Medieval 1212 The Burning of Ravenna Massive Battles

The rest of the forces in the back. More pevis crosswomen. More of these high tier knights. And again we'll come in close and try and look for the king. Bassinet helmets meant to deflect arrows being worn. Awesome. So what I've decided to bring in is going to be the gunners and VA have the best target here. Cavalry which are big targets. Lots of armor that would otherwise be almost impossible to kill. So this is the best position that I want to be in. And this is the moment they were built. The moment they lived for. The moment they were born to do. And that is going to be to hold the front as two armies worth of units try and charge through the center. 93 right now and I guarantee this is going to drop to like 70, oh my god 50, 55, holy crap and just about shattered. So that is the advantage of the positioning that I had. And now I have a 1-2 punch stationed ready to go. My cavalry are milling about, I'm kind of killing the rest of the forces. Oh my god, that just flattened the ranks there, awesome stuff and that does some nice morale penalties as well. Over here my ally is caught in desperate straits with my own cavalry trying to bottleneck that up, if we lose that it does threaten the rear of this pike formation so that's a big problem for me. Meanwhile how is the fight going here? Well the enemy is starting to land some of their ships around back after harassing us for a while and they've penetrated pretty deeply with their forces, we've been able to put this on play. So our enemy doing a good job with mass bowfire, we're going to try and break through and deal with them in the back but it's just not going to happen. Slowly finally breaking through and so we can try and commit to the back of this, we just don't really have enough forces to force the issue. On this front I had sent some cavalry to help the enemy beat back the archers, looked like it did work and there was a bit of a massacre here in terms of the commitment of infantry and cavalry amidst the burnt buildings. 42 kills to their name, fairly well holding out and they held out so long just in part due to the support of the chevaliers on the right but now it's going to be wholesale slaughter. My support over here is shattered, gunners that were positioned to support do get some final parting shots but now they're going to be caught in two positions. My cavalry here, my nobles with 174 kills, silver chevron does shatter another of the macemen forces. We're doing really good but the enemy is starting to close me off, I don't really have anywhere left to go. I'm going to try and pull out behind my units as they sacrifice themselves. Meanwhile this infantry force should hopefully be able to pincer this guy but they need to get out of there. My nobles, I'm desperately trying to click them through but they keep getting caught. I want them to go after the enemy archers and they do get away. So 180 kills to their name and what I'm hoping to do is, oh look at all these juicy targets in the back, I'm hoping to go after them and get some nice kills. We'll see how that goes. Meanwhile the retreat is total on my flank, I'm pulling back with archers, handgunners and my general so that's kind of all I have left. One artillery crew still in the back peppering us but as I said, all out retreat. Nothing much to hold the enemy back. On the right side as well, help by the bohemian king on this flank. Generals seem to be super powerful in this, I mean any heavy cav seems to do really well especially in the late game here so it's going to be able to crack a lot of our blockades. We ourselves do still have some premium militias, perfecti, heavy shock cav to deal with the enemy but in dealing with infantry you really need something to stop them, to anvil them and then hammer them in the back with cav. You need something to stop them and tragically we don't have much in the way of infantry, only one mercenary men at arm unit left and the rest really not much. While the enemy crossbowmen start to get some crucial strikes against me, I do charge in but an artillery strike does more damage. Now I'm down 7 men and I charge straight into the enemy heavy bows but they seem really really good, not quite sure why. They're formed into wedge so they have additional advantages so they're going to hold out much longer than I would have expected. I was hoping to just rampage through here with my general and yeah now I'm down to 24 men but I'm able to obliterate this first force. Two more in the back and now I'm thinking to attack them. The enemy definitely realized the threat and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a feint towards the enemy. That's going to trigger them to pull back, they have more archer support so there's no way I'm falling for that trap. And now with my general at 23 men left I realize yep, I got to pull out. I'm going to fall back to the keep. On this flank we have a lot more crossbows and other units trying to support from the top this engagement but we've been in a losing battle this whole time on this front. We did eventually get our swordsmen to run back to charge the enemy but enemy general, the French king here, did a lot to help keep them alive. He's got 144 kills so yeah he was a large part of that action. We're going to be targeting the enemy general with our crossbows but the arc of fire is not going to bode very well. Although as I say that a couple of them are getting picked off so we'll see how that goes. But yeah once these infantry break, again we have no anvils to keep the enemy at bay. Now the enemy is storming through the center. My cavalry that I told you was going to charge bravely against the enemy force got kind of bogged down somehow. These medium and high tier archers and skirmishers seem to do really well. They have good staying power and so they were able to see me off especially in loose order surprisingly. Just soaked up that charge like a boss and then kept shooting at me and just destroyed me. So that's not going too well. So as I said the rest of the force is going to be pouring on through. A couple of the enemy generals did move, especially the Bohemian King, moved aggressively against one of our militaires. I'm not quite in a position, again this is where choosing the right angles would have been important had our ally pulled back a little further and then engaged there. I could have had my gunners around the flank shooting into them. We got a charge from the