The Bloody Dresden Encounter (Massive Battles)

Hey what's up guys, it's Oakley and we're playing Napoleon Total War. This is going to be on the battlefield of Dresden. I have the Austrians formed up deep. Lots of columns in reserve and a massive front up here with some Archduke Legions and then two Hungarian Fusiliers, both upgraded. A bunch of Grenzers up front. Our enemy has deployed as Spain and as such they have the ability to advance deploy and so they've gone ahead and put a bunch of guys on our side of the woods. Dresden is a map which has a couple just key choke points and those are the only ways across which is kind of annoying I find. It really bottlenecks the gameplay. And so Spain with the advanced deployment like this is going to get a head start but I decide to just pounce on this. Yes they have a lot of Vanguard troops but I'm going to seize this in force and just decide to charge with everything. So we'll go ahead and watch the initial engagement and I don't think the enemy anticipated me charging in with everything. I have Militia units charging up through the front and their main goal is just to tank out most of the fire and absorb cavalry charges. The enemy is trying to reform and fight back but I'm just blunting their first assault. So they're going to have two units that are just going to get chewed up in this no man's land and now more of my guys up on the hill are going to start to draw in and this is close quarters combat. Right at the very get go this is how I like my battles fought and yeah here are the Cazadores trying to move into my units but they're slowed down by the force and I have dual lines. Grenzers were able to pull back. I have squares forming as well so this is really epic stuff. I love these types of engagements. This is a bloody massacre. I've got multiple lines now overlapping and the enemy is going to have its own lines pulling up. For the time being I've had numerical superiority but the tides are going to start to turn a little bit as Spain starts to pull in reinforcements. But this is bloody. I have even some more light Ulans that I'm going to pull in and some artillery, cruisers. And those guys are going to be trying to get thrown in here. The enemy is going to go on intercept duty with some of its cavalry and this is not a place where you want to be between firing lines as a light cavalryman. Yeah this is a death sentence for both sides. More Spanish troops, more Lanceros going to be pulled in. We'll see how their luck holds. And they do get somewhat into my units but again a square defending most of my guys. Let's watch from the rear ranks as you're told as a reservist to pull into the fight. We ran into enemy emplacements and it's time to pull up. The prince is actually going to reinforce as well. We have guard, troops and they're going to come and try and sweep the battlefield clean so let's watch this next charge. Apologies we haven't been able to set the stage for the rest of the fight but this is the huge climax early on in the battle of a lot of action so I don't want to miss it. French troops are going to charge in and they do force most of the Spanish guys to form up into square which is going to give us time to try and redeploy. My Ulans are still alive, they're trying to tie down the enemy and more waves of cavalry are streaming in from Spain. And I think I'm getting the better of this engagement. I decide to bring a build that's almost all infantry, only two cavalry and the limit was four lights and I think we could bring one artillery piece. I decide to forego the artillery and just go almost all infantry and that's allowing me to just meat grind the hell out of this engagement. Seems to be going pretty well. On this left side I'm actually going to minimize this just so we can enjoy the cinematics a little bit more. On the left side where we meet the water my Grenzers are formed up pretty deep and as light troops they have a lot of nice concentrated firepower on this flank plus the reinforcing units that I have here. We're going to tear this force up. Also in loose order, the enemy is not going to do much damage to me especially in the woods. So yeah, this is a really key position for me to hold and the center is where just the grind out knock down, drag out fight is happening. Enemy Casadors have pulled through a little bit further. They were trying to get after my Jaegers my only 125 range units which are really important when you're fighting these battles for choke points. So it was a good move to try and knock them out but ultimately he didn't get that much damage done. Most of his troops ended up dying. All my reinforcements are pulled in. Let's go ahead and look at the Spanish forces. So they have, I believe, almost one and a half armies being poured into here. More Hussars coming in. Seemingly endless waves. And to reinforce this they have an entire six pounder battery but you're not quite clear what's going on from this position. Nonetheless they're firing away into our lines trying to target our Cavalry and my General. Here comes a nice charge and you can see I gave the square order and, oh god, they're going to rear up in no man's land. A little bit of a more fortuitous charge on this front. Right amongst the Austrian banners. And I really love how they have the standard banner affairs in this game. I really wish it was something we'd have in the other Total War titles. Especially Warhammer. But this does successfully kind of force me to pull back my Grenzers. Unfortunately Spain just doesn't really have much to capitalize on this. They're only now just going to be sending in more Fusiliers. But really not much to capitalize on this. Not much to turn the flank. And all of a sudden France with the Empress Dragoons can charge right into this force that unfortunately hasn't formed up into square yet. They're in really thin lines. This is going to be a key another key moment. Let's see how much damage