Tips for Beginners: Besieged AI's behaviors

[Maltz]

This guide is written for beginners who find castle assaults difficult, and those who love to exploit AI's weakness for evil laughs. Let's use the most basic castle as an example.

Autoresolve or Not?

There are two conditions that favor autoresolve during a siege battle:

(1) You vastly outnumber the AI, say more than 2 to 1
(2) The AI has a lot of ranged units than you

If both of the conditions satisfy, auto-resolve will actually cut your loss. If only (1) is true, fight manually (if autoresolve gives you 0 loss, of course go for it). If only (2) is true, wait for the sally. If none are true, fight manually. You will get better outcome, much better than the outcome of a field battle if you wait for the AI to sally from the castle.
This is because AI's behavior can be easily predicted and exploited, as explained below.

Ranged units

There are two kinds of AI's ranged units.

(A) The wall defenders

AI uses ranged units to defend walls, just like a human would. These bowman can only attack the area in front of them - they cannot turn around and fire all of a sudden as if on the field. So basically as long as you march to their side or back, they ignore you even if you are within their range.

Besides, once the AI assigns a unit of bowman to a particular wall, it is extremely reluctant to move away , unless you have successfully breached into the castle (then they will abandon the wall and attempt to shoot you - see B - the mobile army).

The location of these wall defenders are determined based on your deployment. This means that you can easily lure all wall defenders to one or two sides of the castle by deploying all units together, then march individual units away to work on undefended places in complete safety, if there is no mobile shooters.

(B) Mobile shooters

The AI usually assigns half of its ranged unit to defend walls, and make the other half ranged units mobile. They will do their silly march inside the castle, and shoot at anything that comes close. If you don't kill off the mobile shooters first, you will suffer heavy loss.

The most conventional, and not very good way to work on the mobile shooters is use one of your own ranged units to duel them one by one. March your unit in loose formation to the other side of the castle so they only have to worry about incoming fires from one mobile shooter unit. Slap your general's inspiration on them. You can usually win the duel with reasonable losses.

If the AI has more than one mobile shooter, you might have to worry about another mobile shooter joining the shootout. That could be a bad news for you. So pull your guys back as long as that happens. That brings us to the "better way" to deal with mobile shooters.

As long as you pull back your duel unit, there is a very high chance, if not 100%, that the duelled AI mobile shooter will "chase you" out of the castle. Lure them far away from the castle with your general, and mob them up with everything you have once they are out of their friends' fire coverage!

If you have light cavalry, a charge sandwich by the light cavalry and your general should be good enough to rout them in seconds and kill them off. If you immediately retreat from the duel without killing off too much of the AI's duelled unit, you might have a harder time routing them quickly. It is a good idea to plan your ambush unit in nearby forests if there is any.

You can lure out the AI's mobile shooters one by one this way, without suffering heavy losses on your end. When you have disposed all mobile shooters, the AI will not reassign the wall defenders to become mobile shooters. So...

(C) Scoring 10/10 in targeting range

Since the wall defenders do not move, this is exactly like those brainless sieges where the AI has no ranged unit, so you can you march up your bow crew to kill everything. All you need to do is to pick a good angle from the back or side. Here is how to achieve most kills from your arrows.

First, you are in a real treat if you have "unlimited" battle timer. Because you can always wait for your general's next inspiration once the old one expires. Inspiration greatly increases your ranged unit’s accuracy. (Each Inspiration lasts about 10 rounds of fire.) Remember to turn off fire at will.

The AI's melee units march around the castle in a fixed pattern. They will remain stationary in one place for a while, and move to their next destination. They will also move away if they are being targeted by arrows, usually after 2 volleys.

What this means is that you can:

- Wait for at least one group to come into your range and just begins to stand still (stationary).
- Start shooting.
- When you see your first volley hit the target, attack a different stationary target (as the second volley might have just left the bows by the time the first volley hits).

Repeat this until the inspiration runs out, or when you cannot find any stationary target to shoot. Then you can order them to stop shooting and wait for the next inspiration.

This way you can make every one of your arrow count. Don't shoot sheltered targets (such as the wall defenders if the walls are not damaged). Don't shoot if you find out that if the arrows travel rather flat and mostly get blocked by the wall.

Sometimes, an AI unit will get stuck in a running mode, although they are actually stationary. This makes them really easy targets for you - just keep shooting them.

You can usually achieve at least 200 kills per ranged units. After some practices you might even get more than 300 kills! Keep shooting until all of your ranged units have run out of arrows. It is a very good idea to bring a lot of ranged units to these kind of siege assaults. By the time you run out of arrows, the battle is almost over.

