Another story of against all(well, most) odds victory in Rome: Total War. (Vanilla this time.)
I was in the midst of clearing out the last remaining wandering Gauls and was heading towards their final outpost near Spain when up north in newly conquered territory the Britons decide they're going to try to take advantage of my fast push into that area. I had probably moved too fast, left my reinforcement lines too thin, but I had conquered all of Gaul that way. I had about 400 troops left from one of my main battle groups. Mostly hastati. A couple principes, a couple of skirmishers, a light cavalry and my general. They were all well experienced, but few were at full strength. Out of seemingly nowhere, 2000 Briton troops with chariots, cavalry and plenty of those naked dudes storm in and besiege this little village where I'm resting.
It's not one of those cities with easily defensible roads, it's a round, palisade defended town with plenty of open area. I consider my options, but in the end they attack me before i can really do anything. I think I might have gotten a group of town militia trained or something. I study the map layout. It's bad. about 1500 troops attacking from one side, 500 from the other. Means I'll have to split my forces since both sides have battering rams. About 4 on one side, 2 on the other.
I set up my skirmishers to throw over the walls as they get near, but they don't do much damage. My cavalry end up heading out to harass a few of the weaker infantry groups and maybe try to take down a ram or two. They have small success with the infantry but none with the battering ram. They start to take losses so I bring them back inside to rest a bit. While this is going on, I split my infantry. I assign a few up near the walls to try to fill the gaps that'll open up with the rams, but the majority get put back to the first row of buildings, filling in the gaps there. I also set up just a couple behind that. The 1500 side gets the majority of my troops while the 500 side gets slightly less than 1/4, with no real skirmisher or cavalry support.
The time comes, the rams are swinging. The walls are splintering, the gate is buckling. My troops wait nervously. My general sits upon his horse proudly, but even he is nervous. He puts on a brave face for the troops though, standing near them. The walls finally fall. 6 openings, nearly simultaneously. The first line marches forward and readies themselves to hold against the wave of enemies pouring in. They make a valiant stand but once they reach about half strength neither they nor I believe they can do much good where they are. I pull them back to the third line, behind the main.
Enemies pour in, mostly infantry. Thankfully the cavalry and chariots seem to be holding back outside the walls for now. This main line holds for quite a while on the 1500 side. The 500 side is much less lucky. I've spread my forces too thin there and they push through. My troops don't even get a chance to move back to the second line on that side. They retreat directly to the square. They begin to form a box formation around the square as I start pulling back my more hurt forces to the square also to support them. It's at this point that the tide seems like it might start turning. Enemy infantry is starting to panic, starting to retreat. This is little consolation, as roughly 1/3 of the enemy still haven't even made it past the walls yet.
My troops still bravely hold the line. Against the inexperienced and untrained troops of the Britons, one on one they are easily victorious. But they begin to tire of the slaughter and things begin to turn the other direction. Again, I see it's time to pull back, as my troops are thinning. I pull about half my troops, the freshest, to the third line, just outside of the square to delay while my weakest are given time to rest and reform at the square. At the third line, a miracle happens. Roughly half of all the enemy infantry fighting at the moment panic all at once and fall back. I don't know what happened, nor does my general, but it's true that this turn of events may have saved us all. They aren't severely panicked, they make it far from the walls, but reform and turn back on us. Still this gives us much needed time and divides their forces. Again, my forces on the line draw thin. I constantly check back to the square where fighting is already happening on one side. Still their forces are divided over here too. Instead of a tsunami of horses, chariots and bare chested men it's a trickle of units. They easily handle the units one or two at a time turning them, forcing them to retreat beyond the walls where they reform and march back into the meat grinder. At this point I'm down to a bare few units with enough men to effectively hold a line, so I retreat everyone to the square. My best units form an outer wall most of it two or three ranks deep, but some of it only one. My remainders of effectively defeated units fill the center with my general and I wait. I have not yet felt the worst of this storm. The infantry continue to trickle in and they don't pose much of a treat but at this point the chariots, who had played only a minor role so far, decide to charge in with the cavalry who have sat out for the most part. Had I been outside the walls, I might have fared much worse, but they barbarians didn't seem to be able to fight well mounted within the walls. Their formations broke up, they couldn't stay together. It might have been a blessing from the gods, or it might have been sheer luck.
They charged the square, wherever they charged, I pulled back and surrounded them. Had they charged from more than one direction at once, I would have been done for, but they only attacked with one or two units at a time, all from the same direction. My losses were heavy, the chariots still did their damage, but they fell, one after another. Finally the enemy chieftain charged and was trapped within the same trap as the rest of his mounted warriors. He fell and what remained of the enemy, admittedly not much at this point, retreated. My general made a token attempt to chase down some of the slower infantry within the walls, but my forces were tired, they had all fought well and they deserved a rest.
Less than 200 of them survived that onslaught. Roughly the same number of enemies survived also. I was proud of my warriors that day, more proud than I have ever been, I suppose.
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Topic: Medieval II, Total War in general, discussion time (Read 74561 times)