they can get done. Ooh, before another line starts to come in. This is a real, really big bloodbath. But the numbers are starting to turn in our favor. I mean on this side I have four units here all firing away at two units. So it's going to take a while to shoot through the woods that blocks line of sight. But eventually we're going to grind this out. And then I can start to turn in and collapse on this force. Which is only being reinforced piecemeal through this little position. I do somewhat regret not bringing a Howitzer. I mean this position would have been extremely important to start pounding. France is also going to come over and commit Old Guard. Three Old Guard units. That's going to be really critical for holding down our force. In the chat that you're not seeing right now we were kind of calling out for a changing of the guard. So my forces here are going to keep up the action wear out this Spanish line. But with reinforcements inbound we need something to counter that. So that's going to be the French Old Guard going to be coming in kind of gearing themselves up for reinforcements. As that's been going on, well the rest of the battle not really too much has happened. I've got a couple extra units. Four Hungarian Fusiliers that I'm trying to pull up into the central plaza. We're having a little bit of a fight over here. Smith Janissary is going to be tearing into the Prussian Light Troops. Trying to hold the position behind the buildings here. And trying to ford the crossing. He's going to pull forward with two Nizami Jirith. Not much in the way of support. I wouldn't recommend this. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile the engagement over here is Light Troops facing Light Troops. And we do have one artillery unit. 18 pounder. Although for the most part it's targeting units that are way too far away. And I don't think we'll get much done. Perhaps it would be better to target the big blobs first. Or even provide covering fire and try and suppress these Light Troops. Because whoever wins the Light Fight will probably be able to win the fight in the long run. Let's watch on this side where we have two Ottoman forces going to try their luck at this crossing. And they're still getting into position. A Spanish force volunteers itself for the charge. Trying to close range before the enemy can fix its sights and take shot. It looks like only one volley does get off from both units before they get charged. So that's pretty good for the Spanish troops. And they're double veterans so they'll have a little bit of a melee advantage. Although the Janissaries do get in on the Foot Guards. The Foot Guards do have the advantage when it comes to melee. So I don't see the Janissaries especially at this strength yet. They're going to get totaled. Would have been really nice to have those Janissaries come in and support. Or even the French troops to line the riverbanks and try and get some supporting fire. This is just not going to go well. I don't know why he's pulling one of these forces forward. Oh god. They're going to get decimated. If anything I would have turned these guys hid them behind the houses here and just provided supporting fire into that mass. Let's go back and watch the engagement on this side. The switching of the guard here has occurred. The old guard is going to be the one taking my place here in the woods. Cazador is still sticking around in the line to try and beef up this French force because the enemy does have a lot of light troops also pulling in. But I think the advantage is going to be ours. Firing rate, we should have this. But the enemy supporting artillery is going to be more powerful than ours. So it's any person's guess who will win. It really depends how good the shots are on the six pounder. I may start pulling in more of my forces but for the time being I have to reform. And I'm going to basically try and pull out and prevent myself from getting additional fire. One of the things you have to notice is the beaten zone in Total War Napoleon and Empire I suppose is when there's a battle a lot of the shots actually go wide and it's really important to not have those shots that would otherwise miss. To not have those shots just hit your units that are standing behind. So you can see my guys here a couple bullets whizzing over their heads. The battle line is full at this point. There's not much else I can do and so it's a waste to keep your units right behind here. Best to pull them out, away from the battlefield and let them recuperate. Reload, regain their stamina and yeah stay out of the beaten zone. And let the fighting happen where the fighting needs to happen. These old guys are really tearing it up. They've taken severe losses in the center but the rest are doing pretty good. And yeah they've broken one unit the other is going to break so looks like Spain is going to have to toss in more units and they're going to be doing just that. More units tossed into the meat grinder. And I think it's at this point that I realize, hey you know Spain is bringing in reinforcements also with their general trying to reform some of their troops. If Spain is going to try and bring up reinforcements then I should at least pull up with my skirmishers as well and try and suppress this force piecemeal as it comes in. So we'll see how that engagement goes. But yeah this charge of the general I believe is just to try and rally some of his forces. It's pretty ballsy. It's kind of cool to see as well. This is such a cool shot. He's there to buff up his units and then he pulls out. Just wanted to keep them in the fight a little bit longer which is a smart move. This side gets reinforced. And this is where I'm going to once again try and mask Grenzers on the left flank and get some nice overwhelming shots. More reinforcements going to be coming in. Up through the center. Yeah the Ottomans were pretty much massacred on this front. Not much to be