Memorable Evaporations?

[seireikhaan]

What's the quickest, craziest, quirkiest, or most memorable "evaporation" you've ever seen on the battlefield that didn't involve peasants/vanilla archers?

For me, it was an early, Danish game on hard. I invaded Livonia at about 1145 with about four units of huscarles and four units of vikes. After taking down their front line and capturing the enemy general, all that was left was two units of crossbows near the edge of the map. I cornered each unit by entrapping them with a semi-circle of huscarles around them. One unit took off running away from a huscarle to put distance between them.

However, it was running directly towards another huscarle to do so. At the last second before running into the second huscarle, they stopped and tried to run back towards the other unit. The result? One unit of 44 crossbowmen gets effectively "clapped" by two units of approximately one hundred huscarles combined. 41 crossbowmen perish in approximately 1.8 seconds, w/ three lucky souls somehow managing to slip between the cracks.

[_Aetius_]

I assume you mean collapses of an army and not a single unit?

One I remember was as the Byzantines early period VH/VH, usually I dominate the Turks early on but for whatever reason I had lost Lesser Armenia and Georgia by 1110.

It was weird, because at the same time I was losing Greece and Serbia over and over again to Sicily, i'd retake one then the other would get invaded etc.

Just an odd campaign.

Anyway the Egyptians had booted the Turks out of Lesser Armenia and advanced into Anatolia were my main army in the east confronted it.

Numbers were about equal at 1000 and I had a very commanding position on a hill overlooking some woods which the Egyptians had to advance through. I had on the flanks my spearmean to counter there camels and cavalry, my byzantine infantry in the centre and horse archers behind them with my general.

I remember tweaking my formation on the right flank when the Egyptians camels appeared right next to my spearmen flanking them, I was suprised because they were at the bottom of the hill and then suddenly there. My spearmen where being surrounded so I sent the spearmen from my left flank to help and some heavy infantry from my centre. By then though my right flank had collapsed and the rest of the Egyptian army was up the hill and my formation was all over the place.

Soon my heavy infantry was pinned down by heavy cavalry and began to rout, my centre began to collapse and my HA simply fled, I was forced to sound the withdrawel before the army was cut to pieces. Fortunately I managed to salvage a sizable group of my troops.

The defeat in itself wasn't overly terrible, what was bad was that my army had collapsed so easily and it took 40 year to expel the Egyptians from Anatolia. The campaign was crazy because I was on the backfoot for about 100 turns, this battle was similar to that of Manzikert, not so much a devastating defeat, but a collapse of a good army, strategically it was disasterous.

[seireikhaan]

Ooops, probably should have specified, I probably was sort of vague. Can be the collapse of either a single unit or an entire army, just limit it to one battle, not an entire campaign/empire. Certainly though, it is more memorable to find a way to disintigrate an entire army instead of one or two units

[_Aetius_]

Ooops, probably should have specified, I probably was sort of vague. Can be the collapse of either a single unit or an entire army, just limit it to one battle, not an entire campaign/empire. Certainly though, it is more memorable to find a way to disintigrate an entire army instead of one or two units

Well yeah i've seen thousands of units rout, the only reason I offered my example was because it was an army which routed but should easily have won the battle. Hence it was a special case and not just some random army routing.

[Caerfanan]

I think thet greaterkhaan speaks of units killed/captured, not routed. In that cas, I rememeber, when playing the saxions, a routing unit of militia sergeants bumped into a unit of valoured up separmen while followed by charging cavalry/royal bodyguards. 50 deads, 3 seconds, no survivors.

[Adrian II]

Once upon a time in Shogun:Total War...

... two Yari Cavalry units of mine with high Honour and various shields hit a low-Honour enemy Archer unit from the front and back, like a hammer and anvil. 59 of them perished on teh spot. Only the leader got away, running and fighting across half the battlefield with over a hundred Yari breathing down his neck. He made it across the border.

Weird.

[Peasant Phill]

I remember one time where I fought the Egyptians as the English. It was a bridge battle with two bridges. The only cav I had were two units of turcopoles which I send over the second bridge so I could harass the Egyptians in the back. I focussed my attention on my main force as i thought that the enemy general would ignore my turcopoles. Some time later I noticed that the Egyptian force somehow lost a unit of their royal bodyguards. When I located them they were riding at full speed to intercept my turcopoles crossing the bridge. I could evade the Egyptian heavy cav with one of my turcopoles but the other one got stuck in melee on the bridge and was losing badly. I immediatly charged the Egyptian heavies, who were on the bridge now, in the back. And they just disappeared. One moment they were there the other they were gone like they were all been thrown of the bridge by a big plow.

I don't remember the outcome of the battle but I do remember the actions of those turcopoles.

