Craziest thing you've done in a Strategy game?

[Trivun]

Playing a random battle on Rome Total War and i ended up as Parthia, who i frankly suck as. And to make matters worse my enemy was Macedonians, pike heavy. So no calvary charges for me. Well that didn't happen, i used all my archers arrows up and lost my three units of eastern infantry, so i was left with 3 units of Persian cavalry, two of each type of Cataphract's and a unit of war elephants. So i then proceeded to break up my entire army into pairs and micro'd that crap out of the army to successfully separate and pincer charge the entire enemy army. Of course i lost all but 2 units of Cataphract's and the equivalent of one Persian Cavalry, but i got a heroic win.

Cavalry charges can actually be very effective against pikemen. I've developed a strategy I use that nearly always causes pikemen to break. I have my cavalry make a long distance wide charge around the opposing army, as far out as I can to avoid them seeing, it's better too if there are forests or something to hide in. Get my cavalry behind the pikemen, then make a full scale charge from behind while my remaining troops distract them from a frontal attack. Then, have the main force retreat to safety while the cavalry pile in from behind and the flanks. Works a treat to break the enemy, I've sent plenty of pikemen routing like that and makes it so much easier for my infantry to continue with a major offensive while my remaining cavalry retreat back and reform to make a pincer offensive.

 

[notyouraveragejoe]

Rise Of Nations. A lot. Conquer the World campaigns. Firstly the Cold War. I picked the USSR and took the world. I nuked the Americans, declared war on NATO and took Europe really fast. Allied with China and helped them take Asia and the South East. And Australia. I took Europe, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. After making allies with Egypt (bought them off) I helped them take Africa. Finally I hit South America with bribery to win over Chile and using them as allies I took the continent. Finally North America. It tasted good.

In general Conquer the World campaigns I've conquered the World with the Bantus and the Aztecs. They were always awesome. Plus I made great headway as Napoleon.


In Civilization 4 I always do this by building a ton of cities at the start. This nets me the biggest Territory and generally screws over the other nations. The best I'd done though was wage war with a few nations. Then I'd convince the other nations to join the war. Then I'd sign peace. After the other countries had been torn apart by war I'd rejoin on the other side to cripple the already wounded nation. Its always sweet. I also love being the first to build nukes. Then after I have enough and before anyone else can build one I get them to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This means I can nuke them and they can't nuke me. Always fun.

 

[Mr. Mike]

Okay I've got two:

1) Playing the campaign of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade as Imperial Guard, and I was playing that swamp map which is a 3v3 map in skirmish (name eludes me). Anyways, it was me against 3 insane Ork bots, who quickly take most of the map. Being on a hill with only one path to reach me, I bunkered down with a line of infantry bunkers in the front as a meat shield, turrets behind, heavy gunner teams behind those and at the rear two or so Basilisks. The bodies that piled up were insane. When they stopped attacking, I slowly spread out, gaining enough resources for the IG super-tank and some more vehicles, which I used to push back the Orks and somehow wipe them out. Took probably close to two hours, but damn was it a fun match.

2) Don't know whether Mount and Blade counts as a strategy game, and this is a little anti-climatic after the previous one, but, playing on Native Expansion, an army of about 1000 Swadians attacked my capital which I'd just taken off the Rhodoks. In the siege, there was only one ladder they could climb, in single file. I stood there with my halberd and killed them off one at a time. The body pile under the ladder was immense.

 

[ottenni]

Strategic snip

Yeah i do that allot, that or i let my infantry rout, the enemy will almost always break up to chase them, making them easy picking for cavalry. Of course this is not exactly cost effective for the campaign.


On this topic, their is actually a fault in the AI that you can take advantage off. If you flank them with your cavalry out in the open after they have tried the inevitable suicide charge from their general they will not know how to respond and will simply stop moving. So you can easily march around them and get a cheap rear charge. Works wonders against the romans who always use the same setup.

 

[Trivun]

Okay I've got two:

1) Playing the campaign of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade as Imperial Guard, and I was playing that swamp map which is a 3v3 map in skirmish (name eludes me). Anyways, it was me against 3 insane Ork bots, who quickly take most of the map. Being on a hill with only one path to reach me, I bunkered down with a line of infantry bunkers in the front as a meat shield, turrets behind, heavy gunner teams behind those and at the rear two or so Basilisks. The bodies that piled up were insane. When they stopped attacking, I slowly spread out, gaining enough resources for the IG super-tank and some more vehicles, which I used to push back the Orks and somehow wipe them out. Took probably close to two hours, but damn was it a fun match.

2) Don't know whether Mount and Blade counts as a strategy game, and this is a little anti-climatic after the previous one, but, playing on Native Expansion, an army of about 1000 Swadians attacked my capital which I'd just taken off the Rhodoks. In the siege, there was only one ladder they could climb, in single file. I stood there with my halberd and killed them off one at a time. The body pile under the ladder was immense.

