Your "300" moments.

[cardgame]

I had an amazing battle against the Sassanids in BI. I'm playing as the Byzantines, difficulty is on Normal.

Here are my forces: two limey spearmen and one legio lanciarii unit: I hid these in a forest. One peasant unit: I hid this a javelin-throw behind my main infantry to use as a reserve. My general I put in between the two.

I had four horse archer groups, and I put two of these on each flank.

My forces number about 1170.
-----=====-----=====-----


The sassanids have about 2,000 troops, and it is all invested in Kurdish javelins and levy spears, save for their general, a cavalry unit. They are interspaced with each other (like J-S-J-S-J-S) and form a very long battle line.

I let things go at their own pace until my horse archers have the enemy in range. I open fire upon their spearmen and retreat; One group of horses on my left flank I forgot, and they got chased to a corner, but didn't suffer any casualties. They wiped out a levy spearmen group. The other flank lured two spear levies and one or two javelin groups behind my lines; My infantry opened fire with their javelins as they chased my cavalry, stabbing them in the back. My general unit and one horse archer chased down the javelinmen; the other horse archer fired into the backs of a spear group, which was engaging one of my lime spearmen and the lanciarii. Then, my other lime group gets attacked by a levy spearman; I sent my peasants around and hit them from behind; the enemy routs. Meanwhile their javelins have been doing nothing much ((I lost track of them, but they never did fire on me)). I send out my horse archers and rout them. Some other units have routed just from being surrounded (uneasy about flanks) and outnumbered and taking archer fire; I never had to directly engage them. Their general charged me at one point, but he just ran into the spears of all my units and died, which then turned into his unit routing after my general arrived and joined in.

The entire army is routed in no time, but then one or two of them recovered and retreated. I chased them all the way to the border, where they withdrew.

All told I lost about a hundred men to their 1200 or so.

 

[Hehehe]

In M2TW Third Age Total War I fought I siege battle where I had one orc left and he was routing. That was the closest victory I have ever had: if the battle would have lasted just a few seconds longer I would have lost (I won a time victory).

 

[UrbanTiger]

I've had a few massive victories against the odds, I always use the terrain to my advantage, if the enemy outnumbers me great, it just means they can't all deploy against me once!

In the Total War Alexander campaign I utterly crushed many armies which, with reserves armies entering the field during play, sometimes outnumbered my force about 6 to one. Against huge armies I would attack them as soon as possible, massing my entire force against one of their flanks and redeploying my army as I went along so the enemy never got change to recover and counter attack effectively.

I never rated the phalangists, my main line infantry were hoplites and the hyperspists were used like commandos, especially during sieges.

My favourite game in the Total War series is Rome, Total War, I've fought some of my greatest battles on that game.

I played the Imperial campaign as Pontus, it was tough, the hardest battle I've ever won in a PC game was the defence of Phrygia, my army of eastern infantry, light cavalry and skirmishers/archers were beseiged by a Greek army 3 times their own size, consisting of hoplites and armoured hoplites. When I say the situation looked hopeless I really do mean hopeless, the Greeks easy broke through the wooden palisade along several points, at the main gate our eastern infantry held but suffered heavy losses. I noticed the Greeks had overrun the deffences further to the east and were marching to cut off the deffenders around the main gate, only my eastern general and infantry were still fighting, I decided to retreat to the city centre and use the streets to my advantage.

The Greeks could not use their superior numbers in the narrow streets so I decided to set up "killing zones" with my rag tag forces, the first units of hoplites advanced towards the city centre in a column. I put my strongest (and I use the word strong very loosely) units either side of the street where it enters the city centre, the Greeks came on I engaged them from the front with my weak units (typically numbering 5 or so men), I then hit the Greeks in their unprotected flanks, the column kept coming, I kept killing them until they were either dead or running.

I redeployed my forces to any crisis point and repeated the tactic, grinding down a vastly numerically superior, tougher, better equiped enemy with superior tactical skill and absoloute bulldog tenacity.

It was like "300" but with a tiny eastern army trashing a huge Greek army, and actually winning...

