All in all, it was a good battle. Very fun though I lost in the end.

That serpentine though. "Guys the cannon is destroyed" "Doesn't matter, reload it anyway. And don't fire the other working one"

I put my general in a unit of Conquistadores. Unfortunately, it turns out in the Mounted variant you cannot actually rally people. SO when I realized that, I thought "Oh **** I need to be smart." I resorted to a bit of dumb luck and trickery, the dumb luck was blowing up Rookie's serpentines after it killed a bunch of his own men, including the musketeers which I was afraid of most. The trickery was then getting him to start putting his aventurier crossbowmen to start targeting one of my pavise crossbowmen, who had really high defense due to the shield. Once they got in position, I unloaded the rest of my basilisk cannon ammo on them and got them mostly to size. Just enough to relieve pressure on the crossbows.

Unfortunately, Rookie knows how to get those who are about to route to permanently run and ... a survivor of his serpentine crew ended up routing the six leftovers of crossbows (along with a unit of reinforcements!). I had to pull another unit to where they once were, and started cycling crossbowmen to different areas, of which there were three in total. I managed, on the most part, to get him to keep reacting rather than act (which was beneficial, it meant I had control of the situation).

NOW, there was a moment where I *did* lose control and that was when my general died. This sent nearly all of my crossbowmen routing (and on one flank, Rookie did target the largest group with guns which can easily route an entire army. Note he has infinite morale and doesn't worry about his men leaving the battle). Once this happened, I had to get him to react again and charged on two fronts. This was pretty successful, the unit of Conquistadores that had the general managed to get in to Rookie's town center and I immediately killed the remaining musketeers he had. I then tried to charge and maneuver a little bit, but with such little space and three units of anti-cavalry bearing down on the unit the Conquistadores didn't last long.

I had to send in another unit which was much more successful, despite nearly routing a few times. He did eventually get locked out, which meant Rookie was wiping some sweat off and concentrating on the two exposed entries that a: might not come back if they flee and b: were kind of outnumbered, had slightly worse units mixed in (if they route then the other units get unsettled). I got in a unit of Alugmhavars who got the pikemen Rookie had to turn around. However, Rookie knew what I was up to and had his pikemen turn around to resume pike formation and slaughter the Conquistadores.

This moment could've changed the battle. Had I backed off, I would have had to waste precious time on getting Rookie's pikemen to turn around again. Had I continued charging, it is possible I could've killed them before they managed to get in a formation or get their pikes out. Another scenario is I don't back off and the pikemen slaughter the Conquistadores. I opted to not back off, and while I lost possibly around 10 Conquistadores he lost 60 pikemen. Bull's eye. Now I had access with cavalry to his town center again, and his army was too focused on the entrances. There was nothing else he could do. With this, I managed to free any units inside the town center to start relieving the entrances. I managed to get arquebusiers in, along with jeveliniers and cause havoc. Conquistadores running around also added to it, as it saved me plenty of soldiers with each charge they did.

In the end, the dust settled and after the last New World Cuirassier fell, I was the victor of the hard-fought battle, which so started with Rookie positioning aventurier crossbowmen on the wall and shooting my own.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Factions:

Me: Portugal
Rookie: France