Barbarian Bashing Online Battles 38 40

Hey guys, today we're going to be doing a couple battles. This is as per a request by one of you that was that I do a couple battles using barbarians. I've been using a lot of Rome, so I figured we'd do one using, as I said, barbarians. So this one, I think this video, I'll put together a couple of my battles that I fought against the same opponent. So here you can see my forces of raid. It's going to be two Britons slingers, three of these chosen swordmen, backed up by three of these heroic nobles, and then I have painted ones over here on the flank. I do like the Iceni, I think they're the most colorful and, I don't know, I like them thematically for the barbarians. Also because of the chariots they're able to wield, I think those are very cool units. So I think they make an interesting barbarian faction, although I do think the Arverni are a little bit more hardy when it comes to their infantry and cavalry. Anyways, I have on this wing my chariots backed up by two of these chosen spearmen, and on this side we're going to have two of these heroic riders. My opponent, on the other hand, is going to have more infantry than I have, and he is going to be composed of five of these chosen swordsmen, two naked warriors, two oathsworn, which are going to be the strongest forces in his army, and then he has three of these Celtic skirmishers. So I outranged my opponent, and he's going to be splitting up his forces. He has heavy horse, so on this flank we should be evenly matched. They're going to be lining up on this side of the battlefield and trotting forward. Now the main thing to this battle is going to be this slight hill over on that side, so not too much going on here, but I'm going to be using it as a flanking maneuver over on this side, and I'm going to be pushing my skirmishers on either side. Their goal is to target the enemy cav, so I'm going to be doing just that as they get in range of my troops. Getting a couple hits on those guys, it's not going to take down many cavalry, but it's going to at least pull his forces in, and if not do straight out kills, it'll do some damage. Now over here he's going to be charging straight at my chariots. This is a pretty good move. These chariots don't really hold up too well in an engagement like that, but it does force his cavalry to be drawn out of position like this. I'm going to get a charge on them from the side. Over here, I'm actually going to be falling back. Let's go ahead and put this on slow motion. That's something you guys wanted me to do on some battles, so now we can enjoy this on a little bit slower pacing. These guys are going to come racing against my chariots. I do give the move command to my chariots, so it's going to negate a bit of his charge. His charge isn't super effective against my guys, however this group of the naked warriors I believe they are, or painted ones, are going to be doing a significant amount of damage charging into those guys. Over on this flank, I am going to hastily order another charge on these guys, charging in right here. Last minute, I'm going to tell them to charge forward. I was really occupied on that side trying to micro there, so I don't get the best engagement. Now I'm going to be moving my guys over to this side. He does, however, have more troops moving in. My chariots have been able to pull through. More cavalry is coming through here, and now we're going to have the main engagement take place here. Let's go ahead and actually put this on play now. I just want to give you a little bit of the breakdown because this is going to be a pretty quick battle in terms of it coming together like this. On this flank here, more cavalry are going to come and decimate my forces here. However, I am holding it down and more of these skirmishers are coming in. My opponent is going to charge up, however, he is getting a bit clumped. Time to charge in with my heavy troops. These naked fanatics here are pretty strong, however, you can see they're getting decapitated because although good on the initial charge, they don't hold up well in melee. Let's go ahead and get another view on this. We have a scrum going on here. I have, however, reinforced chosen sword bands against these troops here, so I have better quality on the flanks. That's going to be a big turning point. Over here, spears against two cavalry is going to be beating that. Over here, infantry are pretty even and, you know, he's going to be beating me back here. The center is going to be kind of up for debate, however, I do have some of these chariots coming in through here, so this is going to be another important component of the battle. It's going to be my guys charging through here, at least distracting his skirmishers. Now let's go ahead and break this down. I'm going to put this on slow motion just so we can analyze this a bit more, what my thinking is. I know I do have this flank locked down. The center is collapsing. This side needs help. So what I'm doing is I'm using my skirmishers here, these Britain slingers, to do additional damage. Mostly, I'm going to be picking off the forces that are right in front of me. These naked warriors, the troops back here, you definitely want to try and nail those guys in the flanks, and something that I would recommend you do is right