Dumb/Embarrassing Move

[Northnovas]

I haven't seen anything like this in the Citadel for a while. Just wondering that one lapse of judgement that still lingers in your campaign play. You know the army left sitting off shore with a fleet, a poorly defended settlement.
Mine was the English hold of Frankfurt and a very large Polish Army but poorly led closing in for the kill.
My 6 star General with his large force near Hamburg were coming to relieve the city. I was just short on movement and couldn't reach Frankfurt that turn. No problem I will crush them next turn.
Big problem... in the General's haste to get there he left his Army near Hamburg. The AI sense the error and was all over it. I tried to fight a field battle with a heroic withdrawal.
It was a noble death. That one stung for a while.......
Any other good ones out there??

[TevashSzat]

My venetian migration campaign. I had a full stack of italian spear militia, feudal knights, and dismounted knights but didn't have a general in the army. My faction leader had about 4 authority. I sent my army to take thessaloinca and then poof, they were gone leaving recently taken constantinople with a pathetic garrison. I would almost lose constantinople, but barely won due to blind luck. Pathetically, i would find that i had an extra good general right next to constantinople that would have probably stopped the desertion

[Specky the Mad]

im in the middle of wiping out the last power house on the map, the mongols as HRE just after the black death sweeps through so i pull all my main armies together before they get the plague and sign them up on a crusade for the holy lands so i can save some cash with no unit up keep on them, so as im taking over any city/castle in my way i get my best general a 10 star command and dread killer only to succumb to the plague from one of the couple towns left in the game with the plague just short of the target and then to lose what was left of the army to desertion because all my other armies were maxed out, one of the dumbest things i have ever done

[Mithradates]

My most annoying defeat was in my Sicily campaign. I had Algeirs with a decent garrison so i decided to push for Marakesh leaving a skeleton force to guard the citadel. When my strike had cleared two turns march the Moors launched a counter attack on Algeirs using their superior navy. The landed their sultan and his son and a depleted force of spearmen plus a depleted catapult crew. I had a handful of mounted sergants and mailed knights and a few 2 units of 50 spearmen and 3 units of peasant archers. I managed to kill the catapult and the sultans son leaving the Sultan alone and unable to touch me. However thinking that i might be able to wipe them off the face of the earth i sent the archers out to pick him off however i failed to flee inside my walls quick enough and in the resulting carnage he managed to rout and kill all my puny forced chasing the fleeing blagards into the castle and cutting the down to a man, the shame :(

[Ciaran]

That happens to me constantly, that I forget an army, or character, or suchlike, especially in the late campaign.
You know what I´m missing (I´ve been playing BI this afternoon for a change again)? The Movement point bar in the army and agent lists. One rightclick (well, two, one for armies and one for agents) and you can see which unit you have already used and which not.
One of my wishes were for a ingame notepad, by the way, to record what you´re planning to do. That would be helpful when reloading the game.

[Laconic]

Tactical stupidity. In a siege assault I tried splitting my forces, my best troops with all of my towers on one side of the citadel and the rest of my forces and two units of bombard on the other side.

The garrison was rather large for once and I wanted to use the towers as a diversion to suck their army to that side while I used my guns to quickly blow through three walls in a row on the other side to take the square before the enemy knew what was happening. He figured it out as soon as my men got inside the second wall.

He had a few junk units in the square that I didn't think would pose a problem, but they packed the breach and slowed my men down long enough for the rest of his forces to come and attack my men from the rear. The result was the complete annihilation of my only campaign army in that area and put my recent conquests in great danger.

[Chosun]

Just a funny one here...when it said small,normal,large,and huge......I thought it meant the physical size of the soldier on screen and not the quantity of soldiers.
I always wondered why I never saw a difference in the size of the soldiers.

[Frankmuddy]

I'm playing as Russia and using my generals as my primary heavy cav units. Russia's Druzhinas don't perform terribly well against Danish War Clerics, and I'm as yet unable to field Tsar's Guard companies. So the Generals see quite a bit of line fighting.

The downside to this is that every so often I forget one of my General's units in the middle of a unit of spearmen. Or, for whatever perverse reason, my General is the first man to fall out of a 30 strong company of bodyguard.

Doh.

[JCoyote]

Fighting Venice they had 3 settlements left. I attacked, and noticed a couple units of bodyguards in the fight... but I didn't realize til after it was over I'd annihilated their entire family! I didn't want the rep hit destroying the faction just yet...

[dismal]

I lost a city and invited a war with Milan because I was chasing a few rebels.

There was this annoying rebel army that was hanging on the border between Florence (me) and Genoa (Milan). Every time I attacked them, they'd bounce into Milan's territory.

