Transition from MTW to M2TW (Sieges)

Well, this looks different...

Having played MTW fairly solidly for the last six years, I am finding the migration to M2TW a bit... challenging. Are there any other threads out there devoted to this arduous transition?

Siege battles are a particular source of confusion for me... I have seen Welsh Longbowmen (amdittedly rather bloody good, I suspect) turn numerous of my own siege towers to cinders in less volleys than I could count on a Simpsons character's hand, whilst my own peasant archers (okay, they sound pretty crummy - and admittedly were not set to use flaming arrows) barely killed a couple of attacking men as they pushed forward their battering ram in a separate battle.

My melee troops like to take all day to leisurely climb my siege towers, then it takes many repeated commands to move along the enemy's pallisades... And when they do finally charge the enemy standing there only a couple engage.

I still have not figured out where I need to place my men to capture the enemy's gate (I managed it by luck rather than judgement, which may explain why I kept losing it again soon afterward) and I don't even know what towers are for! (Although I suspect it may have to do with gaining access to and control of walls?)

Worst of all, I've played through the siege tutorials and read the manual in its entirity (was bored waiting for the game to arrive) and still can't seem to fathom it... :(

Not that this ist stopping me enjoying the game - I actually like not knowing what's going on! :D

You capture towers and gates when there aren't any enemy soldiers nearby. And I know how it's frustrating when your soldiers just can't seem to comprehend that climbing the tower or the ladder is for the greater good, I know that peasant folk in the day weren't very educated, but still... gah! I still haven't found a way to get around this "I would climb the ladder, but I don't wanna!" feature/bug.

To get around the problem of your siege equipment being shot to pieces, try making two or three rams and three or four towers (depending on your own army's size), also try sending your very cheap expendable soldiers (plain peasants) up front in loose formation to absorb the arrows from any archers on the walls this not only tires them defenders, but also drains their ammo. When those peasants are low on numbers send your archers up front in loose formation, the enemy will still target a few of your remaining peasants thus keeping your archers relatively safe. All the while your battering rams and siege towers will be closing in. Send the siege equipment in all at once, that way if one of those pesky defenders decide to target your ram instead, you'll still have another ram coming up behind it as a back up.

If your soldiers holding the siege equipment keep dying out, try using troops with large shields (like levy spearmen) to hold the equipment, shields are very effective at stopping missiles. If the enemy also sally out with cavalry etc. you'll have a unit of spears there to deal with it too.

If those tips don't work, maybe the good ol' fashioned MTW tactic of charging toward the gate with your entire army could work... :laugh4:
If you don't like the idea of all those casualties on the other hand, maybe just wait out the siege until you can start building catapults and trebuchets.

Theres many similar threads on this..but heres some info


Archers should always be set to fire flaming arrows as the defender in a seige,they affectmorale,have a better kill rate and theres always the off-chance they could destroy an attacking tower/ram. Welsh longbowmen are much farther range than peasant archers so thats why they had an easier time of it. However,depending on your archers/towers to take out the attacking seige engines is risky. Far easier to sally a militia unit and attack the ram/tower troops. The AI wont reuse the seige engines you disengage them from.

Instead of using towers,if at all possible use ladders. You can assault all city and castle walls with ladders at least until the city has *huge stone walls* upgrade. Laddercarrying troops can run with the ladder and ladders are built faster than towers. Also, a tower "fills up" with troops b4 the ramp comes down and they engage your units on the walls,whereas a ladder will disembark the units soldier by soldier as they climb it.

A unit on your walls is in a tight area with enough room for only a few at a time to engage,which is why only a few appear to be engaged. It helps to pre-form your units before you attack, make them into a tighter line so they are "ready" to be on a wall or go through a breach/gate. A unit of spearmen for example will start at typically 4 ranks deep, which Ill usually change to about 6 ranks deep b4 the battle. This makes your unit size abit smaller so they move on/off walls better and also attack/defend better
because of a deeper unit size.

Towers are garrisoned by having troops nearby or on the walls next to them. In this sense, its required that you rout/destroy those forces in order to gain control over the towers.Towers that are garrisoned will have a flag above them.Towers w/o troops will not have a flag on them. Garrisoned towers shoot arrows! Even the crummiest settlement with the worst possible towers and no upgrades will shoot arrows from the towers on the walls...
so use them as often as possible.


