I just had another unexpected tide shifting battle. This time it was against me though. I was sure that Sweboz was on their death death bed, so I devided up my forces and left a single legion in the Sweboz home territory (they still own it but I was attacking little armies before they could group together and form a counter attack). I somehow managed to give myself a recreatation of "The Battle of Teutoburg Forest".

The father of "Germanicus" was leading a single legion on a raid in 'Sweboland'. (This guy was titled Germanicus too but he ironically got it after his son.) I waited the season in a plain (NE of Hamburg) and suddenly a 20 unit army from Scandinavia attacked me. I let foolish pride lead me to think it would be a pushover.

The battle started with the AI trying to flank me with skirmisher cavalry. Wanting to protect my missile units, I had my entire cavalry pursue. I fell for what, if I didn't know better, was a well laid out trap. The german infantry attacked my line of legionaries slightly off center so that their right flank rapped around my left flank. Several groups of light spearmen then chased off my now guardless missile units. I tried to save my missile units with my tired cavalry, but the spearmen chasing them turned and beat-up my cavarly really bad befor my cavalry inevitably won. My surrounded left flank paniced and broke. The panic spread and half of my army slowly "peeled" away starting at the left. Two of their three generals with a quarter of their army held down my brave right flank while the rest of the germans slaughtered my fleeing men. Using my exhausted cavalry, I freed up my pinned down right flank and killed one enemy general. Some of my missiles and the left flank reformed and stood their ground long enough for me to attack them with my exhausted right flank.

At this point, with the battle still in good favor for the Germans, they ordered a general retreat. Fleeing in different directions, I was able to kill a couple of groups of germans including their head general. It would have been a crushing defeat if the germans hadn't decided to run. That was the first time I've lost a whole legion (well half of it was left). I was withdrawing forces from Germania so I'm now down to two legions there.