Eastern Roman Empire vs Huns (Sub Commanders)

Hey what's up guys this is Oakley and I'm going to be doing an introduction to a new series I've started. It's an idea I've dealt with before, but the main concept is going to be the idea of subcommanders. So the way this plays out is it's supposed to be kind of like massive battles, but you break up the armies a little differently. So the setup for subcommanders is you work as a team and each army is supposed to be generally the same faction, but then you break up that faction such that each individual player only commands a subsection of that force. So for instance in this battle, I'll pop on the HUD, we're playing as the Eastern Roman Empire facing off against the Huns. So the way this works as I said is each player is only allowed to select one particular section of the army. So let's go ahead and get an overview of this. When it comes to the Eastern Roman Empire and the Romans in general, what I wanted to do is make it sort of representative of how they would have been built traditionally. So when you're playing as the Romans you have three or four choices. It's going to be split between spears, foot infantry, cavalry, and foot skirmishers. So that is going to be shown to be in opposition of the Huns, where the Huns have to choose between, it's basically split 50-50 between foot and horse. So you have the option to go horse, sort of melee cavalry, horse skirmishers, or foot melee infantry, or foot skirmishers, whereas the Romans is going to be broken up to three foot and one horse. So I think that does add a little bit of dynamics and it forces the teams to work together. So for instance here you can see me deployed with the spearmen, we'll go ahead and put this on play. And I'm going to be commanding the spear force, I have a couple pikes over here, keep in mind that the Huns are small so it means your force really can't contend on its own, and because you're not really a balanced force, you're really going to have to ask for the help of your allies. So here we're going to be moving up into position, let's put this on slow motion actually. The map itself is a really cool map, coordinates are 747 by 417, and it has a really awesome little nook of a town in between. Now this isn't navigable but it makes a nice little piece of scenery. So we're going to be moving forward, I'm going to be fielding the pike force moving forward, and we decide to deploy with the main force over here, playing as the foot consistent, and I think that is going to be Gianni Uccina, who's going to be fielding the foot force. So he has distributed them on both sides, protectores domestici, or domestici, on both sides. I'm going to be backing up most of his force over here, generally with the pikes, and you can see actually the Huns in the distance are going to be trailing us. The other players on our side are going to be Dracul, who's going to be fielding our cavalry force, and then Emperor Derek who's going to be fielding the skirmishers. We've brought a pretty good mix and we're intending to kind of have them all work around this main little town, and that was going to be the rock behind our force. The Huns on the other hand, like I said, are going to be split up between foot troops, skirmishers, also on foot, and then the cavalry contingent, which is also going to be made up of a lot of, you know, split between skirmishers and then these melee cavalry. So it looks like they've decided to group a lot of their forces together, work again, and sort of bring together all their disparate types of forces together into the mix to get a pretty well-balanced force, but in the distance you can see actually two of the cavalry commanders have teamed up. The cavalry skirmishing commander has teamed up with this melee cavalry commander, and they're going to be probing around the flank, so you get this really cool interesting dynamic where if you're going to go on an excursion on the side, you have to ask for the help of your ally to get a balanced push. Us in reaction, we then have to coordinate with our cavalry commander, tell the skirmishing commander to turn his flank, the infantry commander to guard, you can see we're actually issuing commands. I didn't film this live, so you can't really see us doing all of the plays, but it made for a really interesting team dynamics where it's all about coordination. Again, I'm pulling over my pikes here, you can see us reacting on all fronts. I'm also trying to isolate the two hunting forces, Noble Akatsiri Raiders in the back, because we're going to try and isolate those. We can put this on play. So yeah, as I said, this is going to be a new type of battle that I'm going to be developing, the sub commander's battle, and this will obviously be needing some tuning to make it more balanced. I think it's an interesting dynamic, and hopefully we'll be able to even get some battles where we can show you live the communication that goes on. Now, it's a little harder when you have to deal with the fact that we have four versus four that can get a little laggy, and it's not the best experience to watch live. So I'll work on that, and I'm always open for suggestions. Here our infantry commander got a little bit ahead of the forces, and this is what happens when you don't have enough troops to support your army, and you're going to see his infantry actually get attacked straight up by the