(D) Storming the castle

When you finally run out of arrows, the rest is quite fair game. You can expect a 1 to 1 exchange of lives if the troop quality are roughly equal. If you have a lot of yari ashigaru, here is the perfect use of them. Don't forget to inspire the first unit charging in!

If one of the un-opened doors is not covered by a wall defender, you can safely burn it down without any loss, and rush your men in. Try not to attack the doors that is covered by arrow fire - those arrows hurt a lot.

Once your men are in, assign at least one unit to attack the wall defending archers. If you leave them alone, they will keep shooting you while you deal with the melee units. Your general can kill them pretty easily, too. Force them to melee as soon as possible.

That's it! Have fun!

[thirdangletheory]

One thing I've noticed in both seige battles and open field battles is that the AI doesn't react well to being surrounded. If you can get a portion of your force to their flank or rear, they will continually attempt to shift their formation to face both of your sections, but never get truly set up. It's pretty handy if the luck of the draw gives them some nice defensible terrain that they refuse to relinquish, or in a castle seige... I just wish it didn't feel like an exploit.

[Sp4]

Just about everything you do against the AI feels like an exploit =p

Btw, the wall defending archers do move.

[Maltz]

Just about everything you do against the AI feels like an exploit =p

Btw, the wall defending archers do move.
Usually they do not move if the bulk of your army (the non-shooters and those who have depleted arrows) stays in front of it. Even if it moves, we can simply find a new side or back.

[Maltz]

Now let's discuss the AI's behavior in more complicated castles.

More complicated castles are multi-layered, and each situation is quite different. The AI is usually smart enough to move forward or backward, and they have a lot more interesting behaviors to be discovered. But we can still exploit some of their key stupidity.

(1) Breach the undefended section

Deploy all but a few units of your army on one side of the castle. The goal is to draw defenders away from a certain area so you can sneak up with minimal casualties. Once you get in, you have a whole lot of things to do from there. It might take some trial and error to know which kind of deployment gets the best result. Try to capture a section that:

- Has a tower that has good potentials to kill defenders.
- Can trap enemy's ranged units for easy melee mob up. The wall defenders are very reluctant to move.

(2) Gate captures

When your unit stand in the circle in front of a tower or a gate, or anything that can be captured, you can notice the enemy's flag being lowered, followed by your own flag raised. If you capture a gate without destroying it, the AI will remove the gate in its path-finding effort. This could mean that they will take some ridiculous long route, allowing you to set up a perfect trap.

(3) Height advantage enables luring tactics

Since more advanced castles have better walls, shooting enemies from outside might not be very effective (there are still plenty of good angles, but you have to watch out for tower fire). Sometimes you can find a hill overlooking a particular section of the castle. If you can lure the enmies there, you can really make lots of kills. Watch out that the defenders will come out of the castle to chase you down. Again, easy trapping situation.

There will be also situations where you can shoot defenders from a higher layer of the castle. Watch out - the defenders will also chase you down.

You might be able to lure mobile ranged units to go after you similar to the basic Fort siege situation.

(4) Towers

Towers are probably the biggest concern in the siege. You want to dodge getting into the range of any tower that you do not intend to capture.

The great things about Towers are that it has unlimited arrows, and the AI neither knows to move away from them, nor captures them back when they pass by. A stationary AI unit within your captured Tower's range will be slowly shot to piece while you have dinner. Here are a few examples of why an AI could be locked within a tower's range.

- Ashigaru only have unlimited morale in the top layer of the castle. So it is possible that an AI unit will fall into a cycle of "Attack the intruders on the level below! - No! We are shot! Run for your lives!". All you need to do is to lure (with your arrow) one unit to chase you. Eventually the unit will be locked in a permenant routing stage just on the top layer. It will not move at all. Very easy picking. If you lure too many units at once, they might not rout very quickly. So just lure one unit at a time. If too many units respond, it might be better to pull out of the castle and take those out from the outside (much easier as the annoying tower is probably a non-factor now).

- If you have broken a gate, the tower can shoot through the gate opening to get units hiding behind it.

- Some towers are tall enough that they can shoot at units even one layer above. Free kills.

(5) All rout = win

This is one of the few cases that you want to end the battle as early as possible. This can be achieved quite easily - just keep isolating units and kill them while the rest of them are NOT on the top layer. Then suddenly all of the units will rout. You win! And all the un-killed units are automatically dead by the end.

Have fun! :D

[Sp4]

Usually they do not move if the bulk of your army (the non-shooters and those who have depleted arrows) stays in front of it. Even if it moves, we can simply find a new side or back.