here, put forces point blank on the side of these engagements. They'll be able to just smack right into these guys, otherwise engage in combat, and that'll be good for you to break that down. Also excuses for the singing, if you can hear that next door, that's one of my roommates. Let's go ahead and put this back on pause. I think that's enough of an overview that you guys wanted to see. Again, this is a very, very quick battle. Things are happening very quickly. So I'm going to have superiority here, chosen spearmen are strong altogether, especially against these cavs. It's going to force them back. Skirmishers, again, tipping the fight in certain areas. And now, chariots are going to be charging the back of the places that are sort of up for debate in terms of who's winning these. So they're going to help me tip the battle. However, my chariots are going to be taken out pretty handedly by those skirmishers. However, I will trade the distraction of those skirmishers for a chariot any day, especially when these conflicts are going to be down to sort of the last men. Over here, I'm going to leave my infantry engaged to hold these cav, and most importantly, I'm going to charge them over to this next battle. I find in these barbarian battles, they're very close, mostly because the barbarians focus on heavy infantry, so you're going to be in slugfests. And the sooner you can free up your infantry, the sooner you're going to be able to have local superiority against the enemy. So that means you definitely have to use your cavalry effectively and skirmishers to be able to win that crucial infantry flight. And so that's what you can see me doing here, charging in with these cav, equalizing the fight here, and then neutralizing his skirmishers there. So you know, if I could give something of a recommendation to my opponent, I would say what he did wrong was on the flanks. He charged his cavalry into fights that were good at first, but as I got my infantry into those areas, he should have retreated his cav and tried knocking out these blobs in the middle or going after my slingers. My slingers did a significant amount of damage, as you can see here. Yeah, point blank into the rear of these troops, they're going to be doing a lot of damage. So if he could have prevented that and had maybe his cav chase after my own chariots. You know, he had four cav to my two. If he could have just kept one of his cavalry in the back, that would have been great for neutralizing my chariots. They could have protected his slingers, and the slingers, had they concentrated fire, you know, on like maybe a blob like this, they could have annihilated these men all in one volley. So that's the recommendation I would give to my opponent, and it's going to be wrapping up the battle. Very, very close when it comes to playing as the barbarians. Again, it's really nice to see barbarian on barbarian action. Something you guys have wanted, and also because you get to enjoy a lot of this brutal melee conflict and zoom in and see the details of these fights. Very visceral indeed. You never really get to enjoy too many of these animations, but as I said with the barbarian battles, the hand on hand conflict really does drag on for a while. And this is going to be one of the last remaining troops for my opponent. It's going to be his general in the oath sworn unit, but finally they're going to crack. With that, the rest of these troops are going to crack, and the last remaining group of I believe skirmishers over in the distance are going to go ahead and submit. So that's going to be it for this first battle. I hope you enjoyed. I think we're going to go on to the next one just because this was relatively quick. And do kind of a barbarian spotlight. So I'll see you guys in the next battle. Alright guys, we're going to be going into our second battle. Let's go ahead and put this on slow motion. It's going to get off to a quick start. So my forces, I am Galatia. So my main force is going to be six of these Galatian legionaries, two, two, and two, backed up by some of these naked swords. They are truly naked. So decent attack stats, but really nothing much going for them in the way of armor as you can tell here, obviously. Backed up by slingers are going to be my skirmishers, three of them on either sides. And then I have two, three noble horse, and actually two of these really light cavalry here. Light horse. These are going to be crucial on this flank, and they're actually hidden at the moment. Now I do have some defenses here. My opponent forgot to turn these off, so I figured I'd just throw them into battle for a little bit of, just for fun. I didn't think I'd use them, but we'll see if I actually end up being forced to because of what's going to happen on this flank. Here I'm trying to push, take the hill, try and get a flank on my opponent. What's going to happen however is just as I crest the hill, boom, we're going to get the sights just on these forces here, hiding in the nook. These forces are actually, let's go ahead and put this on play. These forces are going to be guerrilla swordsmen. The ability of guerrilla swordsmen is to deploy outside of your deployment zone. This is good. Something you do to get an attack on your opponent. However, I think my opponent drastically misused them. The