Most humiliating defeat ever suffered by you

[Slartibardfast]

Mine was last night.

I was playing a short campain as the Arverni Gauls using the Europa Barbarorum 0.74 beta mod with the Resources Patch. After some dozen or so mooves, of what I must say was a brilliant strategy and clinically efficient tactical command on my part, I found myself about to siege the last Adui stronghold, end the Gallic Civil War and expand to hit Rome before she has expanded her territory or got a single large mobile army.

Thinking "How good am I!", the siege is quickly over with a minimum of causualties for the troops and I go back out to the stategy map and basking in my own glory hit end turn.

"You have been Defeated" - Selukia wins.


Talk about instant kharma.

[Ciaran]

I have a disturbing tendency to lose my custom battles in BI when I play with barbarian factions. No fancy opponents, usually made up much the same as my own army, but for one reason or another they tend to beat me constantly. Must be me underestimating the weak morale in BI

[johhny-turbo]

As the Eastern Empire in BI, Jeuruselum with it's epic walls rebelled against me. I didn't have any 'real' military units just peasents and the spear guys (the ones that aren't as disciplined as legionaries but are better then town guard) ment to keep the peace in the outlying provinces so I recruited some mercernaries, as in a unit of camel riders and two ballista and attacked at least 4 times with my "army" each time getting my guys get shaken by the barrage of arrows by the time they get to the breach and fight the enemy that they run away. I finally managed to build up a real army and massacred the place.

Though I'm sure whatever heretical sect that took the place is claiming "divine intervention"

[Comrade Alexeo]

I don't know if this is the most humiliating defeat I've ever suffered, but it's certainly the most recent - I just fought it.

***

Here's the sitrep:

I'm doing a VH/VH Brutii campaign, version 1.0 (because my game has started refusing to patch ). It's a short campaign, intended essentially as a time-waster until M2TW comes out, and since Brutii was the only Roman I hadn't done, I figured I'd try it out.

It's 240 BC. I blitzed Carthage (on a whim, mostly, but also to stem the growth of the Scipii), so I own: Tarentum, Croton, Lilybaeum, Carthage, Thapsus, Palma, Thermon, Appolonia, and Segestica.

Wait, you say. You only have three Peloponnesian cities?

Yeah...

I'm embarassed to say that I've been able to make virtually no headway whatsoever against Macedon, and have been on the defensive for years. Macedon and I traded Thermon back and forth several times before I managed to establish a foothold, but assault after assault has left my garrison absolutely devastated, and I lack an easy way to get much more to there. Appolonia saw less fighting until recently, when I repulsed another Macedonian siege - though, again, at massive cost.

Now, I'm not too pleased with myself here. I decide I'm going to end this, once and for all. I prepared 3 full stacks - one from the Carthaginian campaign, one from Italy, and one from bribing the Julii (hey, if it works) - and a half-stack of ships and began my war against Macedon.

Phase 1 was to crush the Macedonian navy. In this, I mostly succeeded; they still have one huge stack hanging around Sicily but (knock on wood ) I've been able to avoid that.

Phase 2 was landing my Carthaginian stack near Thermon to force back the Macedonians. It was an unmitigated disaster; I crushed all Macedonians before me but they sent so many that eventually I had to pull what remained of my army into the walls of Thermon - where they were promptly besieged, threw back the assault, besieged again...

Phase 3 involved sending my main Italian stack to the heart of Macedon while the third stack moved up north, as, because of my failure to stop the Macedonians faster, they have expanded almost as far as Germania

With that in mind, I led my main Italian army straight to Thessalonica and besieged it, hoping to draw out the garrison and the Macedonian army nearby...

***

THE BATTLE OF THESSALONICA, 240 BC

I had an ace up my sleeve.

Or so I thought.

After many a multiplayer battle (back when my game would patch), I had developed the use of the Roman quincunx formation with various troop sets. It wasn't foolproof, of course, but I learned how to make it quite devastating against all manner of enemies - particularly phalanx armies.

I had 2,836 troops, deployed like so:

H_H_H_H_H_H
_P_P_P_P_P_
____AAA____
_____H_____
_____G_____

I also had two units of Equites, one on either side of my formation.

