The Turkish Empire: Halted
Within two family generations, playing as the Turks I conquered all of Turkey, Greece, northeast Europe including Moscow, and everything east of Tunis. Things were going well, and then a crusade was called against my capital at Constantinople. "Cool" I thought, "Finally the Catholics are giving me the attention I deserve"
Within two turns every single Catholic faction except Scotland, England, France and the Holy Roman Empire were at war with me.
The first Crusader army came from Poland, fully stacked, and I surrounded them with three fully stacked armies and obliterated them. Another army came from Denmark and their fate was much the same. Then my fortunes changed.
I was advancing on four fronts - my greatest general was attacking the forces of Milan at Zagreb, a four star general was preparing to attack Sofia since the Hungarians betrayed me, though expectedly, another fully stacked army with a five star general was closing in on Novgorod, and finally my faction heir, a mesely one star general who I wanted to buff up, was leading a naval invasion against Bucharest by way of Tbilsi.
My greatest general at Zagreb was surrounded by two armies while beseiging the city, and an army attacked him from his right flank and the battle map came up. My huge army was made up entirely of infantry, excluding my general unit. I was glad when I saw the battle map though because there was a sweet hill I could deploy on, and I lined up my forces in two rows forming a wall on the top of the hill to protect me from any direction. The enemy deployed two full armies, and a third army from the city entered the battle with just one high ranking leader as their army. The sole enemy cavalry unit charged my hills in a futile effort, and I sent four units of pikemen against him and my general hit him from the rear and killed him. I repositioned my forces as one army approached from the front and another appeared far behind me. I knew I had to deal with one of them quickly since I might not last fighting both at once, so I sent my infantry charging down the hill, facing fire from two catapults, and the entire army at my front routed fairly quickly since their army was made up of many archers who perished quickly when my general caught up with them. I killed all their routing forces, turned my forces around, and fought the last army, with about an even number of troops as me. As the battle waged, I thought my general was a little bit too deep in the enemy lines chasing routing forces, and my fears escalated when six heavy infantry units closed around him. I sent all my forces to assist my surrounded general, but I got the cutscene notice telling me my general had died.
"Crap, he was my best general"
My forces kept up the fight for about two more minutes but ultimately routed and one Turkish front was utterly kicked in the gut.
My general at Novgorod, with about 1800 troops, met a really great enemy general with 2,400 units and in a really bitter battle at the outskirts of Novgorod, I lost 1500 of my troops and killed 1,700 of his, but my forces were routed though my general was lucky enough to survive. Presently I am moving him back to Smolensk to change places with the general there so I can send another fully stacked army to take Novograd, but still it was a bitter loss.
My most upsetting loss, for sure, was at Sofia. A Crusader army was providing the defense inside the city, but two full Hungarian armies surrounded me and I killed over 2,000 men, lost about 1,000, but when I saw over a thousand more men approaching, and myself only having three hundred left, I had my forces withdrawl from battle and suffer an upsetting loss. I sent another fully stacked army, without a general, to attack Sofia the next turn, but another Crusader army from Spain appeared and I lost my entire army at Sofia.
Finally, my faction heir at Bucharest was surrounded by two fully stacked armies, one of Hungary, the other a Crusader army from Poland. I ended up getting my butt kicked, but my faction heir fled to Constantinople, evidently undeserving of becoming my faction leader (who is a freaking awesome general who has fought in over 20 battles before the age of fifty)
But now I stand with all my fronts halted. I have several fully stacked armies available in Turkey, but it'll take several turns for me to move them all to the front.
And for the record, I cheat and change the game settings and give both me and the bad guys nearly infinite money. Its more fun that way because there are much larger armies since the AI typically goes bankrupt on the other settings.
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