View Full Version : High attack = great wall defence?
Furious Mental
03-11-2007, 14:52
Is it just me, or are the best units for defending walls not necessarily those with high defense and armour stats, but those with high attack? I first noticed when defending a city with almost nothing besides Ghazis and Mutatawwia- I thought I had no chance but I won, because although I lost a fair few troops, they killed enough of the enemy to drive them off. Since that, I've done the same in every game and had the same results with other similar units. I think the reason is that up on a wall the unit can't be charged and is hard to shoot, so a lack of armour and defence skill becomes relatively less important than the ability to lop the other side's head off with a sword.
RoadKill
03-11-2007, 15:37
I agree also espicially when the enemey are using ladders, by the time 2 or three get up they are already chopped apart from the high attack, but that is only for early periods, If you where to fight the turks i would go with high defence.
My venetian heavy infantry got annihilated by spear militia when assaulting the walls using ladders. I think a big problem there could be the shield bug which reduces certain units' defense and makes them easier to kill. Currently it looks a lot like anything can defend against ladders except if really strong units like dismounted feudal knights come up(they have a shield but also a high defense stat which seems to save them from getting killed too fast).
Microwavegerbil
03-11-2007, 17:22
In my experience, it's almost impossible for anything but the heaviest of heavy infantry to take a wall with a ladder, and even then they need to be against very basic units to win.
rosscoliosis
03-11-2007, 17:28
You'll tend to see this with even peasants knocking out all comers on walls too, ha.
As a side note, I love having units duke it out on the walls, too bad pretty much as soon as the AI has siege units, (especially cannons) they pretty much just blow out 4 or 5 holes in your walls and destroy all your towers anywhere near said holes and then walk on in. :(
Of course, this is where having castles/fortresses/citadels is nice, but then you have to make strategic decisions on how many units to put within the deeper rings from the start. Unfortunately, most every time I've put effort into that, I'd stopped the assault before they got to the second ring anyway, haha.
HoreTore
03-11-2007, 19:36
If you want to attack a wall, have a seige tower. If you want to run your troops quickly at an undefended section of the wall, get a ladder. It's as simple as that really, you CANNOT attack a defended wall with ladders. It wont work. You'll have to get towers.
BTW, for those of yo who haven't. get the shield fix. Seriously. It makes the game so incredibly much better.
Yeah, w/ the shield fix, the beefy defense guys are actually probably the best at defending walls. They will cut down a fair amount of enemy troops, but the best thing is that they can hold the enemy off better, which allows your oh-so-deadly towers to smite the stalled enemies. In my experience the vast majority of kills on walls are accomplished by the ridiculous amount of fire the towers on either side will lay down... so it makes sense to park tank troops there just to stop things up and let the towers work. Even crappy spears are good for such stopping up attempts once their shields are fixed.
As for ladder attacks, I agree that the thing to do is get those guys running like crazy to some undefended area, and get them up there quickly. The biggest advantage a ladder has is that the men carrying it can run. Thus, you can use it to quickly try to divert the enemy's attention from another area. If they bite, they can become spread too thinly, allowing a main attack at the gates or other breach to be much more successful. If they don't, then you have a unit on the wall and can probably use it to flank the enemy once they are engaged fighting at the primary breach. Either way, the ladder's usefulness is much more about giving your attack an extra dimension (it's largely like flanking in an open field battle) than it is about actually trying to take a defended area by force.
FactionHeir
03-11-2007, 20:14
As for ladder attacks, I agree that the thing to do is get those guys running like crazy to some undefended area, and get them up there quickly. The biggest advantage a ladder has is that the men carrying it can run. Thus, you can use it to quickly try to divert the enemy's attention from another area. If they bite, they can become spread too thinly, allowing a main attack at the gates or other breach to be much more successful. If they don't, then you have a unit on the wall and can probably use it to flank the enemy once they are engaged fighting at the primary breach. Either way, the ladder's usefulness is much more about giving your attack an extra dimension (it's largely like flanking in an open field battle) than it is about actually trying to take a defended area by force.
Yep. Its fun to build 2 rams and 2 ladders for a siege. 1 ladder on each flank and 2 rams at front (in case 1 burns). Usually the AI leaves 1 wall section undefended and you can march those troops via ladders into the town square which triggers a full retreat by the AI. In the meantime of course you were battering away at the gate and basically get to fight the defenders from both sides :)
BTW, for those of yo who haven't. get the shield fix. Seriously. It makes the game so incredibly much better.
Well, the mods including that also seem to change a lot of other things and balances which I often don't like so I'm waiting for the official fix, hoping that it will be good.:juggle2:
Despite that, IIRC the mods use a workaround and not a real fix.
Well, the mods including that also seem to change a lot of other things and balances which I often don't like so I'm waiting for the official fix, hoping that it will be good.:juggle2:
Despite that, IIRC the mods use a workaround and not a real fix.
