good to see the fourm thriving again (even though I wasn't around when it wasn't) are you new here I don't seem to remember you and good luck with the aar

Quoted from masterbrett12345:

good to see the fourm thriving again (even though I wasn't around when it wasn't) are you new here I don't seem to remember you and good luck with the aar

No, I'm not new. I've been around for almost two years but haven't been around much over the last few months.

Now, on to my update.

Ok, so here we go. All my screens aren't done uploading, but I figure I can kick off the AAR with the first 40 screens I uploaded last night.

Here we are at the start. We have an enourmous army of course, but a lot of it is crap. If I had to pay upkeep, I would disband more than half of it, as most of the units are peasant-type units.


The reason I have never played a Hun campaign is because of this. So many troops at the start. So much organization that needs to happen to be as effiecient as possible. I like the start of a campaign where you have a few soldiers and even less settlements and build from there. This is fun too though, especially after I settle.

Here is my plan. I have organized the horde somewhat, very basicly. I send my faction leader and a young General along with some reinforcement troops south to Constantinople and they will then sweep west across the ERE's holdings in Greece, sacking all the merry way. I have sent my faction heir and his brother along with some reinforcements east and they will descend into Asia Minor from the Northern Steppes aiming for Sinope, sacking any settlements on the way(I forgot to take screenies of my generals, they are uploading now and I will put them in the next update). The two hordes will meet somewhere in the middle and start to settle down, probably in Greece. I should have enough money by then. If not, I will hammer Italy for cash as well.

Here you see the two hordes parting ways. (I forgot to turn fraps on for the beginning of this play session, so missed out on the screens for the sacking of Campus Sarmatae but you can see the army that sacked it trying to catch up with the western horde.


My diplomat has found the Vandals and they agree to be allies.

However, they broke that alliance was broken the very next turn and I still don't know what they did to break it. It happened when they attacked the Sarmatians in a fort, so maybe that had something to do with it.

I lost track of the Vandals when my diplomat left them, so I sent my spy up to see what they were doing. Good thing I did because they decided to veer south and were on an intercepting course to my half horde. I move my armies back north across the bridge in case the Vandals want to play.


Sure enough, they send a single probing army over to test me. The idiots will pay in blood. They have missile superiority, but I have the bridge crossing. If I was really paying attention I would have taken out all the infantry in my army and replaced them with Horse Archers, but the army I have will do fine.


My infantry is little better than peasants, they don't even stand in formation. I will hire mercanary infantry for all my sieging purposes so I decide to use my infantry as fodder. Here's the setup. Infantry at the bridge head to soak up arrows and at least to try to tire out the enemy a bit. HA's behind them in a wide arch, regular cav behind them in a wider arc with the heavy cav in the center.


The Vandals come accross and almost instantly route my herdsman. I didn't expect anything less.


Now the Vandals have crossed. My Horse Archers are beginning to skirmish away while I prepare my heavy cavalry lead by my faction leader to charge the Vandal Warlord.


Their warlord dies in seconds, and I prepare the rest of my regular cavalry to charge into the frey.



From there the Vandals wanted nothing more to do with the mighty Huns and started high tailing it to safety.


Unfortunately for them, they were very tired. Swimming across a river while exhausted and arrows raining down on your head is not advised. Many Vandals drowned in the river. I hold my troops back to avoid the same fate,


Clear victory. The numbers I lost are decieving. Nearly all those deaths were from my useless Herdsman peasants, sacraficing themselves on the bridge head as you can see in the detailed report.


After the battle, I keep my spy and Assassin tailing the Vandals to gain experience and to see what they will do while my Western Horde waits on the bridge. Sadly, my assassin dies rather quickly.


Feeling confident that they are moving west to sack the Goths holding, I begin moving the Western Horde south to Constantinople.


In the east, my Eastern Horde is making its way along the coast towards Sinope, while I send the reinforcement army to sack Katois.


My reinforcement army has built it's seige weapons and prepares to assault Katois.


There's not too much to this battle. I set up three rams in the front and one on the side.


The main army waits after breaking through the gates for my Horse Archers to drive the defenders from the walls.

The western portion have to fight their way in, a worthless Horde Spear unit and a Herdsman unit.


