Drop-in battle reports for the gentlemen club

I haven't seen a place to speak about the drop-in battles and how it went, but maybe I missed it.

Just had two drop-ins one after the other, one in my egyptian campaign with grinningmaniac, the other in the egyptian campaign of greve at goteborg.

Both gameswere very pleasant, although the first one was quite unbalanced. Grinningmaniac only had two line units, one artillery and a general while I had 3 artillery, 2 line units and two chasseurs a cheval with a general, so he didn't have a lot of straegic choices to make here.

The second drop-in battle was with grave, I was playing an ottoman force (about 14 units) attacking his city. I think I've made several mistakes, like spreading my units too much (had all my line on the right flank and my artillery on the left), which made some of my units easy targets at some point.

We also noticed that the square formation was probably too quick as it was tough to surprise a unit before it had the time to go in this formation.

Anyway, both games were enjoyable and I'm looking forward to play more games.

Replays would be awesome. I'm still trying to get past the initial drop-in phobia. Evidence that the majority of drop-in players aren't immature a-holes would go a long way toward getting me un-scared.

Originally Posted by Tem

Replays would be awesome. I'm still trying to get past the initial drop-in phobia. Evidence that the majority of drop-in players aren't immature a-holes would go a long way toward getting me un-scared.

Here's some replays of drop-in battles I've had. If you haven't tried it yet, I would say do it, most people are glad to fight anything other then the AI whether you are good or bad.

Austrian Hard Defence - Had this one with fellow NTW-GC member Mysted. This one was the battle for Venice. Italian forces had come over to attack my Austrian army. It's a decent stand and I tried to surprise Mysted in the woods but it didn't work out so well.

Costly Rus vs Prus - In my Russian Campaign, I was pushing towards Berlin. I had suffered heavy casualties through out the war with drop-ins. In almost every battle I had to outnumber my opponent by at least 75% more. This was due to my armies being largely militia based. This all changed when unicorns became available. Here we have the Russian army's first field test of the new artillery. This is a intense battle with Russian lines breaking and Prussians advancing.

My first drop in as AI- well as the title says this was the first time I joined another player's game. It's an early Italy campaign but it's solid. At the end of the battle I allow the enemy to retreat since the battle was won rather then have the player loose his general. I would have given the retreating general a cannon salute for the withdrawl but there was no cannon left.

Welllington's Defence - Another drop in where I'm the AI. The other player told me basically if Wellington could win this battle, Berlin would be taken by the British against the French. What happens here is the best NTW battle I've taken part of and may even rank up as one of my top 10 favorite battles for Total War as a whole.

I recommend fast forwarding through the beginning bits since those are usually me and the other player chatting before we set up units.

I had my baptism of fire against Chemfy in his campaign last night. I've been playing since RTW, but this was my first go at MP, and it, erm, didn't go so well

Being my first, it remains a bit of a blur to me, but I was the Danish defending against a Swedish onslaught. I was utterly destroyed, but had fun trying to take out his artillery (I did get one of them) and attempting to conduct a fighting withdrawal (not as successful). I tried to avoid attacking his general for the most part, to try and roleplay the gentlemanly nature of the day

All in all it was good fun, and whet my appetite for more. I've basically played nothing but MP matches since then, with some wins and some losses and one disco (sorry Kutusov)! I've learned a few tricks, and more importantly, have learned never to sign up for a 4v4 again, as my computer just can't handle the lag!

Now I'm starting a campaign that I intend to invite drop ins for at every opportunity, though I'm frustrated at how seldom the game allows that. I think it might make for an interesting AAR

Originally Posted by Lord Nova

Austrian Hard Defence - Had this one with fellow NTW-GC member Mysted. This one was the battle for Venice. Italian forces had come over to attack my Austrian army. It's a decent stand and I tried to surprise Mysted in the woods but it didn't work out so well.

I remember that one, was a lot of fun, i was using fire & advance all the time and it worked out great

how did you manage to invite specific friend in your campaign?

Originally Posted by HellFell

how did you manage to invite specific friend in your campaign?

You can't invite a specific friend for campaigns like multiplayer. Just gotta hope that he gets in.

i am a bit uncertain here: aren't drop-in battles offered during campaign plays only? how come i had spanish fighting russians?

I have yet to experience one...

MP works fine.

Oh I didn't! Is it even possible to do this?

For the first battle, I enabled the drop-in feature and grinningmaniac joined.

For the second, a window appeared asking me something like "would you like to play this drop-in battle?", I accepted and discovered that I was playing against Grëve.