done. We're still holding and the Spanish Prussian force is still holding as well. Over here the skirmishing fight seems to be going in the favor of Prussia. They do typically have an advantage. And also it doesn't help that the fact that we've had howitzers bombarding our positions as well. That's going to tip the scales and here the Ottoman player it turns out in this battle wasn't really the most skilled of players. I mean he's retreating his troops in the line of fire at a walk. And so he's going to be taking a lot of unnecessary losses here. But at least the best we can do is just hold this position and keep the enemy at least in position here. Keep them fixed. I do have a lot of units that I hadn't poured into that main fight. I did want more forces to push around to the left. And so this is going to be my next target. The enemy does have some light infantry but most of them are going to be line troops. And so with some of my own grenzers and other units I'm going to try and set up a position where I can start to force the enemy back and then make a crossing and potentially here start to whip around fire into this, allow us to charge through and then eventually turn the battle here. Because that's kind of the name of the game for this fight. Where there's only I mean there's no other river crossing. There's literally just one two three and four. So there's four separate crossings for I don't know 10,000 men on the battle across. That does not bode well and so any particular point where you can get across is going to be critical. Speaking of critical we're getting some really nice shots with the artillery up here. It's one of the most expensive French artillery units but it does really good work. High accuracy long range. Oh it almost took out that gun unit. Let's watch the reinforcements come in. Again a switching of the guard. Old guard's going to pull out some of the enemy fusiliers. We're trying to get into my guys. Chase off my grenzers. All I did was pull my grenzers back a little bit further and I'm going to allow my Hungarian fusiliers to get some point blank shots. And yeah there you go. You can see my grenzers pulling away. These guys desperate to catch up and try and get into some sort of fight. They're going to ditch that and try and go after my main line. But all that means is well grenzers can turn around and fire straight into the fusiliers. And what I also have is my reserve heavy cavalry. I've been saving these guys for just such a moment before there was way too much gunfire going on for me to do anything. But this is going to be a key position once the enemy is whittled away. The really low numbers can't really form up into square. This is going to be a key moment for them. They're taking a beating from the artillery but still bloodthirsty. They're going to want to get into this fight. This guy too eager falls off his horse. The rest are going to connect however. And do pretty good work and just slaughter that force. Once that's been done I do have the option to chase after the next force. However they're healthy enough to form up into square. So I'm going to hit a couple of them and then all of a sudden the enemy forms up into square. And I always really like the Napoleon mechanic with cavalry rearing up and not hitting forces. I wish they brought that back. But anyways now that they're in square I'm going to pull away with my cruisers. Don't want to lose too many forces and I'm just going to allow my infantry to mass. Look at all these guys swarming through the woods. And now they have a nice plump little infantry blob to fire away at. The enemy units realize how screwed they are and they're going to charge straight into combat. But not before taking a face full of lead here. And so yeah this force should break pretty soon. I've formed up double lines here to try and help out I believe some of the old guard. Yeah still in the fight. 23 men holding back a unit of 100. My guys are here to reinforce. But so are the Spanish I suppose in the back. Oh man this is a real test of wills here. Let's get a nice zoom in of the action. And yeah they got off one volley and realized they're not going to win this gunslinging fight. And so they charge in. And again this is going to be another opportunity for my cavalry to get in the fight. Where did I pull them back to? Yeah they're over on the left flank again trying to stay out of the beaten zone. But this may be an opportunity for me to pull them in. In the center my guys used up all their ammo so I'm going to go ahead and charge into this Fusilier force. Yeah I'm going to lose this fight probably but it does bring an opportunity for me to bring in my cav now that the main unit that would otherwise shoot back at me is tied down. So this is moving up. Infantry is moving up and I'm doing a big push up to this position. Potentially even taking out Francisco Castanos as well. Let's go ahead and watch the cav push up. And they're first going to come and clash straight into this infantry line that's trying to pull through my own infantry. I don't think that's going to go well in their favor. Oh and it looks like enemy general killed. I believe this is the one right here. Yes sniped by the artillery. Really good hit I mean in the force. That was a risky shot but it paid off. Oh and a couple of them died face to face with my Curious Heroes. We're going to go ahead and chase them off and this is going to spell doom for the Spanish force on this front. The rest of the forces have been charged. Walloon guards are pretty good. Guards against guard forces. They have 108 that should beat the old guard but I mean we have reinforcements teaming and I'm going to be able to bring in my cavalry and charge into the flank of this force. Actually it looks like I'm going after some of these Walloon guards or at least I'm going to threaten it with my Curious Heroes and then I decide to do better than do that but still the square does fire