David and Goliath
My Egyptians were beseiging Tarsis, held by the Seleucids. I was hoping to take it on the cheap, had forts set up on the eastern roads on the other side of Antioch, which I'd taken much earlier and built up with stone walls. I had a single unit of slingers guarding the pass northwest. I'd watched a fairly large stack of militia hoplites head west a couple turns earlier and was worried they'd be back.I had an army of about 600 with a light general (3 stars) sitting around Tarsis and reinforcements, if needed, down in Antioch. When I tried to build a fort before the seige began, so the slingers could keep warm, wouldn't let me. Been a while since I last played. I guess I need to control the province to build forts.
So, two turns into the seige my slinger is suddenly attacked. Since he was at the very NW end of the pass, I retreated the first attack, hoping they wouldn't be able to catch up for another that season, then I could lift the seige and bring up that army to deal with them. No such luck. My poor David unit was again attacked immediately. I considered just sacrificng the unit to an autocalculate, but decided to see how much damage I could do with the one unit of slingers micromanaged. It looked like this:
My unit of basic slingers (no upgrades yet, and no experience) was in a NE-SW valley with high slopes to those sides with crests at the edges of the battle zone. I set up facing the center north from the SE ridge. It was gonna be a long uphill slog for the attackers. When the fog lifted that morning, I saw 10-12 units of militia hoplites mostly at full strength, two units of peasants (one badly mauled to about 15) and the general's heavy cav in the rear. The peasants were to either flank and ahead and a worry because I knew they were faster that those pole luggers.
My slinger edged forward a bit, about a quarter down the ridge to start slinging from. I decided I'd be nimble enough to scamper to the top for a second round of stone-whirling, then beat feet for the south and withdraw having bloddied some heads. Twas not to be.
I passed along the fire at will order, trusting my guys to have some sense, but told them to hold until I gave the order to move. They did will, starting on the far left (our right) of the long line, shooting obliquely into the unshield right sides of the unit on the Seleucid left flank. The unit started leaving a trail of corpses.
Eyeing the riffraff on the flanks, I decided we need to slow them a bit, so targetted the full peasant unit a coule rounds and thinned it nicely. It also milled about a bit and dropped back some. The one to our left (and the threat to keep us from heading south, if it got ahead) was still a ways off.
At this point I called for a pull back to a new position. We made it in good order and I aimed back at the same unit hoping to rout it. Some of the scatter was dropping a few hoppies in the unit next to it to, but we were doing some serious head-breaking.
As the line reached neared the crest I decided enough is enough and we beat feet for the pass. As I said, been a while. I hit pause and looked for the command to withdraw. Found a button, greyed out, on the panel that said "Withdraw (W)". Okay, must be in the wrong spot. While I head farther south to the bottom, let me find another spot and do a couple more rounds of slinging. Still have more than 70% ammo.
We did that twice, 3-4 more rounds of stones slung and we routed that first unit. We also tossed some into the peasants and ran them off, since we might have to run a while. Oddly, the general's heavy cav was placidly walking along behind the totally disorganized wall of pikes. Didn't bother me a bit. He looked real nice back there.
At this point it occurred to me that this was a defensive battle and I could play to run out daylight. I knew they'd camp. That would by me another day of this attrition and another day of seige to drop the garrison a little more. And another day to ge the reinforcements up close enough so I could pick my spot better.
I looked at my guys, panting, holding their stomachs, trying to catch their breath in the thin, cold air, then looked back at the hoppies marching steadily, now down the ridge back into the valley. I took a quick poll. Came up one short. We lost someone when we dodged past the tiny peasant unit. But that unit ran off too. I guess one of us decided to play rearguard and didn't make it.
Consesus was, let's use up this ammo and bloody some more heads and see if we can make them waste the whole day (run out the clock!),
So it began. We worked a diamond pattern, more or less, taking as much time as we dared atop the two side ridges, then running, jogging, walking, crawling oou way as fast as we could to pull ahead down into the valley on the north and south ends to have the distance to turn back to the other ridge as the hoppies cut the corners on us some. We did another two loops, slings dragging the whole way, except when we paused to toss some stones at the hoppies to keep them interested.
I found out slinging stones uphill is a waste of good river pebbles. I think dropping them down from above improves the chance to get over those shields. Works, in any case.
As we arrived at the south end for the third time, the sun was dropping behind the western ridge. If I could have found a way out, I would have been very tempted, but still no withdraw option (must figure that out!). So we turned back NE again, up the long ridge, parked at the top and counted our remaining stones. Enough for about two more rounds, then we would just start running for good.
I was wrong, but I lived to learn.
When the hoppies started closing again I gave the order and we dropped the last on some heads. Then turned and started running.
Wait, what's this? Charging up the hill through a gap in the scattered hoppies phalanxes came the general! Hoiw did HE know we were out of ammo, and was that what he was waiting on before risking his pretty little head facing our little slings? (That's my theory.)
Didn't take him long to catch us. He was charging our rear and not obviously exhausted (riding beat walking!) like we were. I think our spirits were down from the inability to use our trusty slings too. He took out almost half of us in that charge. The rest of us scattered and hid among the boulders where the horses couldn't find reach us.
Darn. So close to a heroic victory.
The tally board says it was 81 slingers versus 1322 enemy troops of which maybe 140 were peasants. This was a captain commanding. They had a minor general, very. Not sure if he had any stars, may have been a captain too, so we were pretty equal on command.
We lost 47 good slingers. The rest of us made it back to a fort near Antioch. We left 171 Seleucids for the crows, about one third peasants, I'd say. The rest were hoplites. We killed at least our own number of those.
If I'd figured out how to withdraw, I could have pulled out a 1 to 100 or so loss and repeated it, I suspect, for another delay. If they'd had any cav aside from the general, of course, it would not be a tale to tell.
And I learned a lesson when doing the delay thing. If I ever get the chance to hold off an infantry army with a foot missile unit, I will be sure to save some ammo to both protect my guys' morale and hopefully, prevent the enemy general from deciding it's safe to charge.
Oh, no crossed swords marker in the pass, but the good sligners did their job. I brought up reinforcements, assaulted and took Tarsis with heavier losses than I'd hoped, though, due to the assault versus a sally battle. I lost the young 3 star general who was doing the seige too, since the AI was running his end of things. Then my better general (5 stars) led the attack on the Seleucid relief force and dismembered it once and for all.
That was interesting too. A mostly cav and chariot force against pikes in the pass. It was tighter than I like, and no desert bonus. But we handled them nicely. Numbers were about even, command was not. And this time their general seeing his line under heavy missile fire (4 units of desert archers and 2 of chariot archers) and falling apart decided to charge my flanking light cav. I countercharged and sent in the javs from the flank and headed my general's heavy chariots over from the center, while focussing 3 units missle fire on the general too. He died before my general could get there.
About then my wall of 4 Nubian spears go into proximity with the disordered hoppies and they started routing. The other cav unit behind them didn't hurt. And the missile chariots on the front flanks were making them really nervous too.
I lost most of a heavy chariot unit in a rear flank charge on an ordered phalanx (that was a shocker) which did rout, so I was avoiding doing that. At this point everything degraded fast though, and the chariots and cavalry did just fine charging the disrupted pikes. I put them the run through, and they left bodies everywhere without bogging down and mostly without losses.
We killed about half their force outright to losses of about 50.
I didn't really know how that one would go, with the less than good terrain for chariots, uphill battle, and all those pikes, but I was pretty pleased with the outcome.
Anyway... so, how DO I make withdraw work?
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Re: David and Goliath
Originally Posted by LuckyDog Trojan
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