[ULC]

Iv'e had repeated collapses of entire armies when playing as the danes on hard. I invaded Lithuania, which was owned by the novgorod and had a garrison of 1500 men, most of them decent troops to begin with, but I had enabled the feudal units for them (they get them in the historic campaigns, but not in the main campaign?). I had Archers, Vikings, RK, and fuedal sergeants. Not the most Impressive army, heh? Add to that my 6 star general with famously brave, captured, and skilled attacker. Oh, did I mention that I had only 600 hundred men? Their decnt general (4 stars) plus a teched up army lost horrenduesly against my 600 men. 150 casaulties my side, 870 dead and 236 captured on their side. I have now Idea what happened, as their general never engaged, they used the proper formations, they out flanked me, and they held the high ground. My men had good morale, but that pales in comparison to the stat bonusues the enemy army had! I continued this conquest with these mini-armies, all having the same composition, about the same numer of men (varied from 400-800), repeatedly defeated armies 2-3 times their size, and utterly wiped out the novgorod.

[mfberg]

The Huns vs the Pope Reborn in Rome. The Pope comes in with 6 stacks, advanced troops. My Huns have just over one stack, two mounted crossbows, and a decent group with spears, swords, archers, ballista, horse archers, and Avar Nobles. I do the false retreat covered by horse archers, withdrawing everyone, but when my ballista are off I cancel the withdraw and call in my Avars. The pope who was chasing the withdrawal immediately turns and runs into thin air with all of his 5 remaining stacks. The after battle report indicates 9000 troops were captured by my 2000 men, and only a little over 200 dead.

mfberg

[bamff]

Actually this discussion sparks a question in my own tiny crack brained mind - Why is it that AI armies with numerical superiority will rout on an open field far more often than when they are attacking a bridge?
They just keep marching up to that bridge, getting shot to pieces in their hundreds, but they keep on coming. I would have thought if they were going to refuse an order to advance, that's the time and place that they would do it!

[seireikhaan]

Open field battles are, well, just that, open. Units suffer morale penalties whent thieir flanks are exposed to enemies. Bridge battles, if actually fought on the bridges effectively seal the flanks of nearly every unit on the field, therefore they don't suffer the morale penalty. Also, even though units may get shot up by arrows a little bit, arrows often don't kill enough to route someone on their own.

When units start routing in open field, it often opens up a flank to another unit. That units morale dips and soon it routs as well. Then another units flank is opened up and the whole thing ends up as a massive chain effect.

[bamff]

Thanks for that greaterkhaan - all makes perfect sense. I suppose I was just looking at it from the point of view of the horrendous casualties being suffered in most instances (when marching slowly in a straight line directly at a herd of arbalesters/crossbows, etc). But you are quite right - no danger of being flanked or attacked from the rear when attacking a bridge.

[ULC]

I agree with Bamff though: Why does the computer send everything to it's death in a bridge battle? I have repeatedly watched a computer attempt a massive cavalry charge across the bridge against my spearmen or halbediers. Or even worse is the all infantry rush, in which it suffers the crowding penalty, and my unit of CMA or CS slaughter them wholesale. It even sends It's archers, which simply rout the army quicker! WHY,WHY,WHY!! Doesn't know that it could win or at least lose well by sending a unit at a time!? I have won bridge battles that seemed ridiculous in kills:casualties.

[Martok]

I'm not sure that there's a simple answer to your question, YourLordandConqueror, as we have only limited knowledge as to how the AI "thinks". My guess is that it has to do with a function of the pre-battle numbers as opposed to the ongoing kill/loss ratio as the bridge battle progresses. I suspect that when deciding whether or not the battle conditions are "favorable", the AI always weights the numbers (his men vs. your men) as being far more important than the terrain -- assuming the AI even factors in the terrain at all. Thus, the computer proceeds to send men into the meatgrinder, even though the tactical situation is not in its favor.

That's my theory, anyway. Goodness only knows if it's actually anything close to being correct.

[Deus ret.]

I remember seeing the entire AI army retreating during bridge battles several times, although in most cases they didn't have too many troops left to bring in and only after I had battled off the first waves.

I suspect that when deciding whether or not the battle conditions are "favorable", the AI always weights the numbers (his men vs. your men) as being far more important than the terrain -- assuming the AI even factors in the terrain at all.

Good question! The terrain for sure has a say in the result of an auto-calced battle, not to the extent a player would utilize it, though - bridge battles are still lost to the AI in autocalc when outnumbered 4:1 but not necessarily when playing oneself. This doesn't mean that the AI does take the expected terrain into account when deciding whether to attack / fight a defensive battle or not; I suspect the AI begins its calculations about that on the battlefield and withdraws or fights accordingly.

[seireikhaan]

Yes, people generally can get massive, crazy kill/death ratios on bridge battles, especially if they are "designed" in the person's favor. The best example of this is when I played as Hungary and loaded up an army of about 4,000, consisting of mostly halbadiers w/ some arbs and a few CS in Kiev to face the Mongols. Also my mighy eight command prince and a lone Avar Noble who had achieved the "famously brave" trait for +3 morale.

I wasted their army of roughly 17,000 troops when they tried to cross the bridge, although it kept me going well into the night to do so. I know that the AI wouldn't have achieved nearly such good results by itself. The kill/death ratio was something like 14 to 1.