how many soldiers you guys throw into your battle?

**guineawolf** · 03-27-2007, 12:07

how many soldiers you guys throw into your battle?
i mean the biggest army you ever throw into a battle......numbers of your enemy and results??
i just throw in 9300 into a battle to take out britons(1800)

ah,i forget,this is my biggest 1 i first throw into battle...

**professorspatula** · 03-27-2007, 18:39

Well it wasn't a proper campaign... but with riches even the gods couldn't amass, I kind of created a massive 50-60K strong Germanic force, had them hibernate in Hibernia, then launch a massive assault about 60 years later. I sent this force against the Senate after allowing all the other factions to become strong.

Here was the first big battle:

Over 9000 crazy Germans against 4000 Purple wearing Romans. I didn't care how many men I lost, so allowed the AI to control my reinforcements. However, things went a bit wrong....

My reinforcements were delayed, whereas all 3 Senate armies were allowed to fight from the start. The result - my army was surrounded by hardened legionaries. Oh dear.

Fortunately I managed to somehow rout many of the Senate units, and with the casualties my force were also suffering, my reinforcements had the opportunity to arrive. End result - victory to the Germans! A shame 2 of my armies didn't get involved.

Anyway, after another large battle with the survivors of my army, we took Rome by attacking a Senate army next to Rome itself, thus drawing out the Garrison at the same time. Another 2500 dead Romans.

And then finally to take a simple Scipii settlement with just 1942 defenders and a stone wall in our way. I think these 10,000+ troops should be enough for the task...

Now sadly this was version 1.2 of RTW, which had the fatal flaw that the AI was hopeless using siege equipment. Ladders, siege towers, rams etc - they had no clue what they were doing. So despite massively outnumbering the Romans, and having the settlement surrounded, I witnessed the worst display of siege AI ever. I still weep to this day remembering the massacre that followed...

Whilst I commanded my force to storm the walls, my AI controlled reinforcements decided upon the odd tactic of marching within firing range of the walls, then walking back and forth with the ladders and siege towers and allowing the Romans to kill them at will. Many of the mothers of the fallen were spared the true details of their sons' death. They'd suffered enough without being told they gave birth to a brainless cretin with a penchant for idly standing around getting shot to pieces for no good reason. I think the AI managed to get 1 ladder and 1 siege tower to the wall out of the dozen or so pieces they were given at the start of the battle.

Anyway, I gave it the best shot I could, commanding my forces and bravely attempting to take the town plaza before the timer ran out. I was joined by some of my AI reinforcements who had finally figured out the best way to take a settlement is actually to get over the walls. Despite outnumbering my foe by this stage, I couldn't take the stupid plaza because another exhausted Scipii unit would aggravatingly stagger onto the town square and reset the counter.

Argh, an embarrassing defeat! The timer ran out and my stupid German warriors fled the scene of the battle before the Roman peasants could come out of hiding and shout obscenities in Latin at them. I was so disgusted at the battle and the idiot AI that I took an axe (well more of a hatchet really) to the PC and preceded to smash it to bits whilst laughing manically. Well ok I didn't do that, but I did swear a bit. Not in Latin, but in good old fashioned English. I seldom ever bring more than 1 army to a battle now. I just can't trust the AI with my warriors after the nightmare of this ill-fated siege battle that took place 2 years ago.

**LuckyDog Trojan** · 03-27-2007, 19:10

Holy freakin' cow Professor! Your post above is nearly a mini-AAR in itself. I trust your playing with unit size set to largest? And, if so, does your system ever bog down? (Especially if you ever get 4 or 5 archer auxilia shooting flaming arrows at once?) And I thought I have had some big battles.

To answer the original question: All of 'em!

Unless, of course, I'm attempting to get some hot-shot captain decorated as a 'Man of the Hour', then I let the enemy have the numerical advantage as much as possible.

**professorspatula** · 03-27-2007, 19:35

It's not actually Huge setting. It's a custom setting, half way between large and huge. I call it 'Extra large'. And yes, I do get slow-down with large amounts of troops. Actually since after the 1.2 patch, I've found the game is a bit slower and more unstable with large amount of troops in battles. And for some reason playing a siege of a barbarian city with 6000-8000 troops tends to crash the game after about 30 minutes. That never used to occur.

My system is about 3 years old so I have to get rid of grass details and shadows etc to play the large battles. They only play at around 10-15 fps until soldiers have the decency to die so things speed up again.

As to my post being a bit like an AAR, I used to take screenshots of all my campaigns just on the off-chance of doing a write up. I never bothered though. I still have around 1500 assorted RTW screenshots. I actually reloaded that German campaign last year, made a few changes here and there, then switched control to the Julii in an attempt to fight off my own evil creation. Unfortunately the Germans refused to play ball and wouldn't invade the mainland, so it wasn't much fun. Saying that, I did have to totally reorganise my military and fight off several veteran stacks of Britons and Spanish armies. After a few defeats, one general defied the odds and pushed the Spanish back to their homelands. That man was Marc Antony. It seemed fitting that the hero should share the name of a real life famous general. I thought about writing about his exploits, but again changed my mind. I'm currently trying to finish modding my game so I can start my long time in coming Dacian AAR.

