"Take care. Oh, and go out and have lots and lots of sex with hot chicks. Hot chicks are cool."
Heartcutter
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| Medieval Times! | | | Author: | | | IP: | C418.spaXXXX | | Date: | 03/29/00 02:03 | | Game Type: | Age of Empires Series | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 3, Max: 10, Min: 9
Lifetime Rating for Rysk_Spion: 9.3333 |   |
This is a battlereport of an Age of Empires II battle that took place in the zone in the middle of March. It is a five player FFA, where skills ranges from newbie to intermediate. It has been written in such a way that even non-AoE2 players should take pleasure in it. I also have to warn you that i am swedish and that my english is far from perfect. So sit back, open a bottle of beer, and prepare for an epic story that ranges over a thousand years....
Dear reader
WELCOME TO
"Good day, students. My name is Professor Carl Stoneyard, historican and medieval expert, and today I will tell you about five nations and thier struggle for supremacy on Salvia, a continent filled with mainly forests. We wouldn't know much about this interesting period if it wasn't for Gunnar, a captain that fought for the Britons. His diary from this time is nearly intact and show us a lot about life and death on the battlefield during this time.
-But sir, the Salvia wars lasted for several hundred years!
How could one diary decribe it all?
-Because the diary was passed on from father to son! It was a family tradition to call their sons Gunnar just like their fathers. Their sons were also appointed captians, and so the diary contains over 500 years of military history!
Now, lets take a look at the continent Salvia as it looked in the dark ages, when the five nations just conscisded of small tribes. By this time, around 500-600 A.D , one great leader arrived to each of the tribes. The legend tells that this leader shold live as long as his nation, and lead his minions to victory over the other tribes. The first goal was to improve the tribe village economy, to look for the other tribes, and to advance from the dark age to more enlightend ages, first the feudal and then the castle ages. The different leaders chose different ways to accomplish this.
The German king mojotherooster, called Mojo by his men, didnt want to live in the dark ages at all, and directly advanced to the feudal age. In this way, Mojo gained the knowledge to produce Men-at-arms and Spearmen. However, this investment in military knowledge meant that the Germans wasn't able to produce so many villagers, and so their economy didn't improve very much. Mojo counted on this, and hoped to use his military to force his enemies into submission before they was prepared.
For the Briton king, Rysk_Spion economy was more important than anything. The Britons mass produced villagers, and the villagers was collecting food from berry bushes and sheep to support more villagers. The Britons had as much as 30 villagers before they reached the feudal age. This didn't make Rysk_Spion a peaceful king, however. All he wanted to do was to get enough income so that he could fuel a much larger army later on.
The Chinese emperor mikelou3309 and the Persian sultan CHILDOTHSUN didn't think much of the enemy tribes.  Their first priority was to make walls to protect their nations. The Chinese didn't hurry to get good military or economy. They thought their weakness would make the other tribes overlook them and attack someone else instead. The Persians didn't even bother to scout for others. What could the mighty Persian empire gain from simple barbarians? From behind thier mighty walls and defenses the Persian economy developed nicely, though.
The last, but not the least, was the Celt cheiftain Ratcatcher1. "Rat" styled himself "the enlightend barbarian" and wanted to advance to the most glorious of the ages, the imperial age as quickly as possible. By doing this, he hoped to give his barbarians the best possible weapons, and then sweep through the world raiding and pillaging.
We dont now much detail about all the tribes, so lets read a bit from Gunnar's diary from the year 651 when he worked as a scout for the Briton ruler Rysk_Spion
This spring I was assinged to scout the deep forest to the south of our nation. The east had already been explored and our scouts had run into the walls of the Persians. The Persian nation was the firsts to be discovered, but we knew there was more out there. This is why I left my wife and son to live with the boars and wolves in the deep forests of Sylvia.
In the middle of June, after traveling for more than three month, I saw the first sign of human life. It was some German villagers, cutting wood in a glare. I stayed out of sight and quicky reported this back to my king. A few days later a messenger came with new orders. "Try to spot their walls and defenses. Then see how their villagers gather their food, and how many the villagers are. If you can, try to kill some of their villagers. If you can acomplish all this, you will be rewarded."