away and take out a fair amount of my guys. I am doing a little bit of a risky play here around these stakes. If you go in this direction you won't die but if I try and pull back out I will certainly lose. So this is risky for me. I do charge into the back of these Walloon guards and I can also clip another one of these forces so pretty good on my Curious Heroes there. Yeah they're engaged on multiple fronts. Down to 10 men eager and getting lots of kills so looks like that's going to help us clean up this fight but the Walloon guards are going to be doing a lot of damage. Cannons still up and running. Two batteries so even if we do clean up what's on this peninsula not much luck in terms of pushing past that with the artillery support. Over on this front like I said I was going to try and pull forward with my Grenzers. I'm going to start to get some lucky shots on the Fusiliers and try and just soften up the targets here for me to potentially push the bridge. What else can be said? Up here we have a Nizam-e-Jadid in line order trying to face off against pushing Fusiliers in loose order. That's not going to go well especially with Silesian Scheutzen offering support and the Silesians are actually targeting these Nizam-e-Jadid which are kind of just sitting here taking the fight, taking the shots. Again the concept I was mentioning of staying out of the beaten zone if you don't need to be there would apply. Oh god and yeah the entire Prussian, er, is just getting destroyed at range. Lots of healthy Prussian units. I would say this fight is probably going to go to the Prussians here. So that's why I was eager to get our allies to try and start a battle on this front. I'm trying to bait out some shots with my Grenzers. I got some shots Light Infantry came in and I pulled out of range right behind these buildings forced them to waste an entire volley on basically nothing. I still have some Ja- sorry I was going to say Jaegers I still have some Jaegers on this front. They have maybe two volleys left on their ammo after fighting a long battle on that side and they're going to redeploy and yeah look at all this fire that I'm drawing on and mind you these guys are actually out of ammo at this point so I'm just parading them around trying to absorb fire. And then these guys are going to get some early shots against Light Infantry. Killing a couple of them, sniping at the Fusiliers and then what I'm pulling in with is a lot of infantry. Two Hungarian units and they're going to pull up right to the Riverbed and that is going to scare off this Light Infantry. It does not want to stay around to absorb that shocking strike. Three full units also going to be pulling up as well and yeah they're going to call it quits. Pull out immediately as they start to see the flags waving on that side of the battlefield. I do again wish that I had brought howitzer unit. This would be a very tempting target to break. But again that's what the artillery up here is going to try and do. Jaegers also going to be formed up here to try and hit the enemy. Light Infantry has pulled back to a safe distance where they can start getting some free shots against my Hungarians so my posturing is okay but over time they're going to start to do a fair amount of damage. I decide to try and do perhaps a bold but reckless thing and that is going to be to forward the crossing. We'll see how that goes. On this side we did win but we're faced with the problem that ooh yikes there's only one way across and there's an artillery piece right here. It can switch on canister. Same with this force. Anything that tries to push through here is going to be a loss. So now we're caught kind of in an awkward situation where the battle has been won but all we can do is hold the ground and get shot at. So that's why we're repositioning some of our forces on this side. Over here I decide to forward the crossing, charge in with my Fusiliers against the Light Troops and they take heavy volleys from the enemy. One of them is going to be an overwatch, another here and then the other one up front. This is really good positioning from the Spanish forces. My guys are trying to get up and trying to get some volleys at the Spanish Blob but again they're doing a really good job of getting the first volley and then charging in preventing me from getting a second volley. My other Hungarian Fusiliers are going to try and turn a position here. I was going to get them lined up and try and rake the back of this force to free up my troops but I don't think they're going to get there in time and this is a really nice position to have. This can shoot at basically everything. My guys are still kind of finicking around, trying to reform and I think they're going to break at this point. I see where my first volley goes. I was trying to give an attack order to try and fire into that blob but my guys decided to instead get into a melee fight so I'm like alright, **** it. I guess we're committed so I'm just going to try and turn the tide. Not ideal and the problem as well is there are where are they? Ah, here it is. Two Prussian cavalry forces are going to try and come into this fight and sweep into the back of my forces so I desperately need reinforcements. I lose one of my forces but this light infantry is down to 19. I should be able to break it. I do break the front lines here and I have more suppressive fire but it's literally an uphill fight against these troops here and with cavalry reinforcements and a Fusilier force coming in the back I'm getting pretty scared here and so what I decide to do is hey, this Hungarian Fusilier force is going to have to hold and this other one you are abandoned. You're in no man's land so instead of stand to face a full volley, what I do is I just pull off. I tell them hey, you're on your own and so now we're going to be lost in the woods. If I were these guys I would tell them, you know, bunker up in no man's land within