Most ridiculously outnumbered battle you've won?

[GuineaPig]

Was launching an invasion of England as Leon-Castile. Had a couple of pike/shot armies kicking around (6 pikes, 4 arqs, 2 s&bs, 3 heavy cav, 2 culverins, 2 ribaults). One of them, led by my King (who had high dread and high command), was a bit worn down (2000 men total) when it was cornered by four stacks of English troops (8000 men total).

I used a formation that allowed me to place my ribaults to fire right down my battle lines while protected by other pikes. Combined with arqs and culverins placed on high ground as well as a high-dread general, it's a recipe for routing enemies. I only ended up killing 1500 of the enemy troops (about 1000 by my two units of ribaults), but I picked up 5000 prisoners from amongst the rest. Lost only 600 of my own troops.

[Choy4311]

A battle just south of Vienna in NTW, 453 French (me) in 7 severely understrength units (Marechal Ney w/9 staff, 3 fusil, 1 cannon, 2 chasseurs-a-cheval) vs 1500-ish Austrians.

At the start of the battle, my troops were already low in morale. But thanks to the deployment areas assigned to us, I got out in front of my enemy, had my army marched far from them, then squeezed myself in a tight corner on the map and used a town/village as cover and force *er. The Aussies attacked first w/all their infantry w/their general at their rear. Seeing this, I then had my 2 chasseurs-a-cheval in a flanking movement intende to take out the 2 full-strength Austrian cavalry and their 2 12lb cannon units which was located at the exact center of the map, while my infantry and cannon acts as my pinning force, formed in a hypotenuse fashion w/the map sides, pin the Austrian infantry and their general. I had my chasseurs-a-cheval fire while running towards the enemy cavalry and cannon and inflicting some losses to them, and having the initiative, instantly went to melee. They all fled afterwards, but I did not gave chase after losing 2/3 of those chasseurs and letting them rest for a while afterwards, knowing that my pinning force is already in danger of collapse while fighting w/the Austrian infantry. I then unleashed my general's special inspire ability to make my pinning force hold on, and then I had my chasseurs strike towards their general in their rear and killed him. The Austrians' morale plummeted, and I began my counterattack against them. Victory was mine. I lost 331 in my army, the Austrians 1030. But that army, now even further understrength, was defeated in turn by concentrations of Russian and Austrian armies, but at least I saved my main army (the one w/Napoleon) in Italy from being messed upon with. I had that army rush straight into Vienna, besieged it and had 1/2 of that army decimated, plundered it and withdrew to the forest near Zagreb (my only real objective). Used that money to build up infrastructure and soldiers. Because of that plunder, Austria became a republic, and Russia declared war on her, after 3 turns all her regions were Russian (who already pwn all Ottoman Empire) except her home province itself. I won not just a ridiculously out#d battle; it gave me a precious time to pwn GB, Spain, Netherlands & Portugal.

[anonymous_(\)008]

defeating two jihadi armies (each army having a general and 19 ghazis or something) using four generals and 3 turkopoles.

[Kataphractos]

Two come to mind.

One was earlier today, me as Byzantines against Genoa in Genoa. My army was one general, two reduced Strat light cav, one reduced Skyth horse archers, two Scoutotai at half strength (so one total), one Scoutotai swordsmen at half strength, and one Muro archers at half strength, so about 300 men total (forgive the abbreviations, I'm not good at remembering Byz units), against over 1800 angry Genoans split in two armies, mostly urban spear militia with a few pavise spears and one or two units of archers, who wanted their capital back. Came out of that fight with only 170 casualties with over 1000 kills and ~700 prisoners. The most amazing thing about it though, was that the game didn't CTD on leaving the battle o_o

Another was some time ago, me as Danes vs the Teutonic Order. They caught me with my pants down and hit me with two full stacks vs an army that barely numbered 500 and was hardly a good composition for siege defense (though I did have one unit of Norse archers, so there was that), and to make it interesting, a spy opened the gates, so I couldn't even bring my mangonel with me into the inner keep. After a nearly 45 minute battle, I emerged victorious with less than 20 units left standing. And of course, game CTD's on exiting the battle >.<

[Woxolo]

I won a siege defense with 40 bodyguards against 2300 milanese people. I just cykled charges and alternated between standing melee and charging, so that rear charges were inevitable. It was in vanilla and medium difficulty.

[Gabrius]

I recall a time when, way back in vanilla, I was Spain trying to hold off Milan. They'd come at my castle twice, the first time wiping out EVERYTHING except my king. When the battle was over, only my king was left on horseback with none of his men with him! Another army laid siege immediately after the first so his bodyguard had no time to regenerate. The second army was not very big, just a single unit each of peasants, peasant archers, and light infantry. I held the castle walls until they broke through, then charged right into them expecting to die. By some miracle there were not many of them left after the boiling oil, and before my king even met them in battle they ran!

I was laughing for a good two minutes afterward, I couldn't believe it! I was yelling "You bunch of cowards, ha!" at my laptop.

[LuckyPistol]

Teutonic Knights campaign in 6.4

Had a fully armored upgraded Order Sergeants being ambushed by Lithuanian rebels with two units of mailed knights and a couple more Lithuanian Axemen. I put my Sergeants in schiltrom and put the speed to x6 just to get it over with.

After killing their general, the rebels routed with less than half their strength. I actually cheered with my bloodied and battered troops who had lost about the same -if not more than- the ratio of the rebels.

Needless to say that unit got more than a couple chevrons

You don't with the Teutonic Knights

[BENNI.RoR]

Good thing I make screenshots of all my heroic victories.



It was quite an awesome victory. Playing the Byzantines I knew that Constantinopolis is a jewel of the old world and that the greedy Muslim factions would start a Jihad at some point. When the time came I sent all of my fullstack armies to the Bosporus. I also prepared a special mercenary cavalry army,consisting of light cav,horseback archers and a general,being the only heavy cav in this cavalry army.
Turned out that hit and run tactics are quite effective against cheap Jihad mercenary armies.