Oakley vs Indypride - Game 4 (Online Battle #87)

Hey, what's going on guys? IndyPride here with Milk and Cookies Total War. And Oakley Hynet from THP Productions. And we're going to be bringing you another 1v1 that we played a couple days ago, and this one's going to be the Punic Wars Rome vs Carthage. Of course, it's not really the Punic Wars because I have Praetorian Guard and Armored Legionnaires with Vorica Segmentata on and stuff, so it's not really... It's post-Marius, but regardless... Right, at the beginning of the battle I had said, I'ma Zama you so hard, which is a little bit of... Just because... I mean, we'll talk about that in the near future. It kind of has to do with the strategy of staggered lines that I had, but Indy caught that historical reference right away. He's like, oh, so that means you're going to die? You're going to lose this battle? Is that how that's going to work? But my army setup is actually probably not very meta. If you think about or look at what, not professionals, but really experienced Tournament players do with Rome... For one, I have not played Rome very much on this patch at all. I've actually tried to stay away from Rome because I have a bunch of replays in the past on Rome 2 with this faction, so I've been staying away from them, but I wanted to hop on and use them in this battle. But this is not really a meta build. I think it's probably a little bit too elite-centric. I've got Evocati Cohort, Armored Legionnaires, one Praetorian Guard, which I talked about in the last Rome replay that I uploaded. They're not actually very common anymore just because they cost so much money, and the Armored Legionnaires are like 400 talents less, and they can very often do the same amount of killing, but I felt like I'd bring something to anchor my line anyway. And then I have three Auxiliary Syrian Archers, two Triarii, and three Legionary Cavalry with a General's Bodyguard. And you have a Balearic stuck in there at the end of the line. I do have a Balearic, yes. Yeah, so starting up this battle, Indi seems to have a small force, and just due to the nature of how I deploy, I think Indi, you were saying you're kind of scared at first, because my force covers at least half that. You're really spread out, yeah. Which I always like to do, but like I was teasing before, I said I was going to Zama him. My thinking about this was I know Rome is really good at chopping through units, and so I didn't want to commit everything at once, because if I do, he's just going to cut through everything. And I knew the best way to kill Legionnaires is to tire them out and to slowly pick them apart, and so my thinking was to compartmentalize my forces into three lines, starting with kind of the weakest, so the late Libyan Hoplites are in the front, and after that I have a line of three late Carthaginian Hoplites, and then after that a line of three Carthaginian Hoplites. So I was intending to have you kind of tackle each one of those separately, and each time you would get battered by the archers I have in front of each of those components. So I was hoping to just pick you off little by little, and then once you get to that last line, you would be really tired out, really exhausted, and that's when I could finish you off. And that's kind of, I say that's Zama-ing you, because that's the way Hannibal had crafted his approach to the Battle of Zama, how he wanted to counter the Romans, and using almost like the Roman-style strategy of the Triplex Achaeus. But I didn't have elephants this time around. However, I do have a lot of cav, so four of them are in the front, or yeah, three of them are in the front, pretty visible, and then my general in the back, and then over behind the sand dune I have three Scutarii cav, two of which are hidden at the moment. And one of them I saw, actually. So I mean, I don't know if you would have been able to successfully spring an ambush, because of course having a mini-map is, makes it a lot easier to see when someone's sneaking up behind you, but if I hadn't seen that, perhaps you would have been able to do something like that, I'm not sure. Yeah, although I think you can only see one. I do have two extra, so it did a little bit disguise the amount of cavalry that I had on the field. So before we start this battle, did you have any initial thoughts? What struck your mind when you first pulled into this? What were your strategies? When I, just when I first saw your army, I was scared just because it's covering so much of the map, and I was like, uh, this is going to be interesting, because I like to, I like to keep my forces pretty compact, and then spread out as things go on, but I don't like to keep my lines very spread out, because I feel like I can't micromanage it quite as well. So this is typically what you'll see from my army compositions, kind of how I, how I do my deployments. So I tend to think the opposite. I like to stretch out and envelop the opponents as much as possible. So my thinking was, I'm gonna have him, you know, surrounded fully. And you're thinking, okay, I'm going to go about this piecemeal. So it's interesting to see the two different strategies, and even setups right off the bat being totally different. Do you want to press play on three, two, one, press play. And we'll get into it. So yeah, you're definitely going to have a very distinct cavalry advantage. One thing that, on previous patches before patch 15, Rome actually had, well, I don't know if it's actually patch 15, it might have been a little bit earlier than that. When Rome had Draco, their cavalry was actually really strong. It was actually too strong. Historically, Rome did not have very powerful cavalry. They used auxiliaries. They used, like, Gallic auxiliaries, and they used a bunch of cavalry from different things. But, like, Roman cavalry by itself was not particularly