1.6 Suicide Generals

[Papewaio]

Playing Huns VH/VH on patch 1.6

First thing I did is rearrange my armies. Best 6* general is in the Vanguard with all my best mounted troops. This pure Cav army is all melee orientated bar the one elite missile Cav. My faction leader has the next best army with a couple of spearmen thrown in to counter Cav, this slows down the army but he leads the rest of the horde. On the flanks facing the approach lines of the Vandals and Samaritans I have my other two family members with the rest of the second tier troops. In the center of my horde are the third tier of the troops, these are my future citizens. Two captained armies of second tier troops guard the rear bridge as the horde passes through.

My diplomacy is blunt with the locals, Alliance or I will attack. So I have a couple of alliances and the horde is more or less beside the Sarmatian capital on its way south early on in the campaign. I haven’t fought any battles yet, however this is rapidly about to change.

The Vandals appear north of the Samaritan capital and then they attack my Vanguard unit. Now as the Vanguard has my best general, is composed purely of the best Hunic cav and is standing on top of the bridge south of the Samaritan capital I don't believe that the Vandals strategic AI has made a very good choice of targets .

Now to make matters worse he is attacking with standard mixed horde on a bridge battle. Half of it is Horde Horse Archers (HA), 1 quarter of it is spearmen the rest is peasants. Lead by the faction leader no less. So how does he attack me?

Simple he lines up his HA on the wings so that they can attack my lone HA across the river who I retreat. They stand around awhile, I hit the fast forward, and they form up the melee troops. Nice thing is the peasants start to swim across the river with the HA covering them. Bad thing is he leads the bridge crossing with his Heavy Cavalry against my pure Heavy Cavalry waiting on the other side. Now that is pretty bad as I have 20 units of Cav, of which 1 is a Horse Archer and 2 are Light Cav, my Lancers alone are 3 units, the rest are all Heavy Cav. His Heavy Cav is his faction leader ... so he is across the bridge before his spearmen have started to cross the bridge and the Vandal leader is outnumbered 17 to 1 by Heavy Cav. He dies about the same time the spearmen make it across the bridge. The spearmen actually stay around for a little while and don't insta-rout, they don't as much as they could of had the general been alive.

So instead of leading a bridge battle with his infantry that are specialised at fighting Cav which could have inflicted heavy losses with plenty of HA he a supporting role to pepper anyone who attacked them on the bridge... the Vandals tactical AI throws away the faction leader in a suicide charge .

Mind you even if he had lead with the spearmen all I would have done is retreat back away from contact until the HA's followed up and crossed the bridge. I would have then outflanked the spearmen and slaughtered the HA's and enveloped the spearmen. However I would have taken a lot more losses and the AI would not have lost the general.

So at the next thing the Vandals do is to attack with another stack. I have saved the game at that point. When I get around to playing it again I will see if I get another suicide general.