This is no AAR in the common sense, it's more of a single battle report.

I had one of the coolest offensives ever as the Romani:

After quickly conquering Taras and Rhegion, I prepared a full stack of good troops to go for Epeiros for the heck of it. In the meantime my diplomat managed to achieve an alliance with Makedonia who surprisingly had kicked the KH out of Greece by 266BC and of course lost Pella to Epeiros.

Well, my troops landed near Ambrakia just to be assaulted by 2 quarterstacks of Epeirotes(sp?) the same turn...luckily, there was also a halfstack of Makedons nearby and so I had one of my rare ally battles in campaign...and thanks to alex.exe even the reinforcements didn't act up stupid and it got a rather intense fight (Epeiros sent quite some elite troops) but of course, we were succesful with rather minor losses.

The next turn I started sieging Ambrakia which only had a a poo garrison of 2 units of levies...
Of course, the same turn I again was attacked, this time by an evil general (forgot his name :( ) with a full stack.
But again, luckily my Makedon allies brought in some reinforcements as well and so now I had 1 full stack of Makedons& another half stack of Makedons as reinforcements while the enemy had the help of the city garrison and another small reinforcement army in the area.

Man, what an epic battle! Thousands of units in the field, thanks to alex all sides trying to outsmart the others...that was intense!
I daresay I would have lost this one without the help of my allies, the Epirotes really kicked ass...and as I had no cavalry support on my own due to money issues, my flanking manoeuvers were rather limited.
But again, we won!
The next turn, I could assault Ambrakia and take the city with 4 casualties :D

Yeah, well, now I hoped I could replenish my REALLY battered troops and get some rest behind the walls, but of course, no way.

While a reinforcement army was rushing to Taras to be brought over the Adriatics, Epidamnos started sieging me with one full stack and another 3/4 stack. Where the hell did they get all these troops?!?

My reinforcements marched as fast as they could but were still couple of kilometres away when Epeiros finally attacked...I prepared my ~400 troops in defensive positions around the two gates and hoped they could hold them back long enough for my reinforcements to kick in.



I was surprised how my troops managed to hold the Epeirotes at bay though they had like 4:1 superiority at the front gate and 3:1 at the rear gate...

Finally, my general managed to counter the rear army and smashed into them from the rear, causing a mass rout, yay!

My general had to pursue in order to make sure that they don't regroup, while my troops run to the front gate where things aren't that shiney.

My triarii and Samniti inflicted heavy damage, but also took heavy casualties and the ranks grew thinner.

That was the moment when Epeiros decided to bring in its' joker: a unit of elephants charging through the front gate...at the same time their Tarantine cavalry galloped in through the second breach in the wall and managed to catch the rear of my troops...now things got nasty, in a matter of few minutes my units were simply eradicated...even when the support troops from the rear gate managed to kill most of the cavalry and establish a new line of ranks, 3/4 of my garrison was dead, the rest soon routed and was killed while running to the plaza...
By the time, Cnaevs Cornelivs Blasio, leader of the raid campaign in Epeiros (and faction leader...) decided to order a tactical retreat for his own bodyguard. They withdrew through the side gate towards the reinforcement army which was about to enter the city there.



The Epirotes by the time had their first troops at the square and hissed their flag, now I had 3 minutes to do something about it...

When my reinforcements had entered the city, Epeiros had almost all its army around the city square, jamming all side streets.

Luckily, my reinforcement general finally decided to give heck to tactics and ordered a direct charge with all his 1500 troops...
When the counter was down to 0:09 one horseman managed to rush onto the plaza, resetting the counter...one second later he was slain...

But the additional 3 minutes were enough for my new and fresh troops to push back the enemy (mercenary phalanx, yay!) and bring some heavy infantry on the plaza. My principes and hastati threw their javelins at the elephants who up to now had no casualties, killing pretty much 18 of 24 elephants :D The rest was killed by the phalanx, and as it was the general unit, morals were killed together with them. A part of my reinforcements had marched through the now quiet field of death at the front gate and blocked the retreat for the Epirotes, smashing into them from behind.
After a couple of minutes of fierce hand-to-hand combat in the streets, the first units tried to rout and headlessly fought to death, inciting a mass panic which led to the ultimate destruction of the Epirotes on the almost-theirs-city plaza. Not one man escaped.

After this phyrric victory I razed the town and abandoned it for them to take, withdrawing my battered army to Italy.

I think this was the first time I had such masses of "Wow..." events in such short time...

A whole campaign including epic battles with allies, a siege where hopes switched two times and ultimatley forced to retreat strategically? Wow...
I'm used to that every big advance on the campaign map is clearly a win&take the city-situation...I got a lesson today....

I'm sorry I don't have more screenshots, somehow Fraps messed up with saving them as ordered :(