On top of that my general survived the battle with 2 bodyguards, if you play Pontus, Armenia or Parthia, remember, use your general wisely, until you develope armoured cavarly your general and his bodyguards are the only hard hitting unit you've got.

I have a great record of winning battle that look impossible, I believe their's always a chance, in table top games I once won the battle of Stalingrad for Germany/Italy, the 1/72 scale wargame lasted 14 days straight. I lost all of my tanks, all but one plane, my artillery and 67 infantry, by the end I only had 13 infantry, a motorcycle/sidecar, kubelwagen, mortar team, a BF109 and still sitting holding off his 50 infantry, a T34 and an LaFn5.

The Russians had started with 300 men + the LaFn5, a Hurricane, an I16, 2 T34/76's, an M3 stuart, an SU85, a KV1 and 4 howitzers and seven mortars. My force consisted of 75 German infantry, 5 Italian infantry, a howitzer, a mortar, motorcycle/sidecar, kubelwagen, 2 Pzkpfw IV (an F1 and an F2) a StugIII, a Pzkpfw II, a Sdkfz251, a FW190, 2 BF109's (1 German, 1 Romanian), a JU87 Stuka and a Do217.

 

[SS-Pz.Gren.1562]

The craziest battle I have ever won was during a campaign as the Goths. I was defending my only city form vandal hordes who were looking for a place to stay. I don't remember my exact units but I had:
My king and his 9 sons + their body guard
about 3 companies of spear men
and about 5 companies of archers
equaling 617 men.

The Vandals had a mix of everything available to them but there numbers where a bit more than 10,000 men.

i knew I was going to lose but I was going to take down as many as aI could after the first attack against my wooden walled city they broke in and and started to head toward my town center where all of my troops had fallen back to. The thing that I still credit with my victory is that the enemy tried to send all 10,000 men down the one main street in my town all at the same time and my town center was at the top of a hill. As soon as the heads of that first line of infantry men came up over the hill all my archers rained down flaming arrows of the enemy. The troops in front panicked and tried to run back but the other men who were still advancing were in there way, so now neither the retreating men nor the advancing men could move and the flaming arrows kept on coming. Once They were all panicking and confused I sent all of my mounted bodyguard units charging into the blob of defenseless Vandals. this tactics was repeated unit almost all enemy forces were killed or had run away. After the 2 hour 43 minute battle the Vandal force of more than 10,000 men was sent running back to camp with less than 400 men still alive. I only suffered 17 casualties, one of them being a prince who fell to a volley of Vandal arrows. The Vandals attack several more times each time with a smaller force taken from their whole army of about 30,000 men, and the siege lasted almost 2 years until I was taken down to 235 men left and the Vandal only having about 4,000 men. In the end they decided to give up and left our nation alone. Shortly after, once we had rebuild our army we hunted down the rest of the Vandals and finished them off, only to face a new enemy, the Huns..

So final counts for the first battle:
-Starting forces
Goths-617
Vandals-10,000+

-Ending forces
Goths-600
Vandals- Approx.400

Total casualties of entire war:
Goths-392
Vandals-Approx. 30,000

 

[UrbanTiger]

I noticed on Barbarian invasion its very easy to repel a besieging army as they usually built only one siege tower, they usually leave the field utterly decimated and you're left wondering if they are actually trying to survive or they just have awful siege planning lol.

 

[SS-Pz.Gren.1562]

I noticed on Barbarian invasion its very easy to repel a besieging army as they usually built only one siege tower, they usually leave the field utterly decimated and you're left wondering if they are actually trying to survive or they just have awful siege planning lol.

Yes I was surprised that it was so easy to defend my town. But they didnt need siege towers I only had small wooden palisades and they had 2 or 3 battering rams so my walls were down in about 3 mins. and since i remained under siege for almost the entire war I couldnt repair the wall or train new units.

 

[UrbanTiger]

As a rule I always find that if you stop them up at the breaches in your walls for long enough, their losses mount, units panic and it disrupts the next wave of attackers, allowing you to pick your targets and kill.