Hope it helps.

I would disagree with the notion that having defender archers firing flaming arrows is useful in M2TW. It seemed more useful back in RTW iirc.

Generally, when defending, place your archers in a bulk hugged against a tower far away from the enemies likely anchor point so the trajectory favors you and allows you to kill more. Flaming arrows are relatively useless at burning equipment unless you are the AI. Generally unless a missile is coded to do damage in the projectile file, its very unlikely it will ever set something alight.

Towers are better than ladders in that your units are protected while going up (as well as approaching the walls) and will arrive in bulk, meaning elss die as troops come forth. They are slower however and less maneuvrable.

To capture a gate, you need units standing near the inside portion of the gate. This means either on the ground or on the wall portion right above the gate. Towers are counted as manned if a nearby unit stands either right below it or stands on an adjacent wall. Regardless of unit number btw, so 1 peasant can man 2 cannon towers for instance.

If you have artillery inside your city while defending, never use flaming projectiles as those do less damage than normal projectiles and are less accurate against siege equipment.

Flaming arrows reduce morale and at least give a chance to set stuff alight.In the case of sub-par archers (peasant,militia etc) It at least is more effective than just a regular arrow inasmuch as it CAN in limited cases either reduce morale OR set fires.

Have pics at home of a field battle (not a siege) in which there are 2 trebs that were set alight from the volume of fire-arrows being shot. Quite the sight...and in that case those are arrows that have "missed" their targets and hit the trebs instead since the treb unit was engaged in melee. Sooo ...some slim chance at least of success youd think.

Ive only noticed a tower unit massing pre-attack for the 1st unit, the others behind it simply climb up and file out, so unless its a hvy inf or something decent going in as the 1st unit,the advantages are few over speed,manuverability and the option to pick up the ladder and reuse it. Towers as well can get burned down whereas a ladder unit must lose all 3 ladders 1 at a time in order to become ineffective.

I do agree that if you have sufficient forces you should try to group as many
archers as possible to concentrate their fire. However, it can be said that having 2 groupsis superior to 1 since there are 2 flanks presented to attack.

Generally speaking low level archers will hardly reduce morale because they will hardly kill any unit with flaming arrows due to horrible accuracy. The distance between siege equipment and archer plays some role in the chance of setting it alight due to loss of accuracy over range. However, I have yet to see a human player's archers on the walls shoot down a siege tower that is relatively close but has not yet latched on.
That said, normal arrows have almost double the accuracy of flaming arrows, so you will kill at a higher rate with them especially since you got the height advantage. To use it, you have to place your archers as I described in my previous post by having them hug a tower away from the enemy in square formation.

Towers vs ladders. The dispute can be endless, but generally towers will reduce your casualties as opposed to ladders.
1. Even a burned down tower is a large obstacle covering the exact same dimensions as an intact tower. Therefore you can use them as cover for your troops.
2. As a tower approaches the wall, you generally hardly lose any of its carriers while you lose significant amounts of your ladder carriers.
3. Units disembarking from ladders suffer a morale penalty.
4. As you disembark from ladders, you get 2 at most 3 units on per 3-4 seconds. If the enemy on the walls has one hand weapons that are not spears, they will easily kill your ladder troops, inflicting heavy casualties as those do not have a chance to fight back at all (immobilized for 1-2 seconds on reaching wall)
5. As you disembark from towers on the other hand, you get about 20 men rushing down with the rest close behind. You can also overload a tower to about 30 before opening the hatch if you know how to. Those push away the enemy breaking their formation which gives you an advantage and even if they kill the first few coming out, the rest due to sheer numbers and mass actually get to fight back more quickly and will prevent the wall unit from escaping unless in a rout, allowing you to focus your efforts elsewhere.

The only time I would advise ladders is when you are trying to exploit the AI or if you are storming a citadel or if you are attacking from 3 sides and need to be quick.

My suggestion - Be sure to use decent melee troops when using either towers or ladders. Swords and axes are more preferable to spears and halberds. In my current game, I've been using Hashishim to storm the walls and they're doing very well. Expensive but very effective. And they seem to shrug off arrows most of the time.

I agree that towers reduce casualties more than ladders. But! Towers are soooo slow, they're most often burnt down before they even reach the walls... And it takes time for the men to assemble and deploy.

