Your largest or most interesting battle?

[Dahoota]

Usually in my games, battles rarely go over 20k troops per side due to attrition. Though tonight in the middle of a MP game I had an interesting one when I discovered the Seljuk event and was invaded by 60,000 turks who magically appeared. The climax was a battle involving over 90,000 troops:



What made it memorable is that it happened in the middle of defending against a Jihad lead by another human player (Hispania) and was immediately followed by a Zunist Great Holy War by a human zunist player in Afghanistan+India which is still in progress in the screenshot. I beat the jihad but had my troops decimated in the process, so I merc-ed up and turned to Seljuk.

Definitely one the most exciting/high stress moments of CK2 I've had. Very memorable because of it.

Anyone else got any similar experiences? I imagine players get crazy battles happening during Mongol invasions.

Edit: Just noticed the image hosting site made the text unreadable. Here it is cropped:



Seljuk really could do with having some commanders added to his court.

 

[AchedTeacher]

Are casualties still that high after that change they made to battles?

 

[Dahoota]

I think two things contributed to that here. First Seljuk is the only commander in his court and he was leading his other army, where as I had 3x commanders with martial skill of 20+.

The second is I was using pure Persian horse archer retinues, they annihilate in the skirmish and pursuit phases. I remember being amazed at the numbers appearing in the pursuit phase.

 

[Moarice]

I remember I once had an awesome battle in AGOT mod.
I have around 13k troops at my command + a young, small dragon, enemies have roughly 8k + a huge dragon (which can, by decision, make a huuuuuuuuge reduction to enemy soldiers's morale and kill thousands of them). We engage in combat, and before the enemy can use a decision to decimate my troops, an event fires which causes me and the foe dragonrider to engage in combat in the skies. Through immense amounts of luck, my 5-years old dragon has managed to kill Balerion the Black Dread himself, the biggest and most powerful dragon in the entire mod. This one battle allowed me to win the war and have no further trouble with my enemies whatsoever.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

I don't have a screenshot, but I do have a story.

I was playing as a Reformed Romuva, I ruled over Pomerania, Lithuania, Bohemia, half of Pannonia, and a bit of Rus.

I had a cousin who ruled over Russia, Volga Bulgaria, and a bit of Ruthenia.

And I had another cousin who ruled over Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, and all of Scandinavia.

The Great Priest called for a GHW on Ruthenia. We all joined.

Ruthenia was a war torn nation. (It had been fighting revolts constantly for 60 or so years. It had also just converted to Catholicism and it was fighting an external invasion from the Muslim Alans.)

France and Italy came to defend it. That kept my German cousins pretty busy.

I raised my personal troops and the Holy Order. I had about 25k. My Russian cousins called their entire realm to war, they had about 12k.

Together we marched on Kiev. We began to siege it. I thought it was odd that the Ruthenians weren't near. Then, the Muslims halted their invasion.

The Ruthenians emerged with about 15k troops. I wasn't too concerned, I had superior tech and more numbers.

But a wild Western Army appeared from the South. Apparently they led the Germans on a wild goose chase, they snuck 30k troops through Byzantium!

The Ruthenians hit us, and then a few days after the Westerners hit us.

They were both attacking over rivers, so I had that advantage. The battle was tough, but I emerged victorious! Kiev feel the next week, and I won the GHW.

I was intending for Ruthenia to be incorporated into my realm, I was the top contributor. However, some 78 year old woman of the ruling dynasty who had converted to Romuva inherited?

I had to marry her to a cousin, kill a few of her kids, convert one, kill her, and do a bunch of other stuff. However I finally inherited Ruthenia..... 70 years after the GHW.

 

[Dragatus]

This battle happened on the 2.3.6 patch. I played a Karling restoration game starting in 1066 and after taking over HRE I turned to crusading. This was a Sunni Jihad to take back land I'd conquered in a crusade and while I had a huge army the vast majority of it was in Europe and by the time I managed to ferry them over I was already near -80% war score. I unloaded a small part of my army, some 10-20K troops on the coast in order to bait the Muslims and when they engaged with a similarly sized stack of their own I started landing my other troops and they started sending other local armies to join the fray, culminating in a battle involving over 120K troops. After the dust had settled I mopped up the tattered remains of the Muslim forces and sieged down all the provinces they had conquered and forced them to surrender.

I fought even larger battles during my 2.4.5 Roman game when I fended off the Aztec Invasion, but I didn't make any screenshots.

 

[sreckom92]

I was defending against the Abbassids, and even though I was outnumbered, I still had hope that things could go my way. That hope perished when they started thrashing me.
Then the Seljuks came to my aid.
For some reason.

Anyway, that wasn't really the biggest battle I had, but it was rather emotional for me.
I have no screenshot for the biggest battle, but I remember it was against the Mongols. In total, there was around 600 thousand men fighting. Of course, that was before the levies were nerfed.

 

[Dahoota]

This battle happened on the 2.3.6 patch. I played a Karling restoration game starting in 1066 and after taking over HRE I turned to crusading. This was a Sunni Jihad to take back land I'd conquered in a crusade and while I had a huge army the vast majority of it was in Europe and by the time I managed to ferry them over I was already near -80% war score. I unloaded a small part of my army, some 10-20K troops on the coast in order to bait the Muslims and when they engaged with a similarly sized stack of their own I started landing my other troops and they started sending other local armies to join the fray, culminating in a battle involving over 120K troops. After the dust had settled I mopped up the tattered remains of the Muslim forces and sieged down all the provinces they had conquered and forced them to surrender.

I fought even larger battles during my 2.4.5 Roman game when I fended off the Aztec Invasion, but I didn't make any screenshots.

Damn. I think I need to play the later start dates more.

This serves as a pretty decent illustration of how much PDS have scaled back battle casualties between the patches. The days of wiping out 80% of your enemies troops in a single battle are gone I guess.