The day after, I rode into the undefended german capital. I saw that the villagers still relied on berry bushes as their main food source, and that the total population was less than half of ours. Then I spotted a man mining stone all by himself. I drew my short sword and attcked him. At first he tried to get away, but when he realized he couldn’t, he defended himself.  He was a brave man, and he managed to wound me with his club, but I hit him over the head and he fell down, dead. However, the man’s scream for help had been heard, and a german horseman charged me. I quickly turned my steed around and fled.
He hunted me for several days, as I rode back home as fast as my horse could carry me. As I finally reached home, he was on my tail, and I shouted a warning to the farmers working around the town center. The farmers rung the town bell, fortified themselves in the town center and readied their bows. As soon as the german horseman came into firing range, several arrows flew past me, and two of them hit my enemy in his chest, unsaddling him. Through this, two germans had been killed, while we didn’t lose anything. However, I guess the German king Mojo became quite angry at us, and we could consider ourselves to be his first priority target from now on. But we didn’t fear him, and after this event, I was promoted captain.
After this small incident, there wasn't much contact between the tribes for the next 250 years. During this peace, each of them prepared for the conflict they knew was unavoidable. When our archeologists and historicans analyze the remains of the nations they are able to determine the strength of each one of them. This is what they figured out:
CIVILIZATION STRENGTH AROUND 900 A.D
| Tribe | Germans | Britons | Celts | Chinese | Persians | | # of Villagers | 12 | 37 | 28 | 20 | 32 | | # of Soldiers | 22 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 5 | | Age | feudal | castle | imperial | castle | castle |
As everyone of you can see, the germans was behind both in economy and technology, but they had more soldiers than all the other tribes alltogether. Now, king Mojo decided to use this advantage and begin the crusade he had planned for. And it was the hated Britons who should be the first to suffer.
Gunnar's diary, September 911
One day, as the leaves started to fall off the trees, I and my two friends Ragnar and Leo took a long walk around the city. It was a beautiful sight! A great castle
 had been built to protect our city's eastern side, and another one was built next to it. These castles proved as defenses as well and places to train Longbowmen, warriors that could shoot arrows a very long distance. We also walked by three barracks and saw new recruits train with their spears. Then we heard a scream from the southern side of our town: "RING THE BELL! WE ARE UNDER ATTACK!!" The farmers near the town center quickly rung the bell, and I, my two friends and 3 other solders (We were six men alltogether, our entire army) took position between the town center and our castle. Here we were covered from two sides. Then we saw a miner running towards us. He had at least 20 enemy soldiers on his tail. When our enemies saw us, they let out a battlecry and charged! At first, we thought we were doomed, bur then we saw that the enemy equipment was far worse than ours. And when the fighting started, several foes were hit by arrows from our castle and town center.  I was hit by swords several times, but I wasn't badly hurt. And at least three times I delivered deadly stabbs with my spear. When the battle was over, we had lost 3 men, Leo was one of them, and the Germans was completely wiped out. We counted 22 german bodies. Two weeks later, a herald from Germany told us that their king Mojo had resigned, and that he wanted to speak with our leader Rysk_Spion about a German surrender. When we heard that, we had a town party that lasted for two days. One enemy tribe was down, three more was left."
About one hundred years after the German surrender, a war between the Celts and Chinese started. We know very little about this war. The things we know is that the Celts was the attackers, and that they managed to crush all Chinese resistance after several hard fought battles. But the Chinese didn't surrender. Several villagers escaped and started to build a new Nation to the south of the former Germany.
The Britons didn't know all this, but they knew that a war was going on in the south. Rysk_Spion then decided to use this time of infighting between the Celts and Chinese to strike a desecive blow at the Persians and secure the Britons eastern flank. The Britons now had three castles and four barracks pumping out pikemen and longbowmen.  They organised these into Sqadrants consiting of about 15 pikes and 15 bows each. These were formed as in the picture with the pikes protecting the bows. Their orders was to use the Longbowmens superior range and hold position until the enemy charged. Then the pikemen should break formation and meet the enemy, supported by the bowmen. This was good when it came to engaging enemies on an open battlefield, but not as good at attcking towns and taking down walls and defenses. Therefore, Rysk_Spion advanced to the imperial age to be able to build Trebuchets, massive siege weapons that could fire large boulders over a very long range. To save his town, an enemy had to destroy these weapons. By having their squadrants to guard their trebuchets, the Britons could force the enemy to come out of their fortifications and do battle in the open. This was the plan, at least... With his combat plan ready, Rysk_Spion boomed his military production. In the middle of the 11th century, the Britons was ready for war....
