[TW Guide] RTW: SPQR: Battle walkthrough - Battle Against the Gladiators

[Tacticalwithdrawal]

Author: Tacticalwithdrawal
Original Thread: Battle walkthrough - Battle Against the Gladiators

Battle walkthrough - Battle Against the Gladiators

As requested by several people, this is a walkthrough of the battle against the gladiator army in the South at the start of SPQR 6.0. It a seriously elite rebel army and the figures are beautiful!

The order of battle:
Quintus Julius with: 1 General, 4 Hastati, 4 Principes, 2 Triarii, 4 Velites, 3 Slingers and 2 Equites
Cassius Ofanius with: 1 General, 1 Equites,6 hastati, 2 Principes, 2 Triarii and 4 Velites

The Plan
Nothing fancy, advance quickly to contact with a Hastati shieldwall backed up by Velites. Make contact with the enemy, pin them in place and then put the Principes, Triarii and Equites around the back. My general remains in the centre both to provide a moral bonus for my shieldwall, and also to provide the focus for the AI attack, hopefully drawing it into my centre, thereby allowing the envelopment.

The battle
I formed up the army with the hastati in shieldwall in the front line, slingers in front of them and Velites behind. Behind them are the principes, Triarii and cavalry. For this battle I didn't put the reinforcements under AI control as, with such good oposition I wanted total control of what happened. Therefore, set-up was done with the reinforcements to my rear:



As I closed with the rebels the AI immediately moved forward his skirmishers. To prevent them being of any use I immediately advanced my legion at the run right up to the gladiator lines. At the same time I moved my slingers to the right flank.

The reasoning behind this is simple, the skirmishers will not stand and make contact with my Hastati, but will instead withdraw back into the ranks of their infantry. At that point they are unlikely to open fire for fear of friendly fire casualties. Meanwhile, my Hastati and Velites are now within range of the enemy infantry and have no worries about friendly fire, plus my slingers can unload into the AI army from the right flank.

The plan is to allow the velites to use all javelins and then retire them, replacing them with reinforcements.



This all went remarkably smoothly (although my shieldwall troops did seem determined to dance the fandango rather than stand in a shieldwall. Actually, not just them but the Principes behind them, looked really weird...).

Anyway, Velites have withdrawn (and slingers are withdrawing) and have been replaced by the 2nd General and 3 Hastati. The Gladiators have surged forward to contact and are concentrating on the centre of my line (the trick of placing my general behind the centre has worked again).

Now it is time to start to envelop the enemy. The left and right flanks of my army start to moved forward around the enemy, while two units of reinforcements help stabilise the centre of the line. The cavalry (including the 2nd general) are just off the screen to the right heading into the backfield to take out the cretan archers.



The envelopment has now worked well, the enemy are fighting hard with my original battle line and I have moved my spare forces in behind them. The enemy General was killed trying to prevent the envelopment.

The forces at the top of the screen (including the highlit one) are about to attack the gladiator unit which is by itself fighting my left flank. Meanwhile the cavalry is coming back from wiping out the archers and will line up to attack the centre of the enemy formation. Finaly, the majority of the infantry at the bottom of the screen will attack the mass of gladiators attacking my right flank.



About five minutes later the gladiator right flank breaks and routs. I immediately pull all units fighting them out of contact as I want them to rout not fight to the death.

The cavalry is now set up and immediately charges the centre of the enemy line, which causes two gladiator units to rout (and again I ensure units fighting them break contact to allow the rout). My general helps chase down the routing troops.



On my right flank the sheer mass of the gladiator units is providing moral support to each other. It takes 7 or 8 charges from the cavalry combined with continued presure from the infantry surrounding them before they finaly break, but not before the Hastati unit on my right flank breaks and runs with only 8 men left. It is left to the cavalry to clear up the remaining enemy.



Final Result:

All enemy were killed, 3485 of them.
I lost 636 men killed, but then gained some back so final tally lost was 549 (if you add my starting number to finishing number, both of which include both legions involved).

Kill ratio: 6.35:1

Final Thoughts
The whole battle actually went pretty well and there isn't anything I'd really change if I had a chance to. The only possible change I'd have liked to try would have been to hold back the velites until they could get around behind the gladiators as part of the envelopment. But then both the Velites and slingers caused horrific numbers of casualties before contact was made that I'm not sure it would really have helped.

Two things worked particulalrly well:

1. The quick advance right up to the line of his infantry. This totaly negated his skirmishers and allowed my skirmishers and hastati to cause large numbers of casualties with their javelins and pilums.
2. Pulling my units out of contact immediately the unit they were facing routed. I didn't have a single enemy unit fighting to the death and this definately has a positive effect on the casualty figures.

The other things worth mentioning are

• that cavalry charging into the rear definately is more effective than infantry doing the same
• and the bulk of my casualties was actually caused by the gladiators refusal to rout for a long time, even after their general had been killed. 231 men, 42% of my total casualties were taken destroying the last 3 gladiator units that were in the clump on my right wing (difference between the 3rd last and 2nd last pictures above). In the Sammite battle, this didn't happen as the sammites folded very quickly.
• If the gladiators had folded as quickly as the Sammites had I would have taken only around 318 casualties in total with a ratio of 11:1, and that against much better troops.

anyway, hope that has been a help to people.