Crazy Battles anybody had

[Achilles the last]

This is a simple thread where you tell your craziest, bloodiest, heroic battle against ________ faction where you probably massacred most of your men with maybe a few good or bad units.

I will start with mine, there was this one time i was attacking those Frenchie city of Marsielle i was ambushed by a large army of peasents, crossbow men, dismounted crusader knights and loads of the mounted knights along with some general and mercs on the bridge, i was playing as HRE with only two zweihanders and one pavise crossbowman, they all were at the other side of the bridge, they rushed to kill me with all their army so i sent my zweihanders to the bridge and had the crossbowmen back, it was a massacre where they lost probably all their men, i only had 160 men and they had 2035 men, i only lost 27 men but they lost 1926 men and their king was captured.

afterwards i just decided to ransom the king but the Frenchies are cold and refused to pay so i executed him

[econ21]

Moving thread to the Citadel...

[Hoplite7]

Defending Jerusalem as Egypt from Venetian crusaders, I burned both towers and rams, leaving them with only a ladder. Obviously won that battle, it was great seeing their mighty towers on fire. One of them was actually unloading troops when it crashed to the ground.

[rajpoot]

Was playing spanish in Kingdoms, there was this battle, between some 1000 Taxacalans and double the number of Aztecs, the latter led by their king. Was playing as reinforcements for the Taxacalans, just had the general's guard, and two mounted conquistadors. One hell of a battle, Aztecs had like around 3-4 units of Eagles and 2 of Jaguars, one priest and rest warriors and archers.
Taxacalans had begun to route, managed to reach in the nick of time, charged all out, lost about half of my conquistadors and routed the Aztecs, and captured their king (first time ever that I captured a charecter, it was jaw dropping to see his ransom). Ransomed the prisoners. 14000 for god king Montezuma, another 2000 for others.

[khaos83_2000]

if only if we can save the battle replay of campaign games ....
I don't see the reason why we can't do that.

[Achilles the last]

Creative Assembly believes that saving replays should be for Custom battles

[Zim]

There's one battle I wish I had kept the screenshots for.

I had been playing a Byzantine game in Kingdom's, and ended up in a defensive bridge battle against two Principality of Antioch stacks. I had a pretty decent army, lots of Byzantines infantry, Lantinkon, Guard Archers, etc. Both sides of the bridge ended in a narrow path with high, steep hills on either side, basically perfect for firing down at the bridge.

What made it interesting rather than a slaughter? The enemy's two stacks were mostly siege weapons, with a lot of mangonels in particular. I managed to repell their non siege units easily, and they obliged me by killing their own captain with a mangonel shot. Then they sat and waited me out.

I figured what was the worst that could happen, so I charged across the bridge, cavalry in front, to take out the "hapless" artillery crews. Such a maelstrom of exploding shots poured onto my men that most didn't make it across, and even fewer avoided routing. It looked like a 4rth of July fireworks show. Then I spent the rest of the battle rallying my men and chasing down the crew one by one, while the other siege weapons took pot shots at me.

I think both sides lost 90% of their men.

First time I saw an AI all siege stack do well...

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Was sending some reinforcements to can't remember where when they got ambushed by Portuguese stack (mostly med quality, no peasants). Mean't to press autocalc to minimize loses but accidently chose "play"
No passive AI. Just concentrated fire on a single unit with general circling to lower morale. Eventually all units routed. lol...

[Rhyfelwyr]

Defending a minor city somewhere in Germany a few turns ago, a few Town and Spear Militia + one Ballista against a full stack Polish army of Polish Nobles, Dismounted Polish Knights, and Woodsmen. I was playing as Byzantium, deployed all my men in the centre square in a quarter circle at the edge where a street let strait from the gate being assaulted. The Polish ran up the street, lost their general, the Woodsmen started to rout, and soon a chain rout began. A couple of them regrouped and tried to attack again, but my Ballista sent them running before they got anywhere near. In the end, my Ballista made almost 600 kills.

One of the few times siege equipment has worked well for me. Now every city I own on the frontiers in Germany and Poland has one.

[Galain_Ironhide]

I was going through my old tga's and found this combo of shots I had taken during my English GC.