On the other hand, when assaulting a huge city with a central keep, ladders are more useful as you can re-use them - carry them through the outer gates and scale the inner walls. I usually use archers for this since the enemy AI hardly ever mans the inner walls.

Instead their General and remaining units stand in the middle of the square and gets peppered by my archers on the walls.

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I have a query though:

When placing archers on walls as the defender, can we place more than 2 units on the same stretch of wall?

And: Will they be more effective? Or will they end up shooting each other (via friendly fire)?

I always use low-level archers with flaming missiles to great effect and without fail. On walls I initially use them to target seige equipment then after a bit I switch over to non flaming targeting the infantry/general in front of the gate. Very rarely do I set seige equipment on fire though. I then switch back over to flaming to target the back of the enemy coming over the walls using towers or ladders. If I have more than one group of archers I set them up so that one group will fire into the back of the enemy breaching the gate and the other into the back of the group scaling the walls with ladders or seige tower while my infantry engage their front. With flaming missiles I am always assured of a route even if holding the front with very mediocre infantry. Always works without fail.

If I have a ballista I would use it to target the enemy that has breached the gate from either side but a fair bit away while a unit of my infantry hold the front. Again use flaming bolts. Very, very effective against generals.

The idea of low-level archers is not the kill but the morale decrease. Two peasant archers & 2 militia should be enough to win over a full enemy stack for a seige. Include a 1x ballista and its guarranteed.

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Originally Posted by Nebuchadnezzar

The idea of low-level archers is not the kill but the morale decrease. Two peasant archers & 2 militia should be enough to win over a full enemy stack for a seige. Include a 1x ballista and its guarranteed.

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I want to see you beat a full stack with this :grin2:

I have been playing M2TW for 15 months and still don't have it all down. In fact I probably forget stuff about as fast as I learn. I had forgotten that the towers sport little flags when they are manned until I was reminded by a post the other day. I hope I will be able to remember how to load the game when I retire, God willing, in 433 days! (Yeeeeha, as we say in Texas.)

Thanks for all the advice. I put some of it into practice in a few battles last night and I must say things are now going much better.

I also found out for myself the benefits of flaming arrows (even from peasant archers) on gate breachers from atop the gate! The AI really shouldn't storm breaches with its general...

Just one more question for now, is adoption the formal name for converting victorious captains to generals, or are these two separate mechanics for expanding one's family?

Okay, since I'm on the subject of expanding one's family I'll sneak one more thought in... Does anybody else find it cheesy to move generals back and forth between two settlements to allow them to directly control production and recruitment in more cities? Or does this come with disadvantages? (I can see a negative trait coming...)

There are 4 ways of expanding your tree.
1. Birth
2. Marriage
3. Lesser Adoption (Man of the Hour)
4. Normal Adoption (Start of Turn)

Moving generals between cities generally is beneficial traitwise unless either city has vice giving buildings. However, most people play with manage all settlements enabled anyway so that doesn't matter.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

a) You can also overload a tower to about 30 before opening the hatch if you know how to. b) The only time I would advise ladders is when you are trying to exploit the AI or if you are storming a citadel or if you are attacking from 3 sides and need to be quick.

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isnt a) exploiting as well?

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Originally Posted by mir

When placing archers on walls as the defender, can we place more than 2 units on the same stretch of wall?

And: Will they be more effective? Or will they end up shooting each other (via friendly fire)?

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You can place them on the walls in the same fashion as you do in the field. Can only place 1 unit on wall at a time. They dont seem to fire into each other on walls,but troops that are near the AI attackers would still occasionally get hit.

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Originally Posted by Nebuchadnezzar

The idea of low-level archers is not the kill but the morale decrease. Two peasant archers & 2 militia should be enough to win over a full enemy stack for a seige. Include a 1x ballista and its guarranteed.

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Ive never beat a full stack of anything with only 2archers/2militia theres just not enuf bodies to hold onto everything everywhere. Hats off!

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Originally Posted by Zild

Just one more question for now, is adoption the formal name for converting victorious captains to generals, or are these two separate mechanics for expanding one's family?

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You randomly get Man of the Hour trait for a captain that wins a battle in an army that has no officer in it. It will turn him into an officer and give him a retinue. (which I never understood..wish I could have a "captain of the pike" or sumthing..)