Can't remember the name of the map either, but in Dark Crusade I recall playing through that map, or something similar, in Campaign mode. Or it might have been a similar one in Soulstorm, but probably not.

Anyway, I basically captured all the Strategic Points and the nearby Relic and built Listening Posts on them all, then guarded the main path with a set of turrets. Had my entire base right up on the hill, spammed as many Infantry Squads as possible (with a few Basilisks for backup) and bunkered in with the Basilisks on the hill. They basically fired a few salvos to soften up the nearest enemy base, which was literally at the bottom of the hill on the side furthest from the path, and so right below my Basilisks. Sent my infantry in and took the whole area. A bit of outward expansion, and Robert's your uncle, Francis is your aunt, and the map was mine .

Reminds me of the Eldar stronghold of Tyrea actually, on the same game. I ended up defending the two entry points to my base with a set of turrets and had a single squad in the middle (standard IG infantry) to deal with any jetpack or jump troops. Attacked the small Eldar base first with the Chaos bunkered behind and dealt with that easily enough. The Chaos forces were spamming me with those spider-like tanks, so I built a secondary base right in front of the main bridge to the Eldar base. The new firebase was well placed to stop the constant stream of Eldar jump troops and teleporters from attacking my main base and also meant I could attack the Orks directly. I ended up using just three infantry squads to take one of the bridges to the Chaos base first, and dealt with the Machine Cult inside to stop the tank spamming. Then the rest of the Chaos base fell and the reinforcements that spawn were added to that small force.

Next, I sent a small force from my main base to attack the Orks from behind while I sent a second, larger force to free the Squiggoth. The chaos (no pun intended) that ensued meant a quick end to the Ork incursions. I ended up with two large forces camped out at both entry points to the Eldar base, cornering them. Had both attack and take the first two Ancient Gates, then joined them together to storm the remainder of the Eldar and the third Gate. Took a while to do, but it made for a great battle .

 

[Mr.Black]

Warhammer 40k, I had my squad of 10 Chaos Space Marines charge into close combat with 5 Grey Knight Terminators... and I actually won.

Wait. What? That's just... whatever; FOR CHAOS!

 

[Trivun]

Strategic snip

Yeah i do that allot, that or i let my infantry rout, the enemy will almost always break up to chase them, making them easy picking for cavalry. Of course this is not exactly cost effective for the campaign.


On this topic, their is actually a fault in the AI that you can take advantage off. If you flank them with your cavalry out in the open after they have tried the inevitable suicide charge from their general they will not know how to respond and will simply stop moving. So you can easily march around them and get a cheap rear charge. Works wonders against the romans who always use the same setup.

Good plan, I'll have to try that sometime .

Still on the topic of Rome: Total War, I recall on the tutorial campaign attempting to take Rome in the later stages and failing every time. Well, once when I tried to do it there were two enemy armies already camped outside the city (one Roman, one Gaul) on the side opposite to where I was attacking. I failed to get into the city anyway (like an idiot I chose siege towers instead of battering rams and trebuchets, and they got picked off by archers on the walls).

Ended up taking my entire army away from the walls to fight the pursuing armies, the Romans and Gauls that were already there. They were allied and I ended up trying to take them both down with my mostly cavalry army. Sadly, I was still too close to the wall to outflank them (my usual strategy) and my infantry were decimated and broken. I managed to do plenty of damage to the Romans eventually, but my entire army was wiped out because of my one stupid mistake . Next time I'll have to remember to deal with any troops outside the walls first and keep my siege units well away from the walls until I'm ready. I think my reasoning was that it would be easier to hold off an enemy attack from inside the city, but didn't extend that logic to realising that it also means the Roman defenders were at the advantage when I was attacking...

 

[Sh0ckFyre]

There was one point when I was in a C&C 3 match, where I was playing Scrin, and my opponent GDI. His entire base was surrounded by rows and rows of turrets so none of my vehicles could get in there. But when I got a small infantry unit near to clear the fog of war, I called in a wormhole that opened up a direct path to the enemy base, beyond the turrets. So I got all my tanks, walkers, and cruisers in, got my Mothership to fire its main gun before it got shot down, destroying EVERYTHING in the base, via causing a chain reaction from building to building.

It sticks out in my mind because if the Mothership had failed to fire 2 seconds later, I would have lost.

 

[dekkarax]

In the Red Alert 3 beta, I played in a match that lasted so long my opponent built a wall out of tesla coils across half the map.

I beat him with three aircraft carriers.

 

[BikerDread]

Played a game of Rome: Total war as Gaul. Defended a city with wooden palissade and berserkers, some cavalry, some other infantry no ranged units nobody at full strength. Enemies were somewere between 2-3 times my army. I won, with 2 guys from the cavalry unit and 3 berserkers left, 2 in 1 group and the other the last survivor. They became uberveterans, but I had to abandon the city because another army was coming. It was awesome.

 

[SturmDolch]

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, I was playing with my friend and his brother at his house. We were all allied against some bots. I marched my troops into his base and told him I'm keeping them there to protect him. Eventually, he forgot about it and went out with his troops to fight the enemy. That's when I switched our stance to him to Enemy, and wiped them out... All of them.

