Land Battles, oh is it that time already?

[Wolar]

Hi Guys,

Now that quite a few of us are using mods to improve our Rome 2 experience, I am interested to know how the 3-5 minute campaign battles of the post-release era have evolved in terms of pure length.

So in short what I'm looking is:
What has been your longest land battle in a single player campaign, what patch (2.0 or 3.0 beta) and what mod (if any) were you using at the time? I'm also posting a poll in this thread.

The longest battle I have had so far was in my Sparta campaign; a battle of 2 vs 2 armies of a total of 70 stacks of units. That battle lasted about 20 mins. I was on patch 3.0 beta and using the Radious battle mod.

I'm looking forward to hearing how long your battles have been..

[Dago Red]

Both radious and Luntik's mods improved the battles a great deal for me, but they are still pretty subpar. They've gone from "horrible farce" to "almost playable," to "occasional fun mixed with farce."

There is so much inherently wrong with this game out of the box that a couple weeks of stat tweaking and database editing is not going to solve it. There needs to be major overhauls.

Short answer, I went from benny hill speed 1-2 minute battles to 4-5 minute battles, and am now up to 10 minutes for multi stack or siege engagements. 1 battle lasted 16 minutes but that was mostly because the AI sailed as far away as possible from the town it was sieging and then got hung up on the beach.

(This does not include bugged naval landings where units become disembarked in the ocean or half get off the ships and half stay on colliding with each other, in which case I have to wait out the full timer or just quit. As a result I have set the battle timer to the lowest possible -- 20 min and have never got close to it).

[Praetorian349]

Campaign battle? I'd say the Siege of Antioch.

I landed 2 full Imperial legions (Armoured Legionaries with auxiliary support and Praetorian centre-piece) on the beaches of Antioch and stormed the city while my Classis Rapax and Classis Misensis acted as the vanguard, engaging their defending navy. 4000 men charging through the streets, marines landing outside to be let in through the gates by the ground forces, navies clashing with artillery flying overhead. T'was glorious.

With a defending force of close to 3000 men and high tier defenses it took a good 20 minutes.

No mods.

[curs3]

Longest battle for me was 13 minutes or so. Lots of men too, 2(me)vs3(ai)stacks.

Of course that doesn't count the number of bugged sieges that I had to wait out the timer due to the ai pussin out, even went to the trouble of burning my gate down just to stand there. That happens too often.

[Wolar]

Thanks for the replies so far Guys! It will be interesting to see if 15-20 mins turns out to be a line in the sand. I really hope not, but we shall see..

[Korburss]

Keep in mind, fifteen minutes is about how long it takes for catapults to run out of ammo on FF. I've never had a fight last longer than eight minutes, unless bombarding.

[SamueleD]

They usually last up to 5 minutes, some sieges last longer, but only because there is always some enemy unit stuck somewhere that forces you to waste time and take all the capture points, since you can't kill it.
Frankly they are either short and uninteresting or long and boring, because in long battles most of the time is not spent fighting nor manoeuvring, but just waiting for the clock to end/hunting down hidden units.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

My longest battle was almost 20minutes (Thanks for Radious mods) but in vanilla it took 5min

[Wolar]

Thanks for the replies, keep'em coming.. And please do share details as well, especially if your battle lasted longer than 20 mins.

[Wolar]

Let's see if we can get more results..

[GnaReffotsirk]

I've gotten close to 35 minutes with my modifications. The Imperator Mod.

It was a battle between two greek armies in a settlement. The AI luckily defended quite well. Hoplites clashed and I had to find ways to maneuver behind the AI lines, since it had the only opening blocked by spear mercs. I was able to slip in a unit of skirmishers but it fell into some militia protecting the flag.

It was fun.

Just now, I had a 40vs40 battle with Libya. I had balistas and the AI had elephants. My right flank is shattered by a combined attack of infantry to the front of my pikes, and elephants ramming the rear. Cavalry was chasing off much needed skirmishers. And forced me to commit my cav with the AI's. Hammer and anvil thrown to the wind.

My hoplites won the left flank but didn't have time to support the right, and the flood came flanking my center catching them crushed and outnumbered. AI keeps sending small units to halt my left flank from reaching the right, until it was too late. Small bands of routing units came back but it's of no use.

It was a glorious defeat.

[SPARTAN VI]

I did a battle with Rome vs Syracuse at about 195 B.C., where Syracuse had amassed about 2 fulls stacks and a small fleet, versus my 4 full legions. The ensuing battle was about 8000 vs 8000, and maybe 20 minutes long, with reinforcements by land and sea on both sides. AI doesn't know how to handle reinforcement very well; after the main force was obliterated, the naval reinforcements just stood at the beach allowing me to capture the flag (which I refuse to do). Other than the passive AI at the end, it was a glorious battle.

[Agorix]

Using Radious's mod with 2x unit sizes I modded in with Radious I had a 10,000 vs 8,000 battle. It lasted a good 15 minutes or so, I won killing over 7000 and capturing nearly 1000 prisoners while I lost around 1500. No lag and was smooth, the latest patches have helped with my lag.

[karamazovmm]

vanilla, it was a multi stack battle, I was with one the scordiisci were with 4, won the battle, it took me around 30 min to win that. it was a field battle nonetheless. they lvl2 and oathsworn with artie back up, I lost an entire unit of cavalry in that battle, shameful performance on my part

[karamazovmm]

vanilla, it was a multi stack battle, I was with one the scordiisci were with 4, won the battle, it took me around 30 min to win that. it was a field battle nonetheless. they lvl2 and oathsworn with artie back up, I lost an entire unit of cavalry in that battle, shameful performance on my part

[Humble Warrior]

I had a battle attacking a fully developed carthage (this was in campaign btw). I had 8000 men and they had 2000. I had no siege weapons so went for the gate. having attacked from the sea, it took a while to land then getting everyone to the gate bit by bit. the AI at least knew to block the main gate and used its elephants too. I lost over 3000 men at the gate before we broke through and that was more or less it.

Took about 40 minutes. It was good.

Of course I had a Radious` mods with no arcady buttons and no fire javelins, etc i otherwise the battle would`ve taken 5 mins and looked stupid too. So, as usual, its the Modders that make the game... not CA.

[Humble Warrior]

oh no, forum playing up again.

[Wolar]

Cheers for the replies! 30 and even 40 minute (!) battles, thats exactly what I've been looking for since september 3rd. Excellent! Thanks again for all the responses and I look forward to hearing more about your looong battles..

[alhoon]

I have doubled the hit points of units and my campaign battles are longer as a result. To the point I think on reducing the hit points, since I don't really like too long battles. BTW the longest battle taking 15-20 mins was 1v1 army.

[Wolar]

Thanks Alhoon! So far only about 20 % have managed battles that have lasted beyond 20 minutes. Let's see if that changes..