Taking cities with stone walls

[Kekkonen]

Whenever my troops enter a city which has a palisade or a wooden wall, I get a message about taking the gates. However, when I enter a city with stone walls, all I get are arrows and boiling oil. Is there any way of taking the gatehouse (or towers) so that subsequent units might get in without being deep fried?

[Colovion]

Get your units to go into the towers through the doorways - from the walls or from down below - then you'll get the same message.... plus the nice benefit of having their arrow towers turn against them.

[Krusader]

Yup. LAdders or siege towers. When u get your unit on the wall order them to move to a point on "the other side" of the gateway or to the street below the gatehouse. Example: If your unit climbs up the right side of the enemy gatehouse. Order them to move to the left side. They will then run through the gatehouse, and capture it, and you can send troops through.

Personally though, I use sap points ~D

[LordKhaine]

Or you can go with my favourite method, always have a few onagers (preferably heavy ones) handy. :duel:

Once you're inside, it's often good to have your missle troops/badly damaged units go around the walls capping the nearby towers as well as the gateway. That way when you head around the twisting streets you can avoid getting shot at by the nearby towers.

[Kekkonen]

Thanks. I'm just starting a Brutii campaign, and a few of the old Greek cities (Corinth, Athens too, but it's rebel-held so I can take my time sieging it to submission) have stone walls. I took Corinth the old-fashioned way, sending in a spy and then waiting until he opens the doors, then charging in. It was scantily defended, but I still took heavy losses (my Thracian mercs, for example, went from 70-something to 3; that's what you get for trying to be macho and going into a battle bare-chested). I figured there had to be a better way.

Apparently stone-walled cities in the danger zone have to be fairly well defended too, lest they turn into death-traps.

[Kekkonen]

Get your units to go into the towers through the doorways - from the walls or from down below - then you'll get the same message.... plus the nice benefit of having their arrow towers turn against them.

You can get to the towers from down below?

[chemchok]

You can get to the towers from down below?
Yeah, from inside the cities. Look for the little black doors at the base of "some" towers, move an infantry unit near it, then right click on the ramparts next to the top of the tower. They might stall for a bit, but then they'll start pouring through the door and eventually come up on the wall.

[The_Emperor]

Yeah you can only capture towers if your men walk through the little black doors.

The best way is to build a few siege towers and roll them up (towers give more protection than ladders), then once you get your guys on the walls, have them walk around from section to section... They will capture the towers & gateways as they go and then the defenders will start taking casualties from them.

If you capture all the towers on the wall section around the gateway or breach you are going to use, then the covering fire will make getting through into the city easier and discourage the enemy from hanging around on the other side contesting the breach (unless they like being shot at of course)

Using this tactic (and only siege towers) I once managed to capture all of the gateways and towers in a city to cut off the reinforcement army of Pike Phalanx troops, they were locked outside while I was free to massacre the garisson!

[MonkeyMan]

I have to admit to doing something monumentally stupid the first time i attacked a stone walled city (one with the stone wall the level below epic). I had a spy in the city and when i attacked, he opened the gates so i didn't have to wait and build any equipment. I outnumbered the enemy (carthaginians i think) 2 to 1. I ran my whole army the short distance to the gate and then tried to get them in. The AI put a unit of spears in the way and pretty much my whole army burnt to death (very pretty ~:) ) or were massacred by arrows from the towers. I did eventually win but my garrison was so pathetically small that the city rebelled a few turns later. Needless to say i soon learnt my lesson that MTW style castle assault tactics were not going to work anymore.

[RedKnight]

Ouch, that had to hurt, Monkey! Even if the way is not barred, running your troops through boiling oil will kill a real fraction of them. The first times I fought stone, I wish I knew that all I had to do was capture the gate towers with my first unit through!

When attacking stone walls, the enemy will often be very dumb and only defend certain portions heavily (opposite your troops) - the other gates will have 1 token defender, and none of the rest of the walls. So one can fairly readily move some ladders or seige towers around and take most of the rest of the walls, gates, and towers. Once that's done (and in the meanwhile), you can move your main body around to some other entrance. His main force will dumbly stay where they are for the time being, mostly. Then move your guys preferably to a place along a route that will let you ambush all the enemy guys that once were protecting his walls. (You remember - in the one place you didn't try to attack, right? ~:) ) As they trickle back toward the plaza, they're so easily to annihilate. Meanwhile you can move your archers up at leisure to finish off the plaza.

[SpencerH]

I also learned the hard way. I sent my cav through my gate (that the enemy held) to go and kill the enemy cowards that were not assaulting my city. Needless to say I was quite shocked to see oil crispy-critter an elephant and a few others (luckily it wasnt worse since they were movin fast).

[afrit]

I too ran into the boiling oil problem on my first assault after a spy opened the gate. Pretty devastating.

Few notes on assaulting stone walls:

All towers have an entrance at the bottom, except CORNER towers.


Ladders work better than siege towers on UNDEFENDED walls. If you outnumber the enemy (and usually you do if you are the besieger!), you can build more ladders in a turn. This allows you to assault multiple spots on the walls. Often the AI will only defend the section around the gate. You can easily send your ladder to another section.

Be patient when ordering troops unto the wall. It seems all units have to "regroup" their formation before moving on. YOu may think they are just hanging about the bottom of the ladder (or the entry to a tower), but they are really waiting for their comrades, and when all are near, they will climb.

Hastati on the walls often will not fire their pila if you just click on an enemy unit below. They interpret this as "throw pila before engaging in melee", so they try to get into melee position. To get them to throw, set fire at will on.

If you seriously outnumber the enemy, split your force and threaten two gates simultaneously. This often makes the AI divide its forces too, and leaves one of the 2 sites lightly defended. Simply attack that one, ignoring the other side (unless you are a master multi-tasked and can follow two battlefields simultaneously. I can't).

That's all my wisdom about sieges in a nutshell!

Afrit

[Maedhros]

For well defended cities I like a combo of towers and ladders.

I was initially afraid of ladders because I assumed the defender would just push them back.

Then I defended Sparta from a ladder assault and couldn't push them off. I think this is a ladder weakness that defenders should be able to exploit.

I like the combo of two towers and max of ladders. Ladders get men on the wall a lot faster, but towers defense is best where the wall is defended.

Once the tower men start their assault, some of the ladder climbers should be on the wall and ready to use a flanking attack to help take the wall.

Hoplite mercs are great for city attacks. Once you are advancing toward the city center you can line them up on the ave and march the whole way. A heavily defended city will exhaust themselves on the pikes. Place archers behind the phalanx for added benefit.

The buildings guard your flanks nicely. Advancing the line securely can be tedious but worth the effort.