CIVILIZATION STRENGTH AROUND 1050 A.D
| Tribe | Britons | Celts | Chinese | Persians | | # of Villagers | 70 | 52 | 28 | 60 | | # of Soldiers | 77 | 50 | 0 | 24 | | Age | imperial | imperial | castle | imperial |
The Chinese military had by this time been completely defeated by the Celts, and Ratcatcher was busy burning down the rest of the Chinese buildings. The Persian army of 24 soldiers seems small, but concisted entierly of elite Paladins, fully upgraded knights. The Persians also had better walls and defenses than the other nations.
In the middle-late 1000th captain Gunnar served as leader of the pikemen section in squadrant "A", one of the two squadrants that met the Persians in spring 1078...
Gunnar's diary, april 1078
This morning, our scouts reported that the Persians had built a Town center outside thier defenses. Behind the Town center there was about 6 mighty guard towers. Our squadrant quickly moved within longbow range of the Town Center,  and the bowmen killed the peasants working near it before they could escape. Then, suddemly, we heard a horn blowing, and about ten paladins charged our formation. It was a brave charge, and it caught us with suprise, but the paladins were too few, and most of them was killed by bowfire before they could do any damage.
Now we had to get past those guard towers. It wouldn't be easy. Even if our longbows outranged the towers, it was hard to do any real damage with arrows only. Therefore we sent a messenger back home to call for trebuchets. Now a long siege began. Years passed, as our siege weapons constantly pounded the Persian towers. One after another, the towers fell, but we had just a pair of trebuchets, so it went very slowly. Once in a while there was a minor persian attack, but we all feared that this were only scouts, sacrified just to check out our strength.
Gunnar's diary, October 1102
Now we had four trebuchets and three squadrants outside the Persian gate, totally around 100 men. All towers were destroyed and we were now firing upon the gate itself. All looked very good for us, when one day, hell broke loose.
With a loud metalic noise, the two doors of the Persian wall opened, and a large Persian army approached us. We saw that our worst nightmares had come true. The Persians used ELEPHANTS!.
 
Despite the fear the all of as felt, our line held firm and our bowmen rained arrows over the slowly advancing horde. When the enemy was less than twenty yards away I shouted as loud as I could, even louder than the trumpeting of the advancing elephants:
- CHAAAAARGE!
All the pikemen of squadrant "A" redied their pikes and ran towards the enemy. The pike section of squadrant "B", positioned at our southern flank, soon followed our example. The battle now emerged into a rumble, where pikemen clashed with paladins and elephants, some pikemen got trampled immediatly, but me and a few of my men soon learned how to get round an elephants side to stabb it to death. Some Persians tried to reach our trebuchets, but they were soon cut down by squdrant "C", positioned next to the siege weapons. As the bulk of the persian army was locked in the struggle with our pikemen, Our longbowmen shot arrow after arrow into the flesh of th elephants. Soon, most of the elephants had so many wound that they simply fell to the ground due to blood loss.
A lot of my good men died that day. But in the end, we were victorious. The next morning, when we counted the dead, we estimated that we lost 30 soldiers. Our enemy lost around 15 elephants and 20 men. We knew that our victory was much due to our superior numbers, but also due to the bravery of our men. Our dead pikemen would soon be replaced by new recruits, and our enemy would never recover from the battle of Persias gate.
With the Persian army gone, the Britons could easily break down the Persian wall and start to attack Persian buildings and villagers. When both Persian castles burnt down, the sultan CHILDOTHSUN decided that this was enough. He and Rysk_Spion signed the papers of the Persian surrender. Rysk_Spion agreed to let the southern wall of Persia remain to shield the Persians and Britons from he Celts. When the negotiations were complete, CHILDOTHSUN resigned in shame. His once mighty empire was now a simple british province.
After the Persian surrender in 1110, a period of peace settles in. By this time, the Celt have reinforced the conquered parts of China with 3 Castles. They have also found the new chinese town, but finds it heavily reinforced with walls and trebuchets. To finish off China, the celts sends a siege team of 3 trebuchets with some infantry support to find another path to China.