I was dissapointed with "Alexander", no India in the main campaign, lot of units missing, Barbarian Invasion was ok, but units were too expensive, too many similar units in most factions but I enjoyed playing the Sassanids.

 

[dcmort93]

ive found it great to exploit the unlimited ammo of the towers. when you are being beseiged mainly by the hoarders in MTW2 if you have cannon towers just sit inside the walls, turn up the speed to 6x, and watch as their units slowly die

 

[cardgame]

The King's army of Abdunabar clashes with the army of Gondor in a battle to seize control of Minas Tirith!


Men deployed: 1164. 1131 kills. 277 remaining men, however there's only about 75 or so left on the actual field of battle.

The enemy's first army was a meager 252 men, and only achieved 8 kills; I routed them and left only 5 survivors.

However, their 966-men strong reinforcing army arrived with more advanced troops and, although I had my battle lines semi-organized, we were both pretty exhausted as we started to fight. Very quickly all the units on both sides were utterly tired, the maximum exhaustion level.

They killed 969 of my men and had 76 survivors at the end of the day.

Also, you may want to know that I used the default-sized armies for this mod. Infantry units had 50-70 men, cavalry had 50, archers had 50-70. My general started with 40 comrades; they all perished. Several of my units were completely wiped out.

 

[UrbanTiger]

I always play best when I'm heavily outnumbered, I've the most difficult opponent, if I've lost a battle it was usually a deliberate delaying action against a superior enemy, buying time for me to put a full army into the field.

In one battle I deployed just 2 units of Belaeric slingers against a Roman army consisting of 2 cohorts of Hastati, 2 cohorts of Principe's, 1 unit of Town Watch and a unit of Velite's, it was a long drawn out fight but I refused to give up. By the time my slingers had used all their ammo the Romans were reduced to 2 units of Principe's, reduced to about 12 men each, exhausted from chasing my slingers allover the field. I now had to engage the heavily armed Principe's in close combat, I lost a fair few men to their Pilae fire as I closed in and even more once combat started, eventually my slingers ran, leaving just under a dozen Romans in the field. The result of the battle was that the city of Palma was saved, slingers alone would've been crushed if the Romans had reached the city walls, and the next turn my Carthaginian fleet arrived with a force of Peoni infantry and elephants.

In another battle during the same campaign the big nosed Romans sent an army of almost textbook accurate organization under the Scipii faction hair out from Messana to attack Lilybeaum, I met them on the road with an army roughly a third of their size led my one of my generals. The Romans deployed in standard Roman battle order with Equites on the wings, Hastati and Principe's in the centre and Velite's infront to skirmish, the battle opened with my Numidian cavarly drawing away the Equite's from the Roman right wing, I then sent my only unit of (small) elephants to the now unprotected Roman right flank. As the Romans now shifted to meet the elephants my general, Round shield cavarly and skirmishers (with skirmish mode turned off) smashed the Equite's on the Roman left wing, all this action on the wings allowed my heavily outnumbered Iberian infantry and Lybian spearmen to take the innitiative and charge the Hastati/Principe's. The elephants charged the Roman right, the thieving Scipii general charged my general and Round shield cavalry but was overwhelmed and fled, the Round shields chased the lone general from the field while my own general went round behind the Roman line and smashed into the rear of the Roman right. With elephants at their front and the generals bodyguard at their rear, the Roman right collapsed, my infantry were commited to the centre, holding the Roman legions in place as my elephants and general smashed their way up the crumbling Roman line.

The Romans came with 750 men and left the field with 50, we came to the battle with 280 men and 6 elephants, our lightly armed, outnumbered army whipped Romes finest so soundly that I was able to march straight on to Messana and capture it, Hannibal would've been proud.

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm always impressed by the killing power that knights have in M2TW; especially when charging into light infantry. I get most of my 'wow' moments from that, although I haven't played it in a while

 

[dcmort93]

Odd because I find the cavalry to be extremely underpowered in all of my games, then again I play as England not France so my cavalry aren't the best around.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Odd because I find the cavalry to be extremely underpowered in all of my games, then again I play as England not France so my cavalry aren't the best around.