Huns. They're slowed down a little bit by the terrain, so it wasn't quite as devastating as it could have been. And so we were able to take on the Hun at Calvary without too many losses. You can see us actually bracing, I believe, at the last moment. So the opponents are doing a good job of courting. They sent in their heavy mounted tribesmen, and they're going to follow that up with Uar warriors. So they're working good for a one-two punch, fielding in some of the best infantry in the game. You can get very cost-effective Uar warriors. We haven't talked to them just yet. And then you can see both of these skirmishing commanders kind of lining up between their own forces. So here we are, and they're going to be peppering the middle with these incendiary arrows. Let's get a nice shot of this. I always appreciate the graphics of this burning. And then I'm going to be moving up as a supporting role. This kind of reminded me of Total War Arena. Moving up my pikes, I'm moving one pike over here to guard against the archers in case the Calvary push through, and then two more pikes to guard this flank. I'm also pulling back one of my Lanciari Senores. And then over on this flank, the enemy Calvary counter-charged us over on this flank and flattened some of my infantry guards on the side. And they're actually going after my general. You can see him in the mix. He's starting to get smushed. So it was a pretty good counter-attack. They're taking my Palutena guards all the way down to 53. So hectic battle on all parts. Over on this flank, I've actually pulled back two of my guys over here. The Limitani. Relatively cheap units, but we needed them to ward off the opponents. And now we've been able to isolate two of the enemy commanders. The Calvary skirmishing commander was separated from his supporting body of Step 1st Wavelancers. And so now we're going to be able to isolate these guys. So it's really cool how you have to team up with your own guys and try and break up the opponent's forces. Here comes more of the Huns. The Huns are going to be pretty hard to deal with, and here comes a very epic charge coming into here. So this is going to be a grinding Calvary fight. The nice thing about this type of battle too, and you can see they're dispatching another one of these Warlords, so we're going to need to throw in more forces into this fight. But like I was saying, the nice thing about having small funds is the Calvary don't get too large. I mean, yes, the Huns have two armies worth of Huns, but it's really on small funds, so you don't see too much of it. And a lot of it comes down to the infantry fights, which is a nice change when it comes to Attila. Anyways, you can see that our force here is getting absolutely thrashed. The enemy have so many forces thrown into the mix, we've just melted away. The Roman infantry columns have been just absolutely destroyed, and so now you can see some of the infantry actually trying to pull back to our lines. And take a look at this. We're doing some, you know, working together, and so here come my Pykes. This is my role, was to hold the line, allow our troops to reform, so now you can see them trying to pull back into cover. Over on the right side, they're also going to be pulling back. We have the supporting fire of our ally right behind me, who's going to be shooting suppressing fire into those lines. We're going to try to pull our guys back. And here I am, holding the Huns at a distance, allowing our guys to reform behind our lines. So you can see them actually starting to reform here, behind the safeguard of my Pyke wall. Flaming arrows, all of our forces are supporting this, and the Huns are not going to get through this fight. Just the blistering fire of all of these arrows. Let's get a shot of the Sagatari as they get their shots off. We brought a lot of these cheap troops. So this is also another thing that's cool, because it's low funds, a lot of people want to bring more volume. So you see a lot of these really crappy low tier troops, which makes for some pretty interesting fights. But it means that if they get hit with anything substantive, they'll probably break. So I'm going to be forming a defensive screen over on this perimeter. The enemy forces are kind of losing a bit of their coordination. The cavalry assault here really flattened our infantry, but now they need some sort of counter to the Pykes. And so that's going to be the archers. So now the archers are going to be focusing on our Pykes. The problem is they committed their infantry too quickly, and so the infantry are forced to move around our Pykes. Meanwhile, our own skirmishing component was positioned in such a way that they could pepper the Uro warriors, who are now going to be absolutely destroyed. Yes, my Pykes are going to be taking a lot of fire. But the enemy cavalry was effectively kept from penetrating the rear. That's what they would have needed to counter our skirmishing component. And so now they're being whittled down. Not much they have here besides all these fire shots coming into this position. Whereas in the back, I'm going to be able to try and secure the flank. You can see me repositioning, and we're actually pulling back some of our protectores. The infantry commander being very helpful, and what we're going to be doing is doing a little bit of a switch. We realized that we didn't actually have any real threat to us over