At the same time, squadrant "B" and "C" are sent from Persia to find out what the Celts and the Chinese are doing. On a narrow road through the forest they meet with the Celt siege team. Both sides are equally suprised. 
The britons are out of order and vulernable, but so are the celts, and a fierce battle begins. We don't know very much about this battle, as Gunnar and his squadrant "A" are back in the British town for reinforcements by this time. All we know is that around 60 britons clash with around 20 celts, and that the celts were promptly defeated. Now the Britons move into position to assault the three celtish castles situated in the middle of former China. The newly formed squadrant "D" move away from the main army to look for the Chinese, while five trebuchets starts to fire upon the celtish castles. A few minor skirmishes later, the three castles are down. Now, the following conversation takes place between Rysk_Spion and Ratcatcher:
Ratcatcher: Rysk, are you kissing yellow's(he means chinese) ass?
Rysk_Spion: No, I am kicking it...
Rysk_Spion thought this sounded pretty cool, but it wasn't actually true. Squadrant "D", that were searching for the new chinese town, ran right into chinese fortifications, 
and as the Briton's tried to retreat, they were pursued by chinese champions(fully upgraded infantery) and cut down to the last man. (picture to the right) This revealed a weakness in Rysk_Spion's "squadrant" tactics. If enemy elite infantery could get close in large numbers, the pikemen wouldn't do enough damage to stop them from killing the longbowmen. Pikemen were designed to kill mounted unit or elephants, and fared bad aganist other infantery. The idea was that the longbowmen should weaken the infantry during their slow charge and prevent them from overpowering the squadrants when things got "Up close and personal". Rysk_Spion knew this, and in the year 1210 he ordered his army to stop razing the celtish buildings and instead march to new China. Squadrant "D" hadn't died in vain. Before their death, the men had spotted a hill just outside the Chinese fortifications. The hill, called "boar hill" would be an exellent battleground for the one to be on top of it... But first lets take a look at the strength of each nation, as it probably was around the year 1250.
CIVILIZATION STRENGTH AROUND 1250 A.D
| Tribe | Britons | Celts | Chinese | | # of Villagers | 70 | 60 | 45 | | # of Soldiers | 120 | 60 | 90 | | Age | imperial | imperial | imperial |
As you can see, China has turned into a power to count on. Their emperor, Mikelou, hadn't fought in any real war since the late 11th century, and has managed his economy really well during this time. Now he had around 20 cavaliers(semi-upgraded knights), 20 champions and 2 units of about 25 elite skirmishers. Skirmishers are javelin-throwers that are good aganist archers such as the British longbowman. The chinese weapons, however, wasn't upgraded at all. But Mikelou still hoped that this army would be more than a match for even then dreaded Britons...
Gunnars diary, April 1264
For month our army has travelled through dark and cold forests, and often the snow has been so deep that we simply couldn't move on and just had to wait for some of it to melt. But now, in spring, my men seems more happy and filled with life than ever before. They fell the smell of battle they say. Maybe they are right, cause today, we were ordered to make a halt on a steep hill with a lots of boar running around. This is the boar hill, I was told. Here we shold make our stand.
May 1264
For more than a week we had stayed on this hill, waiting for a new squadrant "D" to show up. When the men finally arrived, I smiled to myself when I saw the enthusiasm in the faces of these new recruits. Me and my men in squadrant "A" are the veterans now. We have been trevelling with this army since the beginning of the campaign aganist the celts. We have been through many battles aganist celtish warbands and won them all. But we havn't faced a real army yet. Maybe that is why I see the same enthusiathic look on my own mens faces as I see in these recruits. Maybe.
June 1264
A large Chinese army has gathered by the foot of the hill.
our longbowmen fire upon them from time to time, teasing them. Sometimes they manage to kill someone, too. This has been going on for a few days, but this morning, the chinese have had enough. 
A unit of maybe 20 cavaliers charged up the hill. We were taken a bit by suprise, and our pikemen didn't meet the charge until the cavaliers were almost upon the bowmen. This could have been a problem for us, but it wasn't. The cavaliers were badly armored and their weapons were outdated compared to ours. As one of them aproached me, his sword hit me on my shoulder without even hurting me. Then it was no problem for me to cut right through him with my pike. The feared chinese champions attacked together with their skirmishers, but far too late, when all the cavaliers already were killed. The champion tried to outflank our army and reach our sigege weapons, but thier light armour was no match for our longbows, and the champions died before they could get close. Then, we turned our defensive into an offensive, charging downhill to take out the skirmishers. Some of them fled, but the rest didn't stand a chance and were all killed.