They route the single unit there, but you can see a unit of cavalry beginning to reinforce from the square.


I send my cavalry herdsman down the street and prepare my infantry to stand their ground and slug it out with the new enemy cavarly unit.


Since I despise my worthless infantry, I let them fight alone until they are on the breaking point of routing in order to tire the enemy as much as possible (I guess they aren't totally useless). When I think my infantry are about to break, I send in my mounted herdsman to finish of the enemy cavalry.


From there I had free entry on all sides. I simply mob the square with all my units. Clear victory. As you can see again from the detailed scroll, most of my casualties were from my fodder, the Horde Spearman.


I sack it of course. Not much coin, but every bit helps.


The first part of my Eastern Horde is almost upon Sinope while the rest struggle to catch up. Looks like easy pickings, and it should have more of a tasty reward for looting as well.


The idiot Vandals of sent the Goths to flight. One more enormous horde is now out there to worry about and try to track.


My Eastern Horde prepares to assault Sinope, the first clash with the mighty ERE. Though, they don't seem to really be at home at the moment. Should be easy pickings.


I will leave you there for now. I will update the rest of this playing session when the screens have finished uploading.

Advice, critiques and suggestions are more than welcome from all.

Hope you enjoy.

[This message has been edited by Bones40 (edited 07-20-2009 @ 06:40 PM).]

Then I was going to do a Macedonian AAR and sure enough, someone started one of those too

Sorry. >.>

Looking good. Never really liked Huns, or hordes in general, but at least the Huns have good cavalry to make up for their crap horde spearmen.

Yay!!! New AAR!!!

Speaking of AARs, someone needs to comment on mine so I can update it. :P
(I apologize for shameless AAR advertisement in this thread)

I would, but I commented in it yesterday and am still the last comment. You should be good to go.

Sorry I didn't finish my first update today like I said I would. Something is up with photobucket. I've been uploading 22 pics all day long...for probably about the last 10 hours and it's only 50% done. Not sure what's going on there.

I see that now. Time for the write up!
Also, I prefer Imageshack over Photobucket.

Looking good so far, Bones. No worries.

Is history poisonous? Great Gods of Thunder, I must be nigh onto death then, buried as I am in the stuff. Where can I find this antidote of which you speak?

Or did you mean anecdote?

Smart ass. :P

I fixed it.

[This message has been edited by Bones40 (edited 07-21-2009 @ 05:52 AM).]

Sorry I didn't finish my first update today like I said I would. Something is up with photobucket. I've been uploading 22 pics all day long...for probably about the last 10 hours and it's only 50% done. Not sure what's going on there.

Generally when that happens on my photobucket account (which I don't use), I find out which pictures I have uploaded, cancel, and try again with a smaller batch.

Also, I prefer Imageshack over Photobucket.

Very sensible.

Good luck with your pillaging, conquering, butchering, looting and raiding!

if in my Hun campains I like making lot's of hordes and my biggest sacks ever were constantinople ceaserya (sp) and one other I got like 15 k from ceaserya and 25 k from constantinople and 17 k from that last city. good luck with the rest of your aar

Yes the Huns!! You should take a peek at Severous's Huns AAR which is really old but it might give you some ideas of how to go about your campaign. Looks like you have things under control though. In my Hun campaign I sacked until I was down to three half stacks and then I setteled in Londoninium and bought most of Africa :P

Good luck!

Welcome to my first AAR. I was going to do a Germanic AAR, but then I saw there was one going

oopsies

Quoted from IncendieryPiggy:

Yes the Huns!! You should take a peek at Severous's Huns AAR which is really old but it might give you some ideas of how to go about your campaign. Looks like you have things under control though. In my Hun campaign I sacked until I was down to three half stacks and then I setteled in Londoninium and bought most of Africa :P

Good luck!

Yeah, I could probably use some advice for when I start settling. I know there's a method to it that allows you to control which units will vanish with each settlement. I know SubRosa's Sarmatian AAR goes into great detail regarding this. I may look at that when the time comes, or I may just fly by the seat of my pants.



Ok, here is a small update. Actually, it's just the end of the first update which was delayed due to photobucket.

First off, here are my family members which I neglected to put into my first update, starting with my faction leader, Tukhechjen.


My faction heir, Kandak.