fact of the matter is, he did drive my forces off, good, he succeeded. He's got no way to really capitalize on this movement. He pushes me off the hill, but now what? Now he faces two of these cavalry who are moving up here, more of the legionaries who can take him on. I'm retargeting my slingers to take these guys out. What you should really do if you're going to try and use ambush forces like this is use them to take strategic ground and then reinforce. He should have sent immediately all his cav here, prevented me from getting a flank, sent half his body over here, and tried to really push me back, or at least force me off this hill. What I'm going to be doing right here is not engaging outright, I'm just going to go ahead and take my free time and target these guys with slingers, soften them up as much as possible, and he's going to try and push forward. That's exactly what I want to do, that's why I'm pulling my cav on this flank. And take a look at the sun actually right here, I'm using a mod, I'll link it in the description below, that plays around with graphics. It's not GEM, it's another one that I found, but it definitely looks very dazzling, it changes up the mood and the theme. Let's go ahead and put this back on slow motion, a lot of ----'s going to be happening right here. The main body is going to be however pushing up. The problem with my opponent's build right here is he has a lot of troops, but they are fierce swords. He has almost like the Naked Warriors, almost no armor. Cav are going to be splitting up, my forces are going to be drawing back here. I really can't fight him outright because he has so many men, so I'm going to be pulling back here, pulling back here. Now on this flank, I've charged my cav, retreated, these infantry are now going to be charging right into these forces. And take a look at this, his men are really meant for ambushing, they have light garments for speed, for stealth, not making much noise, not rattling, but when it comes to melee brawls like this, I'm going to be taking the victory. And yeah, these forces right here are going to be facing a double charge from my cav in slow motion. That's going to be pretty epic, just balling over all these men. Pretty light skirmishers, second group of cav is going to come right in, finish these guys off. So I think in this engagement actually, I lost 6 men, 6 men, so 12 men overall and none of my cavalry. So I traded 12 men for 2 entire units, so 160 men, so I definitely won that. If my opponent had reinforced it however, his ambush would have been a little better. However, this is going to be the deciding point of the battle, is where do these guys get committed. So my opponent is deciding to split up, I would say that's probably not the best move, I would say try and isolate one force, he has overwhelming numbers here, hit them with skirmishers, engage with one of the cav units, pin them down and then surround them with these guys. The rest of these forces should be drawing up a line right here, just keeping my guys at bay. Yes, I may have these slingers, go ahead and prod me, but I wouldn't engage here, considering that I have more numbers on this side and I have the high ground. Now what am I going to be doing, I'm going to be pulling back as you can see here, behind these defenses, again as I said, I didn't really want to use them, but just due to what happened on this flank, I was forced to hold my own right here, I'm going to be forcing my guys to form up here and just keeping these slingers in the action, doing as much damage to the front of his men as possible and his cavalry right here, I'm going to be going on a charge. Again these guys are going to be important for knocking these guys out as soon as this conflict is joined. Another problem my opponent is having is bunching up his troops, you can see that at this point, you know he is getting good shots off against my men in the back, that's exactly what you want to do, but all these guys are charging in at one unit, that's very very bad, especially when he has so many numbers, he should be surrounding me. Let's go ahead and put this on play. So his cav, everything is going to come and just charge straight through on my guys, that's exactly what you want to do, stop these guys from retreating, but then go ahead and swing around on all fronts. On this side, my cav are going to engage with his, this should be an even fight, however what he is doing is reinforcing with some of his spearmen here, that's a very good move. The problem however is he doesn't have enough reinforcements, these spearmen are like, okay I got to reinforce, but take a look at this, slingers are going to be taking these guys out from the side, couple hits right there, charge from infantry, charge from cavalry, that's going to be enough to finish them off. Now the fight here is going to be pretty contested, however slingers are going to be helping to even that out. Let's go ahead and watch this real quick before we move on to anything else. So you can see any of his counter attacks, I'm going to counter counter attack them, so if you are going to reinforce with troops like that, make sure you have some sort of move to keep me from countering you. Over here my guys are superior, you know it's going to be shirtless, it's going to be skins