Bridges and sieges - the achilles heal of the hordes?

[econ21]

I suspect I am nearing the end of my first WRE campaign (380AD, hold 31 provinces) and confess I am a little underwhelmed by the threat of the hordes. The AI seems to commit suicide by throwing them against bridges and into sieges.

First, a Samartian horde attacked Salona. Caught by surprise, I had only two units in the city. But the Samartians lost over a thousand men marching two of its stacks around the city wall to get to the wall they had taken with their siege tower.

Second, the Samartians, Huns and Vandals all threw themselves against very well defended bridges - one North of Salona, the other a little further north and east. True, these were entry points to my lands but the battles ended up being slaughters. It reminded me of what I did not like about Shogun - bridges became too dominant. A key thing about the hordes is its mobility - it could move around; it did not need to get fixated on one bridge.

I'm not sure what the best response of players to this is - autoresolve sieges and don't defend bridges? The shame is that sieges are rather fun to play now and bridge bottlenecks add a great dimension to defensive strategy.

[Dutch_guy]

well the sieges I had were all lot's of fun, against hordes, I didn't see the AI march it's units in front of the walls, and it always tries to use as much towers and ladders as it can.

Still, if you have more than 3 archer units in a siege you can make them suffer badly, and in stone walls or higher the ram crew always stands still in arrow / tower fire when their ram is burned to the ground ( which almost always happens in > stone wall...)

So in short the sieges are probably more fun if you have wooden walls.... but even then the Ai is easily beaten, ;

HA in streets versus infantry equals a slaughter...I once tooke out 4 out of the 5 Goth horde stacks , with just one balanced frankish army, fun but weird at the same time ;)

However what you said Simon is right ; sieges and bridge battles are indeed the bain of the hordes, in the open plain they are at their best.

:balloon2: