In the same Byz. campaign as mentioned above, I've just had a series of great battles against the Portugese in Egypt. A little background: The Portugese beat me to Egypt already in the first half of the 12th century, so Sinai was my SW-border for some time until they luckily decided to sink one of my fleets. A long naval war began where I eventually stood victorious since I could just out-produce them, snatching Egypt from them in the process.
It is now 1270, and I've been at war with them since they again attacked me in the 1220-ies. The naval war is more or less a stalemate. I can't entirely drive them out of the Med, but at least I'm in control. I've taken most of Iberia from them and they are now reduced to some lands in northern France and Northern Africa (their king is in France). Neither them nor I had updated our forces in Africa sine the mid 12th century, so these battles were essentially Early battles. While they were still an empire, they had massed up some 10,000 men in Cyrenaica, then I isolated them there by sinking some navies. Their general (their king) died and his heir spawned in Ile-de-France. For decades they sat at my border and didn't attack, even though I had 3,000 against their 10,000. Then, by 1250-something, they finally attacked.
The first two battles were pretty tough due to their numbers and my own stupidity (way too many silver armoured Hoplitai and Pronoiai). In all they lost about 3,000 men and I 1,000. I then reorganized my forces, sent away heavily armoured troops and recruited new ones with less armour. I also recruited about a dozend units of Byz Lancers.
In the third battle, I killed off their general pretty much immediately and won killing only 400 Portugese to my ~50 dead. But in the fourth battle, they attacked me with a force of around 6,000 (some were reinforcements from Tunisia). Most were Spearmen or UM's, and they were nice enough to bring six siege engines to the battle:
Black = General (Hoplitai)
Blue = Hoplitai
Green = Trebizond Archers
Yellow = Byzantine Infantry
Red = Byzantine Lances
Orange dots = Position of enemy siege engines
Coloured arrows = Coloured arrows... (rather self-explanatory, enemy approach etc.)
What is illustrated above happened over and over again: A few enemy units attacked, I flanked with my Byz Infantry, brought one group of Byz Lancers into their back and chased down routers with the other group. All the while I had to replace my archers who ran out of arrows. After a few equally pathetic attempts to break my position, the enemy retreated, giving me a nice chance to slaughter the retreating units with my cavalry. In the end, ~3,000 Portugese were killed or taken captive (I killed all the prisoners and earned the nice Butcher vice) to my 250.
In all, it was essentially the perfect Early battle (although fought in the late 1260-ies) with every unit fullfilling its task and a light version of the double envelopment tactic in practice. In the following years I drove them out of Cyrenaica, Tunisia and Algeria, and I'm now planning a final strike against the 2,000 men trapped in Morocco.
Bookmarks