Weird Replay
I just had a really strange thing happen playing the Byzantines. Although I've come up against some of the many bugs constantly complained about in M2TW I've never had them so bad that they caused me to quit a campaign until tonight, with the Byzantines. I gave up on turn six, but that isn't what this post is about. I do wonder if the extreme bugs I was having in the campaign are related to the bizarre replay.
I set up a Hard custom battle between Byzantines and Venice so that I could try out the Greek Fire. I didn't check the units properly, going off the icons rather than the names, and chose Byzantine Gunners by mistake - a mistake I didn't pick up until the battle began and I heard the gun fire. So I set up my army and pressed start.
One of the first things the Venetians did was send a unit of Mounted Crossbows to stand in front of the Gunners on my right flank, a move so stupid it was memorable, especially since the entire unit was wiped out in about 30 seconds. The Venetians charged soon after moving the Mounted Crossbows there, but before they were all mown down. The next major thing to happen was a charge of Mailed Knights into the same Gunners that killed the Mounted Crossbows, these guys were met by the Byzantine Spearmen standing behind the Gunners and promptly dispatched (5 routed but were captured by a unit of Byzantine Archers I had flanked around to the back of the Venetian army). Now all my units with the exception of my Kataphractoi and General were engaged. The Venetian General broke off and charged one of the Byzantine Cavalry units that were firing from maximum range on my left flank so I sent the Kataphractoi and General to deal with him and he disengaged with only three men remaining then attacked the main line, still followed by my heavy cavalry. The General was killed within seconds of engaging my Heavy Infantry. At the end of the battle I had lost three units, two destroyed and one routed, and the remainder of my units had taken heavy casualties - of just over 1000 men deployed only 400 walked away. the Venetians had 1200 men and the battle ended with four Mounted Crossbows getting over the red line with my entire army hot on their heels.
So, after reviewing the battle I decided to record it for the first time because I wanted to have a look at a skirmish that I didn't actually see until it was too late (and there were a LOT of corpses in the area). I went back to the main menu and chose the Replay Battle, loaded it up and started to watch. Everything seemed fine for a while and then things started to go... differently. The Mounted Crossbows were mown down by the Gunners. The Mailed Knights charged into what they thought were Gunners but turned out to be Spearmen. I thought this looked a little funny, but figured I must not have watched this part of the battle close enough so must have missed what was happening and dismissed what I saw. The Venetian General charged the Byzantine Cavalry on the left flank and my Kataphractoi and General chased after him. Things definately went wrong when the Venetian General did his kamikaze run into my Heavy Infantry.
The first really wrong thing was that I noticed a unit of Stradiots annihilating my Byzantine Cavalry that were on a hill for some reason. When I turned the camera around I saw TEN Venetian Bodyguards charging into my Heavy Infantry. My General continued his attack and was quickly surrounded by Italian Spear Militia. A moment after the Venetian General fell I got a message about my cowardly General fleeing and watched him run off into the distance trailed by three of his men. WTF?? The real battle ended with 15 of my Bodyguards (2 healed), and the unit didn't even come close to routing. The Kataphractoi that should have been with my General were nowhere to be seen and I suspect they were the large pile of horses at the bottom of the hill near to the Stradiot created pile. I then watched as the Venetian forces totally destroyed mine.
Am I crazy? Isn't a "Replay" supposed to be... you know, a replay?? The last 75% of the replay was completely different to how the real battle played out.
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Originally Posted by SSJPabs