The main Macedonian army consisted of some 2,565 troops - mostly Phalanx Pikemen, with, IIRC, 4 units of Light Lancers, two on their left flank, one on the right flank, and one as the general unit. The other Macedonian army of 441 consisted of a general and some cavalry, but he didn't really come into the fight.

The Macedonians were deployed in a typical formation - infantry line with cavalry on either side. They began to advance.

Skirmishing between cavalry began on my right flank. I was stunned to see my Equites beat off one of the units of Light Lancers, and I moved up a Hastati cohort to reinforce them - but, alas, the next Light Lancer unit smashed my Equites, who scattered. My Hastati easily pummeled the Lancers but by that time the main engagement had begun.

Things began to go my way at first. The pike line became disjointed as it moved on my first line, and I began moving the second-line Principes through the gaps, who would then swing around and hit the Phalanx Pikemen in the rear.

This worked on my left flank well, and the pikemen began to crumble. My right flank also was doing their job, but they were harassed by the return of the Lancers.

Unfortunately, though, my center was not so lucky. The AI fought better than most people online against the formation - rather than concentrating on the first line, they moved through the gaps and also attacked my Principes, which stopped them from performing their flanking jobs. The line began to buckle.

Now, this sort of thing had happened to me before, but the nature of the battle generally led one or both of the enemy flanks to be turned, allowing me to then wipe out the center. Hoping that my center would hold, I sent up my reserve Hastati unit as reinforcements and then swung my left-flank Equites around and charged them into the engaged Phalangites, which would then allow me to concentrate on the center.

Alas, the line did not hold, and my center shattered. I'd finally turned the left flank, but by this time it was too late. My right soon collapsed as well as the pikemen moved to envelop the envelopers.

Knowing the battle was lost, I called a withdrawal with my remaining forces. Only a few managed an orderly retreat, though - most of the rest simply routed, and many were cut down by the enemy pursuit, which now included the Lancers of the other Macedonian army.



It was absolutely devastating, and I was absolutely devastated.

My army was in tatters, with my disgraced general just barely escaping with his own life. My grand scheme of sticking a knife through their heart ended instead with the blood of over 2,200 scattered over the outskirts of Thessalonica.

All is not lost; Placus Crassus will likely be able to reunite with the third, final stack of my scheme, which has abandoned its northern march and cautiously begun moving towards Bylazora. I can recruit new armies, which will soon include Triarii from, ironically, Carthage.

All is not lost, but the bones of the fallen will litter the Thessalonican plain for years to come...

[Severous]

Average Defeat when I had the advantage and was defending a bridge.

About to drown is my commander..he is running down the bank into the river.

It was a huge Thracian King unit that did the damage. Nothing I had could stand against him....well not the way I played it they couldnt.

[Braden]

I remember one now.

First one was when I first encountered Britons in the game – Yes, those darn chariots!!

I had a decent army and it was about even on numbers but I lacked missiles and basically if the chariots weren’t slowly taking my men apart with their arrows they were isolating and destroying Cohorts!

I stupidly fought to the bitter end and lost TWO high ranking Generals. Not to mention a near full stack army – utterly destroyed, run to the hills and never coming back.

I always took enough archers after that AND made a point of withdrawing when things looked too bad.

Oh….and the times when, tired and late at night I accidentally click “Auto-Resolve” and suddenly find I’ve lost not just the battle but a full stack army!


....I did remember more, but someone just asked me a question about somethign else and they're gone

[x-dANGEr]

Me : Carthage. Four Iberian Infantry units, four Round Shield Cavalry units, and a General Bodyguards unit.

Enemy: Greeks. A General Bodyguards unit.

Campaign Difficulty: VH/VH
Place: Sicily

Actions: At the start of the battle, he just charged at my units one by one and decimated them. Though, I replayed the battle seriously (Without underestimating it), and I won with one of my units routing.. Simply, I put one unit of Iberian Infantry on loose formation as a buffer to my other infantry, to receive the charge. And when it did, I charged with everything.

Seriously, Carthage campaign is the most enjoyable in RTW.

[Matrixman]

I remember one now.

First one was when I first encountered Britons in the game – Yes, those darn chariots!!

Same for me.

When I first encountered them I thought who the hell are these guys?.

Absolute chaos as I tried to reform ranks. I didn't lose the battle but learnt a humiliating lesson as what I thought would be an easy victory turned into a "tail between legs" near disaster.