His older brother, and probably more suitable heir, Diggiz. He also has four sons already!


And the youngest brother, Ellak.


So we left off with Diggiz and Ellak, leading the Eastern Horde, readying to make first contact with the ERE at Sinope. Diggiz is eager to make a name for himself after being passed over by his father as Faction Heir. Sadly, Sinope was not going to provide much of a challenge.


As you can see, Diggiz hired a unit of Bosporin Infantry and two units of Veteranii to replace his nearly useless Horde Spearman.

The walls were undefended when we entered. Two units of Hippo-Toxotai, one of which is the Roman Captain, move out of the square to engage. Diggiz takes it upon himself to deal with these.


He then orders his mercenary infantry to handle the square. They approach from two sides, envelop the enemy and destroy them.


Clear victory. After all the reports he had heard about the mighty ERE, Diggiz is disgusted with the lack of real fighting.


Not a bad take for such an easy fight.


Diggiz sends Ellak west to engage a group of rebels reported by his scouts to give young Ellak more experience commanding his men.


Ellak considered it more of a slap in the face. As if he'd get any valuable experience engaging these rebels. He sent his mounted archers to deal with the pests.


Nothing to it. It was more of a Circle Hunt than a battle.


However, as the battle ended, Ellak's scouts arrived in camp, exhausted from hard riding. They reported a large Roman army to the south that his brother could have no idea was there. Ellak grabbed the nearest fresh scout and gave him instructions to head as fast as possible to Diggiz to inform him of the army and to tell him that he was in pursuit and would meet him at Caesarea when he had dealt with Romans.

Meanwhile, Diggiz himself advanced south to Caesarea. He too was met with the site he'd been anticipating since leaving their homes on the Steppes with promises from their father that they would meet great enemies in the west. They had come to these lands to engage the armies of the greatest empire known to the history of man. By the looks of it, he had found them at last.



(I'm no story teller, but let me know if you prefer this type of writing compared to the first post.)

[This message has been edited by Bones40 (edited 07-22-2009 @ 06:32 PM).]

I prefer the second post a little bit to the first.

good post and the roman HA are called hippo-toxi

No, Hippo-Toxotai.

Quoted from Brutiangodofrock:

No, Hippo-Toxotai.

Thank you. I've fixed it.

We last left the Huns with Diggiz and Ellak making independant sightings of the fabled Eastern Roman Empire Armies in Asia Minor.

Meanwhile, in the west, Tukhechjen and Kandak are closing in on the borders of the Romans lands after a scrape with the Vandals.


While Constantinople itself was lightly defended, Tukhechjen's scouts reported a large army to the west. He besieged Constantinople in the hopes that the larger army to the west would come to the aid of the garrison and meet him in the open field, saving him the trouble of gaining entry to the city. The Roman army marched east exactly as Tukhechjen had hoped, until they caught site of the Hun army. That promted them to veer off course and wait in the harbor. So Tukhechjen sent his heir, Kandak to deal with them as he prepared siege weapons to gain entry to the city.


This battle was a mess and very hard to take proper screenshots of, but I will describe it as best I can.

Kandak sent his speedy horse archers and light cavalry units around the Roman lines in two groups, keeping his heavy cavalry in a battle line in the center.


He waited for the Romans to get spread out and disorganized chasing his light cavalry and then sprung the trap.


Kandak cursed as two units of his valuable horse archers allowd the enemy to get to close and were caught in melee action.


He signaled his heavy cavalry to put an end to this fight, he was losing too many men. His father would not be happy.


They made short work of the tired and unorganized Roman lines. He was angry at the amount of losses, but it was still a victory.


The road was now clear for the Western Horde to pluck the Jewel out of the Crown of the Roman Empire, Constantinople. However, Tukhechjen was beginning to worry that he had not brought enough men with him to complete the sacking of Greece.


In Asia Minor, Diggiz and Ellak were preparing for what they hoped would be an epic struggle against the Romans.


In the next report from his scouts though, Ellak was dissapointed to see that the Roman army he was persuing had moved east to aid in the defense of Caesarea. All that was in his path was a tiny Roman army that would bring no glory. When his own scouts informed Diggiz of the news he said nothing, but a terrible grin began to grow on his weathered face. Now he would test the true mettle of these Romans and prove that he could lead his men to great victories in the hopes his Father would change his mind about naming Kendak his heir.