The French heavy cavalry selections are some of the best in the game. The only better are Polish, Russians, and Mongols. (The game likes to brag about Kwarezmian supremacy, but its a joke).

 

[UrbanTiger]

For me the Mongols were great horsemen yes, but it was their organization and tactics that stood out, they Tutonic knights were beaten purely by superior tactics, if these elite German knights had actually caught up with the Mongols and brought them into close combat they would actually have smashed them into next year.

I think my tactics against more heavily armed, much larger armies reflect the Mongol way of doing things, pure tactical and organizational superiority beats numbers and more powerful troops.

Actually, one thing I noticed while playing as the Britons on Rome: Total War, was that I was undr constant pressure from the Germans, they frequently sent armies to invade Belgica, each time I would send out just 1 or 2 units of British light chariots to fight a delaying action. These delaying actions consisted of making the enemy chase my chariots allover the battlefield until they became exhausted, by which time my chariots, now out of arrows, could turn and charge the poor buggers, catching them on the hop. Even if the battle was declared a defeat, I'd lost a few chariots, the enemy had lost 100's of men and any units they still had were easy prey for my main force next turn.

Sometimes its not about maintaining a squeeky clean win/loss ratio, I'd gladly "lose" a battle if that battle means I only lose 50 men to the enemies loss of 500.

 

[Traitorfish]

For me the Mongols were great horsemen yes, but it was their organization and tactics that stood out, they Tutonic knights were beaten purely by superior tactics, if these elite German knights had actually caught up with the Mongols and brought them into close combat they would actually have smashed them into next year.

I think my tactics against more heavily armed, much larger armies reflect the Mongol way of doing things, pure tactical and organizational superiority beats numbers and more powerful troops.

The Mongols actually fielded some pretty devastating heavy cavalry, as depicted in-game. It's simply that they made up a relatively small proportion of their army as compared to contemporary European armies, and were used to deliver decisive blows to an enemy force, rather than to overwhelm them with brute force; more a rapier than a sledgehammer. Perhaps they wouldn't necessarily compete head-to-head with a batch of heavily armoured knights, but that is not how they are intended to be used. "Best" does not, even in the context of heavy cavalry, mean "most brutal".

 

[cardgame]

Sometimes its not about maintaining a squeeky clean win/loss ratio, I'd gladly "lose" a battle if that battle means I only lose 50 men to the enemies loss of 500.

I love it when I can do this

 

[UrbanTiger]

Traitorfish, another great example of tactics vs brute andnumbers is Agincourt, 5000 longbowmen and a few knights not just defeating, but obliterating an army of knights 6 times their own size, its actually more impressive than any of the Mongol victories when you consider that the English army were on foot and had no withdrawl option, it was win or die.

Eastern heavy cavalry were pretty good, and as you say, their role was different in the Mongol army, although european knights were pound for pound the most powerful close combat troops its always a mistake to believe that one troop type can win a battle. Another huge factor was that knights weren't organized into to divisions like the Mongol cavalry, the Mongols had China next door to them and Ghengis learned lot about organization and logistics from them.

In the same way, in the early years of WW2 the Germans, famous for their panzers, actually didn't field many tanks heavier than the 20mm gun armed Pzkpfw II, they usually faced much better armed and armoured tanks and often more of them. Once again organization and tactics were the key, understanding the weapons of the day and how best to use them, and avoid the enemy strengh where possible, is what Germany made most of its gains with, not hulking great heavy tanks.

For me though, still the greatest commander of largely lightly equiped soldiers facing heavily armed, superior numbers is Hannibal, in all his battle, from a skirmish where he deployed 2000 men as a lure, to the the battle of Cannae, he was outnumbered and "out gunned" by the Romans and not only beat them but made them look useless. They only managed to defeat him by learning from him, using their superior logistics to chip away at Hannibal's territorial gains while was elsewhere, and avoiding him if he apeared.