the city but unfortunately there's no buildings to be garrisoned and so now what I am forced to do is just pull around back. My intention was just get away from the cav, get away from the infantry perhaps even go up here and seek a fight but just don't stand and take volleys and so we'll see how this goes. The chase is afoot. The general smells blood in the water. All these forces are coming in and here are my guys. I try and form up into square but it's a couple seconds too late. The cavalry does get a charge and now everything comes barreling down. This is not going to look good. So my attempt at a crossing failed pretty spectacularly. I lost a fair amount of units so I was pretty bummed about that but there was nothing really to be done on this front so I tried to just throw up my guys and I'm going to prove how reckless of an act this is. Fusilier force gets a full volley off this one as well. Extremely extended line meaning the entire force can fire in the split second that I come with in range. One of my forces melt. The archduke legions and then two more units are just clustered up. It's going to be a chance for the, oh it looks like we did take out the artillery. But yeah it's going to be a chance for just a ton of damage to be done here. So I'm pissing away units at this point in the fight. Probably not the smart thing to do. I should have probably just pulled them back out of artillery range and just kept them as a threatened being and just kept them back there rather than throwing them away because that allows Spanish troops to redeploy and come back over here. Same thing could be said with my assault here. Probably was best to bide time but what I saw was a stalemate here where enemy has advantage in artillery. I saw nothing was happening in the center and I saw we were losing the left over here so my thoughts were hey, we got to try a gamble or something at least. So with my two gambles on this side lost or at least a standstill here my next gambit is going to be to try and push on this position. This is going to be key as well because look at all these forces we have, especially with a lot of cavalry. My idea is if we can forward the crossing without too many losses, we have cover here and then we can run and we can hopefully rampage through all of this with cavalry. I'm going to have to fast forward at this point because now that I've lost my guys and the initiative has been lost and the blood shedding has kind of slowed, we're going to fall back into kind of what happens typically in Napoleon battles is you get an extended standstill so this is why I'm obviously going to have to fast forward through this part of the fight because it's very long and yeah. I am going to go ahead and keep fast forwarding and then what you'll be seeing here is a bit of engagement, lines coming in to try and support, lots of damage being done to our guys and overall we're on the losing end. But yeah, I will cut back when there's a bit more action. And we're cutting back just real briefly to show a little bit of my moves here when I decide to cross the bridge with some of my Jaegers. They're very tired and they're actually out of ammo so what I'm doing is a little bit of a feint. Just pulled them across the bridge, yeah they took a little bit of fire but I'm just posturing, trying to make the Prussians uneasy. It looks like it worked, it's forcing the foot guards back and it's giving us a little bit more breathing room to perhaps attempt a crossing. I was trying to get our forces to cross en masse because I think we can take this out and this is a really scary move. This last Spanish cannon here, holy crap, it's being really ballsy and they're going to dismount right in the face of our forces and this is a deadly position to have a piece of artillery with canister fire. I mean that'll shut down all attempts to cross through here. So we'll see if they can get this off. We did pull one of our Janissary units, the Grenadiers here, and we'll see if they can try and snipe this artillery crew. Not quite sure how many men it has left, nine troops remaining and now they're going to start to get their cannon going. And light troops are in support. I'm not quite sure why this cannon... Hopefully this is a glitch. I didn't actually notice this when we were playing the battle but this is definitely saving us. Yeah, I mean Janissaries here are in full view of the cannon. If it were active it could fire a canister straight into this, take out a huge chunk. But luckily for us we do get a couple shots and some of them do ding the crew members. There we go, two of them going down. So it looks like we may actually be able to get a route on this guy. I'm not sure if the Ottomans are targeting him. That would be a really good move. Down to seven. Oh, there we go. Okay, shattered. Thank God. This cannon is left here, facing the wrong direction. Apparently none of these guys have enough training on how to turn a cannon around. So yeah, thank God for that. The rest of the fight is basically not much is happening here. Spain tries to push up with the Balloon Guard. We push up with two Polish Legions. Start taking more artillery fire and we're going to be able to destroy, I believe, this Balloon Guard. But basically just the grinding continues. Up through here, Spain and Prussia are sitting pretty. And then I try and pull up with a couple more of my units. Again, almost all of them out of ammo. Grenzers are going to try and charge in and even this fight out. Jaegers here trying to force back the footguards even though they're out of ammo. And then my General also going to be coming in. Watch the charge of my Grenzers. They're very tired. They've got no ammo. So we'll see how this goes. Oh God, half of them died from the volley from the back. And then they get charged. This is at which point I was hoping that these Grenadiers would pull up into point blank range and try and use some of their grenades. I