Lopsided Victory

[Ebannaw]

So I had an army that had been campaigning across sicily to assisst the Scipii in clearing out that war-ridden island of hell. They had my best general (im brutii). It was at Libayeum(sp?). Thousands of Greek soldiers popped up out of no where. My army was war torn from previous battles, won and lost in the field. I knew I had the advantage here though. My men were tough and experienced veterans of many, many battles, plus I had shield wall :p.











I've never killed so many guys in one battle with so few men...

[HunterKYA]

Jeez dude...what kind of experience and armor did you give those Romans to get a kill ratio of 15:1?

[Ebannaw]

I didn't give them anything, they were just troops I had since the begining of the campaign and had been using to help the Scipii in Sicily. I took on a doctrine of clearing Sicily first before I start to invade anywhere.

[Freddie]

I didn't give them anything, they were just troops I had since the begining of the campaign and had been using to help the Scipii in Sicily. I took on a doctrine of clearing Sicily first before I start to invade anywhere.

Can you tells a little how that battle went down?

[lt1956]

That is an unusually High kill Ratio for a City battle and especially with Premarius units and you have hardly ANY missile units and you didnt take many casualties. I have seen high ratios against barbarians and bridge battles, but thats a pretty high for a siege defense.

What difficulty are you playing and did you change ANY stats in your version for SPQR? Also was the battle smooth or Choppy when you played it?

Lt

[Freddie]

Something’s a miss here. One of there armies had a general and Spartans Hoplites. In cities and towns it’s very hard to move units around to out flank the enemy and as LT said you have hardly any missile units.

[Hoffman]

In the siege of Messana in my Campaign I toasted 2 Spartans with hardly any effort.
2 Hastati in Shield Wall in a street as wide as you can get, one behind the other completely halted a 2,000 Man Greek advance lead by Spartans.
I then positioned my Principes and slingers on the other routes into the square as the Greeks tried to flank, broke their probes, and then moved the units to block the greeks and let my Slingers just slaughter the enemy units.

Slingers are a Spartan's Worst enemy.

In a siege of on an open field all you have to do to defeat Spartans is tie them down and move Velites or preferrably Slingers (More Ammo than Velites + rock to the back of the head = ouch) to the rear and just have at 'em.
This is usually after you break the rest of the army as the Spartans will never break and the AI rarely pulls them back and redeploys them.

[Ebannaw]

I swear this is not forged or fake in any way shape, or form. I guess you can say I've become a "master" at siege defenses since playing your mod. When I first played your mod, I was amazed at how the AI would make large numbers of battering rams. Naturally, I was so used to only defending 1-2 openings in the gates so I would have all my units around them. But, the AI in SPQR comes in through multiple directions so I was slaughtered. Then I took up a policy of defending the enterances to the square, and the "shield wall" formation in SPQR makes this an even more effecient tactic. So I had placed my units in a kind of " \_/ " formation with shield wall at each enterance. The Greeks, being an all hoplite/phalanx nation, were only able to attack one side of this "\_/" formation at once, allowing the other two to attack them at once. I placed all my units on "defense" and "Fire at will". The enemy attacked the square with HORDES of infantry from three directions. Like you said, I only had limited missle capability. I used my velites and my slingers (my slingers alone caused 853 casualties!) to maxium effect by placing them against my main infantry. When my missle units ran out, I charged them in to fill any gaps in the breaking shield walls. Then after about 30 mins of brutal street fighting, one sector of the enemy attack began to crumble, so I took off defence on all my units I had stationed at that enterance and charged into the the mass of retreating, demoralized, exhausted Greeks. Meanwhile, my other infantry is guarding the other two enterances. So I used the infantry freed up from this enterance to come in on the rear of the secluded infantry attacking at the second enterance. Then I do the same to the thrid. The result: an utter slaughter. The reason I took so few casualties was because of the shield wall, it really is a useful defense tool. One shield wall of Hastati though for example, is not nearly enough. So what you do is layer shield walls, one right after the other to prevent the wall from breaking. This tactic works quite well in narrowly defended streets. Plus, the fact that Amulius Brutus has the highest command ability possible didn't hurt either. :p

Still, after this battle, I had a second army try to sack Syracuse, but they were idly beaten by a massive Greek army and had to retreat.

It's a much different story in the open field, yet the bloody 4 faction fight on Sicily continues!


Oh, and i'm playing on M/M.

In the siege of Messana in my Campaign I toasted 2 Spartans with hardly any effort.
2 Hastati in Shield Wall in a street as wide as you can get, one behind the other completely halted a 2,000 Man Greek advance lead by Spartans.
I then positioned my Principes and slingers on the other routes into the square as the Greeks tried to flank, broke their probes, and then moved the units to block the greeks and let my Slingers just slaughter the enemy units.

Slingers are a Spartan's Worst enemy.

In a siege of on an open field all you have to do to defeat Spartans is tie them down and move Velites or preferrably Slingers (More Ammo than Velites + rock to the back of the head = ouch) to the rear and just have at 'em.
This is usually after you break the rest of the army as the Spartans will never break and the AI rarely pulls them back and redeploys them.