I had 3 units - a unit of Swordsmen, a unit of Dism. English knights and a unit of Hospitaller knights. By memory i was moving them through French held Dijon province from Marseille to bolster my defenses in Rheims, however they were attacked by a largely unproffesional rag tag French Militia army along the way (see below shots for composition).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As it was a large soldier difference, I pretty much wrote them off for dead (also considering i had no missle troops either whereas they had plenty). When the battle begun, I had the high ground, so I let them come to me. Most of the men I lost were through enemy missle fire, but once the enemy spears and other militias engaged the 2 units of foot soldiers, the battle evened up. I then flanked my hospitaller knights around that fray and charged them towards the Merc Knight unit, quickly disposing of them, though taking a few losses. Once they were all dead I turned my attention to the missle troops, which included the captain. They charged through the captains unit and killed him almost instantly. This quickly routed the rest of crossbowmen and ballista's. Meanwhile, my 2 foot units were absolutley decimating the enemy militia's, although they too had taken substantial losses.

Finally, the surviving Hospitaller knights then charged the remaining miltia's from the rear, causing a mass rout.
Especially during the phase where my 2 foot units were defending the high ground, it was just entertaining to have the battle on close up view, sit back and watch them kill the enemy 1 by 1.

Not what you would call a great battle, as my troops were technologically superior. But I still had fun.

The final results:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Who said that 2 handed units are no good????

[Rhyfelwyr]

Just fought the Portuguese a few turns ago, they attacked me with a full-stack to relieve the besieged defenders of Tunis, just a few depleted units.

My General, Komanos Ducas, led an army of 1564 men, mostly Latinkon, with some Vardars and Dis Byzantine Lancers. It had been heading for the new world, but I thought it would be better off removing the Portuguese dominance in north Africa. The enemy General, Menendus Solez, led an army of 1601 men, consisting of about half Pavise Xbows and half Dismounted Feudal Knights. The enemy reinforcement army was three about-half units of Dis Feudal Knights.

So the battle began, and the enemy advanced, xbows in front with the foot knights just behind. My Latinkon units were in two lines, five units in the first line and three in the second. I charge the first row, and immediately killed 25% of the enemy. Took a couple of casualties as my knights got bogged down, and so pulled back to reform. My second line provided cover and charged the enemy, routing mos of the xbows. Then the enemy foot knights charged, and by this time my front line had reformed and counter-charged, absolutedly decimating the enemy. Meanwhile their General was distracted as he was chasing my Vardars, and afters weaking the bodyguards to about 1/4 strenght they charged and routed remainder, shooting down the General. By the time the enemy reinforcements got near me, I had reformed the second line of Latinkon and charged them, causing an instant rout.

In the end, I lost 84/1564 men. The enemy armies lost 1567/1601 and 149/151 respectively.

Playing on VH (M on camp map). First time I've depended on a cav charge this campaign, and this was on turn 180 or 190 something, 1454 AD anyway.

[Achilles the last]

I had another crazy battle, it was against two stacks teutonic order in a seige, they had loads of ritterburd, latvian swordmen and prussian archers, i was playing as Denmark with 5 Gotland Footmen, these guys are very reliable, anyways i had them stand at the city center where they had an advantage together, the teutonic order was stupid enough to send prussian archers to engage in a melee combat, they all died, then they sent the latvian and ritterburd in an all out attack, i thought that i lost the battle but turns out the Gotlanders chopped all of them, it was a heroic victory
these are the life/death ratio of the units
me: 200/81
them: 3912/3564

[Uunts - a proud Estonian rebel]

Has anybody gotten some nice hero traits after a heroic victory?
When I (playing Sicily) defended a small village against venetians. I guess I had two units on normandic dismounted knights, one spearman unit, bunch of archers and a general. Venecians had a full stack of units. It was a real massacre. When I had about ten normandic knights left and about 5 general bodyguards, I couldnt think of anything but sending two units of archers to help them in melee. And then the last of my archer unit. And actually it did the job. When the battle was over I had left like 3 normandic dismounted knight, two bodyguards and a general and about one and a half regiment of archers.
After the battle, my general got many good traits, the best one "the hero of Lombardia" was a really superb skill. Too bad I dont remember what it did. But actually it showed how heroic the victory really was!