mean this would clean house on that. But unfortunately, like I said, the Ottoman player is not super skilled. So it's not going to do much. Finally, the Chasseurs from France do get some shots off. So it did do a fair amount of damage to the Phasers and actually shattered them. So it was pretty awesome. So yeah, my sacrificial charge did do a pretty good job. And we're starting to get the advantage here. I was screaming into chat, you know, charge with all this cav. I mean, look, all they have guarding this is light infantry. If we can pull up with our cav, we could thrash this force. And then start turning the flank on this position where, yeah, we're kind of losing. But it's a kind of even-ish fight you could say. All of a sudden, France kind of agrees that it's time to charge. So he's going to pull up with two Swiss foot against these light infantry. Let's watch this. And again, I guess while we have a little bit of slowdown in gameplay, I do want to discuss the news that CA had announced saying that they are working on a new historical Total War game and it is in full swing. And I really wonder what it's going to be. I posted a video summarizing what CA was talking about. But basically what ended up coming out of that is no one really knows. There's a lot of variety. All the history people are coming out saying, oh, I'm sick and tired of Warhammer. It was the worst thing they could have ever done. I would strongly disagree. Warhammer was a great step forward. They were able to innovate and do a lot of things. It's a really fun game as well. It's different, but I understand why people are reluctant to see a second Warhammer game come out, hopefully a history one. But anyways, I'm excited to see what the history one ends up being. I do wonder if they're going to get back to something Napoleonic. People were mentioning they'd like to see something Victorian era. Would be pretty cool. Something about the US Civil War or start to get into the Franco-Prussian War would be really cool. Kind of that era. Would be really interesting. And then there's also the chance that they said they would do a standalone title that would perhaps supplement an existing game built off the back of it. They were saying DLC and the standalone might be something to play off of it, but it could be its own time period. So again, a lot of options to go into. Here, Prussian Hussars do a really good job of beating back our Swiss Foot. Buying a little bit more time for the Fusiliers to perform. Fire away into our line. And our guys are going to charge up. This is really a poor move because look at this. Musketeers on the flank in a perfect position. And then here, oh god. Footguards and Hussars are going to try and get after my little hidey hole that I had here. My Jaegers are going to get trounced, but that's okay. They're out of ammo. And what I was trying to do is bait the enemy into this position. You can see me trying to pull back. And what I wanted them to do is have the enemy line up right in front of these Chasseurs. But I'm not quite sure why they're not firing. I mean, they have a clear shot at the cab. I was hoping they would take the shot. Perhaps they're facing the wrong direction. I'm not quite sure what's going on. But now the Camels decide to engage. So this is going to be a very interesting part of the battle. Come on, Chasseurs. Please turn around. You can massacre this force. We have a really brutal engagement happening here. Swissfoot was cleaned up, and so what this means is... Oh, yikes. The Camels are going to be greeted by formed masses of infantry. It looks like he's giving them attack order here. Oh, God. But if this force reforms, especially Footguards, they're going to tear into these big targets. And where are the reinforcements? It looks like he's deciding to swing around some forces. I think he's going to try and reinforce this position. Pretty good move. But at least, at this point, I think the reinforcements are almost out. Nothing really left here. Again, a face-off. And the bulk of the fighting is going to be happening here. Oh, God. Here it comes. Camel charge into the enemy. And they've already formed up into square. Camel's already not having that great stat. With the Gunners, perhaps they might have a little bit more luck fighting against the square. It's not fully formed, but the main problem here is that there's a Musketeer force completely, oh, God, unopposed. And then the Camels pull out. This is just a mess. Chasseurs is missing a really good opportunity to try and clean up against the Foot Guards. Not sure if they have, like I said, fire at will. It looks like they're facing the opposite direction. So we're having a little bit of a problem with our allies. One of the main things that I will complain about this battle is we started to get a pretty toxic chat going at the end. The message part was really cancerous at the end here. And that's usually what happens when you get a standstill where no one wants to move forward. People are calling each other assholes or campers. Yeah, comments started to fly back and forth. So this is when things started to get a little bit more tense, unfortunately. You know, fast forward. Again, just because, I mean, yeah, we're getting slaughtered here. And the battle is starting to turn. Ah, finally. Finally. This is another thing I forgot to mention. We had a cannon unit sitting here the entire time. So you saw how I was pissed about the Chasseurs not firing into this. We had a cannon literally on the bank here that was not firing in support. It was instead trying to snipe this artillery here. And after all those shots, killed one artillery piece. So yeah, the Ottomans were not being very helpful this fight. I do charge in with my last remaining unit. He tries to take out this force but gets routed. So that's the end of my forces. Everything has been destroyed and I am left in a spectator mode, unfortunately. Oh god. And