Greatest Heroic Victory in EB Ever (yes, it's the dumb AI fluke) w. Pictures

[Intranetusa]

This is perhaps my greatest victory (or AI battle fluke/stupidity) in EB. Battle Ratio: 3 to 20


I was Roman, year 215 BCE in Asia Minor. I had ~374 soldiers, composed of ~half strength Triari, merc phalangites, camillan reserves, and 2 ~full strength cretan archers and 1 Persian archer. The Seleucids sent several huge stacks at me, 2 of which beseiged my city. The armies that beseiged me had 2500 soldiers, composed of mostly phalangites (see pics), spearmen, and elite phalangites.

I was 95% sure the city was screwed, so I prepared to relinquish control to the Seleucids. Well, for some reason, they only built 3 seige weapons, and didn't use their seige artillery. Then they started randomly circling my walls.

In the first 30 minutes, they got their tower to my wall and heavy wall fighting ensued. Then they used the battering rams and broke open my gates.
I decided to send out half of my troops from the other gate, and attack the seige tower...thinking that they could only use the gate entrance if their tower was destroyed. Well, it worked...after their tower collapsed, the enemy sent wave after wave of troops to attack through my gates...tower fire and boiling oil killed most of them, allowing me to pull of a crazy lopesided heroic victory. All in all, it took me nearly 2 hours of fighting. :D

pics:



Battle Strength Ratio:




Enemy Army #1 Stats:



Battle Scene #1 "Start":



Battle Scene #2 "Boiling Oil Frying Elite Phalangites":


Battle Scene #3 "Defeating Elite Phalangites in Melee - with Archers"


Battle Scene #3 "Aftermath - Enemy General's suicide charge of Desperation":


Aftermath, Heroic Victory Stats:

[CaesarAugustus]

Nice victory, but a horrible waste of two hours of your life. I am usually annoyed when the AI acts stupidly like that, but judging from the size of the grey death's empire you need every victory the computer's incompetence can give you.

oh yeah, is that you or the Saka who control that Indian province, I can't tell by that screenshot. And whats your secret to the huge treasury?

[sgsandor]

Dude awesome! How did the germans get there?

[Intranetusa]

Nice victory, but a horrible waste of two hours of your life. I am usually annoyed when the AI acts stupidly like that, but judging from the size of the grey death's empire you need every victory the computer's incompetence can give you.

oh yeah, is that you or the Saka who control that Indian province, I can't tell by that screenshot. And whats your secret to the huge treasury?

"grey death's empire you need every victory the computer's incompetence can give you."

I thought Seleucid had been sucking too much (they were throwing peasants at me for decades) so I gave them 200,000 denrii via console...lol


"is that you or the Saka who control that Indian province"
Lol, it's my province. Funny story actually. I had a really really horrible general (langorous/uncharasmatic/dull) so I sent him with mercs on a suicide mission deep into the heart of the Seleucid empire. It turns out, he won battle after battle and fought all the way to India. He conquered the Indian province but then died the next turn from a city riot...lol
Nonetheless, the city settled down and PO went to 120%, so now I have a province in India. :)


"And whats your secret to the huge treasury?"

huge treasury? I think it's kinda small since it's the year 215 BCE... :/

I would have a treasury in the tens of millions if I had been steam rolling...cuz so far, I'm mostly roleplaying and letting the Gauls/Germans/Carthage build up before I conquer them. :)

[Dan_Grr]

I don't know wether to applaud you, or the AI major stupidity. It's threads like this that disappoint me from the Total War world and make me think I'll only play a decent game with a decent AI in a couple of decades, when developers and editors realize that sending games with just shiny graphics won't cut it anymore.

[Gabeed]

In my opinion, boiling oil is too powerful, because it pretty much routs units who run through it and causes massive casualties. It's suicide to attack the gates of a stone walled city with rams.

Stupid AI. Amazing accomplishment on your part, though.

[I Am Herenow]

Nice :)

I did a similar thing in BI with Huns attacking me - mowed down their infantry with arrows and infantry on the walls until they had like 3 spearmen left; made all units run off walls and into central plaza, lettingthe 3 Hunnic spearmen capture a gateway making their cavalry charge in; waste cavalry in hand-to-hand in plaza; towers pick off routers. Job done :)

TBH though, I think in RTW and EB as soon as you've got a stone wall, that's it, you're sorted, you can kill pretty much anyone.

