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.