then this is another thing we have. The enemy is now going to swarm, clean up our positions. Foot guard is going to pull up and they're going to murder the rest of our guys. So now the enemy is retaking the outer banks. And we have cavalry that's going to try and form up. And this is a really good actually move, finally. Instead of pushing through here, he's going to go for the weakest position and charge around with the Sifai cavalry right into the Fusiliers. Cleaning them up. No support. So this is really good. This is the final break that we needed. And now they're free. They can chase after these Hussars. Come forward, clean them up and break them. So this is going really well. Theoretically, he could turn around and target this artillery piece. But at this point, I mean, that's not going to gain anything. It's just going to lose us time. So instead, Ottoman forces are going to try and charge across here. We were telling him not to because it was a fool's errand. So unfortunately, he loses a lot of units trying to make for the crossing. And then walk out, loses more men. And in chat, we're trying to tell him, yo, go for the back lines. I mean, charge the general staff. Charge the Howitzer. Try and get at the weaker, unprotected enemy forces. Looks like he's going to do just that, but not be mindful of the pathfinding. And he's going to take some free shots from these Hussars. So the Ottomans here being the stumbling giant at the end. And then unfortunately, he has targets there. And the general is going to come and slam him inside. This is going to be the one and only time you see general staff take out elite heavy cav. And yeah, at this point, I'm facepalming pretty heavy. The other force gets in here, knocks out some of the Howitzers, but then gets tied up on the infantry and ends up routing. So both of them ended up being super ineffectual. And the general staff getting triple chevron veterancy after killing two Sifai cavalry forces. So that was pretty terribly executed. He could have swarmed this general unit and then retreated and just maybe pulled back and been a threat in existence. Sat in the back here and waited for the opportunity. But instead, no, the Ottomans do end up losing their cavalry. So all that means is we just have a couple units left and yikes. Not much left to forward the crossing. Looks like all is lost. However, we do have one spare Polish legion here, full strength. And it is actually in a really good position. It's able to get across this force. And now with the threat it poses on this Prussian force, they're forced to vacate the crossing. Which is then going to allow us to start to pull forward. And then actually, we have the Ottoman 18 pounder. That's going to be the saving grace of our army. Basically, it's here and the enemy has some Howitzers, which aren't doing too much damage. And we have this big heavy hitting cannon that can start to beat back the numerically superior enemy. They have more numbers. In an open fight, they could charge and destroy us. But, because they're forced to take this crossing here, we actually get the advantage now. Where, you know, if they try and cross us, canister shot to the face all day. France has made the crossing. And so he's going to try and fight the combined Prussian, and I would say Spanish force, but all Spain has is the general staff here. And yeah, these Polish, Swiss foot taking a really heavy beating. But the 18 pounder here got a really clean shot earlier on with some canister. Killed a lot of guys. And yeah, he's slowly starting to pick away at the forces. We're forced to retreat. This guy pulls back on the other side and is going to reform across the river. So slowly, we're kind of manhandling the enemy, which is numerically superior, into position. Ottomans try and pull up and they're going to take an engagement against kind of like what I said earlier. Yikes. On open ground, the enemy can form up and, you know, destroy us with superior numbers. And so this is not a good move on the Ottomans. And so they're going to get pretty much thrashed here. Cannon fire going to try and support to beat back these Musketeers, but we lose two of our infantry forces. And now the battle has swung. Ottomans only really having a 18 pounder and a general. Meanwhile, France's forces have been beaten back. A lot of enemy forces, so things are looking grim for us. Here comes the crossing. It's pretty decisive. We'll go ahead and put this on play. And this is the critical moment. The enemy has a chance to knock out our Ottomans. The entire infantry force is routing. All that's left is going to be a general and some artillery. So these, um, the entire fate of the battle rests on these 18 pounder artillery. They've switched to canister shot. They're done reloading and let's see just how much damage they can do. One shot tears through. Second shot takes that cluster. Third shot and fourth one. So now they're down to really low health, low morale, and this is really awesome just as the enemy is going to try and get in. Enemy general charges in and actually shatters two units. This was critical. Saved our army. Not much in the way of reinforcements here besides Fusiliers. And these guys are actually ill-formed as well. Pretty strong. If they were to form up in this way, they could probably beat us. But unfortunately, they're caught, uh, you know, flat-footed. And our general is actually going to charge in. So all of a sudden, after, I mean, honestly, after the Ottomans sucking this entire fight, he gets a miracle turnaround. On top of this, the enemy general pulled himself too close to the position. Canister shot starts to tear into the guards and he shatters. And with that, the, um, oh my god. Yep, killed another force. So with that, the Ottomans have saved the day. Killed the general, destroyed three infantry forces, and now the tides have once again turned. We have the advantage. So this is insane. Uh, the name of