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View Full Version : Golden horde assaulted my castle in Khazar! story.



TheRookiee
06-03-2003, 18:27
Last night I purposely took over Khazar and beefed up the castle as much as I could before the Golden Horde arrived. As English, I had a castle with catapult towers with 400 Chiv seargants and 120 CMAA and one unit of knights. I bet as Byz, I coulda gotten a fortress there to defend. I play on huge unit size setting.

Anyway, the Horde attacked with the usual 20+ thousand AND they now have bomard cannons Sweet. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

I thought this would be one sweet battle. Ever since VI, I've had far more castle battles, and they are great fun. I've anticipating the Golden Hordes' arrival just for the castle battles.

As the battle started, I had my brave unit of knights outside the castle charge into the bombards and take out two of them. They had one more bombard on the rear of my castle blasting me. My knights charged the other bombard with heavy steppe cav right on their heals. My castle was launching rocks and tons of arrows into the evil Horde. My knights barely made it to the third bombard cannon and was doing damage when they were overrun by the steppe cav... Trouble I HAD to get that bombard Alas, I only got 80% damage to hit before my knights gave their lives for the British Empire.

Golden Horde was just letting that bombard tear apart my side castle wall. 10%....15%....25%.....35%..... Then, my catapult tower started firing at the bombard cannon Yesssss... Destroyed My wall is 39% down. The mongols charge their heavy cav toward my gates. Just by this time there were already heavy losses on the mongol side just from my castle. The odd thing here is that the colored casualty bar showed no kills on my part. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif Very odd.

Mongol heavy cav charged my gates and knocked it in, but my chiv sargeants were on stand ground, hold formation 7 rows deep just inside the castle. Those cav weren't going anywhere. They charged in, and chivs reeled back from the charge, but the formation held and pushed back the cav. The cav were taking heavy casualties. The battlefield was already litted with Mongold dead bodies and the battle had only begun

Another odd observation, the colored casualty bar started counting when my men engaged the heavy cav, and it showed fairly low casualties.

Well there wasn't much for me to do at this point except keep an eye on my chivies... Man those guys just don't die They had two armor upgrades and a weapons upgrade.

The Horde was just dieing horribly. There army was spread out, most of it in range of towers halfway around the castle. Waves after waves of the Horde kept coming, and my castle defenses held strong. They were not making any headway at all.

My one unit holding the gates was down to maybe 80 men in strength; still very strong. However, they just kept charging relentlessly. It was just suicide on their part. The bodies were just insane. I've never seen so many bodies scattered all lover the map. Seeing huge boulders bounce through the enemy ranks bolstered the confidence of my men.

Eventually the time came for me to bring up another unit of chivvies. The waves kept coming, and they kept dieing. This went on for a long time. Eventually I just decided the run the game on hight speed. I ran the game on high speed for over 30 minutes straight bringing up more men as needed.

The Horde appeared invincible as there was no end to the units coming onto the battlefield. Alas, the Horde was just too much for my men who were weary from slaying the countless cavalry. I finally brought up my final chivalric sargeant who was my general and engaged the CMAAs with the Horde. The carnage was just unbelievable. My small force of 540 troops taking on the entire horde for such a long period of time.

Finally the horde just wore my troops out. They fought bravely to the death. I eagerly looked for the casualty screen as I expected their deaths to be a good few thousand... WHAAAA??? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif Only 850 mongols dead? The battlefield had so many bodies you couldn't even see dirt, and this went for a ways away from the castle.

Now I wonder if somehow the game is bugged to only count the deaths my men dealt to the enemy because that could be an accurate count of how many cav my army killed, although, I thought it'd be more. But for sure the castle alone killed thousands. This battle went on for a LONG time, and I ran it on high speed for a good portion. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

At any rate, I think I have a saved game before the battle, and a saved game after the battle, so I'll try to compare the final size of the Horde before and after to see if more died in the battle, but the screen just didn't tally the deaths. Or perhaps I was robbed of the kills since they weren't tallied correctly in the battle defeat screen?

Has anyone else experienced this?

Oh and by the way, I recommend taking Khazar and the surrounding provinces and beefing the castles up before the Horde comes because the Horde does assault the castles which makes for some great battles. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Wilbo
06-03-2003, 18:35
Ive never had one of my castles asaulted. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

Ive been playing Medieval since release and it was one of the things I looked forward to before getting the game.

Anyway to make it more likely for enemies to attack one?

