Your Best Moments!

[TevashSzat]

My best moment was my best battle in terms of odds. I had a ragtag crusader army with about 10 units. My heir was in it down to half men and the rest of the army were all bad mercs like bosnian archers and pilgrims all of which did not have greater than 2/3 men. I faced against a 16 unit byzantine stack containing their king with 9 command, 4 or 5 various HAs, 6 or 7 top level militia, and the rest trebizond archers. It was a river battle but the ai held missle superiority. The battle was long, but in the end my general survived and my 400 strong army of poor mercs beat a 1200+ top quality army with only about 200 losses

[Caliburn]

It was a few days ago, when the foolish Venetians decided to launch a sneak attack against my Polish stack of 6 halberd militias, 2 merc crossbows, 26 Polish Nobles, a small number (maybe 11) Merchant Cavalry, and my idiot king with 2 stars and -3 to all troops on the field (never mind why, I don't believe the yellow press...).

So, a storm was raging, I had no idea what I was facing, and placed the militias to a hill, protecting two passages between cliffs, and the crossbows above them, waiting with my cavalry away from my main army. And then I see the Venetians - they're running 4 units of various missile troops ahead of their lines, so I charge them, which is a mistake, because a second later the next 4 missile units come to view and all but decimate the Polish Nobles and the Merchants.

I retreat the 14 knights left of my bodyguards, and let the militias take charges by enemy spear militia, bodyguards and knights, until they run out of cavalry, and don't dare to use their spears actively, but let their crossbows do the job. There are still huge numbers of the missile troops, but my bad king (the black lamb of a noble and great line of crusaders) manages to rout the crossbows by endless charges to to their rears. Finally I have to rout the remaining spears by charging with my militias...

A heroic victory it was, mostly due to the AI's stupidity, but I believe without the storm I still would've lost with such small numbers of cavalry.

Great stuff.

[TeutonicKnight]

I had a nice fight last night. My Danish force, led by a young general and consisting of five or six dismounted Huscarls and two merc crossbows were holed up in a small town with a wooden wall. The HRE seiged me, and decided to assault before a could get a relief force there. Their force consisted of a lot of cavalry, and armored sergeants I think? Some sort of armored spearmen.

I knew I would never hold the square against the cav, so I determined to hold them at the gate. My crossbows were able to get up on hill in town to provide defilade fire on the area in front of the gate. Then I just waited.

When they breached the gate, I charged my entire mass of dismounted Huscarls at the entering army. They literally stopped them in their tracks. For the next five or ten minutes, it was just a chaotic fray. My Huscarls were killing the armored spears like crazy, but there were a lot of them left. The cav moved in, preparing to support them, but my crossbows were doing a lot of damage to the cav as well.

Finally, as my Huscarls were just about to give out, a lucky crossbow bolt took out the enemy general. I charged my general into the pocket that had formed inside my gate, losing half my mounted knights but breaking the enemy's will to fight. They turned and ran. Half of the enemy footmen didn't even make it out of the gates, and the rest were ridden down by my cavalry. The enemy cav made it away of course.

Wasn't a strategic victory by any stretch of the term. It was a podunk town on the frontier with a nobody in charge, fighting a nobody invader. I could have cared less if I'd lost the town. But it was the most memorable fight of the entire campaign. :)

Armored spears vs. Huscarls = a lot of dead spearmen.

[EKKM]

Early in my campaign as Spain (my first) I had just forced France to pay me for a cease fire. I accepted because I was rather stretched out and wanted to build some infrastructure up and I had just completed my objective of taking all the provinces on the Mediterannean from them. I had an army beseiging Dijon under the command of a general Vaasco when the ceasefire was granted.

The very next turn however Milan laid seige to my newly captured Marseilles. I had a pretty good garrision (maybe even a depleted field army, can't remember) so I wasn't overly worried about that city. Milan to this point had all of northern Italy, Berg and two or three provinces in central Europe.

I sent the Vaasco's army in Dijon through the Alps to assault Berg, which was the only province connecting Milan's northern holdings to the Italian holdings. I captured Berg without an issue but my army wasn't strong enough to hold it and I was competely cut off from my other territories. I then moved the entire army from the fortress into northern Italy (just inside the border) and had my diplomat in Rome gift Berg to the Pope. This resulted in all of Milan's northern armies being cut off from Italy as they could not go through the Papacy's land.

Unfortunately this meant Vaasco was surrounded by three decent sized Milanese armies two turns away from reinforcements. The good news (i thought) was that they were mainly militia, the bad news was that Vaasco was outnumbered 3-1. When the battle commenced one army was on the right, one on the left and the largest right in front.

Although I prefer a defensive or methodical approach I could not fight this way as Vaasco's army would be encircled in short order. The Jinettes (I had 4 understrength squadrons) were sent around the back of the enemy in front and I ordered a general advance of all my infantry and heavy cav. Milan's main army began routing after a few tense moments but I did not pursue as I needed to reposition to deal with the two other armies that were now almost upon Vaasco.

One of the armies was mainly Genoese crossbowman and artillery and the other a fairly balanced force, although it was short on cav. I sent my remaining Jinettes and some heavy cavarly to engage the crossbow army and my dismounted knights lined up to face the other army along with my artillery (undermanned trebs and ballista).After several tense minutes, and a lot of cavalry micromangement, both remaining Milanese armies began to route. I don't remember the final tally but it was a heroic victory.

I managed to get Vaasco's army out of Milan to retrain and eliminated Milan from Northern Italy fairly quickly as all of their castles in Germany were cut off from the oh so rich cities in Italy.

It's my fondest moment due to the initial strategic coup and the resulting heroic victory (my first). I still have a two of those units of Jinettes 100 years later (gold chevrons). I also finally got around to eliminating Milan (and France) recently.