Roman Legions vs Parthia Macedon Sparta Massive Battles

Hey guys, it's Oakley and we're going to be doing a battle of three Romans against a mixed bag of other factions. It's going to be Macedon, Parthia, and Sparta. You can see here how we build our contingents. I'm mostly going to be comprising the skirmishers and the cavalry for Rome. And what you'll see on the battlefield is we're going to be working pretty strongly together in this. I'll show you once the battle loads up, which should be momentarily. So you can see my forces are going to be comprising these Velites, the troops that are moving. And then I have some cavalry on the wing here and over here. So that's going to be my forces. I'll go ahead and show you this actually in the overhead. Oh, looks like actually we were playing on battle reloads mode so it couldn't work. So anyways, we decided to coordinate with our allies to make a huge Roman army. So here you can see it. And this is going to be a series of battles where you have Roman legions taking the field. This is one of actually the smaller ones you'll see later, 4v4 is just epic. So anyways, I was in charge of the skirmishers. Here you can see them moving forward towards the enemy. And my ally was in charge strictly of the infantry. So that was a good mix. We could each focus on our own forces. And then the third player over here, he had a bit of everything. But you can see how substantially smaller his army is because it's obviously not a combined force like you see over here. So I thought this was a very cool approach that lets each player focus on what they're doing. It just requires a little bit of, you know, communication and micromanagement to pull this off. And the effect is definitely very cool. I love all these skirmishers moving forward and it felt very empowering as the player in charge of all these skirmishers. Because usually skirmishing, you know, you use them and then you're done for the rest of the battle. But here I had to make sure I was, you know, using them the rest of the battle. So it makes you use them a bit more effectively. Let's see our opponents here. It's going to be Sparta making a massive front here. And over on this flank, there's going to be Parthian mixed bag units here. More of the units are going to be hidden. That's going to be the Macedonian troops are hidden. Over here we're going to have a Macedonian push onto this flank. Take a look at this. They're just posturing, trying to ward us off. But you can see with the Roman forces moving forward, it's pretty frightening. I really love this view of Total War. You don't really get to enjoy this. That's why I'm doing this in the battle replay mode because I know, you know, obviously it might be a little corrupted. We'll see how the results go. But it's definitely much more cinematic. And yeah, as we're rounding over here, we're going to start moving our forces around this flank. So these are my cavalry that are getting pushed over to the side. Take a look at this. The Parthian heavy cav was just revealed. There's going to be a huge component of a ton of these heavy cataphracts. They're going to be maneuvering to the flank. Look at this. Tons of armored cav just moving forward. So this is going to be very scary, especially combined with the Aspis forces here. And they're going to be charging forward, straight at the Romans and straight at this flank. Meanwhile, over here, you can see we're forming up. Not much is going on. We're sending reinforcements of the Triarii. Take a look at this. There's going to be a massive assault on these flanks here. I'm going to pull back this flank and try and bait them in, charge them multiple fronts. That's going to be going on there. We'll come back to that. I just wanted to show you this massive smashing of the forces right through here, right through the Roman line, bawling over these thin troops. Now they're going to do a lot of damage. So over here, here's what's going on. I'm pulling back. You can see here, spearmen are going to be holding this flank here. More cataphracts charging in. But now that these troops have been left in this sort of pulled in and pulled to the side, what I have is a double teaming up against them. So right here, I'm going to get nice charges on them from that side. I'm going to pop an ability on these guys and charge in. So these cataphracts are not going to go down without a fight, especially with more of them coming in. But again, we have just more cavalry coming here to reinforce. Swooping into the battle. So that's going to be a long battle, prolonged fight over here. Cataphracts are making pretty good work of these triari units, but still triari are the best units to have holding up against these cataphracts. Let's take a look at the main forces here. The Roman legions here are going to be fending them off. Archers are supporting me. Over here, the main comet is going to be here. You know, they did have a good initial charge, but now they're going to be stuck in amongst the Romans, making good amount of damage, but not much progress. So let's just keep pushing up through this battle. They're going to be cycle charging through here, pulling out, charging back in. You can see the Romans reinforced with the triari are really going to be what's pushing them back. Additionally, we have some more Romans engaging here. And over here, this is where I decide to charge forward with my guys. You can see some of them got caught up on the cavalry charge by the companions, but that's fine. Over here, I decide to charge forward and Spartans are going to be charging. I'm going to pull back my skirmishers and allow the Romans to just handle this charge. All along the battlefield, that's going to be what's happening here. The Spartans were targeting the wrong troops and the Romans are going to come and catch them on the side. Take a look at that. I'm pulling my horses back through my lines, meaning that the Romans are now going to be the ones to hold off the Spartans. That's going to be perfect because they're ideally meant for holding up against these pikes. Roman infantry are tough. They can't necessarily crack them right away, but they're going to be the best way to hold them in place. We do, however, have Spartans trying to go around the flanks here. So you can see me shifting my heavy cav here and all my skirmishers are now going to be focusing fire on specific units. I'll show you