I don't even take much notice of the battle of Zama, the Roman account puts Hannibals army as larger than Scipio's to make Scipio look good, fact is, Carthage had lost most of its soldiers already, they tried training a new army but it had been destroyed before it was ready. Now Hannibal returns from Italy with only his 4000 spearmen (these hard veterans held their own against Scipio's 30,000 infantry until Roman/Numidian cavalry attacked them from the rear), he collected together the remnants of Carthages army (including 80 untrained elephants) and prepared to fight a battle he probobly new he could neither avoid nor win.

Cardgame, at times that I'm quoting Stewie Griffin saying "what did you learn?" at the enemy lol.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Traitorfish, another great example of tactics vs brute andnumbers is Agincourt, 5000 longbowmen and a few knights not just defeating, but obliterating an army of knights 6 times their own size, its actually more impressive than any of the Mongol victories when you consider that the English army were on foot and had no withdrawl option, it was win or die.

The numbers of that battle are greatly exaggerated for English prestige. In reality, their numbers were nearly equal, but the French armored footmen outnumbered their English counterparts about 4:1. The majority of the English army was longbowmen, who are traditionally lightly armored.

f you want a Hundred Years' War battle that's more impressive, check out Poitiers in 1356.

In the same way, in the early years of WW2 the Germans, famous for their panzers, actually didn't field many tanks heavier than the 20mm gun armed Pzkpfw II, they usually faced much better armed and armoured tanks and often more of them. Once again organization and tactics were the key, understanding the weapons of the day and how best to use them, and avoid the enemy strengh where possible, is what Germany made most of its gains with, not hulking great heavy tanks.

Probably a good comparison.

I have dreams about B-1 bis formations smashing through the West Wall.

For me though, still the greatest commander of largely lightly equiped soldiers facing heavily armed, superior numbers is Hannibal, in all his battle, from a skirmish where he deployed 2000 men as a lure, to the the battle of Cannae, he was outnumbered and "out gunned" by the Romans and not only beat them but made them look useless.

That stunt was at Trebia.

They only managed to defeat him by learning from him, using their superior logistics to chip away at Hannibal's territorial gains while was elsewhere, and avoiding him if he apeared.

Not really. The famous Fabian Strategy called for a war of attrition and indirect confrontation to effectively wait Hannibal out and deny him the great victories he needed to scare the Italian cities onto his side.

Its notable that the most embarrassing defeat in Roman history resulted from the breaking of this strategy, which was seen as weak, stupid, and un-Romanlike.

I don't even take much notice of the battle of Zama, the Roman account puts Hannibals army as larger than Scipio's to make Scipio look good, fact is, Carthage had lost most of its soldiers already, they tried training a new army but it had been destroyed before it was ready. Now Hannibal returns from Italy with only his 4000 spearmen (these hard veterans held their own against Scipio's 30,000 infantry until Roman/Numidian cavalry attacked them from the rear), he collected together the remnants of Carthages army (including 80 untrained elephants) and prepared to fight a battle he probobly new he could neither avoid nor win.

Zama is only of note because the Romans had finally figured out how to deal with elephants.

 

[Poltair]

On Medieval Total War, the original, I had the single most unbelievable victory imaginable.

After taking Toulouse, I think, using what was then called the Almohads (Moors in Medieval II) I had suffered crushing losses. What remained was a handful of men from several units numbering less than 200.

The largest unit may have been 30 or 40 men with most others being less than 10.

Several armies of Frenchmen assaulted the castle (Which was highly upgraded when I arrived.) Numbering close to 10, 000.

I placed all of my soldiers behind the stone wall and iron gate of the castle Motte and abandonned the wooden wall defended Bailey.

Through a painstakingly long process of allowing the French to pile up at the iron gate of the Motte, waiting for boiling oil to soften their numbers and then sallying out and forcing them to retreat, quickly withdrawing back behind the gate afterwards I managed to begin to whittle their numbers.

After close to an hour of this (And this is the only time that I regretted turning the battle timer off) the French Captain, who was a Hobilar unit or something equally as useless but definately Light Cavalry, attacked the gate himself.

