STW2 Castle Assault/Defense Tactics

Maybe that this has been dealt with in other threads before, but thought it was worth starting up a thread on castle attack/defence tactics.

Attacking - well, the most obvious 'tactic' is to autoresolve if you outnumber the enemy as you'll invariably get a win with hardly any casualties, whereas a live battle will probably be hard won. I've yet to devise a solid attacking tactics that don't involve losing a lot of men (unless you seriously outnumber the defenders). Be interested in others best tactics.

Defense - my favoured tactic if you have enough troops to merit a player battle (what is a no-hope situation varies on the number of attackers who the defenders are), and you have a good mix of missiles/infantry is to put your missiles on the walls (the inner most wall if you're in a developed castle), with your melee troops lined up along the base of the wall, in guard mode, and spearwall if they're ashigaru. This seems counter-intuitive, as you miss out on the advantages of melee-defending a wall, but in actual fact your infantry can generally survive for quite a while (but keep flanks covered), whilst your missile troops rain down arrows/shot on your enemies from above un-interupted, pummeling their morale and generally avoiding friendly-fire because of the high angle. If its a developed castle, enemy units will have already suffered casualties and morale from scaling numerous walls and fire from towers too. If its only a fort/stronghold then your melee troops will suffer quite heavy casualties from enemy archers - so don't put in spearwall until their melee troops close for combat.

In my experience this tactic definitely beats retreating missile units from the walls when attackers start climbing and replacing with melee (or having the missiles on outer walls and leaving them to their fate). Some of the most epic battles (and wins) i've had have been putting a full stack of armoured naginata and ashigaru teppo (half/half) in a castle and having 4 stacks of experienced enemy samurai assault (as what tends to happen at the start of realm divide). Absolute massacre with teppo getting hundreds of kills each. However, even with mediocre troops with poor morale (standard ashi spears/archers), this approach can still be used to beat much larger samurai forces.

When attacking a castle, I split my units. If the opponent gets reinforments, I massacre them, when they try to reach the castle, then I split my units. The ai is terrible at that, so don't expect much losses. Depending on the situation, I send up to 7 units each to 3-4 sides of the castle. As I typically use only yari-ashigaru in most stacks, I rarely attack well defended the smallest castles(so I wait for them to come out). The bigger the castle is, the bigger problems the ai has.
I move my units near the castle (out of range of the archers) and begin to attack at the worst defended part of the castle. I send some units through a gate and some units at the walls(a low wall if possible, never a high wall), but when conquering a part of the castle I use only as much as needed for an effective attack (more would bring more losses). When the area is sure, I send more units in and do whatever makes sense: attacking more units, capture towers, waiting for a counterattack, taking the next gate with the same tactic(up, most times)

At defending a castle I prefer to lure the archers into the castle, so my units can kill them easily. It works in every castle.

On defense:
-Use your garisson units first. Trow them into battle, whatever, they will reappear next battle ... all for free.

Beyond that I always shove my archers into the walls where the AI hits, though give priority to the side from where the AI archers come (overwelming them). As soon as the AI hits the walls in order to climb them I pull back my archers a bit and send in the melee troops to defend the walls. This way you start banging on the AI with a full unit while the AI's unit is still mostly trying to scale your walls (and again you basicly overwelm them, possibly with less troops as the attacker).
Do note that when facing samurai stacks when defending with weaker troops in a developed castle .. move your troops to the top level or else they'll end up mass-routing and at the same time draw in the enemy samurai who are more than willing to slaughter you.


On the offense, besides all the exploits, which I'm not going to mention. It seems sieges work pretty well in a realistic way, meaning that when you siege you in effect trow your entire army at the walls of the enemy, from different angles, and overwelm them unit by unit (the AI has some units here, some there and some elsewhere, get every group locked in battle and make sure you overwelm the AI in at least 1 location .. capture a gate, get your general inside the walls for moral boosts and keep pushing).
These will be hardfought battles, but I personally find them a lot of fun. I rather have the losses than wait for 20 minutes for me to get enough archers in place to shoot down the AI from the rear (you absolutelly do not have to exploit the poor AI programming in order to win).