He wasted no time in bringing forth his men to face the two Roman armies.


The reinforcing army, lead by Numerius Flavius, had somehow managed to get behind Diggiz and his army and threatened his rear. Diggiz quickly ordered his horse archers to engage the force in front and begin to whittle them down while he prepared his heavy lancers to deal with the threat behind him. He would lead this charge personally and draw first blood.


He sought out Numerius from the onset and charged carelessly into the Roman lines.


The rest of the Hun heavy cavalry caught the blood lust from their commander and laid into the Romans with unmatched ferver. Diggiz feared his archers needed to be reinforced on the main battlefield, driving him to kill all the faster.


Little did he know on the other side of the battlefield, but he Hun Horsemen were doing what they did best, killing from a distance without risking themselves in hand to hand combat. They were doing a great job of creating chaos in the Roman lines, preparing them for devestating charges by Diggiz and the rest of the Hun heavy cavlry.


They were so efficient at their job, in fact, that they sensed the Roman army was at a breaking point and never waited for Diggiz to arrive to deliver the finishing blow. They drew swords and charged.


The Romans broke on contact and began to route and were ridden down under Hun hooves. Diggiz had his first Heroic Victory. The Shamans would tell the tale of this battle for generations. Something that would be hard for his father to ignore.


With the victory, he was able to gain more retinue members.


The victory left Caesarae nearly undefended. It would fall soon but Diggiz held out hope that the third army his scouts had spotted earlier to the east would be coming to it's defense.

Meanwhile, Ellak found a new target. He had found Ancyra. He sent word to his brother of his intentions and didn't wait for his approval.

[This message has been edited by Bones40 (edited 07-22-2009 @ 07:36 PM).]

Nice update I have a tip for when you intend to settle it helped me destroy the Goth hordes kill off the vandals and threatend both roman empires that they started tributing to me.


It is 3 tribal cav to chase horse archers. 1 general 1 infanty in case you want to besige a settlement 4 hunnic archers it doesent matter whitch one elite or normal. Now as the main power house 6 hun lancers and 4 hunnic heavy cav with this one army I defeated the goths vandals and heavily damaged the WRE and ERE. I deployed horse archers in the front line to defeat enemy HA and harase their infantry tribal cav behind them to chase enemy HA s then hun lancers in a line about 5 men deep this will crush the enemy front line in a charge. Now finally the general flanked by 2 hunnic heavy cav on each side as the final trump card with your one infantry way behind out of harms way.

That's very similar to the tactics I am using, though it may be hard to see with my terrible screen shot skills. I generally send the horse archers around the enemy (half around each flank) to shoot into the back of the enemies. The light cav serves to charge into any units closing on my HA's...if I'm micromanaging enough. I lost 3 HA units in that play session, not something I'm happy about.

The enemy army generally becomes a confused mess splitting up into groups andchasing around my HAs and I pick an opportune time to charge my heavies at isolated units.

I lost too many heavies in the fight outside of Caesarea because I thought they would come in on the side of the map, but they came in on the corner(I didn't even look at the campaign map that shows where they will come in. I just assumed)...right behind me. I was forced to mass charge my heavies as they entered the field. It worked pretty good but I took more losses than I would have if they came in from the side as I expected.

We last left off with Tukhechjen preparing to assault Constantinople with the Western Horde while Diggiz and Ellak were approaching Caesarea and Ancyra, respectively.


In the North, the Vandals seem to want a piece of the ERE as well, heading for Sirmium.


Two of Diggiz's sons come of age on the same turn. I've never seen this happen. At first I thought maybe they were twins but Ellac(not to be confused with his Uncle Ellak) is two years older than Tuldila.


Ellak makes it to Ancyra and besieges it. I think I will have to wait them out on this one.


In the west, Kendak approaches a lightly defended Thesalonica...


...while Tukhechjen assaults Constantinople.


On the surface, this looks like it will be an easy fight. And it would have been had I taken the time to set up my towers on blind spots and use my Horde Spearman as wall runners, but for no good reason I'm sick of dragging those Spearman around so I decide to trim the fat a bit in this battle.