He fell victim to the same strategy and was captured as he tried to retreat. Now is probably a good time to mention that Medieval Total War's option to kill prisoners on the battlefield had helped greatly as my men showed no quarter, butchering every Frenchman who failed to die with honour or escape with his cowardice.

I didn't kill all 10, 000 of my enemy, to do so would've truly been worthy of retelling, instead my band of demonic warriors slaughtered enough to force the entire on-field army to retreat after several thousand Frenchmen (And most of my scattered force) had died.

With their entire fielded army in retreat the game ended on it's own and the French thought better of attacking twice just long enough for me to bring up my reinforcement armies.

The battle was a long time ago and I never remembered the number of dead but it was close to 3, 000 dead Frenchmen and around 100 Almohads, leaving barely enough for a celebratory party afterwards.

But the kills aren't the achievment in my eyes.

Roughly 150 Almohads had defeated 10, 000 Frenchmen and that was a victory worth remembering.

 

[UrbanTiger]

Cheezy, I'm not sure about Aginourt on the numbers I do that its THE battle the French don't like talking about because they say themselves that they should've won the battle.

Yes he used his Numidians at Trebia, I was actually reffering to an action fought in the lead up to Cannae, Hannibal needed the Romans on his side of the river, he achieved that, he then needed them to take the ridge opposite to his camp. He had to make the Romans think they had pushed him off the ridge, so he deployed his best men, his Lybian phalanx, who apeared to be "driven off" by Roman velites and cavalry, while keeping in formation, the Romans thought they'd won some victory, infact they'd just danced to Hannibals tune...

When I was reffering to how Rome defeated Hannibal I put all their strategies in a nut shell, I'm aware of the Fabian strategy having studied the complete campaign a couple of years ago. I big factor was the lack of help Hannibal recieved from Carthage, they did too little, too late, and paid the price with defeat. Another factor was the poor performance of Hannibals ally, Phillip V of Macedon, the Macedonian army had changed since Alexanders day, the cavalry were reduced to guarding the wings, not punching through enemy flanks while the phalanx was now even slower and far less tacticallly flexible. Phillip arsed about with the Romans in Ilyria and achieved nothing, his invasion fleet even fled from just 3 Roman quadraremes, at Chaeronaea Phillip's right wing smashed Flamininus's legions but his left, still coming up the ridge were cut to pieces, a close defeat, but enough to break Macedonia as major player.

Hannibals later partnership with Antiochus the Great should've been a winner, Antiochus was coming close to rebeuilding Alexanders empire, only Egypt and Greece/Macedon/Thrace remained, however, Hannibal was employed as an admiral, while Antiochus pretended to be Alexander reborn. Antiochus's next moved defy logic, he lands in Greece with a small army, does nothing as he waits to see if Phillip will join him, the Romans arrive and Phillip takes their side, Antiochus is defeated in Greece, his navy is defeated by the Roman/Rhodian fleet and then the Romans land in Turkey and defeat him again. The Romans were joined by the Ionian Greeks while Antiochus brought up an army of some 70,000 men, the Seleucid army became disorganized during the advance, giving the Romans/Ionians chance to press their attack.

There is another general I forgot to mention who lead small lightly forces to victory over better equiped armies, Khalid Al Waleed, although to be fair, both the Byzantine and Sassanid armies he faced were poorer in quality than the armies these two empires had fielded during Khosrow's war against Byzantium.

For me Erwin Rommel was a lot like Hannibal, a great leader, organizer and motivator, he could do so much with so little, he could move fast and plan ahead. At Alamein Rommel had about 50 tanks fit for battle, one British soldier recalled that even when the Afrika Corps lost a battle, they would hang around the edges of the battlefield until nightfall, looking for parts from damaged tanks to repair the few they had left.

Rommel's greatest deed was joining the plot to kill Hitler, if he'd succeeded the war would've ended in october 1944, even Churchill saluted this noble adversary, he'd earned the respect of any allied commander who'd faced him on the field.

Poltair, I have the original Medeival Total War, its old fashioned now but still fun. That is a great victory, even if you'd lost it would still have been a cost effective battle with such heavy enemy losses.