flank. So when you're at a disadvantage like this, numerically it's often best to seek a positioning advantage. And then also Bohemian shooting at our reinforcements. We have a big, or kind of a motley crew I should say. There's hand gunners in here mixed with medium melee infantry so we'll see how that goes. We're going to try and clear this out and it does draw off pressure from this flank if only momentarily. This huge blob of macemen is the scariest thing. We don't have anything to counter it. Gunners up on the top rank are going to try and do some damage. And we'll see how that ends up going. Not really expecting too much. I have my own gunners that I've brought into the back. And they're getting a couple shots up over into this mass. Not doing too much and look at the mortars now pulled into the fight. Starting to hammer our guys. We'll see how this does. Let's get back to this side. The Bohemian King down to 11 versus our 25. So we're exhausted but confident. And so I think we are going to win that fight. Here comes another Emperor's Bodyguard late to the battle. Fresh however so he's going to be a welcome addition to that force. A lot of infantry here kind of milling about. And they have their supporting artillery guy once again circling around. Really cool to see the navies. I'm not quite sure if this is a custom ship. I know they were working on some. I'm not sure if this is one of those. But it looks glorious. I'm not quite sure if it's going to be able to dock. I know one had previously. It may just be trying to get some supporting fire. And the enemy is massing about with its archers. And they're going to start to target our bombard crew. Yikes. Not looking good. Although if we can kill the enemy king we may get a little bit of a morale domino effect. But it's going to cost us one of our late tier units. Oh and he does end up getting shattered. Time to get a Latin Emperor into the mix. That was pretty dope. Five men left plus some swordsmen. I think the fight is going to go in their way. And oh god we have our own general caught in the mix. Count him to lose. He shatters. My ally starts to shatter and waver. Or waver and then shatter I suppose is the proper order. And then I have my own crossbowmen in the mix. Plus gunners attempting to get around the flank. We're going to try and hold the choke. And I think I'm going to do a little bit of a stutter step retreat. Hoping to get maybe, I don't know, a little bit of more breathing room to get a shot off. But nope, my guys are routing back to the keep. Two of our units on this flank. Crossbowmen did do a good job of actually warding off or seeing off the enemy. But yeah, yikes. Not much left. I've lost all my forces. Our allies have lost all their forces. King assassinating kings. Emperors fighting emperors here. This is a huge concentration of nobility, monarchy, and power all fighting in the mix. And then you have arrows and bolts thrown into it just for good measure. Two of our archers decided to try and spite the emperor's bodyguard. And now they have drawn the ire of that bodyguard. Looks like he's going to turn about for a final charge. And this may be the final moments for our defenders. A couple of withering blows taking out some of the knights. We're here going to charge in at the trot. It's not looking too scary. Until you notice that there is, oh, a fuckton of macemen and other units coming in. And if that weren't enough, there's even going to be a whole bunch of archers and other units closing in on the back. So at the end of this, this was, like I said from the beginning, it was supposed to be a 4v4 and then one of our players dropped out having desyncs and issues with the mod. So we proceeded with a 3v2, thinking that the advantage of being in the city, plus the enemy not having any siege equipment save cannons, would even the odds. And I think at the end it did kind of come out fairly evenly. And I always like to fight a good battle. I would say at the end of the engagement, I did really well on my side. It was more fun than just kind of holding the edge of the map and kind of keeping them at the choke points and knowing you're going to win. I find these types of battles way more entertaining. Let's end the rig play and kind of see what we're dealing with here in terms of kills. You can see 3v4, but you bring a lot of guys to the fight. Let's take a look at, I guess, my forces first. So I brought forces of Sicily and General with 65. Cavalry doing a lot of work for me despite being in the city. Gunners doing great. Archers doing fairly well. And then, yeah, my swordsmen actually doing a lot of the work. These polearms just didn't seem to pay for themselves. Pikemen doing fairly well, but I think, for the most part, swords seem to be the way to go. You can see Dankbeam here. Yep, bringing almost exclusively swords, although his didn't do very well. Mostly getting shot to pieces, I believe, by crossbowmen. And his own crossbowmen doing fairly well. His cannon, holy crap, 608 kills. I should have definitely invested in one of these. I had tons of clusters of troops to take out, so that probably would have been a worthy investment. I mean, 608, that's absurd. That's like a third of an enemy army, that's crazy. And then Johnny Cash here, 216 on the cannons. Yep, I definitely should have brought a cannon. 122 on the Latin Emperor, 157 on the Mercy Minot Arms. And yeah, again, a huge preponderance of swords. On the other side, Slytacular here. A lot of swords, again, shoved up to gold. Lots of swords, lots of kills. Cannons, again, doing a lot of work. And the enemy just didn't bring that much cavs, surprisingly, which allowed me to do a lot of the sorties, a nice action. Tons of swords with a medium number of kills. These are the guys that I charged out and attacked, so that was a good move knowing that, I mean, mortars are capable of getting 606. Yeah, taking those guys out early was a good move. Looks like the French here doing okay. Crossbowmen, most of their killing power. And footmen of arms, some of these guys doing well. It looks like their halberdiers did well. And again, French King, generals all around doing fairly well. Here, Luke George I. And where did he get most of his kills? These guys, heavy assault troops. And, yeah, I mostly fought against the Empire of Nicaea. I did really well against them. So, hope you guys did enjoy this battle. There will be more to come. Stay tuned for those future battles. See you in the next one. Peace out.