I set up my towers, all on one wall.


I was hoping my siege towers would clear the walls for me, but they only targeted one enemy unit.


Then it was on to the wall fighting...


Looks like my mass of Spearmen will route that one unit, doesn't it? Well if you thought so, you'd be wrong. That one unit of routed all my infantry...save one.

Fraps lost the screen shot but I sent one unit to wall run around to the west gate to let my Cavalry in. There wasn't much to it after that. I was in a hurry so I just mobbed the square and took more casualties than if I'd lured them out with my arrows.


Heh. It was a blood bath. I sure got rid of my Spearmen though.


A very nice haul.


Tukhechjen gets a special reward.


A little to the west, a small ERE army comes to the aid of Thesalonica.


It will save Kendak the trouble of a siege.


The large garrison acts as reinforcements, and the approach on my left flank. I send my horse archers to harrass them.


And I send my Heavy cav to deal with the lone Roman General, while rotating the rest of my cavalry to face the garrison.


The General is swallowed up by my horsemen, including his bodyguard.


These units of enemy light cavalry seem lost.


The Roman army is in dissaray and there Commander is surrounded by my men...


...and put to the sword.


Clear victory.


Thessalonica is left undefended.

And is sacked.


Meanwhile, my diplomat acting as a spy has reached Athens and found it lightly defended.


Kendak immediately heads there.


In Asia minor, Diggiz is faced with a bit of a problem.


The army itself isn't a problem. However, Diggiz has the siege equipment built and is waiting for his infantry to join the army...they are just north of him there. The new ERE army is restricting their movement and they can't join him. So I am faced with either having Diggiz call off the siege and defeat the new army, or send one of his other enemies north around the mountains to clear that army. I choose the latter option and send the army. After the the battle for Constantinople, I need to conserve my men. Waiting out sieges will become more common now.

Uldiz, the third son of Diggiz, comes of age.


And is no prize.


In the south, Kandak assaults Athens.


My infantry get atop the walls and open the gates for my cavalry and I proceed to the square to set a trap.


Heavy cavalry on either side of the opening and a single unit of horse archers is sent forward to draw out the enemy.


It works as planned and the enemy is squashed.


Clear victory.


Athens is sacked and a nice boon to the treasury is aquired.


Things have been going very smooth this campaign. I started to wonder when things would get exciting. Right about then the Vandals decide they might be ready to avenge their earlier loss to me at the beginning of the campaign. They have sacked Sirmium and look to be coming for a confrontation.


This doesn't look good. I scrap together the few armies I have in the area and prepare to hold a mountain pass to limit the Vandal's numbers advantage.


Things are better in the east, but not much. The Sassanids have appeared behind me. The two armies you see of mine north of Caesarea are just Horde Spearman for the most part. While Ellak is besieging Ancyra, the rest of the horde is spread out and faced with a dilemma that could leave them very weak without the ability to train new units or even retrain units.


If you have any suggestions on how I can make this better, please feel free. Whether it's with the presentation or with gameplay/strategy.

[This message has been edited by Bones40 (edited 07-24-2009 @ 03:05 AM).]

if you want new units just ocuppy a large city retrain all your troops then abandon it and destroy all the buildings. I liked how you were presenting it in your other posts more than this. good luck.

Very nice.

Quoted from masterbrett12345:

I liked how you were presenting it in your other posts more than this.

Yeah, I liked writing it better that way too but I started to realize that back stories were forming with the characters and a whole side story to the actual conquest. I was making it up as I went, so I realized the amount of time it was going to take to plan out the story and fit it in and I just don't have that kind of time right now. I'll think about doing that for my next AAR though.

Quoted from Hussarknight:

Very nice.

Thanks


New Update:
Diggiz finally gets his infantry joined with him and orders the assault of Caesarea.


He sends his infantry forward with two towers and one ram. Only one tower made it.


The Mercenary Veteranii pour out of the tower and put the defenders to flight with their swords.


Then run around the walls and put another Roman spear unit to flight with their pila.


Then it's on to th square. Diggiz orders his infantry to wait outside the square.


The Heavy Cavalry arrives on the other side of the square and waits.


A lone unit of Horse Archers are sent to lure the Romans out of the square.


The Romans fall for the trap.