strong. So when they had Draco on previous patches, they were actually able to take cataplysis and probably should have not been able to historically. And that's kind of changed now. They took away Draco, and the Roman cavalry is much less cost effective, much less good. If we remember going back to patch one, Roman cavalry was insane. It would beat cataphracts one-on-one in melee. So it was a good thing they got rid of that. But you're definitely going to have a very distinct cavalry advantage in this game because you have three Scutari and three Carthaginian cavalry, is that right? Yeah, and then the noble cavalry in the back. Yeah, so you're definitely going to have a cavalry advantage. So again, I'm going to have to... I felt like I did this in every battle we played. I had to keep my lines very compact and keep my cavalry close to my lines. Like, even in the last battle when I was Parthia, I kept my cavalry close to my lines just because I didn't want you to sneak in and get my archers with a little bit of early cavalry action. And you can see the deployment right now. On my right wing, I have one of those mercenary bullarks put in the forest. And then I have that triple line formation that I'm keeping there. And you can see each of my skirmishers is stationed out front. And they're positioned in such a way that if any one of them gets threatened by one of your cavalry, the other one can get some shots off. And each one of those units is supported either by a nearby cav or nearby infantry block that I can fall back to. So that's kind of a strategy you see me taking for skirmishers is I'll put them away in advance, but just close enough to my lines that I can retreat and I can bait a charge just like you're kind of falling for now. And when you do that, I'll get some counterchargers or some free strikes. And this is kind of a tried and true tactic that I do almost in every battle. Well, I mean, yeah, I'm not going to let your cavalry charge me. So I'm just going to back up. But yeah, it will give your skirmishers time to get like a couple shots off. And I think you actually are going to get a couple of kills on the legionary cav, I believe. Yeah, here comes a volley coming in here. So this is something that I like to do a lot. It's the early microing things where I will allow you to get close, do a little pings of damage on you. It's not a huge move, but it can sometimes catch your opponent unwary. And then just getting some early, you can see all the splatters of blood, just getting some early HP damage to you is always good. So you're going to end up getting two kills. They're not a massive deal, but like five kills. But yeah, like you said, it's more about the HP damage and that'll help you in a cavalry fight later on. One thing that I'm going to have to do here is, and it's scary because again, he has that cav advantage, which means he's gotten Carthaginian cavalry all the way in my flank. And I have to be very careful and keep my eye on the minimap the whole time because if he moves in and gets like a charge on my gen and I'm like not facing him or don't get a counter charge off, I could very easily lose my general. I could very easily lose my Syrian archers. And if that happens, I'm going to be in a bad position to just start this battle. So I have to keep my Triarii and everything very close to my lines, make sure he doesn't kill anything. I'm making a push for your general. And you, like you said, you're watching that minimap like a hawk. But I have multiple units. So you can see I struck at one position that pulls one of your legionary cav. Your other back is exposed. My Carthaginian cav is coming from that side. So I'm just doing everything I can to keep you immobilized. And at the same time, my Bellerics, my Cretans, they're all firing. So I'm just trying to keep you from counter-reacting all the while and, you know, just get some shots in wherever I can. Yeah, I did a little bit of HP damage to your noble cavalry as well. Yeah, I'm looking at that right now. That was a good move, targeting that. I tried to push them in just to threaten you, make your archers shuffles. You didn't overreact to that. You're getting into a nice little box right there. That's not derogatory or anything. It's just what was required at that moment. Well, yeah, I absolutely kind of have the box up right now because you have me completely surrounded with cavalry. And that's when you spring the ambush with a Scutari. And it looks like you're going to be looking for a melee fight here. Yeah, I pulled out those three Scutari, which I don't think you're quite ready for. And I just go ahead and I throw one into your legionary cav. Probably not a fight I'll win, but it's something that I wanted to tie that down because I know you only have those three cav units. I have like, what, five or six. And you know, the more I can tie down, that means the more opportunities I have to exploit different points in your defenses. It was absolutely a mistake for me to have taken this cavalry fight. I could have very easily run them closer to my swords or Triarii. And then you would have either just backed up or if you decided to commit, my Triarii would have been way closer. But instead, I'm actually going to do kind of a bad job. Like I run in there and then I don't back up with any of my troops. I do turn a lot of my skirmishers and start shooting in. And I did a lot of damage there, but I didn't back up with the Triarii anywhere near fast enough. Yeah, and I'm kind of throwing away that Skutarii and Khajiit cav advantage. But it's taking out your legionary cav, which is what I want. If I can rob you of your mobility, then your archers are, you know, they're at the mercy of my remaining cav. All the while, my archers are still picking off your units. I've particularly targeted your Triarii and any units you have in the