Have you ever lost a campaign?

[DVX BELLORVM]

I was wondering, have any of you ever lost a campaign? If the answer is positive, you could also post some details (what faction were you playing, difficulty, what phase of a campaign where you on, and what went wrong with it...)

You can also answer for Rome TW (including expansions), because the engines are similar.


To answer the poll, I've never lost (yet).

[Matt_Lane]

My first Campaign was with Venice and I managed to miss manage my economy enough (who needs cities, oops) that Milan utterly stomped me. I never stuck it out to the utter end but got out before they could perform the coup de grace.

[Doug-Thompson]

My first campaign, when I rushed to unlock factions. I was the Spanish and concentrating intently on killing the Moors after taking over Portugal. The French walked all over me.

Then I lost as the Russians, where I had so much fun beating up the Poles, I remained blissfully ignorant of how much I was angering the other Catholic factions, and overextending myself.

[sassbarman]

yep lost as carthage, it was glorious!

[Kobal2fr]

I must own up to quitting when things are starting to go pear shaped

[andrewt]

My very first campaign as Venice, I did the council missions and hit the rebels in the immediate east hard. However, I paused and only started building troops and attacking the Byzantines after they attacked me first. Needless to say, I was unprepared when Milan double crossed me so I restarted after they were on the verge of capturing Venice. I think the HRE attacked me as well and the Hungarians were close to attacking.

I restarted and hit the rebels and then the Byzantines immediately. After conquering Thessalonica, I slowly conquered the Byzantines and was able to defend Venice.

[Kraggenmor]

Oh yeah, I've lost more than one!

I can't count how many times I restarted as Spain while re-learning the game.

I stepped up to M2 from MTW having never played Rome. So, there were some new concepts to deal with and I took some serious lumps early on.



Having gotten more grounded in the game now, I haven't lost one in a long while.

[atheotes]

Never lost one... even before i played my first campaign in the TW series i had read a guide so knew not to ignore economy... but i barely managed to win my first campaign... but since then completing a campaign has not been the challenge.

[TinCow]

Abandoned due to imminent loss. Like several others on here, it was my first attempt at Venice. Here are my comments on it from the Venice Guide thread:

I grabbed Zagreb and Durazzo almost instantly, with Florence and Rhodes following shortly. I made alliances with everyone I could and was raking in money. Unfortunately, my military forces were relatively minimal, with the only sizable force capable of taking the field located near Venice. Hungary and Byzantium allied and both declared war and besieged Zagreb and Durazzo respectively on the same turn. Both stacks were massive and I had no chance of defeating the assaults. I sent my large army from Venice to try and help Zagreb. Both cities fell the next turn, before my relief army could arrive. With the main force diverted to the east, Milan (my allies) declared war and besieged Florence. Hungary also moved on Ragusa. I turned the army back around made for Florence, but it too fell before I could get down to help it. HRE then declared war, defeated my main stack and took Venice. I had managed to assemble a large force on Crete and could have attempted to invade Greece and survive that way, but instead I declared defeat and started over.

[andrewt]

I think almost everybody who lost their first campaign in MTW2 or restarted it before they lost picked Venice.

[Guru]

I haven't lost a single campaign though I have abandoned many. Not because I would have lost, because I get bored. It would be fun to fight for your lives instead of fighting for new lands... Defend your last settlement, feel the relief when you get a ceasefire for a huge price, then revenge when you are strong enough... In some faction's intro video "a fight for survival" is mentioned; I'm not sure if it refers to another game. Operation Flashpoint anyone? That was a fight for survival. I saw the "You are dead" message countless times but I've never seen "Game over" in MTW2 even though I do not consider myself a good or experienced TW player.

Sleepy Guru out... ZZzzzzZZzz..

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I started RTW on easy to learn the stuff. I have quited a lot of campaigns. Not because I was losing them but because of boredom. In M2 I have started a lot of campaigns. I never finish them because in the end I am to powerful and get bored. I sometimes think that I could lose but then I simply defeat the AI. So in the end I always win.

[Hellenic_Hoplite]

the only time I can really think of is when I was playing as macedonia on rtw and had to face the insanly powerful roman units, I remember I kept sending armies of royal pikemen over to rome only to have them be decimated by legionarries (is that how you spell it), I eventually abandoned that campaign.

[magnum]

Not many but have lost a few that either luck was against me (yea, it was all bad luck, thats what it was!) or I simply badly mismanaged my empire.

[Thurak]

Like many others I quit most of my campaigns when I am too strong. Most times that occurs with ~30 provinces under my control. But if that's early enough I don't call that games lost.

