Total War: Rome II - Sparta vs Seleucids (Online Battle #34)

Hey what's up guys, it's Oakley and I'm coming to you at the end of this long weekend. I hope you guys had a good one, I did too. I ended up going to the beach, that's one of the pleasures of being in California, even though it's supposed to be winter. We had high 80s, I went to the beach, even saw dolphins, so that's a nice weekend for you. Anyways, I was able to play a little bit of Rome 2 over the weekend. I will admit I didn't end up playing too much, mostly because I was taking advantage of the beautiful weather, doing homework and doing other things, and just mostly enjoying kicking back with friends and stuff like that. Of the couple of games I did play in Rome 2, a couple of them were pretty disappointing. For example I played against a couple of players, I think one of them had spammed all elephants and chariots and cataphracts, so I got hit a couple times by players abusing the Seleucids and also players using Pontus and having like four chariot units and a bunch of heavy cav and stuff like that. So I ended up getting a bit cheesed and so in the next battle where I fought against a player as a Seleucid I was expecting the same, so I chose to field a Spartan army with a ---- ton of pikes. I figured that would be an effective counter to the elephants because I was kind of sick of it, but it turns out my opponent was taking a different tact, a different strategy, and he actually ended up being a very worthy opponent, very good player, and I like his strategy, I like his mix. So right off the bat he is going to have a main force pushing on my left and another force on the right. His intent is to try and break up an opponent, and what he's trying to make me do is choose to attack one group or the other. Obviously he wants me to attack the main group, and what he's going to try and do is bait me into the main line, he can retreat that line, hold me up with whatever forces he has there in terms of pikes, and then come in with his side of the cavalry forces here. One of the advantages of having the Spartan army here is you can use a lot of these Spartan pikes and they're very cheap so you can field a huge number of them. I would say this is spammy, but considering what I thought I was going against I thought it was allowable, but in any case there are effective ways to counter the pikes and you'll see this is very, I won't say very much, but this is far from, that's a better way to put it, this is far from an easy battle even with all the pikes I have. So my opponent is going to constantly bait me so what I decide to do is leave a substantial force over to the left side to hold off his guys here, and then I'm going to try and bait this army to engage with me here. I'm throwing in some cavalry trying to get him to charge the wrong group of cav while I come in with the rest of my forces. You can see there I baited his cavalry to attack one line of troops and then with the other one I charged in from the flank so that was a good way to negate his cavalry attack and it's forced him into a general retreat. You see I'm following up with my own infantry, two peltast units because those are going to be good for taking out his heavily armored cataphracts so they're going to be giving chase but I don't allow him to mire me down in the conflict over there. I'm going to constantly move around my forces here. You can see what my opponent is intending to do is to break me apart using his micro and hoping that I lose focus. So for example if a player were to get too focused on what's going on the right side of the battle and microing there, well then you can see my opponent is just weaving in and out with his cavalry. One is cutting through the center, another three are going around the flanks, and in the center he's going for a massive push with his main line so that's forcing me to turn some pikes around which is what you want to do when you're facing a pike army, force them to turn some of their pikes around. That diminishes the wall of spears that can face the front and that's exactly what you want to do. So you'll see throughout this battle I have to choose my battles. I didn't decide to engage both flanks at the same time. I decided I would wipe out one side, namely the one over here, and try and finish off his cavalry before engaging with his main front. My opponent is not really going to allow me to do that in peace. He's constantly moving these as at night, trying to pick off my guys here but you can see I'm kind of passing my skirmishers between various pike units, getting them to the position I need but not having a single pike unit walk with them the whole way. I'm having my skirmishers jump from pike unit to pike unit so they're always in cover and that's something I recommend you do. Also notice at this point I'm falling back with my left wing and my right one is chasing off his units here. I realize I don't actually need to chase his cav and my center might actually face a defeat against his main army so that's why I'm sending in reinforcements from this side. I'm going to try and swing around, try and get his flank turned around onto him. Right here he's stationed his cavalry for a moment, that's when I'm going to turn on my forces and try and attack him. So I'm trying to take advantage of my opponent's lack of micro on that front but you can see quickly he turns his forces around and just as my forces turn to chase his cavalry he's going to move up his main front so you can see we're engaged in a pretty solid dance right here. So what you want to do in these occasions is if you have the numerical superiority make sure you're able to get the flank on your opponent. That's why I have this group here fighting off his cavalry and you'll see in a short moment I'll use them to turn around and get my