what's going on over here. We have this pike wall moving forward, hoplites forming deep ranks, so that's going to hold up the Romans there. Cavalry engagement is still going on over here. Let's go ahead and focus mostly over here, which is going to be the crux of the infantry battle. So Romans are going to be moving, sandwiching a lot of these Spartan units. I'm going to be shuffling my skirmishers and their main goal is going to be to target these Spartan units that are caught in melee here. Now, you know, I may hit my own Romans, but when I get the good engagement on like globs of units like this, that's perfect. Charging with my cavalry from the back, that's really going to be the Spartan's worst nightmare. Sparta really wants to function much like Thermopylae, where they can just face their enemy head on. So when I'm able to charge from the back like this, it's going to be very damaging, but take a look at this. Pikes from the back are going to come and reinforce, and I'm going to have to desperately pull out from here. I'm going to do a cycle charge. Over on the right, I am pulling some of his forces out with my cavalry, but take a look at this. More and more of the Macedonian pikes are going to come and reinforce this line. However, look at this. Tons of my skirmishers are just going to be wailing on these guys. Tremendous amounts of damage inflicted on these troops, and that's exactly what the benefits are of having so many skirmishers, obviously, is even when the reinforcements come, I can just pick them off at ease, especially when they're just hidden behind my contingent of Roman allies. Yeah, take a look at this, just absolutely wrecking them. So you know, they can hold up pretty well against the Romans, but the more they stand still the more they're going to get just absolutely pummeled, and you can see how I'm directing my fire in multiple directions to make sure to take out as many of his troops as possible. Now we're going to have a pretty big cavalry charge in here. I'm going to counter charge against his cav and do more maneuvering. Over there, I'm not going to be able to show you too much of that. It's mostly cleaning up, the battle is dragging on, and I'm going to counter charge, drive some of his units off, but he does have more spears coming back. However, take a look at this, I'm going to be lining these guys up for the perfect charge in the rear of these pikes and Spartans here, who are at the moment under heavy fire. Take a look at that, all my skirmishers eagerly pursuing various targets. So I'll go ahead and put this on so you can see what my intentions are, I'm reforming them over here to try and beat back his cavalry on the right, and now we're going to see just how effective this cavalry charge is going to be on the backs of these engaged Spartans. Let's take a look at this, pretty epic charge straight through the back, more Romans coming in darting through the gaps and just massacring these troops here, and you can see we even have some additional Roman troops coming in, volleys of Pilla coming in, and take a look at this, just, yeah. This is going to hit a lot of my troops, but a lot of the, you can see the, these are going to be Aspis cavalry, so I'm taking out a bit of everyone, and just this hail of, Jesus, look at that, look at this horse, absolutely massacred on all fronts, so, yeah, this barrage is definitely doing its work, just shredding these units, you can see no one's holding up to this, I don't think I've ever witnessed this much carnage, look at the floor. That's absurd, yeah, all these cavalry trying to retreat, and that's going to seal the deal for that battle, so let's zoom out and see what happened, basically, at that point we had crushed the forces on this side, because my cavalry were able to hold his down for long enough, and he had concentrated too much on heavy cav, and so we were able to reinforce with this third Roman army on this side that had a mixed bag of troops, and so he was able to hold off the cavalry with his infantry and triarii, my cavalry that were devoted to this side held down these cataphracts and we were able to reinforce and take them out, in the center, where the Spartans charged, we were able to hold them off, draw them into a Roman front, and I could pick them off with my velites, and then my troops, the additional cavalry I had here, would do hammer and anvil strikes, and then you could just see the effectiveness of the barrages coming in from these missile troops, just unbelievably effective. So I hope you guys enjoyed this, it was a cool look at how you can combine armies where someone focuses on one or two specific units, so for example I was skirmishers and cav, and my ally was spears and infantry, so we'll have more of that in the near future, as I said this is going to be a series of these combined battles, this is actually going to be the smallest of a couple of them, we're going to have a 4v4 that is definitely very epic, take a look at the results here, skirmishers definitely get a lot of kills, cavalry doing well, actually, yeah let's look at the other troops, so the dux repae is a guy I've been playing with, very nice guy, you can see here, infantry just soaked up a lot of the damage and they did a lot of hurt, and he also had a Roman scorpion that did pretty good amounts of damage, I'm guessing he targeted the Macedonians, take a look at this, these guys actually got a decent amount of kills, the foot companions and the cavalry, but the problem is he just didn't have enough of them, whereas when we split up our forces we could get a lot more. This guy who had the mixed bag got a pretty good amount of kills, let's take a look at the cataphract build, you know, decent kills for royal cataphracts, but for the price that they cost, that's really not effective, and then his mercenary hoplites pretty much melted under the combined arms of the Romans, let's take a look at Sparta, ah, they did alright, I would say he had too many royal spartans, he should have had a huge pike wall of spartan pikes, and then some elite units, but the pike wall was definitely necessary in a fight against Rome, holding those guys off, and maybe more of his own skirmishers to pick off my skirmishers. Anyways, that's going to be it for this battle, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll make sure to bring you guys more stuff in the near future, yeah, peace out.