[Old Geezer]

I went to assault a city the other day and took my catapult up close so I could hit the gate easier and speed up the battle (I was impatient). On 6x speed the battle lasted less than 6 seconds as both catapults were set ablaze! I think what happened was that both of my Scot's whiskey barrels caught on fire and exploded. I saw the first flaming arrows hit one catapult and it burst into flames and remember thinking "how unusual". When the second one went up I thought "how very unusual, time to reload."

[Rhyfelwyr]

I will never insult gunpowder units again.

Lost around 200 men out of a 2/3 full stack, killed over 2600 Milanese, including their King. Four units of Mercenary Arquebusiers hid in the forest just in front of the rest of my army, and when they popped up a few feet in front of the Genoese Crossbows they let of a volley and caused an insta-rout. Guard Archers added to the casualties, and Vardars mopped the scene up. Good old cav charge with some Merc Knights on the reinforcements.

Oh and I'm sure I'll have some nice battles to report tomorrow. Some elephants just landed in Cuba...

[manwithplanx]

My most heroic heroic victory was when I was playing the Milanese and was sending a couple units across to help defend something over the rhein (small attack by the HRE). It was 2 Geonese Crossbow units and a spear unit. I got to the bridge and ran out of movement points. During the HRE turn they sent a half stack of fairly good units. Remembering fun with the Spartan Hoplites defending bridges in RTW I just let them sit on the bridge with the Crossbowmen firing over there heads. It was a complete bloodbath with corpses strewn across the bridge. It triggered Man of the Hour and I netted myself a nice 5 star general.

[Achilles the last]

you should keep in mind that some 5 star generals aren't recomended like old, disloyal, Infertile, ugly generals
well that's what appears in the MAN OF THE HOUR for me most of the time

[Barbarian]

Not my most glorious battle, but the one, which I remember well, because it is
not my habit to storm the bridge with 1000 tercio pikemen under direct musket fire , but for the sake of the campaign it was necessary: after chasing the final stack of english colonists for several turns, I finally managed to catch them and I thought: "This ends today!"
Both sides had terrible loses. At first I managed to position my cannons in a very good spot, so I disrupted English formations a lot and also managed to destroy 3 of their 4 mortars. My musketeers were unable to weaken enemies by firing over the river, because this time AI had figured out how to station 4 units of musketeers in perfect formations at the coast .
So, I ordered all my pikemen to march, because that way it was guaranteed that some of them will survive + they were accompanied with few units of spanish dragoons, who helped a lot by taking out enemy's foot musketeers.

victory wasn't so bad after all - they lost more men than I did, probably because the spanish dragoons have a great effect on enemy morale, and they started routing soon after I reached the opposite coast.

Btw, here is a short video from that battle:

http://s255.photobucket.com/albums/h...7-43-35-06.flv

[Jasper The Builder]

Nearly the same as Nebuchadnezzar, But i killed more men

[lilo lol]

This was not my most glorious victory ever, but I'm quite happy with the amount of casualties I suffered.
I'm playing Byzantines and the whole catholic world is at war with me (could have something to do with the fact that I attacked rome and that the pope wants his home back). I was fighting in Italy, Spain, the British isles (I like boats :p) and then hungary decided to go for Constantinople.. With all my dreadlords executing the catholics all over the world I had to sent out some spoiled young generals with a quickly massed combination of everything I could find and hire. I was expecting the worst (playing at very hard and such) but it turned out my generals did a good job at surrounding the enemy and charging them until they ran

P.s. the generals started with 1 or 2 experience points.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Finally got to use my Elephants in the New World, just fought my first battle against the Aztecs. I've learned a lot from playing them in the past where I mucked up basically. Some points from past experience:

1. Go to them - do not let two or more stacks attack you at once, get them while they are isolated
2. Do not bring AP units such as Venetian Heavy Infantry, sword and shield foot knights are ideal
3. Bring at least 'Good Morale' units to prevent the rout caused by the Aztec high morale Generals and Coyote Priests
4. Bring archer/xbow support for gunmen, gunmen are for causing damage to morale, not serious casualties
5. Bring roughly 3/4 stacks from the Old World, and hire the plentiful mercs, preferably Tlaxcalan, to fill each stack, as they soak up all those arrows and javelins and keep your core strong

Anyway, in this battle I had 1x General's Bodyguard, 6x Dismounted Latinkon, 6x Guard Archers, 6x Tlaxcalan Mercs and 1x Elephants.