[Intranetusa]

Dude awesome! How did the germans get there?

I gave them a city in Asia Minor (which they lost the previous turn), so there is a German army sitting there.

[Intranetusa]

Nice :)

I did a similar thing in BI with Huns attacking me - mowed down their infantry with arrows and infantry on the walls until they had like 3 spearmen left; made all units run off walls and into central plaza, lettingthe 3 Hunnic spearmen capture a gateway making their cavalry charge in; waste cavalry in hand-to-hand in plaza; towers pick off routers. Job done :)

TBH though, I think in RTW and EB as soon as you've got a stone wall, that's it, you're sorted, you can kill pretty much anyone.

Yeh, they should really make the towers in EB have limited arrow ammunition and limited amount of boiling oil...this scenerio is just ridiculous

[Orb]

Hard. Coded. (I think)
Sorry.

There might be a way to get rid of boiling oil (completely, but can't limit it), IIRC Blue Lotus has this.

[Intranetusa]

Hard. Coded. (I think)
Sorry.

There might be a way to get rid of boiling oil (completely, but can't limit it), IIRC Blue Lotus has this.

damn...I suppose MTW2 also has this problem... :(

[Sygrod]

I just had to pipe in here....

I started a new campaign as Baktria, since the Qart Hadast campaign ended in a CTD that would not go away. Anyway, the Seleucids decided to wage war on me after only 10 years. In one attack, they sent a large army to lay siege on Baktra. Their army of 1391 men had 50 medium cav, no less than 5 archer units, 5 spearmen units, one Hellenic Spearmen unit and 2 Eastern skirmishers units. Against this formidable foe, I had 2 generals, one with 50 bodyguards and one with 18, 2 persian archer units, two very reduced archer-spearmen units, one cheap 120-man peltastai unit and one Pezhetairoi unit: Total 553 men. I had no choice but to attack.

At the beginning of the battle, the seleucids decided to regroup, so I sent out my archers and generals and made their move somewhat of a challenge. The generals inflicted serious damage on the archers, but were harrassed by the spearmen. Once they had arranged themselves, I had to get out of there. What followed was a drawn out battle, where I tried to draw enemy archers forward and hit them with my cavalry. The Seleucids sent forth a couple of spear units to chase my archers and I retreated behind my Pezhetairoi, where they were stopped in their tracks. After hammering at their units one by one, I finally got them to break, where the real slaughter began.

Result: My losses were 241 men. Seleucid losses were 1337. The Seleucid army disbanded. This time the AI did not act stupidly, so i had to use every trick I could come up with to devide their units in order to pick them off piecemeal.

/Sygrod

[Cata_Tank_Guy#3]

I had a similar experience, had about 750-800 men (medium spearmen, archers/slingers, two family members, and a couple light spearmen, and I believe 1 heavy infantry[swordsmen]) vs about 1500 Seleucids (3 family members, elite heavy phalanxes, medium phalanxes, and a few skirmishers). The difference being we were in the open field.

I figured I had no chance in hell to win (and could not retreat), so I immediately formed up a battle line and charged their main army (their reinforcements were far off to the side) all the while blasting the you know what out of them with archers and slingers. I spread my line to the thinnest amount possible with my medium spearmen and hit their phalanxes head on, sent my light units and had them surrounded, but they pulled about four elite phalanxes out before I could seal them in.

The battle was starting to turn in my favor, and about a minute after that, the Seleucid reinforcements smashed into my flank. I don't really recall everything I did after that, I just remember nearly constantly pulling units back and flanking them. I did manage to kill the main general and the general of the reinforcements soon after we engaged each force.

I must have done the charge/retreat combo with my generals at least 40 times. By some act of god, the noble armies of the Ptolemaic Greeks fought off hordes of the barbarian Seleucids.

Seth (Egyptian God of Chaos, though they worshipped Greek gods at the time, so maybe Ares) must have been watching over my forces that day.

[Intranetusa]

Elite Phalangites would own...

[Garbarsardar]

109 of them left alive? Disgraceful. You should give chase with your archers and mow them down.

[Intranetusa]

109 of them left alive? Disgraceful. You should give chase with your archers and mow them down.

lol, I'm sorry mom, I'll do better next time.