here, so we're going to push forward with our skirmishing component, try and target the enemy general. I'm going to be moving my Pykes up just to intercept any cavalry. And so here he comes. They're going to try and engage in this fight, chase after our guys. The Hunnic cavalry is super fast, but I was able to catch them just at the last moment. The coordination with us was pretty crucial. Myself, the Pykes, holding back the enemy Huns. I played a very crucial role, but again, so did the skirmishing component. And then the cavalry fight over here, we were able to disengage a lot more of our cavalry from other parts of the battlefield. The ones that over on that flank, we pulled them back and we dealt with the Huns piecemeal in the back. And actually with the supporting fire of the fundatories, we were able to get a pretty good amount of kills and able to ward back the Hunnic skirmisher cav, which allowed us to win this cavalry fight. But if it was just our cavalry fight, remember we only have one cavalry force against two Hunnic cavalry forces, we would have lost. But because we used the supporting fire of these guys, it actually turned out really well. We can go back to the front where now I have deployed a screening force with my Pykes. They're going to be taking a lot of fire. And now I have more Pykes actually moving in plus the infantry commander in the rear offering some support against the last of the Hunnic cavalry. And now it's going to be basically us against the Hunnic step troops. And so they should be able to do a good amount of damage to us, but with a lot of heavy infantry and not much cavalry on the opponent's sides left, there's not much they can do to whittle us down. You can see them actually starting to break en masse. So there they go. They're going to start running for the steps. So definitely a very, very interesting battle. I love how differently this plays out from traditional battles. The communication that is required is really, really fun and allows for more ways to exploit your opponent's lack of communication. Here's our allies general. He sacrificed his general just to tie down those skirmishers so we could pull in here and clean up the rest. Definitely a bloodstream battle. And I don't think this is any less epic than the traditional massive battles. If anything, it's even more epic because you see troops, obviously you have to pay a lot more care to the moves you make. And then also the fact that we're on large, small funds means that every individual type of commander only has to deal with a certain type of force. And so you can focus a lot more on your micro and your strategy. So I'm definitely going to try and promote this as more of a routine staple of this channel. So let me know what you think of this type of battle, how you think I could improve either the commentary or the mix up of the forces. Do you have any suggestions of matchups? How would you split up the enemy force between four components, three components? Because that's definitely something to consider. Like here we did Roman infantry with three components, one component cavalry, whereas the Huns were two components of cavalry, two components of infantry. So if you can come up with any other types of mixes, that would be great to hear. I look forward to it. And also make sure to check out this map. It itself is a very cool map. As I said, coordinates 747 and then 417. So that's it. That's the end of the battle. We came out of this pretty handedly ahead. So I have to thank all those who participated. On the other side, we had Hib Maestro, Woody17TML, Silico, and Pompey. Thank you for taking part in this battle and this flagship new series. Hope you guys enjoyed. We can take a look at some of the stats. So myself here with the pike wall, I brought a lot of troops. So not getting too many kills besides my pikeman who took a brunt of the enemy cavalry and infantry assault. The Huns with their Ura Warriors did pretty well. We can go ahead and look at the cavalry commander. Not doing super well, but mostly we had the support of the, Derek was actually in charge of the skirmishers. And he got a lot of kills with the Sagatari, especially the Balistari. And then these Fundatories were mostly in charge of helping balance out the cavalry fight. And here, yeah, Johnny is in charge of the infantry. A lot of these protectories just being sent into the meat grinder that you saw. Here on the Hunnic side, it looks like we had a lot more men overall. And so that's maybe one of the downsides that I have to streamline is, you know, if a forces, if they have to bring cavalry, then maybe they have less men overall, but you know, it's cavalry. So anyways, here they go. Those are the Ura Warriors. Woody was in charge of the skirmishing component. It looks like he brought some of these first wave lancers, which I think is technically allowable because they have a bow backup. Stilicho right here had a mix of the Hunnic Cataphracts, Raiders, and then also mounted tribe people. And then Pompey here had a lot of the skirmishers, who did a pretty good amount of damage, especially the Steppe Warlord, who was cleaning up a lot of our infantry. Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed. I will see you in the, in the, in the next one. I'm looking forward to your comments and feedback as I develop this new series. Hope you enjoyed. See you next time. Peace out.