Finally, I figured I'd just fight them on the other side of the border and be done with it. But my army got pinned within the radius of a big Milan stack and couldn't get back. The next turn Milan (here to fore my ally) attacked Florence which was very under garrisoned and took it. (I almost never lose cities). Fortunately, I managed to grab Genoa with my army that had accidentally stumbled over the border, so it was a one-for-one deal.

[Calavera]

In my recent Portugese campaign I got a little overconfident with my generals, and ended up losing my heir and 2 family members in one battle. Then I lost 2 others in sieges a few turns later.

I made it up in adoptions later, but those were good generals I lost & crap generals I gained. The game just went downhill from there and I conceded defeat a bit later.

[Blackboots]

Glancing away from the screen and realizing that it's 4:00 am. Again.

Oh, wait, you meant in the game...

Sending your faction heir out in command of a crusade: dumb

Having him become king while he's in Antioch: dumber

Letting him get besieged there by the Golden Horde: more dumber

Fighting a desperate battle to break the siege and get your king to a ship: not dumb

Forgetting to move your fleet that is carrying your king on the last turn it would have taken to get to safety at Rhodes and having it get massacred by the Egyptians: priceless

[dacdac]

hehe, i got a stupid one i did. I picked a fight with the Mongols as the Egytpians in an attempt to lure them away from my places and into Anatolia as my homeland was not very well protected due to a jihad on Rome. All of a sudden, they break south, head for all of my cities, and completely destroy all i had leaving me with only Rome surrounded by enemies with a rioting population. This wont end well.

[TevashSzat]

Glancing away from the screen and realizing that it's 4:00 am. Again.

Oh, wait, you meant in the game...

Sending your faction heir out in command of a crusade: dumb

Having him become king while he's in Antioch: dumber

Letting him get besieged there by the Golden Horde: more dumber

Fighting a desperate battle to break the siege and get your king to a ship: not dumb

Forgetting to move your fleet that is carrying your king on the last turn it would have taken to get to safety at Rhodes and having it get massacred by the Egyptians: priceless

lol

[dph948]

My biggest yet was in a game as Egypt. After an interesting 3-way war between me, the Turks, and the Byzantines, I had almost elminated the Turks, leaving them with an underdefended Smyrna, home to a pair of Spies. Seeking a quick end to the war, I sent most of the Iconium garrison to crush them.

On the way, however, a Turkish army up near Nicea swept down, besieging Iconium. No problem, I thought. The garrison should be able to handle the attackers, if I don't kill off the Turkish capital first. The 72% chance of the spies opening the gates failed, of course, so the Turks proceeded to attack Iconium. I feel the need to do every siege on the battlemap, especially when defending, so I set up my defenses, and went off to make a sandwich before starting the battle. Unfortunately, I came back to a "Close Defeat" message, as I failed to pause the game. That same turn, a HRE crusade on Jerusalem arrived, shortly followed by a French crusade, and the Mongols in the east, so the Turks are still around.

As a more common mistake, am I the only one who occasionally tries to move an army led by a general, but ends up only moving the general because his card was selected? Over 4-5 games I've lost about 3 family members that way, and I rarely lose family members.

[FrauGloer]

When moving a crusade army through the Alps, double clicking to skip the lengthy walking animation, and then noticing that the pass was blocked and your foolish general decided to walk from Innsbruck to Venice via the route Bern-Milan. Desertion, here I come...

Parking my 8 command 4 piety general in a ship on the coast of Crete on his way home to Europe and having him fried by an Inquisitor.

[Foz]

Just a funny one here...when it said small,normal,large,and huge......I thought it meant the physical size of the soldier on screen and not the quantity of soldiers.
I always wondered why I never saw a difference in the size of the soldiers.

Hmm..... you're thinking physical size, and the game setting is called "unit size." Maybe your soldiers are bigger, but in a less obvious way: they've got small, normal, large, and huge "unit size." The only noticeable difference is probably that they waddle a little more on "huge unit size" - it can't be easy to walk when you've got a huge unit.

As a more common mistake, am I the only one who occasionally tries to move an army led by a general, but ends up only moving the general because his card was selected? Over 4-5 games I've lost about 3 family members that way, and I rarely lose family members.

No... you're definitely not the only one to do this. It only took a few times for me though - A couple of things broke it for me. I got in the habit of using Ctrl-A to grab all the units (I think that works - if not then I'm shift clicking from top left to bottom right) and then ctrl-clicking the ones I don't want to move... or if I intend to move a whole stack, I select it by its banner. That always seems to move everyone. Either of those habits should pretty much break this problem for you.

[Calavera]

Forgetting to move your fleet that is carrying your king on the last turn it would have taken to get to safety at Rhodes and having it get massacred by the Egyptians: priceless

That reminded me of another one. In a game as the Scots, I took a family member or two, some troops and put them on a boat bound for the Med. I hoped to take one of the islands down there so that I'd be a shoe-in for the next crusade to the Holy Lands.