opponent around the flank. You can see also I have a huge blob here. No reason to do that. I'm going to start spreading out my forces and creating a wide concave bowing of my line. That's something I tend to do a lot in battles. Obviously it's drawn from Hannibal and what he was able to do at Cannae but it's just a classic military strategy. Pull the enemy in and hit them from the side so that's what I'm doing here. I'm falling back and retreating trying to get around the flanks. You can see my opponent is catching on to what I'm doing. He's moving his cavalry here trying to push me back but again there's nothing he can really do with his heavy cavalry there in the face of my spear so I'm effectively able to push his flank and over here you can see I'm wrapping around the sides using my spears now to guard against his cavalry wings. Keep them from getting at my skirmish units. Usually people forgo skirmishers but I would say they're very very important in these types of battles because of the fact that they have high armor penetration and in terms of stalemates they can be used to pick off units from the back. The flank weakened key units and especially here I can turn the flank and without getting engaged in a straight up fight and sort of putting all my troops into the melee blob I can attack from a distance and keep my units cycling around forcing his cavalry back. As my opponent is going to start moving up here you can see my peltast already took a significant chunk out of his royal peltast and my opponent is now going to be moving in more units to reinforce that side. He's also charging out in the center. He realized that the problem of my strategy which is to try and draw him in and go around the sides is just to punch right through the center so that's what he's going to do very aggressively. Very good move and take a look at what he does at the same time. He's going to go ahead and charge in with his cavalry so he's kind of reversed the situation on me. Done double envelopment on me. Very very good move of my opponent and at this point I was worried about him collapsing my center and all of a sudden he would split my army in two so what I'm trying to do is turn my spears about and form up two solid fronts of spears so that he can't crush them. I'm going to cut my losses, leave the guys in the center for sort of at the mercy of my opponent and try and reform the guys to the north. You can see how I'm forming another wall of spears to face my opponent. I don't want him infiltrating my lines further so I'm going to try and make the best of the situation by doing that, targeting some of his cavalry and then I'm going to slowly once I've reformed this line, make sure I push forward and try and attempt a rescue of the center. You can also see in my distraction I missed out on those cavalry. My opponent was smart enough to move them in from the sides. He's also charging the flanks of my spears, getting in and around them, doing a very very good job of getting around my flanks and avoiding the tips of my spears. Here his units are charging on me in a long line. The idea behind him doing that is to get around my flanks, outmaneuver me and individually outmaneuver each of my positions. But you can see I fall back and form a solid front against his charge. His cavalry now are going to be engaged and that's going to be a very big problem. But because of the fact that I have so many units at my disposal, I'm able to keep some in reserve and guard my flanks and my rear. Over here the tides are starting to turn. I'm finishing off his cataphracts. His units here were caught in a bit of a pincer and he didn't end up having enough cavalry to face me. Also right here I'm able to turn around with one of my pikes and just catch his cataphracts outright that kills maybe about a quarter of them on the charge and the rest of them are not going to be able to do much. Over here his units are starting to break just due to my overwhelming numbers. You can also see I don't tell my units to go ahead and engage right away with his forces. I tell them to fall back, reform a line and then I use my remaining skirmishers to pick off his guys. Always go for the small victories around the battlefield. Don't feel like you have to commit if you have nearby support of some sort of ranged unit. You want to go ahead and expend that before you expend the lives of your men in your more expensive units. So that's what I do. I pull back, shower his guys and wait for them to collapse on their own and that's going to allow me to save up more men. Now if the battle were in a very desperate strait, every single man that I could save would in the end be much more important but in this case the battle was kind of decided at this point and my opponent was very graceful. He told me bravo and he was being a good sport about it. I apologize for the spam because as I was saying earlier I was expecting elephants and chariots. But anyways, very good battle for my opponent. I haven't had a dance like this in a while. I had a very good time of it. My opponent did a good job of countering my strategies moving around. I think what he could have done better was, I mean it's hard to fight this amount of spears. Maybe not get baited in with his cavalry as he did on that one flank and just keep the pressure on me. Keep swirling his cavalry around and eventually I would have cracked. I think he had the micro but it was just that one lapse at the beginning of the battle that made it snowball in my direction. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this battle. I had a good time and yeah I'll try and get back to Rome. I end up not having too much time but on occasion when I do have a good battle I'll make sure to save it with you guys. Anyways looks like our troops here did very good. So yeah, see you guys next time.