Angevin Campaign Stage 3 on difficulty 4 - feels impossible?

[Vidmeister]

Greetings lads and gals!

I normally play campaigns on difficulty 4, as it gives a good challenge while still carrying a real risk of losing. The AI can sometimes feel like a “zerg rush”, fielding up to twice as many units, but in campaigns such as Northern Crusades, superior troops and human tactics usually make it manageable.

Stage 3/8 of the Angevin campaign has finally broken me.

Stage 1 went badly after two unlucky breakthroughs led to a rear charge, leaving me with around 25% losses instead of the expected 10%. Stage 2 then was very difficult, but I eventually won with another 25% losses.

Stage 3 is a siege against roughly three times as much infantry and twice as many knights of comparable quality. In another player’s YouTube playthrough I checked for reference, they had five mounted and six dismounted knights + other infantry. Meanwhile here I have six spearmen (2 raw...), four knights and about 95 points, enough for only one more knight.

Have my earlier losses simply made this stage unwinnable? I have never seen losses snowball this badly in other FoG2 campaigns.

[Vidmeister]

Update: I somehow managed to beat it shortly after posting, with 17% losses. It involved corner camping and a fair amount of luck, but a win is a win.

Still an absolutely brutal scenario. It seems extremely map-dependent, as the terrain and deployment can make a huge difference to whether the numerical disadvantage is manageable at all.