front. The Evocati in particular dropping pretty quick. So I'm using the confusion and the tying down of your cav to just take out the key units I want. Yeah, so I don't have enough spears actually to cover all my flanks. I only have the two spears and all my cav is tied down. So I started using my swords as anti-cav measure. And it's honestly effective. Like if he tries to charge a Carthaginian cavalry into a Praetorian guard or an Evocati cohort, he's going to get punished for that. Like he'll get some kills and he might be able to pull out and not take very many losses. But the Pilothro from close up is going to do damage and he doesn't want to engage them from the front basically. He wants to save those for hammer and anvils, right? Yeah, and I see you're starting to pop some of your abilities. So I was able to take out I think one of your legionary cav. The other one's half strength and another one's at 24. So I think I threw away, I think two cav units have gone down to maybe one, two roughly of yours. I think I did a pretty good exchange. I've gotten some good melee missile kills on some of your Evocati and various troops and now you're pushing forward. So now we're good against the sort of the meat of the engagement and my cav I decided to detach at this point and save them for another part of the battle. So yeah, I engaged my Evocati and my armored legionnaires up in the front. This is a fight I should win against the Libyan Hoplites and I've started focus firing your mercenary green archers for dropping very quickly as well. Yeah, and this is kind of the strategy I wanted where I knew you would have your elite tier units to just come in and so I was going to have you wear yourself out on some cheap crap units that can just hold you long enough and maybe allow me to get some more archer fire which I am getting at the moment and now my cav are coming in for seconds. So I've found your legionary cav, they're stationary and one of them I get a decent strike. One is completely isolated, he's gone. The other one is chasing me off and I'm just trying to pull you away from this fight and you can see my noble cavalry kind of mirroring that hoping you take the bait and I'll come and counter charge them. And here you're going to come and engage with my second line. So my strategy is working. However, I do have a whole third line that's back here kind of waiting and I forgot about them a little bit although they will come and commit later on in the battle. Yeah, so I was really scared at this point because you have the cav advantage now for sure. All my mobility is gone and you have some full strength Carthaginian cav units. So I had to be very careful here and not let my skirmishers die because they are going to be a really key important part of this battle and you're going to try to sneak your Carthaginian cav in here and they're going to hit my armed legionaries who are already hurt and that charged a lot of damage but I'm quickly going to back up with my Praetorian guard and kind of swallow them up and pincer them and they're not going to be able to pull out of that fight too easily. Although that charge with my Carthaginian hoplites look at where your archers are ending up. I was able to force them back and this is the engagement that I'm always looking for in all my battles is the point where you kind of slip up and your archers are exposed and this is where I get a lot of free kills right here. But you do react quickly enough. I'm not able to wear them down and you're going to counter charge and all the pill of volleys is going to end up actually neutralizing a lot of my cav so it maybe wasn't the best trade but your archers are at least not firing and they're getting bounced back and forth as opposed to getting shots on my guys. Yeah exactly and you did do a good job making my skirmishers stop firing and just make them reform and do things that I didn't want them to do because right now there are plenty of targets like this late Carthaginian hoplite with its back turn. I could have shredded that in a couple seconds if you weren't continuously charging your cavalry and making them reposition but you were. Yeah and like my Cretans are still alive. Like you said before they're starting to drop. I was able to stop that and just keep getting heavy shot onto your guys. Yeah your Praetorian Guard are now having to sort of face both ways and engage two units and my strategy of just prolonging this combat is making for a lot of opportunities for my guys. I do wish I had engaged the rest of my forces right now. I was kind of, I sort of was too busy microing this main force and I should have brought this force in especially the Cretan archers. They could have been helping tear up some of your elite units. Yeah those hoplites that you left are definitely going to make I mean that's a problem for you honestly. Like obviously like that's three not really expensive units but they're ones that could have definitely tied down a bunch of my swords and you could really be using those right now. Yeah and I mean part of me was planning on falling back to further and further positions but at this point it probably would have been better to commit them which you see me doing right now but it's a little bit too little too late. I think I let the pendulum of battle whatever swing too much. It's starting to swing in my favor but this battle is not even close to over yet. Like you still have some skirmish units left you still have a half-strength noble cavalry your general's not dead and a bunch of your guys are still in melee and haven't routed yet. So I mean yeah the balance bar started to shift in my favor but battle's not over yet. Yeah I'm picking off some of your avocati they got too far I get a charge against them so you do have some guys on your extremities that I'm able to pick apart but at the same time