I lost one time so far: Playing Scotland as my first long campaign I decided, after I got the Isles + all Danish provinces, that I follow the Pope's call and send armies towards Antioch. That was a funny hell of a game: After I established a nice, small, stable, Kingdom in the middle east and shortly before I finally moved towards Cairo and Alexandria the Mongols arrived... And I had big problems fighting them, but that was ok. With tons of order knights I finally won.
When I was on the move again, south and north, the Timurids arrived. Endless battles were lost and won, far too many brave Scottish soldiers died in the desert... And after I finally had the Timurids down to two or three mini-stacks (few survivors of larger armies) it was around 1420, Scottland had only ~20 provinces and my economy was ruined. Still possible to win, but as I did not try to do it I must count this as a loss.

And I have another "half" loss: As Portugal I decided to take it really, really slow. And I decided not to take out a single faction - to avoid the reputation damage for being at war. At first I defeated the Moors, with a peace traty when they had only Algier left. Toledo and Leon fell, after I knew that Spain had another settlement (Bordeaux). When I found out that Spain was in Dublin as well, I established Bordeaux/Tolouse as my northern border. Worked great. Although both neighbours (Milan and France) betrayed me once. The second alliances lasted forever. And I had some additional income from England and Spain who attacked me quiet often and paid a nice sum for a peace treaty.

In the south I asked the Pope for a crusade against Algier. Milan or Venice took it and I bought it from them. Then I took Tunis from Sicily. After I took Palermo (crusade) and the Pope took Naples the last province of Sicily was Tripolis. Unfortuately I could never again call a crusade against them and although several nations are at war with them none decided to finish them off.

But well, I took my time to establish this small (~18 provinces), but powerful empire, bought Sardinia from the Pope, took Corsica and Marseille during the short wars against Milan/France and when I finally took the fight to the Middle East I had to fight the Mongols and, much worse, the Timurids. It was not such a huge problem as I built cannon towers as soon as possible and so I could defend my cities/castles well, but it took much time - time where my empire did not expand.
Finally, 1500, Portugal has 38 provinces (3 of them in the New World) and the Timurids are pretty much beaten up. I could easily win this game with my armies at Bordeaux and Tolouse, but I won't betray my allies. And I doubt that I could take 7 more provinces in the Middle East. (Adana has a few good Mongol stacks left) so I did quit this game. For a late challenge or when I changed my mind about backstabbing my allies.

Scotland has Oslo, Stockholm, Arhus and lost Riga a short tiem ago due to a crusade.
Denmark owns Stauffen (yes, that castle in the middle of Europe), Helsinki and Novgorod (and perhaps some provinces south and east of that, but as Russia is not weak I doubt that)
Spain owns Dublin and Caernevon.
Siciliy sits in Tripolis.
Byznanz is only at Cyprus.
The Pope owns Genova, Florence, Rome, Naples, Bucharest, Sofia, Budapest, Constantinople, Nizäa, Smyrna.
Hungary (at war with the pope for two centuries) owns Magdeburg, Vienna, Bran, Ikonium - they had a huge empire, once.
Poland sits in Venice, Zagreb, Prague, Crakow (hey, at least someonw who managed to reconquer [from Hungary] their capital) and another bunch of typical Polish provinces. Besides England they are the most "normal" empire.
I don't know exactly what Russia owns, but they do NOT own Riga, Viipuri, Kiew... but they own Tiflis.
The mini map looks horrible

[Rebellious Waffle]

I haven't run a campaign long enough to lose. Farthest I ever got was around turn 50, with the Holy Roman Empire. Conquered the Levant region on Crusade, donated it to the Pope, consolidated my crusading armies and cut a bloody swath through Asia Minor in the name of the See of Rome.

(The Papal States became the second most powerful faction, next to me -- I wasn't interested in Asiatic holdings because of the potential for Mongol problems later. Sack the cities, make off with the gold, donate the ruins to the Papal States, merge armies and buy mercenaries as you savage Egypt, Turkey and Byzantium. When the Mongols invade, my plan was to turn my armies around and start killing barbarians, redonating the conquered lands as I go. When the Timurids invaded, I planned on sticking around; why go to all the bother of holding that land when I can plunder it and let someone else pay the construction costs? Besides, they make reliable bribes against excommunication.)

[Thurak]

Sorry for all those mistakes but I can't edit my own posts...

[PrestigeX]

I hate playing campaigns, it takes waaaayyy tooo much time. And you have to start from the begining with crappy boring units, all the other factions just gang up on you. and for the first many many many turns you never have enough money. And the enemy always has really crappy armies.

I only play quick battle, online, and custom battles - where i can make the enemy have good units and make it harder.

[Gaiseric]

Yes I did lose the campaign once. I even got the death of your faction screen. I don't remember what faction I was or what the death screen said, but it was really funny!!!