**LuckyDog Trojan** · 03-27-2007, 19:52

Marc Antony, now there's a name for 'ya. It has a certain ring to it....

The 'dead solider' trick is worth noting. And I look forward to reading about your Dacian exploits in the hopefully, not too distant future.

**YENKO** · 03-28-2007, 19:31

Hi there!

I am fairly new to R:TW (about a month or so, a couple hours a day, if i can) so anything is possible in my battles.
So far, i never used the AI-managed reinforcements (no need for reinforcements so far, actually, playing on norm/norm).
Last night, i made the error to attack a Greek city with my second Army, while the First one was already sieging the city.A stupid oversight.Oh well. So, the garrison makes a sortie, and my main Army is AI-controlled. I decided to watch a bit. I was outright astonished to watch all my precious Cretan Archers (mercs, i am Brutii) shred to pieces by the stupid, ultra-stupid AI who stubbornly used my Cretans to charge at some Greek armoured Hoplites!!! Comeon, even if it is 'just' the AI, it is a bit too much!! In that army i had 6 companies of mercenary Hoplites and some Principes, so in no way the Cretans should charge the Hoplites. They had about 3/4 arrows unused.

AI-controlled reinforcements? Never more. :(

This was on un-patched out-of-the-box vanilla RTW.

Have fun,

Y.

**LuckyDog Trojan** · 03-28-2007, 20:05

Originally Posted by YENKO

Hi there!

I am fairly new to R:TW (about a month or so, a couple hours a day, if i can) so anything is possible in my battles.
So far, i never used the AI-managed reinforcements (no need for reinforcements so far, actually, playing on norm/norm).
Last night, i made the error to attack a Greek city with my second Army, while the First one was already sieging the city.A stupid oversight.Oh well. So, the garrison makes a sortie, and my main Army is AI-controlled. I decided to watch a bit. I was outright astonished to watch all my precious Cretan Archers (mercs, i am Brutii) shred to pieces by the stupid, ultra-stupid AI who stubbornly used my Cretans to charge at some Greek armoured Hoplites!!! Comeon, even if it is 'just' the AI, it is a bit too much!! In that army i had 6 companies of mercenary Hoplites and some Principes, so in no way the Cretans should charge the Hoplites. They had about 3/4 arrows unused.

AI-controlled reinforcements? Never more. :(

This was on un-patched out-of-the-box vanilla RTW.

Have fun,

Y.

All things considered, I'm surprised you also didn't lose your general - if you had one assigned to this particular army. I've seen the AI do that too many times. You're off controlling another army and the multi-star general foolishly rushes forward, only to get his head lopped off.

Because of this - and this is a lesson I learned the hard way - whenever attacking a city or army with (for example) 2 armies (one with & one without a general), ALWAYS control the army that has the general if you don't want to take a big risk on losing him. If both armies have generals, then stick with the one that's most valuable to you.

Have fun and head back to the bank for a loan to hire some more of those Cretan archers!

**YENKO** · 03-28-2007, 21:31

Thanks for the reply.
I think my general survived because he was routed at some point. And he is a 10-star general, for x-sake. In that battle he looked like he couldnt command a sack of potatoes!

Ah, no need to take a loan to hire more mercs: i am playing the Brutii ;)

Cheers,

Y.

**mightilyoats** · 03-29-2007, 06:07

YENKO, the AI probably saw this as the perfect opportunity to get rid of your very dangerous Cretan Archers. The enemy general might have had a Cretan Turncoat among his buddies ;)

**Severous** · 03-31-2007, 07:22

This is unmoddified RTW V1.5

Custom battle.

€10,000 value Greek army attack a €150,000 value Gaul town.

Captured and held the plaza for three minutes but was then wiped out by a cluster of angry Gaul General units. The game still awarded the victory because of holding the plaza long enough. Only the Greeks that had routed on the city outskirts survived...all the Greek heros that took and held the plaza were wiped out.

Playing with over 30,000 men is a bit slow. Once troops have been killing, and around 24,000 combatants remaining, things returned to normal.

PS..Nice post ProffessorSpatula.

**Omanes Alexandrapolites** · 03-31-2007, 07:30

I normally, in R:TW/EB, throw around as many full stack armies as I can afford which, on my settings, incooperates up to 1600, not including officers, or slighty more should there be any sixty men units on the feild, men on the battlefeild at any given time. I would like to have more the feild, yet my PC simply can't handle it, whatever I may do. Ah well, such are the woes of posessing a feeble PC.

**LuckyDog Trojan** · 04-02-2007, 19:38

Severous: WOW! What a battle!

Omanes: My system isn't too bad. However, while currently playing with large unit size, I did have to back off a couple of the visual niceties (grass, dust, etc.) I also notice that things can get 'choppy' when I or the AI (or both) have several archer units launching missiles at the same time - worse still if any of those are fire arrows. Still, I'm like you. I wish I had the horsepower to max things out.

**Severous** · 04-02-2007, 21:43

one of the largest battles from a completed Celt campaign (Barbarian Invasion)

Ive noticed that the AI will delay reinforcements in such big battles until the main army is significantly destroyed. Fortunately not too many occasions when that coding is put to the test.