Complete victory against all odds
How many battles have you all fought and won when the odds meter is stacked more than 5:1 against you?
I won against venice a battle that was really an accident; as the HRE I was marching reinforcements down to Bologna from Innsbruck Castle, 2 levy spearmen, a peasant archer, and mailed knights, my only really up-to date unit in this "Army."
I was attacked by a Venetian army of a catapult, 2 crossbow units, a peasant archer unit, and four sergeant spearmen with upgraded armor and weapons.
Since I was planning on armoring my troops in Bologna at the armor factory there, mine were without armor at all; Innsbruck was my rather defensive position that I had turned to in a pinch.
The map allowed me to deploy against a mountain; not wanting a repeat of the day before's battle at Bern, I backed my men up all the way against the mountain. There was an "Impassible" ledge that was perfect for me to place my archers atop of; they commanded the immediate valley below and there was no way to get to them from the front. Later on I would find that enemy arrows were almost useless against my position. I placed my spearmen on the archers' flank, at a 90 degree angle so that they were shielded from enemy arrows by the rock ledge and still on a steep slope looking down, to protect the archers from an assault. I placed the other spearmen to their left and rear, both a flank guard and a reserve force. My cavalry was placed way to the rear and left of the main force, and kept out of site.
Before they got to me, 1/3 of the time was up, and frankly I was hoping they would take all day to get there since I was out manned and underarmed and armored.
However, they made it, and the enemy archers came up first, a full half mile ahead of the enemy sergeants. Bad juju; my archers killed a dozen of the 60, and my knights rushed in and routed them. I didn't allow them to pursue, and pulled back after inflicting another 40 casualties with no losses.
The first crossbow unit, close behind the peasant archer, came up and were repulsed without getting a shot off. They wised up and waited for the sergeants to come up before bringing up the last crossbow unit.
Then they got dumb again, and I guess were trying to kill as many as possible without engaging, becuase a archery duel went on for about fifteen minutes... even I, a guerilla war expert, was getting bored. The enemy archers weren't inflicting many casualties, so I switched my target to the nearest group of sergeants; 75 men went to 69, 69 went to 64, and so on, until only 19 were left. They decided to attack, which was good; I was almost out of arrows, and my archers were directed to the second enemy line (They appeared to be attempting to use a form of Napoleon's "Attack Column," units stacked in a column with battle lines only a battalion wide) of enemy sergeants.
Then I swung my spearmen down like a gate to meet the enemy, whose 18 or so survivors ran away instantly through the others, causing them to panic mildly. The second line fought for a minute or two, then they too ran away. The last of my archer's arrows were spent on the fourth group, and the enemy made the mistake of "bunching" their troops in a desperate attempt to break my spearmen. The second spearmen unit of mine was not yet engaged. These swung widly around the enemy, and engaged them on the flank. My cavalry was not yet engaged; my archers had inflicted around 120 casualties, and recieved only 8 from counter-fire. My engaged spear levies were recieving minimal at worst casualties, and the other unit was recieving next to none.
I left a gap at the corner of my flanking maneuver, so that my knights could swoop in and send the enemy fleeing; I almost was tempted to engage my archers on the other flank, but thought better so that if I had to fight again before making Bologna they would have less casualties than if they engaged.
My knights finally were ordered to swoop in, and no more than five seconds passed before all the enemy spearmen were in flight. I pursued the enemy with my entire force, now ordering the archers forward to finish off a retreating unit of 6 surviving spear sergeants.
The enemy catapult was too far back to have been useful in the fight, and my knights rushed over the mile or so to them and wiped them out. my spearmen finished off the two spear units they were chasing, and the archers made short work of the 6 men they were tasked to annihalate.
I used my knights to catch up to and cut off (and up) the enemy archers almost to the redline; 6 of the enemy made it to the "Safe" zone all in all. I wiped out the entire army of 500 at the end of the day, and got a "MOTH" for my captain, who has since proved invaluable to my operations north of venice and is now going to fight the danes up north.
It was a splendid victory, offset by the capture of Genoa the next AI turn and the loss of the entire militia there, including merchant cavalry and two merc crossbow units. However, I retook it two turns later and my "MOTH" from Innsbruck laid siege to Venice itself, with help from a detachment from the garrison at bologna and mercs. However, a shifting of alliances with the Byzantines allied to both me and Venice caused a ceasefire before the city was taken.
Any other one-sided battles that suddenly became one sided on the side supposed to lose?
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