some of my cav are getting swallowed up in some positions. Yeah I let my avocati get too far out over here and you're actually gonna I guess run out of ammo with the baleric slingers and commit them into melee and this is actually smart because if you manage to pull your noble cavalry out of this fight and then hammer and anvil with the balerics kind of tanking the melee engagement then repeated hammer and anvils is gonna make this avocati rout for sure. And if you look at your praetorians I'm continuing to get some carthaginian cavalry strikes in the back but those are a tough unit and that's where I'm trying to focus my hammer and anviling is over at this unit you can also see our archers just countering fire and my kreen archers they have 120 kills oh no sorry they just have what how do they have one kill? oh that's because it was that reserve force anyways I have them on heavy shot and they're gonna be targeting some of your armored legionnaires Did you actually put them on heavy shot? Oh you did they're at one yeah okay just for future reference I don't think you're supposed to do it because the heavy shot it makes you lower the range and the amount of damage you get for it doesn't really it's not really advantageous so yeah I know that a lot of better players than me like prussian prince never use heavy shot on any of his archers ever like horse archers none of those doesn't use it on so I trust him I just don't use it okay that doesn't mean that it doesn't work for you but anyways my third line is coming in here and they're trying to stem the tide in the back I still have some troops running around trying to find a gap in your forces but now you've been able to rally and your archers are going to be able to reform and that's probably the main thing is that even though I got that strike earlier somehow your syrians and balerics survived and this is where you can start picking apart my reinforcements that would otherwise be I mean they're full strength and they're green if you look at your praetorians and armored legionnaires they're all going to be tired like all your units are tired yeah if you take away your archers I think I would have won this battle yeah and it's interesting because I feel like if I had brought maybe like a baleric slinger corps I would have been or like for my for my skirmish component I would have been in real trouble because if you look at their at how many men are left they're only 33 men out of the unit and that's because they have really really low armor but the 40 armor of the auxiliary syrian archers actually really helped you did get cav charges off on me but I was able to survive them because I pulled them back and kind of let them not get like completely charged for free like you kind of had to hit other units at the same time and the hp and the armor of the more heavily armored archers made them survive those those engagements yeah and here we have a general duel at the moment I have 25 you have 14 but you you do get your triari in that fight so that will start to help tip the scales I do get one cav unit into the mix but like you're saying just the the armor of those syrians is not gonna allow them to go down I even have some of my own mercenary balerics coming in just anything to tie you down and uh yeah your praetorians are are cutting through my men but I'm holding in pretty well and here they here they go and they still have pilla somehow my praetorian guard do yeah they just threw yeah they just threw their yeah I see that in the shields yeah and so yeah they're gonna enter melee combat and these carthaginian hoplites are fresh so yeah in some ways like again of course it would have been more beneficial to have those carthaginian hoplites earlier in the battle but my my very tired praetorians are fighting fresh carthaginian hoplites so I'm not going to be able to cut through that very quickly and if you especially if you get them into phalanx formation which you did yeah from the front that's not going to be a particularly easy engagement for me yeah and in the back my uh your general actually ended up beating mine so that was unfortunate I was hoping to get that that morale blow to you and then I could use my general to keep harassing your cavalry or do some hammering anvils but yeah maybe if I had been a little bit more cautious with my cavalry like if I had kept one at this point in the battle like I had six and you had what three had I still had some left at this point it probably would have been could have turned the tide but I think I did use them pretty effectively I'm trying to think back to what I could have done better but yeah just maybe trying to save them a little bit more and not continuously throwing them into your force instead throwing maybe some hoplites to do that and let the archers getting that killing fire yeah I think the longer the battle went the more the harder it would have been for me to protect my skirmishers so I mean one cav unit would not have been able to kill all those archers it simply wouldn't have I would have just like targeted the rest of my archers to shoot at the cav unit as it came in but if you kept like that you had two full strength uh carthaginian cav after the cav fight was over and uh as my general dies they're charging into the archers um I think if you had two cav units that were good enough to kill that archer blob and killing that would have definitely definitely changed things for this battle for sure but uh yeah like you're saying I mean look at my my hoplites fighting against your praetorians your praetorians are getting nowhere because they're so tired so my strategy of keeping these reserve lines was working decently well I just I just needed some some remaining killing power at this point it was actually really interesting because like Oakley said earlier when the engagement first started