Tem, i perfectly understand where you are coming from, and that's why I joined the gentlemen club, in the hope that I'll play with people interested in having fun, not in using any tactic or exploit they can to win.

Those two first battles were encouraging as they match what I was expecting and were very pleasant to play. Hopefully it's only the beginning! :p

you can limit the drop in battles to ur friends list
that should be enough for the one friend trying to get in to have his place reserved!!!!!!!!!!!

Had a drop-in battle today in Willothewisp campaign: I was the attacking austrians while Willothewisp played the british forces. It was the battle of Munich, if I remember it right.

I asked information on the battle and willothewisp kindly told me what I needed to know, notably that I was expecting quite a few reinforcements... which was a relief, as my starting forces sure weren't impressive, with a unit 1 grenzer, 1 grenadier, 1 cannon and 1 line. Knowing this, I tried and found a good position for my cannons and decided I would use the line and light infantry to test the british forces and try and get them busy while the reinforcements arrived. I hid my grenadiers near the cannon unit, as well as the dragoons where my general was.

The battle began and I had the nasty surprise to see that will had something like 15 units, so I sure hoped the reinforcements would come for a good direction otherwise it would be easy to crush my starting units. Fortunately, Will had chosen a defensive position (which made sense as he was, well, the defender!) so my fear that he would use the time the reinforcements arrived to attack me was somewhat relieved. Will had most of his strengths deployed on a hill on the right, with his front lines smartly placed behind a little hill. on his right wing, there were two buildings which could be used, as well as a little forest which would probably a good spot for an intense firefight. His 3 artillery units were kind of worrying for me as they were well defended and it seems like it wouldn't be possible for me to destroy them easily.

My reinforcements come on my left wing which was a good news, as Will had deployed his forces opposing to my centre/right wing, which means I would have plenty of time to reorganize my forces before attacking. I started doing that but it was kind of messy and it took me some time to align line, skirmishers and grenadiers as I wanted. I saw that I had 4 line units, 3 light inf units, 2 grenadiers units, 2 artillery units and 3 light infantry units.

During that time, Will sent a light infantry to occupy the building the farthest away from his lines, so I used my artillery unit to destroy it, but he was able to see it coming and retreated. I immediately sent my 3 light cavs to chase them but in turn Will sent his cavalry to protect them, so my horsemen had to stop the chase and come back. I then used my line infantry to start some firefight with his infantry down the hill, while my grenzer unit started occupying the other building and shooting... unfortunately, Will targeted them with his artillery and destroyed the building, wiping them out!

I finally had organized my main forces on his right wing and started attacking with the grenzers exchanging fire with his light infantry which was in the forest. I then noticed he had sent a cavalry unit on my right wing to go all the way around and attack my starting artillery unit which looked undefended... That's when I ordered the grenadiers near them to get ouf of the woods and protect the artillery unit, so this attack was cancelled. My line unit in the centre was starting to have trouble occupying so many enemy units and started to fall back. I sent the grenadiers unit to reinforce them while the reinforcements on the left wing weren't very far away to operate a junction.

I then noticed that I could flank one of his unit in the forest by moving near the destroyed building that my grenzers once occupied. However, this move hadn't escaped to will who quickly sent reinforcements to protect this weak spot, so there wasn't any advantage there. on the other side of the battle which was happening on Will's right flank, I noticed that our units were very close (I kind of played like the AI here as I had "walked" into his line :p) so I saw an opening to end this firefight which, I thought, was probably going to end badly for me, so I sent my two grenadiers units here to try and get a decisive advantage. Will reinforced this spot too but his line started to weaken and he had to fall back on the top of the hill.

That's when I noticed that I had now an opening to attack his three artillery units. I used a light cav as a sacrifice to destroy one of them and a weak unit of grenzers was able to destroy the other one. It seemed that I just needed one more push to win the day, but the last British units were still pouring fire into my men who were trying to charge them... would the British finally break? (Will at that point said "gg, my first loss in a drop-in battle" but I wasn't so sure it was over)

Then, a canister shot from the last artillery unit killed a lot of my men in one of my units and all of them started to rout... what seemed like a victory was suddenly starting to look like a defeat! Some of the British routing units were also back, while the British general seemed to turn the tide of the battle. The general's unit then charged one of my last unit but they were able to form square (this still happens too fast) and the general's unit finally routed. One last charge on the two last British units were finally enough to win the day with huge losses on both sides.

It was a very enjoyable game although there was a lot of lag and it was a lot of fun. I hope I'll get the chance to play with Will again soon.