Great Battles

**Clearchus of Sparta** · September 29, 2006, 02:51 AM

Sometimes winning doesnt make the best battle. Losing, and the realisation of all that it means can sometimes make for adrenalin pumping scraps.

Post your best ones here.

Here's one of mine. Let me know what you think?

I have had some great scraps against Greece and Macedonia, but my favourite was the battle for Sparta. The Greeks had been on the receiving end of both myself, (Roman) and the Macedonian armies. Inside Sparta was the pride of the Greek army. A full stack army of Spartan hoplites, Cretan archers, some light cavalry and their faction heir. I quickly lay siege to the city as I could see the Macedonians massing several full stack armies close by ready for the kill.

The Greek army sallied forth before I could launch my attack to storm the walls. The Spartans taking up the centre flanked by cavalry. I advanced my legions slowly but found myself under attack from their archers still up on the walls. I was forced to retreat and whilst my back was turned a light cavalry charge followed up by a heavy cavalry unit put paid to one of my legions, which began to rout.

Eventually my legions began to retake the initiative and reform into a more defendable position. At this point I noticed some little black triangles sneaking onto the edge of the map. The sneaky Greeks had allied with Macedonia at the last moment and they were beginning to arrive.

Swinging some legions ready to meet them meant exposing my flank to the Greek hoplites now engaging my front line.
The Roman heavy infantry were holding their own …. Just. Pila began to rain down into the massed ranks of those Spartan hoplites, but they refused to break or give ground. This was going to be a battle of attrition, and if the Macedonians arrived, I didn’t see that I could survive long. I couldn’t risk flanking their lines with my General because their cavalry hovered just out of range ready to counter charge. I decided to risk withdrawing one of my heavy infantry legions from the front line in order to flank their line and use my General to protect them too.

Macedonian phalanxes were now engaging my reserve legions on the other side pinning them. I have to say that either by luck or judgement, the legion now attacking the Spartan flank slowly started to make headway into the first Spartan phalanx. I allowed my legion to break formation in order to surround them. Then switching them back to defensive so that they would reform with the maximum number of troops engaging the Spartan rear. I nearly missed the light cavalry charge into my rear but just managed to intercept them with my General.

The first Spartan legion finally succumbed to the flank attack. and their light cavalry routed. On the other side, the Macedonian’s too began to crumble. They were obviously not as tough as I thought they were going to be. Just a lack of experienced troops I guess. Time was running out, I had one last strategy to employ. A small group of legionaries (about half strength) grabbed a siege tower and started to haul it toward an undefended section of wall away from those pesky archers.

To cut a long battle short, they scaled the walls and into the main city area, they headed straight for the lightly defended town square. Sensing the danger, the Greeks tried to extricate themselves from the main battle in order to help defend the main square.

I let them withdraw a short distance, but as soon as they turned their backs to me, my General led charge after charge to reduce their numbers. They didn’t break or rout, but they would be seriously weakened if another battle followed.
Eventually I ran out of time to destroy the Greeks. The Macedonians had me pinned on the battlefield and a further 2 full stack armies awaited the victor.

When the battle was over, I was still laying siege to the city but the Macedonians challenged me to another battle. I had no option but to withdraw and re-group.

My respect for the Spartan phalanx grew immensely after this engagement, so much so, that I started a second campaign just so I could play them.

**coffebean** · October 02, 2006, 03:35 AM

Sounds like a good battle

I had somthing like that happen to me...but it wasn't in one battle it was like a about 5 battles.

I was the Greeks, I had taken Greece, allies with the surviving macedonions and the Dacian's and Thrace were heading in the other direction so I turned my attention to the rich asian minor. I wasn't planning on a war with Pontus but after I took the front of the asian minor the pontus people started war with me I sent a Generel with a middle sized army and built a small fort to keep an eye on those sneaky pontus. When I left my soldiers out of the fort to send help to the lower asian minor the pontus people stiked!

Apart from 3 armoured hoptiles and 1 unit of Generel Body Gaurds my soldiers were crappy militra hoplites and a unit of light calavry...the pontus army was full of what they normally had. Missle Cavarly and light infanry. At the end of the battle all I had left was the 3 units of armoured hoplites and the surviving light cavary. After that that small surviving army got hit and hit again by huge pontus army's. At the end just as that small army was about to make it back to a greek city, they hit one more time, the armoured hoplite's had one unit of 14, 21, and 28.

They were mainly hit by tons of arrow fire, and at last by a massive surounded cavalry charge....none escaped

But I was proud of those 3 units.

p.s In the later turns I got 2 full sized batilions of greeksmen and took pontus without mercy.

**Brutius Bollocksus** · October 02, 2006, 01:37 PM

My example was actually a multiplayer battle, armenia (me) vs greeks (opponent).

The greeks were positioned on a small hill while I had the cover of small sections of forest on either flank. I charged forward my horse archers and camel archers into a cc perpetually firing at the, very few in number, cretans. They were relatively quickly routed and I chased them off with my cavalry. By this point the enemy infantry (mainly spartans with 1 armoured hoplites unit) had advanced towards my legionaries in a phalanx formation. I had only just realised this and withdrew them to a nearby forest. After having so easily defeated the enemy cavalry with my cataphracts and general, I pulled them back to my position and charged the spartan phlanxes from behind... What turned out to be a VERY bad idea. My cataphracts seemed to be slaughtered, even when charged form the very back of the phalanx. Since there were only about 15 or so of them left, I pretty much suicided them into the spartans once again. I had to quickly move my horse archers and camel archers back and while I distracted the spartans with my legionaries. Once I had got my archers back into position, I fired at them with little to no success, only killing about 2 or 3 spartans from each unit. Then I had a plan. I engaged my legionaries (8 units to the 3 spartans) which would easily hold their own for a little while at least and then manouevured my archers to the back and fired at the spartas while completely uprotected by their shields. 2 of my legionary units were also starting to flank the phalanxes, everything was going to plan and the spartans were dying with relatively small loss to me! But then I saw the other section of the greek infantry about to catch me in a spartan phalanx sandwich... not good. I quickly retreated my legionaries to the hill where the greek army had origionally deployed. I formed up again with my legionaries in a double line formation. I prepared for what I knew would be the final battle. The phalanxes slowly marched towards my position and decided to try and flank me on my left side. Their plan *partially* worked but I quickly managed to reallign but now the advantage of the hill was gone. My legionaries were dying easily against the experienced spartans, and they routed within probably 3 minutes. With what little ammo my horse and camels archers had left I decided to skirmish as well as I could against the spartans. I managed to kill 5 or 6... Yay? By this point it was pretty clear I had lost

. I outflanked the phalanxes and melee charged my archers into the rear of the phalanxes, but as you may have guessed they died even easier than the cataphracts

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**Clearchus of Sparta** · October 03, 2006, 05:12 AM

Nicely written Brutius.
What version of RTW are you playing and any Mods?

Hi Coffebean

Did the loss affect your campaign any?
I found that when I lost a battle, there was mild panic and mass recruiting of troops to defend newly exposed cities.

The enemy would approach one city so I'd have to raise troops and then it would move off to threaten another.

So far only when I've been at war with both the Macedonians and Greeks at the same time, have I found any real difficulty, because as soon as you defeat one army, another from the other team lays seige to the same town. However, I found that roman troops are more than a match for most enemies and so bringing up a fresh army and laying seige to one of their cities soon sees them off

Merged double post. - Trajan