In the begining of the game you get only one spy and you have to build a brothel before you can get another. My spy was busy exploring the map when he should have been scouting. (The very same map that I must explore every game(Annoying!!! ))

Anyway, I should have had him scouting because I took a rebel settlement with my Generals(all of them). Only to have a very large army besiege me on the next turn.

I think it was Sophie that I took playing Hungary, because I was trying to grab it before the Byzantines.

There was no way I could have won a battle with my 3 Generals against 15 units, mainly Byzantine Spearmen. I tried sallying, I tried defending, but nothing worked. My Generals all died and since it was my entire family, I got the faction death screen.

I wasn't too upset because it was the start of the campaign. But I thought it was really funny that the AI had beat me. It was too funny to ever let it happen again.

[danfda]

Yeah, I lost my first go-round as Venice. And I lost multiple times as the Goths in BI. Yeah, I know, sad. I've lost many more times in the original incarnation of this game, though thats probably more due to the fact that I play that constantly, and this rarely.

I have had some that go awry or I quit due to laziness, but usually victory is just a matter of time. Which is sad, because I would make a horrid King and/or general.

[Ciaran]

Only with MTW, as far as the vanilla games go.
My first Total War campaign was played on RTW,with the Julii, which was fairly easy.
Playing MTW proved way more difficult, not the least because you can actually lose a campaign due to killing of your family (to do that in RTW or M2TW you have to go about it with intention, otherwise it just can´t happen to you before you lose all your territories).

Another campaign I lost was in Chivalry, due to the campaign time having expired.

[gardibolt]

I lost an RTW short campaign as the Brutii to the Egyptians; it was a fluke though because I forgot that I was playing the short campaign and so I was taking my sweet time and the Egyptians fulfilled their victory conditions first.

[Shahed]

I was wondering, have any of you ever lost a campaign? If the answer is positive, you could also post some details (what faction were you playing, difficulty, what phase of a campaign where you on, and what went wrong with it...)

You can also answer for Rome TW (including expansions), because the engines are similar.


To answer the poll, I've never lost (yet).

Never....

/incoming rant/
....but I wish I did, because it was a real challenge. i.e I do wish t was actually possible to lose because the game engine was that good that it could actually beat you. Ofc that's not the case, you can't lose because the game is just incapable of putting up any challenge without massive advantages, like gold chevrons and huge amount of numerical advantage.
/rant over/

[manwithplanx]

Yes I lost a campaign, I played as the Greek City States and about half way through before I quit I was at war with all the Roman Factions, Macadonia, Thrace, Carthage, and somehow Germania. I quit a turn before a fleet of ships was going to drop a stack near Sparta.

[WhiskeyGhost]

I've never lost. In fact, i agree with Sinan on that same point. The only risk i've ever really come across was maybe the Mongols/Timurids when i played as Egypt and didn't bother to expand at all. Even then i barely even reached the 'risk' of defeat because i had a good 10 family members and a dominante foothold over the Moors southern areas (timbuktu marrakesh, etc)with my prince as a backup in case i did lose Jerusalem to Alexandria somehow...........

[Zpartan]

I dont have much information because i quit in disgust. But I was Sicily around turn 28 I think and I laid seige to the city left of Tunis forget the name sorry and then waited out the seige the turn right before I would capture it it all of a sudden said Defeat. I dont know why? but that the only time so far.

[Didz]

Yep! losing one right now as it happens, but usually I give up and start again before the final curtain falls.

[Husar]

I'm not sure about losing, I think there were one or two I gave up.
Then i had that HRE campaign where all my neighbors hated me and I could not make any progress until very late end even then only slowly, it was defence almost throughout the whole campaign.

[NightStar]

I lost as HRE on VH/VH, didn't have enough time to build up or stave off the A.I, at the beginning the French went to war and got me excommunicated and then I got a crusade on me with England, Venice, Milan, Poland and Danmark joining in on the fun. I didn't have the dough to bribe the Pope to reconcile and no assassins to end his reign.

With most of my settlements under siege, I couldnt produce anything worthwhile and didn't have the florins to do it either. I tried to sally, managed to defend some but got whittled down slowly. I managed to sue for peace with most of the factions but by then I had lost 4 out of 6 settlements. I had 2 cities left and finally It was Milan and the French who wouldnt accept peace that did me in (darn Italian Spear Militia)

Other than that I haven't lost any in M2

I lost one in RTW as Carthage, I sold everyone my map and soon after literally every faction declared war on me, Greeks, macedonians, Gauls, Iberians, Egypt, Numedia and Romans alike sent forces by boats or land, or blockaded my ports. After that I have never sold my maps....ever!!!

[sapi]

I've only lost because of my own stupidity (and so voted no) - putting every familiy member on a 1-ship fleet is becoming a habit of mine