During the long voyage my king died, and I couldn't seem to find the new king anywhere. I finally checked my fleet and there he was, with his heir as well, right off the coast of Rhodes.

[Quillan]

I cannot tell you how many times I've manually combined ship units in a fleet to bring ships 2-4 up to full strength (if you notice, those take the majority of the losses) and move to engage another enemy fleet, only to find that I've moved only one single ship, now WAY understrength, because I had only that one unit card selected.

[Digby Tatham Warter]

One of my wishes were for a ingame notepad, by the way, to record what you´re planning to do. That would be helpful when reloading the game.

Ever since RTW mods like EB or SPQR(these games can have large complicated turns mid/late game)I use a notepad and pen to remind me what I was planning and who should move where etc, because it seems to me that it is rare in these large complicated turns, that there is ever a good time to stop and get some sleep.

Without the notepad and pen, I am further tempted to go for that 'just one more turn, just to tidy things up'.

[Marquis of Roland]

Glancing away from the screen and realizing that it's 4:00 am. Again.

Oh, wait, you meant in the game...

Sending your faction heir out in command of a crusade: dumb

Having him become king while he's in Antioch: dumber

Letting him get besieged there by the Golden Horde: more dumber

Fighting a desperate battle to break the siege and get your king to a ship: not dumb

Forgetting to move your fleet that is carrying your king on the last turn it would have taken to get to safety at Rhodes and having it get massacred by the Egyptians: priceless

LMAO this is LINE BY LINE exactly what happened to me as English

Except between him becoming king and Mongols attacking Antioch, I send him out with what was left of the crusading army, about 12 units, to stop Mongols at the bridge near Edessa. Was watching a basketball game on TV at the time, so wasn't really paying attention to where I clicked on the map for him to move.

So when I click end turn and Mongols attack and I play the battle, to my surprise, I am not standing on the bridge, the bridge is BEHIND the Mongols because I didn't actually click ON the bridge, I clicked about 1 millimeter BEFORE the bridge

So I was pretty much stuck on top of a small hill (more of a bump in the road actually) getting shot up all day. Not good

[Ograbme]

A jihad was called on my city Jerusalem and a Turkish stack was just chilling outside the walls, but not laying siege. This lasted for several turns. Then a Mongol army rolled down and sieged. They assaulted with a tower and some rams, but no artillery. During the battle, I saw the cutscene of walls crumbling. There was no audio, and the Mongols had no artillery, so I figured it was just a bug.

I totally forgot about the full Turkish stack at the other side of the city, pounding down the walls.

Happy ending: The battle was weird. The Turks ignored the holes they knocked down and marched aaaaaaaall the way to the Mongol side of the city, took their rams, marched aaaaaaall the way back to their own side, abandoned the rams, and walked through the holes. This gave me plenty of time to move defenders to the correct side. I wound up anhilating both armies that day.

[stuartdm]

When moving a crusade army through the Alps, double clicking to skip the lengthy walking animation, and then noticing that the pass was blocked and your foolish general decided to walk from Innsbruck to Venice via the route Bern-Milan. Desertion, here I come...

I had the same, but I carried on with what was left. As I was in Turkey, Jerusalem fell and the Crusade was over. The next turn I was ambushed by rebels in the mountains and lost half my force. Carried on back towards England but annoyed the Byzantines by walking through their territory. Placated them with a bit of money. Then found that Bucharest was only a rebel village and captured that, losing 80% of what was left, including my Prince. Stayed in Bucharest until the riots got so bad my 35 remaining troops were kicked out. I then took the hint and disbanded them.

[gardibolt]

I had been defending Gaza from the Mongols as the English from many, many sieges. The worst of them, the Mongols breached the walls but I ended up routing them, slaying three family members, with judicious use of the ballista towers armed by a skeleton force of 14 men spread over 4 units. It was a heroic victory indeed!

I rebuilt the walls, and the garrison to a full stack, and even had a couple extra units of cavalry outside the city when the Mongols came back for another round. I decided to sally and wear them down a bit. That went well, I retreated back into the castle and tried to exit the battle.

It said I would lose if I did.

WTF? I went back to the battle, made sure that all my units were back inside the walls. Yep, everyone's fine, gate's shut? Hm. Try to exit again.

Still says you will lose.

It's late, I'm tired, I'm hoping it's just a gliltch, but when I exit, I do indeed lose and the vast majority of my garrison is killed, including nearly all of my archers. Gaza falls to the Mongols shortly thereafter and I've not been able to get it back.

It wasn't until the next morning I figured it out: I still had those two extra cavalry units as reinforcements. Since I hadn't lost any units in the battle for Gaza, they never appeared on the map, and they were still outside the castle.

I was so furious that I found what few men were left of those cavalry units and sent them directly into the Mongol Meatgrinder.