With Chaos invading from the north and Karl distracted by a bunch of legendary quests that he probably should've done 40 turns ago, I failed to notice my allies to the south, Averland in particular, being overrun by the Border Princes. At the last moment, I saw them... with two provinces conquered and Averland's capital under siege by a 20-stack plus 5, with the defending armies reduced to three men (some combination of lords and heroes) plus the castle garrison. With my lord moving from undead hordes to orcish raids, and my secondary army headed to the front lines of the Chaos invasion, it fell to my third and final army, which had spent the last 20 or so turns sleeping in Helmgard to ward off the Wood Elven menace, to sweep in and save the day.
They started by reconquering one of the provinces in a lightning raid... but that did not deter the sieging army. And so I rode to battle, assaulting the Border Princes from behind. Their army was a 20-stack, with a heavy focus on Outriders and a single mortar, but a complete lack of melee cavalry, plus a small reinforcing group of infantry. My army was also a 20-stack, with multiple artillery units and two Demigryph Knights plus a mix of ranged and melee infantry, reinforced by one army containing exactly three men and a handful of expendable castle garrison units. The auto-resolver gave us 40-60 odds of winning the battle.
I deployed my forces in three groups. My own Outriders and Pistoliers were sent to handle the incoming reinforcements. My archers and infantry were hidden in the woods in the middle of our deployment zone. And my cavalry and artillery set up down the road, in a spot with the clearest possible line of sight while also staying out of range of my opponent's singular mortar.
The fight went... basically perfectly. My Pistoliers took exactly one hit from a mortar shell before it repositioned, and otherwise they annihilated three melee infantry, one crossbow, and one melee Lord without so much as a scratch. My artillery carved through their forces on the approach, and my archers caught their flank perfectly, gunning down the incoming Outriders and Handgunners one-by-one before they could pivot and unload properly. Then my allies took the field, and the enemy
abandoned their charge against my artillery to reverse course and attack the reinforcements, providing me a wealth of time to bombard them, while also causing them to expose their backs to my Demigryphs who tore through them like a hot beak through butter. The enemy routed before my melee infantry could even join the battle.
When the fight ended, I had suffered
seven casualties, out of a force of over 1000 men, and we'd killed over 700 of the ~1200 opposing forces. Sure, the garrison forces suffered fairly heavy losses from being dogpiled by the entire enemy force, but garrisons replenish quickly and I care less for AI losses. And dare I repeat:
seven men on my side gave their lives, in exchange for hundreds of opponents, in a decisive victory that saved my ally (and trading partner) Averland from certain destruction. My only regret was that my ranged cavalry ran out of ammo, limiting my ability to run down the last survivors!
Total War: Warhammer, saving the day as the Empire. Sadly I can't give back the provinces the Princes took, so I'll either have to 'convince' the AI to invade it themselves, or just suck it up and confederate them already.
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Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1332312 times)