versus shirts, in this case the shirts are going to have a great advantage in this conflict. Again same kind of story here, my guys have just more stat superiority, so I'm going to be beating them back. However he does have more of these forces here, so this could go either way, but because I was able to reinforce this and claim victory, I can finish that off coming to reinforce. Now what's happening over here? My light horse that I showed you before came around, wrapped, hit his skirmishers here, and recharged some of his forces here, this is going to stabilize the fight. He is however doing a good job with his skirmishers, taking out my men here, taking out more of them here, however they are going to be at the mercy of my returning cav. This is going to be evening up, let's look here, my cav that I said were finished with that battle on the far side there with his cav, I was able to finish his guys off on the return. So what you'll find with these barbarian battles is it really comes down to how you are able to get local superiority. You'll find a lot of the times they're going to be having these huge massive infantry matches that can last forever. So what you're going to need is to make sure that you can crack the enemy infantry as soon as possible and just steamroll the sides, that's going to be by using your cavalry and your skirmishers. So make sure you are able to kill the enemy cav or prevent them from engaging, then use your cav to come in and free up the rest of your men, you know, chase off his skirmishers, finish off these blobs here, really free up your men, and especially if you have hidden troops here, it'll allow you to come in the back and equalize fights like this. So I would say my opponent did a pretty good job, a little bit better than last time, but what he did wrong was really not reinforce this flank here, and when he did engage he blobbed up his forces way too much, he should have taken it a little bit slower, focused on surrounding me, and really reinforced, you know, things like these cavalry and these skirmishers. Anyways, we're going to go on to the next battle real quick, and yeah, keep playing around with the barbarians. So let's go on to the next one. Alright, this next battle is going to be me playing as the bowie, and my opponent is going to be the Arverni, looks like he really likes using those guys. My build is mostly going to be made of these sword fallers, I think I have once again, yeah, six of them comprising my main front, backed up by Celtic Bowmen, Oathsworn, Oathsworn, and then Spearwarriors, Spearwarriors on either of the flanks, so I have a pretty good, actually I would say a solid infantry build, these guys are on the high end of sort of medium heavy infantry, then Oathsworn are very strong, Spearmen to hold down the flanks, and then this time I do have three of these heavy horse troops, they're going to be pretty powerful. However, look at that, on the other side, let's go ahead and see what my opponent brought. Pretty big force I would say here. He is moving down the hill, my opponent did choose this battlefield, however, it was kind of in his advantage, but he didn't mean to do that, so he's going to be coming off down the hill, very noble of him. Anyways, his force is, let's go ahead and see what he's got right here, so, Spearwarriors on this flank, Spearwarriors here with his cavalry, Spearwarriors here, so he's got, you know, enough Spears to hold back against my cav, that's good. Then he's going to have, I think, four or five of these Chosen Swordsmen, three Naked Warriors, Oathsworn, and then Celtic Skirmishers, so, I think he did well. Look at his cav here, reinforced by Spears, this is something he learned from that last battle, something he should have done, but now he's taking that to heart, reinforcing his cav with Spears, very good move, it'll keep these guys as viable as possible. Seeing how this is going to go down, look at my forces down there, look at his forces, it really looks like I'm outnumbered, that's because you can always count on me having hidden troops, so that's what I've done over here, hidden forces in the forest, so, I have Celtic Bowmen, Heavy Horse, and then I also have Spearmen right here, so the Spearmen are going to be important because it allows me to anchor this ambush force, it's, to the contrary, as opposed to what my opponent did last battle where he just had two Ambushers and that was kind of it, they were just there to ambush but not do much, I have enough to do sort of a utility knife of Ambushers I would say, so here they go, they're launching, if they were to encounter any enemy forces, I can fall back behind my Spears, my Archers, my Cavs, so they can all reinforce each other, I got everything I need. Main battle is going to be engaging here, my opponent is sufficiently distracted, that's why I moved up my Cav here, just to bait him while my forces in the distance there make their approach, so that's going to be perfect for knocking out Skirmishers, tying down Cav, or even hitting the backs of these troops, so Barbarian factions, you know, don't think that you have to be brawn over brains, you can always use the brains to defeat your opponent. Now seeing as I'm at a numerical disadvantage, take a look at what I'm doing, I know that I have a counterattack coming