Servile War - Battle of Grannacus - Need some tips

[venividivici]

This one is proving to be my nemesis. Its the one where you have to defeat the slave army in under 60 minutes (thats under 1 minute in-game). I have a hugely overwhelming force which could easily defeat them without the time limit but my army is placed so far away at the game start that at least 15 seconds are wasted just charging to make contact (yes I do have them placed as close to the enemy as they are allowed to go). I have everyone on charge, no weapon throwing just straight in with the swords. The cavalry are sent against the enemy cavalry. I've had well over 10 goes at this and the enemy always comes out of it with at least 40-50 survivors. I'm only playing on Normal and cannot believe this one is so difficult. Is there some magical tactic that I am just missing on this one ?? Some pics of my setup at the start of the battle.............

[venividivici]

YAY beat it at last and right on the very last second too - that took a crazy 19 goes to win Formation that won it in the end was all heavy infantry with general in the front line and my two high stat units of militia. 5 units sent directly at the enemy general Crixus, and the rest spread out on the other units. I think it was the addition of the militia units that swung it for me as they seem to be able to mingle with enemy units more freely whereas the heavy infantry just bunch up with only the front line doing much damage. This was a very satisfying and tough win - great game

[duncan]

Those time-limit battles are the hardest for me, because I'm used to play defensively...good work! Go for hard...

[zedeyejoe]

Yeah, I would say cavalry and heavy infantry charge down both flanks.

Light infantry charge down the middle.

[spedius01]

Ave venividivici,

How DO you paste pictures into your topic? I've tried Cntl+C, no good. I've tried copying a print screen item from Paint, no good.

Help!!!

Vale

M.Spedius Corbulo

[pipfromslitherine]

You would probably have to host them elsewhere and then use a link into the message.

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Pip

[venividivici]

I resize the pictures to around 80-100kb and save as jpeg using Paint Shop Pro 10 then upload the pictures to www.photobucket.com You need to pay a small amount towards the hosting on this site so that you can link externally to the pictures from a forum. Have been using them for two years now and can fully recommend Photobucket.

If you need more advice let me know.

[spedius01]

Ave pip and venividivici,

Thanx for the info, very helpful, thanx again guys.

I'll hold fire about doing anything with it at present.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[Redpossum]

Spedius

Ave atque vale.

Before you go the photobucket route, why don't you see if your ISP provides a small amount of webspace with your account? Almost every ISP does, and that's an ideal place to stash pics, even if it's only 5-10 megs.


Aye thrifty, lad, aye thrifty

[spedius01]

Spedius

Ave atque vale.

Before you go the photobucket route, why don't you see if your ISP provides a small amount of webspace with your account? Almost every ISP does, and that's an ideal place to stash pics, even if it's only 5-10 megs.

Aye thrifty, lad, aye thrifty

Ave possum,

Hail and farewell to you too!

Many thanx for that info, possum. I'll certainly check it out.

Is "aye thrifty, lad, aye thrifty" going to be your signature? It sounds like something, I can imagine Long John Silver from "Treasure Island" saying, or his parrot, Cap'n Flint!! You know, "ah Jim lad", "shiver me timbers", "we'll keelhaul the swab" or "pieces of eight"!! Slightly off-topic, I know, we're supposed to be discussing Romans!

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[spedius01]

I resize the pictures to around 80-100kb and save as jpeg using Paint Shop Pro 10 then upload the pictures to www.photobucket.com You need to pay a small amount towards the hosting on this site so that you can link externally to the pictures from a forum. Have been using them for two years now and can fully recommend Photobucket.

If you need more advice let me know.

Ave venividivici,

I did check out my ISP and there was some free space for me to use but problems with javascript prevented me from using it. So, I've registered with Photobucket and, somehow, managed to get two pictures into an album. I next checked out their tutorial, but, didn't understand it. Some help would be very much the order of the day at the moment.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[ste]

IIRC that time limit was originally 50 seconds, and Iain added another 10 to it think yourselfs lucky

[venividivici]

that time limit was originally 50 seconds

50 seconds I could have developed a severe mental disorder trying to finish it in that time! Thanks to Iain I am still sane, well most of the time

[venividivici]

I did check out my ISP and there was some free space for me to use but problems with javascript prevented me from using it. So, I've registered with Photobucket and, somehow, managed to get two pictures into an album. I next checked out their tutorial, but, didn't understand it. Some help would be very much the order of the day at the moment

Hi Spedius

In your photobucket album you will have three boxes of text titled Url Tag and Img below each image thumbnail. Go to the Img box and double left click in the box to highlight all of the text in that box. Now right click on the highlighted text and click on Copy in the menu - this will place the whole line of text on your Windows clipboard. Now open a post in the LA forums and right click where the text cursor is located and choose Paste from the menu. This will copy the full Photobucket image tag into your post. Effectively all this does is provide a link to your picture hosted on photobucket from within the forums and tells the forum html code to show the picture in your post. You should now see your picture appear in the post Let me know if something goes wrong.

[spedius01]

I did check out my ISP and there was some free space for me to use but problems with javascript prevented me from using it. So, I've registered with Photobucket and, somehow, managed to get two pictures into an album. I next checked out their tutorial, but, didn't understand it. Some help would be very much the order of the day at the moment

Hi Spedius

In your photobucket album you will have three boxes of text titled Url Tag and Img below each image thumbnail. Go to the Img box and double left click in the box to highlight all of the text in that box. Now right click on the highlighted text and click on Copy in the menu - this will place the whole line of text on your Windows clipboard. Now open a post in the LA forums and right click where the text cursor is located and choose Paste from the menu. This will copy the full Photobucket image tag into your post. Effectively all this does is provide a link to your picture hosted on photobucket from within the forums and tells the forum html code to show the picture in your post. You should now see your picture appear in the post Let me know if something goes wrong.

Ave venividivici,

Yippee - it worked!!!! I had problems at first, it seems my windows clipboard had something stuck in it. When I worked out in my tiny, one-cell brain, what I was trying to do, I wrote out the link and typed it into the new post manually. Check out my latest offering "Keeping Records?".

Many thanks, my friend.

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[scipio_americanus]

This battle was evil. I must have given it 10 tries before I found success. After reading some comments above and sending heavy infantry up the middle and heavy cavalry up the flanks, I tried that plus auxiliary archers directly behind the heavy infantry.

Here's how I massed my units (all on the left half of the battlefield, as close to the enemy as possible)

HC-HC-HI-HI-HI-HI-HI-HC-HC

-Vel--Arch--Arch--Arch---Vel-

-------------General------------

The archers were close enough to reach the enemy general and the units in front of him. The heavy cavalry and heavy infantry went ahead at full charge. The velites followed up the heavy cavalry with a full charge. Finally, I sent the general ahead just to get close to the heavy infantry.

On both flanks, I came out with a surviving heavy cavalry unit thanks to the velites. On previous attempts, all the cavalry ended up routed. The central heavy infantry (Praetorians) made it ahead to the general and dispatched him pretty quickly with the assistance of the archers (dang, they can really shoot far!). The rest of the heavy infantry took out the enemy infantry more easily once the cavalry was free to come up from behind. I didn't bother with any flanking by the cavalry, as I wanted to get them engaged as soon as possible.

Won the battle with three seconds to spare. I think I was holding my breath for the entire battle, as I let out a huge breath at the end.