the player, I believe, was InsaneBull. We were cheering him on in the chat. Um, yes, he was a noob, but in the end, we had to rely on a noob to win the fight. So this was kind of a pretty epic moment. Now the 18-pounder is going to start to snipe, and he gets a shot right over the head of this general staff. Um, Francis trying to do his best to keep the Prussians at bay, but he's in a losing fight, so he has to pick his fights very carefully. And now, um, now he's going to try and get across to this general and keep an eye on this house. The cannon's going to try and shoot through. And I believe some of our shots are going to come in and lay the law down on this house. The rest of our forces are going to take out the 7-pounder. Here it is. A couple shots coming in, and I do want to see the house destroyed, but let's go ahead and first watch this. So, enemy general gets, er, our general gets an opportunity to strike and shatters how it's a really critical move. Again, sniping the key value units. All of a sudden, Prussia wheels about and says, oh ----. And, uh, we're going to pull out of this fight. The general staff is going to try and see us off. We pull back behind the hill, luckily, before the infantry can come in. Our artillery's got a shot on us, and this is going to be a really cool moment as well. I'm going to go ahead and cheer in the chat real briefly because we're in a fighting retreat, and suppressive cannon fire comes in, demolishes the house, and watch another cannon shot. Boom! Look at that. That one cannon shot killed, like, five of the enemy general staff. Sniped the general. He died in the field right here next to the smoldering cannon fire, so that was the biggest money shot right there. It shatters that general's unit, and all of a sudden the, uh, new player here is just going to turn the tides. All of a sudden, he kills so many units in the blink of an eye. And so, like I said, we were cheering him on, so he just destroys that force. The luckiest cannon shots there, really turning the tide around. And now, all the enemy has is going to be two infantry forces. We have the artillery, we have the numbers, and now it's just a matter of time, and we have a unit in the back as well. Polish legion coming in. We can fast forward this to see kind of what the enemy's going to do. And yeah, I mean, everything is shattered. They don't have much else. He's going to try and reform and try and get a flank to turn on our forces here. And I would tell, you know, the Ottomans, just stay here. Stay out of range, wait for the enemy to come to you, get your shots off, and just whittle away at their numbers. And plus, France is coming into the back. All of a sudden, this entire line opens fire on this force. The general, however, comes in from the side, and again, being the MVP, starts to clean up these forces. The enemy is able to form up to the square, which perhaps may be the undoing of our force, but we'll see. At least it does tie down enemy numbers. Oh god, this musketeer force, 50 men in square against 7-6 units. That's not going to go well, but now we're able to double team this force. It's going to shatter. Oh my god, the tides are turning, and the noob player again kills another force, driving his sword deep into the enemy force. So he single-handedly took the battle here at the end. Really epic stuff. Like I said, this was a very big stand-up-and-cheer moment for us in the chat. We thought the battle was lost, but all of a sudden, the noob player pulls it off somehow miraculously, so perhaps not so noobish this day. He earned his rank here. The general is going to chase after, and at this point I think our ally is getting a little bit carried away. The artillery is continuing to fire here. I think what might end up happening is some of the fire may end up clipping the Ottoman general, so this would be a terrible way for him to go if that ends up being the case. He can fast-forward this. I didn't watch this part of the battle, but I do remember him. Something happening. Okay, the artillery has switched targets. Ah, but this force comes back. Oh god, is the general going to lose? I wasn't watching this in the battle. Looks like he charges in. Pretty healthy. Five men against 47. Oh, and we break the enemy. Freaking awesome. There we go. Now it shatters, but our general also shatters as well. Nonetheless, a very, very cool fight. Hope you guys enjoyed that one. It did have its dull moments, but I think the opening salvo in the bloody woods over here was really epic stuff, and then the finale was very clutch-worthy. In the end, you can see how many enemies were killed. I got the meat of the kills here. I brought most of the infantry in, so yeah, that's suitable. Our ally here actually getting a fair amount of kills. Overall, our team doing really well here. UGM tried it, not getting that many kills, but getting the fewest losses of all the armies, so perhaps he, you could say, was being a bit more cost-effective. And then the enemy force here, MGL Proteus with 870, really not doing too much, and the other one doing pretty well. The Prussian force here with 1388, getting the most kills on his side. He was the last man standing, but honestly, most of those kills were scored against Insane Bull, the Ottoman, who was kind of feeding him units. Let's go ahead and look at the unit statistics. I want to see how many kills I got. Holy ----, 225 on Hungarian Fusiliers, 149, 143. That was in the bloodbath that ensued, and a lot of my guys getting tons of kills. Yeah, I think bringing a lot of infantry to that fight was really good, but perhaps I could have afforded to swap out maybe one or two units for a howitzer force, and that would have allowed us to perhaps turn the tide in some of these central positions, where otherwise I ended up losing forces. That's it for this fight. I hope you guys enjoyed. I'm going to exit the replay, and yeah, see you in the next one. Bye-bye.