from the back, so what I have to do is tie my opponent up, so the way I'm going to do that is spread out my forces, thin lines are going to be able to catch as many of his guys in combat, I know it means I won't last very long, but the advantage is it'll keep his guys tied down. So I'm going to line my forces up here, try and draw him out, spread him out, allow these Cav to hit each one of these in the back, at the same time I do know that my forces here are pretty strong, you can see here, pretty padded, heavily armored, my opponent does have some good troops here, I think we'll be an even match, the forces behind Skirmishers are going to be good, this is a good move on my opponent, however if I can't sneak through with some of my Cav, that'll be devastating. His own Cav is going to be going mostly for this wing, so I have my own Cav here, and Spears, however I'm not going to engage, I'm just going to keep warding them off. The charge is going to come down through the center, I'm going to countercharge here, countercharge here, countercharge here, countercharge here. At the same time, my Cav are going to be looping around, this is important. Now as I said, my main goal at this point is to tie the enemy forces down, that's why I'm countercharging. These Cav are going to try and take advantage of the backs of his forces here. So what am I thinking? I want to pull these Cav into the center, means they can't flank, means I get to flank. My opponent is going to be smart enough not to fall for that, instead he's going to go ahead and charge with his Spears here, very good move. I'm not going to react right away, even though I should, but the main reason I moved these guys here was to try and countercharge these guys here, break up this assault. So this is working effectively, you know I may be outnumbered, let's see, 2-1 here, however more reinforcements are coming in, and most importantly I'm going to get a rear charge with these guys here. Cavalry are still off to the side, these guys are going to be redirected, they're going to smash into the back of his forces. More numerous reinforcements are coming in, they've avoided the bulk of his skirmishers, and now I'm going to go ahead and put it on play, this is where it's really going to fall apart for my opponent, I'm sorry to say. Look at this, cavalry charge from the back, pretty much flatten these guys, they have little to no armor, can't hold up to heavy cav who just do tremendous amounts of damage. His oathsworn here are going to be doing, eh, decently, but as soon as my cav get into the fight, more of them coming in here, the guys who were supposed to come from the ambushing side and hit his cav, they decide to go ahead and knock out his skirmishers, and next, look at this, they're going to charge right into my opponent's most elite troops, these are going to be his oathsworn, exactly what you want to do, break those guys up. The rest of his forces crumbled on this flank because he used his naked warriors, not very good for holding up a front, I had way too many troops on this side, so that was the advantage of, and there you go, also additional spearstone, but the advantage of having my thin lines meant, yeah, his center was caught up, I could win the flanks, and then my cav returned just in the nick of time to massacre his troops, and you can just see how quickly this whole battle fell apart for my opponent in the center, mostly because I targeted his elite troops with my cav for the main strike, and then his naked warriors just really fell apart. Now his cav are going to be coming back for the charge, however, I've been keeping spears, you know, close, trying to ward his guys off this entire time, my opponent really should have used these guys to counter charge my cav, counter charge my own troops, he, eh, I think he waited too long with these guys, he tried to go for a huge flank, but he took so long that the rest of his army died, that's going to be obviously a problem. If these guys had landed strikes at the back of my thin line while I was engaged, that would have been game over, my opponent would have won, but instead you have this situation. Additionally cav are still going to be marauding around, sandwiching those guys from this side, killing them from the other, and, you know, these troops here, I'm going to let them just stand still, soak up this charge, you know, you can see how that's doing a pretty good amount of damage, but at the end of the day, all my forces here, even more of them down there, are going to be able to just massacre these cavalry troops once they get back up. So I think you guys have learned a pretty good amount about how to use the barbarian factions, the various ones, I found the bowie were very very effective in this battle, I don't know what happened, if it was just my tactics or their traits, but they kicked ass in the center. Yeah, anyways, there's a lot to internalize in this, so go ahead and rewatch the video, I'll probably play with barbarians a couple more times in the near future, or try and do massive battles with them, but I hope this serves as a pretty good introduction to the use of barbarian armies, at least against other barbarians. So, you know, make your suggestions for what you'd like to see next time, I will see you guys in the next battle, peace out.