The battle of Boar Hill was over. It was the bloodiest battle in history, counting over one hundred dead. Ninty percent of these were chinese. Their emperor, Mikelousacrified them in a poorly executed battle, without even giving them real weapons. But still, it was a glorios victory for us. The conquest of China is far from complete, but this battle will prove to be desecive.
Three years later, in june 1267, the chinese Emperor Mikelou resigned and comitted harakiri in his underground headquarters. The british troops had by that time destroyed virtually every important chinese building. The chinese grimly fought on until the end, but it was all in vain. Now only the Britons and the Celts remained. The British army now organized hitself after the razing of the Chinese town. The army marched back into former China without any opposition.  Then, in 1285, the second war aganist the celts started. By this time, the Celts had built up an army as big as the Briton's. It was divided into three parts:
- The southern army, which defended the southern parts of former China.
- The eastern army, which defended the Celtish heartland.
- The northern army, which were in the process of razing the walls leading to Persia. The northern army should then attack the British heartlands from the east, hopefully taking their capital by suprise.
While the southern and eastern armies concisted of heavy cavalry archers only, the nothern army also had pikemen and trebuchets with them. There are no detailed desciptions of the second war aganist the celts in Gunnars diary. Why? Nobody knows for sure. One explaination could be, that Gunnar believed this war to be completely without glory.
The Celt southern and eastern Cavalary archer armies simply didn't stand a chance aganist the British longbows. cavalary archers are good for raids and hit-and-run attcks, not for mass battles with foot archers and pikemen. Probably the celtish armies were slauthtered en masse when the four British Squadrants attacked their heartland.
In April 1359, however, something unexpected happened. A British mining colony right outside Persias gate was attacked by a large celtish army. It was the northern army, which finally had attacked through Persia and into the British heartland.
Gunnar's diary, November 1366
My dear son, When I write this to you are not born yet, but when you are old enough, I want you to read this.
In June 1360, the Celtish siege weapons started to fire upon our eastern castles. All we had for defense was one small squadrant, which I was in command of. The rest of our army was far south, burning down the remains of the celtish capital. We thougt the war was won, but somehow the celts had managed to get this army through. The celts had a large army defending their siege weapons, so I decided to hold back my squadrant and wait for reinforcements. We were lucky, and the king of the Celts, Ratcatcher, aimed the trebuchets in the wrong way and most shots missed our castle completely. Our workers could easily repair the little damage that was done. Frustrated about their siege weapon's inefficiancy, the Celts tried to storm our castles.
 The Celts tried to minic our squadrant formation using cavalry archers instead of longbowmen. When the brave Celts charged, they must have known the impossibility of their attack. We had two castles to support us as well as our usual longbows. None of the celts who charged that day will see another sunrise. Now, all we had to do were to destroy those siege weapons. They were guarded by a small force of 6 pikemen and 2 cavalry archers. This was an easy fight, my squadrant counted at least 20 men. When we charged, an arrow from a cavalry archer's short bow hit me in my chest. Usually, these arrows are deflected by my armor, but somehow this arrow got through. My wound is deadly, and I don't how many days I will survive. Althrough my loved wife, our mother, is taking good care of me, I feel how my body is getting weaker and weaker. But I want you to know something, my son. After the battle, the Celts surrendered. There is now peace in the world. In our family, all sons have become warriors just like their fathers. I want you to break this tradition, my son, and use your time on this world to preserve life instead of taking life. This is my last which. Know that your father died honouring your name. Gunnar.
 Gunnar
Very well students, what can we learn from this? I like to point out a few things:
- Pikes and Longbows are a good unit mix(especially aganist Cavalry archers)
- "Most villagers win" Are a theorem that once again proved to be right.
- FFA in black forests make interesting games.
- When you get enthusiastic about a battlereport, its hard to keep it short
Well, thats all for now. See you again sometime!"
*Puh*, if you made it all the way here I am impressed. Now, please COMMENT and tell me what you think. A flame is better than no comment at all : ) But please remember this is my first report, and I really want to get better!
Feel free to mail me at Stengaard1@hotmail.com
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