The Mercenary Bosporan Infantry close the door behind them.


And the romans are cut down.


Diggiz has finally cracked Caesarea.


It's sacked for a nice sum.


Luckily he exits the city to the north, in case those Sassanids don't have the purest of intentions.


Ellak has nearly starved out Ancyra a short distance to the west.


Further west, in Thrace, The Vandals are really starting to worry me. Are they going to go around and come at me from behind? Are they going to Constantinople?


Tukhechjen breathes a sigh of relief, mixed with regret, when his spies tell him the Vandals have turned around and are headed north west.


South of Caesarea, Diggiz sends an army to clean up some remnants of the ERE and to scout further south. The army is led by none other than Captain Attila.


Attila leads his Horse Archers to the high ground to begin harrassing the Roman army.


A unit of light cavalry routes the Roman's foot archers as the heavy cavalry prepares to enter the battle.


I missed a lot of screen caps at this point because the battle was so fluid as I lured units with my HA's and crushed them with my Heavy Cavalry. Here is the last few units of Romans trying to make it to safety.


Captain Attila lives up to his historical namesake and annihilates the Romans easily.


After the battle, Attila takes a peek south and finds Tarsus. Determined to eradicate the Romans from Asia Minor, he sets his course.


Meanwhile, back at Ancyra, Titus Flavius finally leads his starving army out of the gates to engage Ellak.


Ellak positions his Horse Archers to send arrows at the Romans as they exit the city while his Heavy cavalry forms up behind them.


After a long wait, the Romans finally gain the courage to open the gates.


This lone unit leads the charge and we get a glimpse at why they were so reluctant to leave the safety of the walls.


Once that unit is detroyed, the rest of the Roman army obliges Ellak and forms up within arrow shot. Silly Romans.


Titus Flavius finally gets sick of the waiting game and charges the Horse Archers.


At the top of the screen you can see Titus realizing the trap he walked into. At the bottom you see the rest of the Romans trying to engage the Huns.


Titus goes down.


The rest of the battle was a matter of charging isolated units like this one.


And these.


The Romans are handily beaten.


I forgot to get a screen cap of the sack, but it was around 9k.


Ellak immediately heads out for the last ERE holding on Asia Minor (well, asside from Tarsus) on the west coast.


The Vandals are now harrassing the WRE. Good.


That didn't take long. Looks like they are heading to Italy. Even better.


Ellak finds a lone ERE family member.


Scratch one more ERE General.


And then continues to Ephesus.


Meanwhile, Captain Attila assaults Equitius Flavius in Tarsus.


Atilla and his Horse Archers clear the walls before sending forth his rams.


He then sends his mercenaries to do the heavy lifting.


This draws a good portion of the Roman army to the battle. They willingly expose their backs to my heavy cavalry.


Scratch another ERE general.


Then it's on to the square.


They are lured out by Attila into my mercenary Bosporin Infantry, then slammed from behind by Hun Heavy Cavalry.


Attila proves himself as a commander again.


He lets his curiosity get the better of him, and takes a peak at Antioch. Such a rich city, so lightly defended...


Ok, advice time. I'm getting to the point where I need to settle. I have the bank roll (especially if I sack Antioch) and have cleared the Greek peninsula of all enemies that will allow me to get started from scratch in relative peace. The problem is that when I first started this plan, I thought there was a land bridge from Asia minor to Constanople. I guess I've played too much M2TW. So now I'm faced with a dilemma. Should I march my Eastern Horde all the way north and around the sea to get to Greece? I want to settle Athens, Thesalonica and Constantinople. To do that, I will have to march troops to Greece. I just don't have enough there to do it.

The other option is to settle in Constantinople, Ephesus and Ancyra or probably better: Constantinople, Thesalonica and Ephesus. That would give me good see trade to start and a foot hold in Asia Minor. Another option is to settle Constantinople first, try to get a boat built to get the rest of the army over to take Thesalonica and Athens...

What are your thoughts?

why not settle constantinople Athens Thessicalonica Ethes and Anycrya or settle one settlement then abandon it to get more horde units I don't know if that will work though. Also just leave your eastern armies over in asiaminer so that the remainder of the hordes over there (I know that the horde units disband) can start the conquest of asia minor right away. Good luck.