Siege and Missles

[ThaiGuy]

I'm curious if anyone else has encountered the following scenario. I'm playing the Danes in the early period and I'm laying siege to an AI German keep with a curtain wall. There are about 60 German troops garrisoned in the keep, none of which are archers and only one ballista crew. With my catapults and troops, I think it's going to be a cake walk to take the keep. Nevertheless, my sieging troops come under fire from both archers (which supposedly don't exist) and the ballista, which result in casualties I didn't anticipate. Has anyone else experienced this?

[YunDog]

Thai,
yes buddy these are the castle upgrades that you build onto your castle they are permanently manned balista towers and archer towers - you can eventually get cannon towers - doesnt matter what troops are in the castle may be just one man - they will still decimate the sieging army by themselves whilst you try and bust in and kill the men inside- once you have taken the gate and marched inside the outer wall should cease fire but then the keep will be raining arrows on you.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Cooperman]

With sieges take some siege weapons and a general with a high command rating and auto resolve you lose only a couple of men then.

[el_slapper]

It's a shame but autoresolve is the best way to assault castles... unless you want to get rid of a bad heir, of course.

[Gregoshi]

Hail ThaiGuy Welcome to the Org http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif I was confused by that mystery missile fire the first time I ran into it too.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif el_slapper.

[SmokWawelski]

Quote[/b] ]It's a shame but autoresolve is the best way to assault castles... unless you want to get rid of a bad heir, of course.

I would not put it so strongly, but the truth is that assaulting a castle was risky and lenghty process. Well manned and provisioned castle could stand to many armies that lacked motivation, as was quite common in middle ages.

Yet shame on the MTW that people decide to autoresolve sieges...

[Lehesu]

I've been practicing castle assaults on custom (there is a use for them) and have been reasonably proficient on attacking the lower to midsized castles. Still need work on the huge Citadels, though.

[SmokWawelski]

Hmm, I have never thought about CB in that way... Good idea

[Theodoret]

You really need cannon for anything above castle size. Otherwise your artillery have to get too close to be able to blast a path through to the keep. For anything above Motte and Bailey size forget the basic catapult. I usually make a siege train consisting soley of trebuchets, mangonels, and, later, cannon. I then leave that stack in a port area and ship it over to any castle in need of demolition.
Does anyone have a favourite troop type for castle assault? I tend to use spearmen because of their resistance to missile fire, but that means I have trouble killing off powerful garrison units (such as Ghulam bodyguards).

[SmokWawelski]

I usually starve the castles out and only do the attack when there is this one or two guys stuck in the castle with wait time of 8-10+ years. While assaulting I just send the cheapest unit I have, so that I will not worry about losing it.
Never actually developed strategy for assaulting well manned catles, but while on defence I just patch the whole in the wall with spears or something and shoot from behind. If I am lucky to have any cav unit in the garrison, I ASAP send them outside and run the siege unit, later just run around and look for possibilities to run over enemy archers or something of a easy target. When the enemy gets into the castle I raid them from the back or call then in for the last line of defence. Of course this cav unit has to be of high morale to take all that runnign around away from your general...

[Theodoret]

As far as defending a castle is concerned, I used two units of chivalric foot knights to chew their way through about 800 attacking troops (mostly spearmen and Ghulams) the other day. First time I've ever used foot knights and I was very impressed. Admittedly, the enemy had already suffered a fair amount of missile fire before they got to the breach, so low morale and high fatigue may have had a lot to do with it.

[Vertigo10]

Just out of curiosity, is there really any point in actually assaulting a castle? I mean, it's pretty fun and all (especially being on the defending end), but why do that when you could just starve them out? Seems sort of pointless to me.

-Vert

[Theodoret]

For the money. If you wait for a castle to fall by itself you can lose up to ten years of tax revenue from that province, and you have an army tied up besieging the castle when it could be attacking some other province. Also, the castle seems to 'downgrade' itself at the end of a siege, but this doesn't seem to happen after an assault (I think I'm correct about that, but I might be wrong).

I usually wait if the siege is only going to last three or less years. Otherwise I role out the siege engines.

[HopAlongBunny]

The castles downgrade and you lose more improvments if you starve the garrison.

I usually starve'em out unless its going to take too long. After gunpowder I build a siege train of about 10 or more cannon (siege and demi) and just blast away http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

With enough cannon you can turn any castle into a field battle Once you start the assault, get it over quick though; any towers you missed will keep shooting right to the end

[kaasbris]

There's other good reason why I want to assault Castle instead of wait them starve: (expert setting)

To prevent revolt
When I sieged Lithuania, I figured out % of rebellion was around 10%, that was fine.
But 1) if I keep sieging after months, or 2) if there's farmine, % gets hike.
Instead, If I deceide to assault, % gets drop signifiantly.

In expert setting, it's hard to keep royalty, which doesn't improve fast as other setting. And I usually do not have enough units to garrison or siege to keep % of rebellion low.

Well, it's also fun to assault castle It was too easy to assault castle in hard setting, as I could win siege even my army was just double the number of depending force. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pissed.gif

[Gregoshi]

Welcome to the Org Vertigo10. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif Thanks for stopping by.

[Vertigo10]

Ah. Thanks for all the help there. And thanks Gregoshi, I feel so welcome http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

-Vert

[ThaiGuy]

Thanks all for the replies. I know now that missles may rain down regardless of the garrisoned troops.

For those who asked why bother to assault the keep/castle, that tends to be my preference also. But if it takes more than 3 or 4 years, or I think I can do it without significant casualties, I opt for the assault (sometimes using the autoresolve). In the scenario in my original post, I was trying to take Switzerland from the Germans and was informed that the keep would not fall without assaulting it. Hence, my encounter with the mystery missles.

[Lord Romulous]

one thing i have never understood is why once you kill the visible troops on the battlefield the castle falls.

when i am facing a 3 ring citadel alot of times all the garrison troops are in the first wall and once i kill them i am awarded victory.

this seems a bit silly to me as the 2 other walls remain unbreached. and what about the troops u cant see maning the walls and towers on the 2nd and 3rd ring, did they suddenly give up the fight ?

what i would like to see is a castle not falling until you have smashed oppen the keep or citadel door.

(mental note to self, god i post this complaint so much i should stop going on and on and on and on and on)