Yep, exactly.

[Freddie]

I swear this is not forged or fake in any way shape, or form. I guess you can say I've become a "master" at siege defenses since playing your mod. When I first played your mod, I was amazed at how the AI would make large numbers of battering rams. Naturally, I was so used to only defending 1-2 openings in the gates so I would have all my units around them. But, the AI in SPQR comes in through multiple directions so I was slaughtered. Then I took up a policy of defending the enterances to the square, and the "shield wall" formation in SPQR makes this an even more effecient tactic. So I had placed my units in a kind of " \_/ " formation with shield wall at each enterance. The Greeks, being an all hoplite/phalanx nation, were only able to attack one side of this "\_/" formation at once, allowing the other two to attack them at once. I placed all my units on "defense" and "Fire at will". The enemy attacked the square with HORDES of infantry from three directions. Like you said, I only had limited missle capability. I used my velites and my slingers (my slingers alone caused 853 casualties!) to maxium effect by placing them against my main infantry. When my missle units ran out, I charged them in to fill any gaps in the breaking shield walls. Then after about 30 mins of brutal street fighting, one sector of the enemy attack began to crumble, so I took off defence on all my units I had stationed at that enterance and charged into the the mass of retreating, demoralized, exhausted Greeks. Meanwhile, my other infantry is guarding the other two enterances. So I used the infantry freed up from this enterance to come in on the rear of the secluded infantry attacking at the second enterance. Then I do the same to the thrid. The result: an utter slaughter. The reason I took so few casualties was because of the shield wall, it really is a useful defense tool. One shield wall of Hastati though for example, is not nearly enough. So what you do is layer shield walls, one right after the other to prevent the wall from breaking. This tactic works quite well in narrowly defended streets. Plus, the fact that Amulius Brutus has the highest command ability possible didn't hurt either. :p

Still, after this battle, I had a second army try to sack Syracuse, but they were idly beaten by a massive Greek army and had to retreat.

It's a much different story in the open field, yet the bloody 4 faction fight on Sicily continues!


Oh, and i'm playing on M/M.






Yep, exactly.

You were on the defensive that explains a few things. Sorry for doubting you it just hard to imaging beating a huge army that is defending a city.

[Hoffman]

You were on the defensive that explains a few things. Sorry for doubting you it just hard to imaging beating a huge army that is defending a city.

I don't camp the square, I fight right behind the wall, any half decent field commander would see the value of the streets, but I detest retreating all the way back to the square and leaving so many homes and shops open to the pillaging of the Enemy.

I'll leave a reserve force there incase the main body is crushed so that I have something to stop the hordes from fully taking the city.

Besides, fighting with such narrow areas decreases the effectiveness of my slingers and the charge of my Principes when we finally manage to flank them.
160 Principes hitting their massed gaggle of maggots is more effective than only fighting one rank at a time.

[MasterAdnin]

I don't doubt you. I am, rather than question you, congradulate you. I do the same tactics for city defense, although to make it harder, I put units in shield wall formation(2 ranks deep), at the areas the battering rams will knock down. I do this so 1)-Gives other AI armies a bigger chance at victory due to more losses, and 2)-makes it harder on me.

So congrats on a great victory,
Adnan

[lt1956]

Camping in the Sqaure is similar to cheating in RTW universe. lol That explains it, its an exploit because in real life a person would just fire missiles at your shield wall and then punch through it with heavy cavalry. AI is pretty dumb. lol

I think 6.0 will be harder, but then again those type of exploits are hard to beat, I would congratulate you, but Its not earned using those tactics. But it must have been a sight though. :-)

Lt

[Ebannaw]

Yeah, I know AI doesn't know any better, but I had no choice. I couldn't afford to lose the only Roman foothold on Sicily, I had to resort to desperate measures. Even then though, I doubted I would be able to survive due to the sheer numbers of Greeks. My victory surprised me.

[SweetDreamz]

I think my computer would die having that many units on it.

[Arcarius]

I think my computer would die having that many units on it.

lol... mine wouldn't..... i had a battle agaist the gaul which there was 10,000 gaul, and only 2000 romans defending in an open field, it was a somewhat easy fight...... but man nice job agasit the greeks

[lt1956]

Well I understand disperation, but there is no glory in it for us. lol I too had to hold a bridge once or twice just to survive. But I dont advertise it for shame. lol

Anyway that was a nice battle, did you have any Frame rate loss? If not what system do you have? CPU, Video card etc.

Heilige Legioen same thing what is your system specs?

Lt

[Ebannaw]

Yeah I had some FPS loss in the initial phases of the battle, but it was still playable. I run my RTW with full settings, everything on high, glints, reflections, dust, 1024x768x32 reso etc.


I have a AMD64 3000+, GeForce 6600GT 128mb 8x AGP, MSI K8T Neo Mobo, 1 gig PC3200 memory