The original version is my standalone version, still available (linked in my sig). It zeros the shield, puts half into armor, and half into skill. So the most important aspect, the unit's frontal melee defense, is correct. Some other things are a bit off which you can find discussion of in that thread, but overall it is infinitely better than not fixing things since so many units are broken as a result of the bug. As you pointed out the fix is a workaround since we don't have code access to the game mechanics that are at fault, but it makes the units operate very close to how they should if shields were working correctly, which balances gameplay a lot and represents a large leap forward from the vanilla functionality of units.
You are of course free not to use it... but you should expect a big shock then when you update to 1.2 which will have the official fix. It'll be a lot different, where I hardly expect to notice any difference since I've been using the fix for more than a month :smile:
HoreTore
03-11-2007, 22:50
Yeah, it basically changes to whole game(to the better). I was shocked at how different and much more "real" the game feeled when I fixed it. I used foz's fix btw, not any mods.
Oh btw foz, your signature isn't working as I see it... Not sure if it's just my computer clipping it or not, but the sig stops right after "I've proposed a temporary fix to the shield bug until it"....
No it has been that way for a few weeks. I hope he fixes it soon. SadCat
Most of the time I sally out the first turn I get once a city/castle is undersiege. I usually win these battles and the rest of the time I weaken the enemy so much he cant do much when it comes time to actually assualt. The times I do defend from inside I rarely bother defending the walls. Once the AI has cats it just knocks holes in the walls and then takes out towers before assaulting. Defending the walls at that point is useless. I've noticed the AI likes to build ballistas and cats more often than other units for some odd reason. The trick here is to get your troops up on the ballista crews asap. Once you are in close their siege engines are rather useless.
What I like to do is defend in the city streets. 9 times out of 10 the AI doesnt think to use more than one avenue so I just choke the main street with infantry units and have my archers stand in the rear. I make sure the street units are positioned in a thick depth to absorb enemy cavalry charges since they can push in pretty deep at times. Save a couple units in the rear for reserves and to cover any side street attempts and thats about it. The General's unit stays in the rear too to avoid any nasty deaths. I'll also use him at times to run down fleeing enemies or make a rear attack on the enemy.
The only times I lose a city/castle, which isnt often, is usually because the enemy catches me with few defenders to begin with.
Yeah, it basically changes to whole game(to the better). I was shocked at how different and much more "real" the game feeled when I fixed it. I used foz's fix btw, not any mods.
Oh btw foz, your signature isn't working as I see it... Not sure if it's just my computer clipping it or not, but the sig stops right after "I've proposed a temporary fix to the shield bug until it"....
No it has been that way for a few weeks. I hope he fixes it soon. SadCat
Lol guys. Thanks for jumping right on that and telling me as soon as you noticed... :wall:
It had been displaying okay to me. Grr. Wish it would show me my sig the same way it shows everyone else's sig...
Anyway, I shortened it up some, somebody let me know if the link to the shield fix is showing up now, it's on the last line of the sig.
Suraknar
03-12-2007, 05:39
Well, defensive units hold pretty well the walls in early game.
I assaulted a Stone walled City with half infantry and half cavalry force.
After having torched my rams so I could no longer burst their gates, ladders were the only way in. 2 enemy units of regular spear militia held 5 units of mercenary infantry and routed them.
The enemy even made an exit from their gates but that was dealt with my cavalry.
my only option at that point being left with only cavalry and archers was to give up, since my cavalry just could not climb up the ladders and I doubted that my 3 units of archers could accomplish what 5 units of infantry ha failed to do.
But I finally decided to go all for all, I concentrated all archer fire to one of the units defending against one of the laders, till my archers run out of arrows then selected all 3 units of archers and assaulted the walls.
The first archer unit that managed to climb up routed but the other two managed to rout the defending spears and I emediatelly sent them up the gate towers to take that gate, having successfully done that I was able to storm in the city with all the cavalry at once, and win the day short of 4 minutes before the battle timer ended.
Was a long battle and I had many losses. But since then I have also been able to learn from this and keep less troops for defending my cities.
The only down side to that is when the enemy brings siege equipment such as balistas and catapults.
I found out that balistas are very capable of bringing down walls to my surprise, 3-4 shots and a stone wall crumbles.
Lol guys. Thanks for jumping right on that and telling me as soon as you noticed... :wall:
It had been displaying okay to me. Grr. Wish it would show me my sig the same way it shows everyone else's sig...
Anyway, I shortened it up some, somebody let me know if the link to the shield fix is showing up now, it's on the last line of the sig.
Works for me.
Foz
Your link is working now.
RJJ
Furious Mental
03-13-2007, 14:23
I've played with a shield fix since one was available and it hasn't made a difference. Units with high attack still take all comers.
I've played with a shield fix since one was available and it hasn't made a difference. Units with high attack still take all comers.
Well of course it doesn't make a difference for the units with high attack - they don't HAVE shields. What it does do is take the absolutely abysmal wall-holding abilities of units like dismounted feudal knights, and make them awesome instead. I'm not saying units with high attack aren't good at it, simply that w/ the fix units with high defense ALSO are good at it.
TevashSzat
03-14-2007, 02:37
Units generally seem alot better at holding walls because of the massive morale bonuses that defender gets
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