The enemy sent their missile units forward first, and got slaughtered by a combination of my archers and my General's unit (my only cavalry, one mistake I did make on the journey). My archers then advanced and were able to fire freely, depleting just under 50% of all the enemy after they had used all their arrows. Focused of course on the Jaguars and Eagles. Then my Elephants spent their ammo (rifle elephants BTW, not cannon, kept some for the Timurids earlier, now in Russia) on the Chuaha... whatever they are called, just under Jagaurs in rank IIRC. And then a couple more units were gunned down. So my General covered the left flank, and the elephants the right. My line of Tlaxcalans engaged, just to pin the enemy down as I prepared to assault the flanks. Some of them got down to 'shaken', so my dis. Latinkon supported them. My General virtually eradicated a unit of Eagles from the rear, and my elephants charged horizonatally across the Aztec line. Insta-rout!

Their General and a unit of Spearmen had the good sense to withdraw before engaging, and they got away. But on the whole a great success, lost just over 200 men, most of which were Tlaxcalans and were replaced instantly. Elephants made 407 kills and got +2 experience. The enemy lost nearly 2300 men.

So in answer to every 'how do I fight the Aztecs thread' - bring elephants!

[Poncho400]

I can't remember much of my major battles. But one does stand out.

The Mongols were invading Russia, who I happened to be. They finally decided to fight me at Kiev, where my best general and a few guys were staked. Before they attacked though, I had wiped out about 2/3 of their generals with my super assassins, so they only attacked with a weak general.

I had about 400 troops. Mostly spearmen, some archers, a few Boyar sons and kazahks, and my general. They had a typical stack of guys, around 1000-1300. I set my guys up in the second area of the city, so I could get them in a choke hold.

The battle lasted about 45 minutes. When they reached my inner-city gate, they rammed it down after suffering casualties from my archers. When they stormed in, I beat them back with my spearmen and a few chargers from my general. This happened about 4-5 times. Eventually, I began to run out of spearmen (my archers long gone), and my Kazahks were out of ammo (same with the boyar sons). I routed quite a few of their troops, and even killed their general (who foolishly charged my spearmen).

In the end, I had all 400 dead, and I had killed about 900 of them. They took Kiev and exterminated it. I later came back with some an army and seige equipment, and took the city back. Thats about where I stopped playing that campaign, as I grew too tired of fighting Mongols for 50 turns...

[Rhyfelwyr]

Its just gets better and better, I can't believe I had problems with these Aztecs before.

Texcoco Region, 1498 AD, fought two major battles, first against enemy Emperor and then against a captain, Emperor's a full stack, other slightly depleted.

First battle, killed 2002 out of 2673 enemies, lost 13(!) men out of 2173, unfortunately the Emperor survived.

Second battle, killed 1987 out of 2350 enemies, lost 53 out of 2160 men.

I only even brought two stacks to the Americas and the Axtecs are being well and truly streamrollered. To think I got a full stack routed and slaughtered against them in my Venetian campaign.

[TevashSzat]

Best battle I've won in terms of odds.

So I was blitzing and the Byzantines only had that city southwest of Constantinople left. My army, though, was only left with my general, two half depleted light cavalry, 4 or 5 pilgrims, 4 balkan archers, and an unit of spearman.

I intended to use clever movements on the campaign map to take the city without engaging the full stack very close to it, but I failed and was forced to fight even after retreating.

The enemy had about 7/8 units of militia/lower end infantry, 2 generals, rest various merc/byzantine cav. I stationed by troops on a small hill right beyond the river ford.

The enemy's whole infantry line started marching forth and so as soon as they got close to my side of the river, I charged with my infantry head on and my general/cav from the sides. I was extremely lucky and barely avoided an instant mass route from my infantry which was dieing incredibly fast.

My archers, though were extremely lucky and managed to kill the enemy general thus giving me a mass route of their general.

Now only the enemy archers/HAs were left. The HAs charged my infantry and what left of them began to route. I used all my cav and barely managed to beat the HAs and ended up with my general+5 bodyguards and about 7 other cav left.

My now, my infantry stopped routing and the enemy archers charged. It was a bloody fight and then my infantry started mass routing again. In the end, I barely managed to beat the archers leaving with only my general + 1 bodyguard left.

Final was left 200 men left for me from a start of 500 and about 1200 killed/captured for my enemies from a start of 1300