They do not move much per say... also only if they don't have a lot of archers. Like one or two units. If they have more, there really are some that just stand there until you come up the wall.

[frogbeastegg]

Maltz is back! Nice to see you in these parts again.

That's a lot of good information. Knowing how to cope with castle battles is very important, and it's a subject which has gone sadly ignored. :bow:

[Nelson]

Good stuff.

Unless you’re using kisho ninja, it’s also a good idea to avoid climbing high walls. Even when unopposed the deaths to falling can be severe.

[philosofool]

Are siege weapons useful? They look expensive to recruit and maintain, and then there's building damage you have to repair promptly, so they're not exactly weapons of first resort.

Nevertheless, it would seem like the ability to destroy gates, fire towers, and walls should be useful. Are destroyed walls easier to scale? Do they still protect the enemy archers? Anything else to know about siege weapons?

I've tried using the tactics here. I have gotten results sometimes, but other times I have been less successful. I think I need to follow the rule about enemies with lots of bows in their castles.

[Maltz]

If your Siege weapon can destroy an inconveniently placed arrow tower, it might give you the much needed safe spot to slowly destroy enemies with your arrows.

There is still hope to defeat an archer-heavy defending stack. First, you can lure the mobile shooters units out with Archer duels one by one. This works great with the unpatched game, but after patches there is some difficulty (they still chase out sometimes).

Another way involves a lot of patience. The AI units have limited arrows like you. So you can purposely move any unit within the enemy's firing area, and as soon as you see arrows leaving their bows, quickly run away to move outside of their range. The enemy's arrows cannot trace you like guidede missles. They are fired assuming your unit keeps the current momentum. So theoretically you can exhaust all arrows from all AI untis one to two volleys at a time. Then they are just sitting ducks! This also works when you are the attacker on the field. But the AI will charge toward you when their ranged power drops below you by a certain extent.

The patches also weakend the effectiveness of arrows. What you used to kill with 3 units of Bow Ashigaru now might take 5. This could work against you, but it also helps you to cut down loss when you try to exhaust their arrows.

[Nelson]

Are siege weapons useful? They look expensive to recruit and maintain, and then there's building damage you have to repair promptly, so they're not exactly weapons of first resort.

Nevertheless, it would seem like the ability to destroy gates, fire towers, and walls should be useful. Are destroyed walls easier to scale? Do they still protect the enemy archers? Anything else to know about siege weapons?


I’m not sure how much cover a wrecked wall provides but I do know that you can’t order a unit to defend a smashed wall section.

The only siege weapons I typically use are guns and they require Christianity. Even then I find them most useful for killing enemy command units in the field because they fire over great range with devastating accuracy (though this is very inaccurate from a realism perspective). Their immobility is a big drawback especially when attacking.

Artillery can wreck walls and towers but your men can throw torches to burn defenses so not even fire arrows are required for this. Artillery also slows armies A LOT on the strategy map causing me to move it by sea whenever possible and independently over land.

The trebouchets can be useful if your shooting is lucky but I think they are too much trouble for what they can do. On the other hand, they do offer a different wrinkle for a siege assault and that is worthwhile for re-playability.

[Ca Putt]

my current main army has 2 catapults which I mainly use to thin out enemy lines before I storm up the walls. I also have a support army marching ahead of this army, which is composed entirely of cavalry and thus it rather swift, If a castle is only lightly defended I actually use the cavalry army to take/garrison it while the main army moves on.
May not sound particulary clever but is great fun^^

[Nelson]

I also have a support army marching ahead of this army, which is composed entirely of cavalry and thus it rather swift, If a castle is only lightly defended I actually use the cavalry army to take/garrison it while the main army moves on.
May not sound particulary clever but is great fun^^

This is a good idea, especially with some cavalry archers along to provide fire support, whether mounted or dismounted. The dismount feature is a welcomed ability when you need to climb into the works.

[Ca Putt]

Indeed, I usually beat the typical 3-4 Yumi and 3-4 Yari ashigaru you find in "un" defended castles with 2-3 cav archers, 2 Katana, 2 yari(now + the Guard cav) and a General. with losses that can be replaced in one turn. The Yari cav is not too usefull but is good to have when lureing out(and chargeing them down) the folks or when you need an extra 60 men to take a tower or when the Enemy has a stray General camping inside. With the VERY usefull tips from Maltz (props man!) I actually managed to cut down the casualties to nearly nothing^^ especially as they allow the unmounted samurai to scale the Walls and kill the wall defenders unopposed.

The biggest advantage tho is that it gives my main army to opportunity to march onward, whereas the cavalry can close up the next round.