 

[littleghost]

In age of empires 2, I sent my villagers to cut a path in the forest all the way to the enemies base. It took forever but was quite effective.

just so you know, using catapults and trebuches is a lot quicker haha =P

OT: in Rome: Total War i pit about 40 men against 150 in a seige fight. just used the 300 tactic of funneling them onto my wall and only fighting them up there and won the battle only loosing 3 or 4 men. and only about 15 of the enemies bodies were left on the wall, the others were just pushed onto the ground. it was epic

 

[firedfns13]

I once took the time to make a massive amount of nuclear missile silos in Zero Hour to anihilate all 3 enemy bases at once. It threw a scorpion tank miles into the air and it fell right in front of the camera all uberhuge and scared the crap out of me.

Also, I like building artillery in CoH. It feels so awesome to just womp the crap out of stuff with it.
I forget my awesome CoH stories though.

 

[Iwata]

Don't know if this counts, but tabletop 40K is still a strategy game, so...

Playing my Imperial Guard against a friend's Black Templars. His unit of 5 Terminators deep-strikes and obliterates a platoon of guardsmen. My turn to fire comes, and I open up with everything I have, a couple of Leman Russ tanks, two platoons of guardsmen, a sentinel, heavy weapons, you name it, killing only a couple of termies.

Not enough. They're still standing. Next turn they'll assault my command squad... oh wait! I didn't fire my command squad. Blast, there's only one guardsman in range. Oh well... nothing to lose.

Hey, he actually hit!

Hey, he actually wounded!

Hey, you failed your armour saving roll!

Hey, you failed your morale test!

Hey, your termies are running for their lives!

Eh!

 

[Comte de Frou Frou]

I bet a full stack Milanese army with only 3 units of Venetian spear militia in a siege battle for Venice in Medieval 2 Total War.

[small](The game glitched and the ballista towers started firing cannonballs so I guess that helped)[/small]

 

[Exorian]

I play strategy games quite often, so I have a few of these. My favorite was in Empire: Total war. I united Germany as Prussia, and took Ceylon from the Dutch, and began fighting wars to turn Prussia into a colonial power. But the craziest thing I have ever done in that game was when I played as the Maratha (Indians from India).

In my attempt to unify the subcontinent under my rule, I declared war on Portugal, and captured Goa. However, the Portuguese wouldn't sign a peace treaty with me, so I decided to teach them a lesson. I crammed a bunch of cheap militia troops into a galleon, and sent them off to Europe to go raid Portugal. When I finally got there, however, Portugal was so weak that I just sent them to take it over, which they did quite easily. Thus, I turned the tables on the Europeans, by having India colonize Europe. While I set about converting the populace to Hinduism and allying with the British and the Turks, Spain and France declared war on me. After a long, brutal war through the Spanish countryside, I took Spain, and forced the remaining Spanish in Gibraltar and Italy to surrender their territories in America to me before I destroyed them. Eventually, I also took over France, and came to the aid of my ally, Britain, by conquering the fledgling United States. Eventually, everyone in continental Europe hated my guts, and I went to war with Austria, Prussia, Poland, and Russia at the same time. So I created a dozen full-strength armies, and executed a massive inland push, which ended with me having dominance over central Europe and the Balkans, with only Russia and the easternmost reaches of Poland still resisting my rule. It was pretty insane.

Also, at OP: I did pretty much the same thing once, in a world war II mod for the Civ IV giant earth map. I played as Turkey, and allied with ze Germans against Greece, helping the axis powers capture the Balkans, and the middle east.

edit: another fun thing I've done in a strategy game was in SupCom 1. I had a nuclear missile, and one of my enemies had his base covered almost entirely in shield generators, except for one small hole, which his commander was sticking halfway into. I fired the nuke at the commander, and it cause a double-nuclear explosion that wiped out his entire base in one fell stroke.

 

[Calobi]

In Age of Empires 2, it was a 4-player free for all with 3 of my friends and I. An island map was picked and I completely walled my island off. Didn't build any towers though, instead waited for the Castle Age. Once there, I built castles right behind the wall and just sat in my base, with no resources other than food from my farms. I ended up losing as I didn't have an army and one of my friends built a wonder, but it was still fun that no one could get to me. If I had had enough to build a wonder myself I would have won, but alas it was not to be.

 

[literallyanythingelse]

An awesome game of RomeTW where I was playing as ze Germans - all my armies were just 12 or so units of berserkers and a general. Beginning of each battle, I just marched my guys forward til they were about in arrow range, then clicked 'berserk', and spent the rest of the time running around my mounted general mopping up the retreating enemy.

Tactics? What are them?

It even works for fortified cities, provided you have a unit of spearmen or something to carry a ram.

 

[RamirezDoEverything]

In Age of Empires 2: Saving the game and sending every single villager/soldier/boat I had at the enemy. what an epic scene...