mercenaries made up the right flank. And on the left flank, at the highest part of the hill, were 72 (4 units) Scythed Chariots. They were essential to my plan, so I had them protected by some units of Pontic Light Cav.

The Galatians had obviously picked out the Scythed Chariots as the main threat, and sent all of their cavalry (bar the general) to deal with that. I used my Pontic Light Cav to ward them off and on perfect timing, the infantry came into place.

When the Galatian infantry was within charging distance of my inferior infantry line, I sent the Scythed Chariots rolling down the hill. They cut through the unarmoured Naked Fanatics like a hot knife through butter.

Meanwhile, I sent the right flank of cavalry into the right side of the infantry, and the pincer was complete. I also used the right flank to deal with their general.

Not my biggest, so to speak, but it's my most recent heroic victory. And I liked the way how it went exactly to plan.

My infantry, as usual, played a very minor part in the battle. I sent them charging at the Galatian line when the two pincers were beginning to meet.

[jelay14]

My biggest battle was as the Seleucids VS the Armenians at the Orantes river... King Antiochus had between 1100-1200 men to use against 3000 Armenians, made up mostly of eastern spearmen. Since I was defending my capital along the Orantes, I got to defend the bridge, using only half my force (550-600 men).

The Armenians hurled their spearmen, several divisions strong, against my force at the bridge, causing a huge traffic backup along the whole length of the bridge. With hundreds of men jamming every square inch along the length of the bridge, the Armenians at the front ranks had no choice but to walk right into my phalanxes. Over the course of the battle the Armenian army cut itself to pieces trying to break through the phalanxes, until finally the army routed. Where did they flee but right into my army, which annihilated the remaining Armenians fool enough to run into my forces.

In the end, I think I only lost about 300 men. Of the 3000 Armenians, only about 200 walked away from the field.

[ArnoldLol]

your biggest battles are really tiny :D

my biggest RTW battle was about 2500 romans vs 20000 eggies though they came in 3 waves. that is i fought 3 battles in a row in one turn without refreshing. i was defending and they attacked

[Severous]

10 years into my first Brutii campaign and my two biggest battles both occurred on the same turn.




Large unit scale (Peasants=120) Difficulty H/H

1043 Thracians are beseigning Bylazora. 853 Romans countered that in a combined relief and sally. Lost 23 men in that fight compared to 1041 Thracian dead.

The other battle was more one sided. Together with my Ally Pontus we assaulted Greek Pergamum. 1442 Allied troops attacked the garrison of 239 Greek. I lost 14 men in that battle whilst I hung back and let Pontus take all the glory.