during the cav fight actually I popped my general's abilities and I was using the Julia Caesar gen and I haven't used that at all like because I just got Caesar in Gaul DLC like a couple weeks ago on the steam sale and I haven't used him as a general at all so I popped the ability like way too early and I didn't realize that you can't use the ability twice so both of his abilities I used like super early in the battle and didn't get to use them again and unbreakable like none of my guys were ravering and apparently I used an ability that makes it so your guys get unbreakable morale so like completely pointless usage of my abilities but I thought that was kind of funny and look at look at my cretins who are shooting into the back of your evocati I'm like almost gonna make them rout and my my carthaginian hoplites are holding on to both sides of that assault and like all these all these guys who I kept to the end they're all holding out pretty well um I mean besides these one carthaginian hoplites now who are sandwiched but uh like they're holding their own against units that would otherwise just chop them up yeah and that's because they have the high armor and they're fresh and that helps a lot like a lot of people don't realize how much stamina actually matters in this game and I say it matters but yet I still run my guys wherever I go no matter what like I never walk them ever I don't know if you do the same but like it's just funny because the stamina actually does matter a lot and sometimes you overlook it and you can see like your guys lasted for so long in melee just because they were fresh but still managed to rout that carthaginian hoplite and then get my evocati around the flank and charging the rear and that will signal the end of this battle yeah so I mean end reflections on reflections on this I think my strategy worked pretty well um it could have used a little bit more refinement like I said for that third block to move in and then maybe a little bit more cleaning up how I handled my cav but for the most part I think I did a good job of surrounding and picking you apart it was just the the final moves maybe in the last third of the the battle that I didn't do so well yeah I think I think honestly and I said this in the last battle that I did Rome vs Carthage which was maybe like two multiplayer battles ago is that I do think Rome has the advantage against Carthage in a 1v1 but the way to win with Carthage and it's not like you have to bring some kind of crazy army composition that you never see but I think avoiding infantry engagements for a while and picking them apart with a cavalry and skirmishing for a while is definitely the way to go like maybe even bringing one or two more cavalry units could be utilized really effectively and just have like a couple of high tier hoplites like tying them down and then have the cavalry come in from the rear I think that could have changed things for you like literally I think one more cav unit like at the end of that battle there could have could have changed how that that battle ended up because keeping my skirmishers alive I mean you look how much damage they did they each got more than 100 kills for the most part so they made a big impact on the battle if you've been able to get get at them it would have been a different battle I think yeah and I mean looking at my troops I don't see anyone that's like that's super underperformed from either of our armies well maybe one of your legionary cav and for mine it might be the late Libyan hoplites but those are like those were the fodder units that I knew would just yeah that's a throwaway unit that's not going to kill anything yeah I mean but for the most part like we kind of ground each other down everyone got fair amounts of kills it was a really hard battle I liked your early cav actually you surrounded me and I think I responded relatively well I think we both played pretty well but yeah I think that ultimate game changer was you leaving and just forgetting about those hoplites at the end there which it happens I mean it's happened to everyone Arif Carthage did it to me in Scanning Intel Tournament he left like two noble horse for the Iceni like just off on the other corner of the map and I mean I've done that as well too I've left units just randomly on the battlefield before so it happens and I mean it sucks because I was I think bragging about how I was using the debug cam where I can zoom in and zoom out as much as I want but then again like having those units off to the side I mean I did forget about them for a little bit but it was also part of my plan to have you encounter each of my armies in steps so I wasn't too worried about having those three hoplites out of the fight I think I would have done that even if I knew they were there the entire time it was mostly that one archer unit that I think could have been there to help pick apart your guys before they could kill my troops like killing your guys at the end of the fight as opposed to middle way through the fight it's better to kill the midway through the fight because all that time they're getting kills so if I'd been able to target your praetorians a little earlier it might have maybe saved a couple more of my units and it sort of snowballs the effects of leaving those praetorians alive yeah but so I hope you guys enjoyed that battle I had a lot of fun playing it for sure yeah and hopefully we can do more of these commentaries in the future I think in terms of the mini series that we did two wins for me two wins for you so we'll put this as to be continued maybe sure absolutely and I hope you guys enjoyed yeah see you next time and also make sure to check out a Milk and Cookies Total War if you're checking this out from my channel currently and for my channel check out THFE Productions Oakley Highdef see you guys later see you peace