Sondek
06-03-2003, 18:49
The casualty bar only seems to register the heads taken/ lost by your units, not the invisible cast of thousands manning the towers. Likewise the end of battle screen.

If you want to find how many of the Mongols died, you might find the answer in the log file. Have a look in the Logfile directory, sort it by date & open up the log files created the date of your battle using NotePad or WordPad.

The AI seems to attack if either (a) there are few defenders & the castle will take a long time to fall or (b) it's in a hurry (like the Horde) to conquer & move on.

TheRookiee
06-03-2003, 18:54
Well a sure bet is to take Khazar and get ready for the Golden Horde. They will assault it. They just arrived, and they have already assaulted three of my castles.

I bet you can easily bait the enemy to assault your castle if you leave it weak. As long as the enemy has seige weapons with him I'm pretty sure he'll assault it every time. If the enemy has to wait many years to take the castle I bet he'll assault the castle. Or if he greatly outnumbers you I bet he'll assault the castle.

I could make my save game file available to you for download if you wanna play that massive battle I just did.

I'm considering starting a new game with the whole purpose to get a fortress in Khazar all beefed up for the ultimate castle defender experience Then it would be cool to make this game available for download online for others to play.

TheRookiee
06-03-2003, 18:59
Thanks for the reply Sondek. I will look into that when I get home. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

NewJeffCT
06-03-2003, 19:18
I believe the above poster is correct - only casualties caused by your troops count

Mount Suribachi
06-03-2003, 19:31
For those wanting Castle Assaults - get VI. With the addition of besiegers losing casualties the AI is much more likely to assault. It also makes castles much more than a mere thru-point on the tech tree - they become a strategic asset

Longasc
06-03-2003, 20:16
Yes, after Viking Invasion I had now my first Campaign Castle Assault - the English assaulted me, and while they failed, they really took a heavy blood toll from me

The AI is not too good, but it did well - could have done even worse. This was on normal diff.

BTW: Kills by the Arrow Towers I guess where not counted, but after I made the first Hand-to-Hand Melee Contact, they suddenly startet counting, too.

Perhaps the same as with you, Rookkiee

The_Emperor
06-04-2003, 12:49
I wouldn't mind having a full on Fortress (complete with Cannon tower upgrades if possible) being assaulted.

That would be an awesome experience

TheRookiee
06-05-2003, 15:58
Well I checked out the log file, and it did not report the casualties that the castle inflicted upon the attackers. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

Why would they withhold the kills by the castle? I cannot think of any reasonable explanation for this discrepancy. Why only show the kills made by the defenders of the castle? Wouldn't everyone want to see the total kills made? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif Hmmpphh...

Therefore, I took on the boring task of loading the game before the attack and counting all the Mongol stacks before and after the battle. Mongols appeared to have around 5,000 less troops after the castle battle. The castle was invaded with 23,000 men but had a lot more in the province due to moving units around that turn and after. Ughh.

I'm disgruntled by the way the battle stats are displayed. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/argue.gif

Oh well. I guess I'll have to do lots of adding just to know how many kills I make on the enemy when defending castles.

Dogmeat
06-05-2003, 20:19
I had a similiar experience in Syria. As the Russians. It was a citadel, and i wanted to see if it would be assualted, and i also had little choice as the large bulk of my army was needed elsewhere. So i left 160 basic spearmen to garrison it. Bingo The next year, 3000 egyptians attacked. Best battle i've ever seen, i most have killed well over 2500 egyptians (not just peasants either). Though i did lose the battle (barely).
The amount of bodies was huge, and also the computer didn't count arrow tower deaths onto the kill ratio. But don't worry, they are dead, just your men don't get the credit for it.

TheRookiee
06-05-2003, 22:28
Thanks for the info Dogmeat. Good to have confirmation that kills are carrying over even though they aren't displayed.

Dogmeat
06-06-2003, 16:45
no prob mate http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
But trust me, they are dead. Its a shame that castle kills don't add to your kill ratio, but the tedious method of loading before and counting how many attack you, and then counting how many remains is always available.
In my case, when the 3 full egyptain stacks attacked. After the battle only half a stack was left, and there was no way my underpowered troops killed that many themselves.

Orda Khan
06-06-2003, 18:44
Perhaps beseiging that castle as the Horde you would do things a little differently? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif They allowed one unit of knights to gallop around smashing up their bombards http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

.....Orda