I almost always use ladders. Going head to head against units with the wall defense bonus is going to cost you a lot of lives no matter which type equipment you bring. Ladders are much more flexible, they can draw enemies away from the gate or simply run to an undefended part of the wall and claim it.

All that being said, it comes down to personal preference. If you want to fight on the walls because you prepped your forces with superior infantry bring towers, if you want to take gates and force the enemy to retreat to their town square (Usually because you prepped with archers), bring ladders.

You can use any 4 random militia units to defend any huge walls city against full stacks of AI troops due to bugs. Stop the ram or clog the gate with routers and the AI's pathetic 'trickle in' routine with siege towers cannot capture your walls. It's irrelevant at that point how many men they bring.

If you have less than huge walls and the AI brings more than one ladder crew, you'll be in for a fight, but your max freebie garrison still has a pretty good chance against a typical AI full stack.

:egypt:

Ladders are death! I have run off Venetian Heavy Infantry with a cheesy HRE spear militia. I recommend using ladders only against unmanned sections unless you just want to use an "expendable" unit to cause a diversion. (Varangian Guard would most likely do quite well against peasants and poor militia or weak melee archers.)

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Originally Posted by Eikon the Magistrate

You randomly get Man of the Hour trait for a captain that wins a battle in an army that has no officer in it. It will turn him into an officer and give him a retinue. (which I never understood..wish I could have a "captain of the pike" or sumthing..)

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Not really. It is not random and you never get a retinue for that character immediately after the battle unless you mod it to be that way.
Whether you get an offer depends on your family member to regions ratio and whether there is free space on your family tree. Also, you never get MotH for sally, siege or if the captain ends up in the settlement at the end of battle or turn.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Not really. It is not random and you never get a retinue for that character immediately after the battle unless you mod it to be that way.
Whether you get an offer depends on your family member to regions ratio and whether there is free space on your family tree. Also, you never get MotH for sally, siege or if the captain ends up in the settlement at the end of battle or turn.

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I always get the retinue immediately following the battle... In a full stack it would kick out 1 unit and replace it with the retinue.(20cav) I have no mods that Im aware of. I guess I couldve been more descriptive in that of course, no sally or siege will produce this.

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Originally Posted by Eikon the Magistrate

I always get the retinue immediately following the battle... In a full stack it would kick out 1 unit and replace it with the retinue.(20cav) I have no mods that Im aware of. I guess I couldve been more descriptive in that of course, no sally or siege will produce this.

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You're using "retinue" to mean bodyguard. A bodyguard is instantly assigned to all MOTH generals.

FH thought you were using "retinue" to mean ancillaries. Ancillaries are NOT an automatic component of a MOTH promotion (though the MOTH may be in a position to acquire some pretty quickly after promotion depending).

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Originally Posted by Old Geezer

Ladders are death! I have run off Venetian Heavy Infantry with a cheesy HRE spear militia. I recommend using ladders only against unmanned sections unless you just want to use an "expendable" unit to cause a diversion. (Varangian Guard would most likely do quite well against peasants and poor militia or weak melee archers.)

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I've only fought a few assaults so far, but it does seem that the ladders are less likely to succeed in M2TW than they were in RTW. Moreover, the need to garrison a tower to prevent its being retaken is MUCH more of a hassle here than in RTW. I used to lover heading up an undefended stretch of wall with a half unit of slingers and circling the city converting all the towers as I went. Running with ladders at least gives you some real speed.

I am annoyed by defender's reclaiming the gates when they seem to be barely "in the aura" and my troops are still atop the gatehouse...

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Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh

You're using "retinue" to mean bodyguard. A bodyguard is instantly assigned to all MOTH generals.

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Yes that is what I meant. My apologies FH...

btw was not trying to be combative... boredom is a terrible thing. And work is even worse!

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

You can also overload a tower to about 30 before opening the hatch if you know how to.

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How does one accomplish this?

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Originally Posted by Eikon the Magistrate

isnt a)
Ive never beat a full stack of anything with only 2archers/2militia theres just not enuf bodies to hold onto everything everywhere. Hats off!

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No need for hats off its all just exploits and cheap shots. True the archer/militia is much harder to win then say archer/militia/ballista but you don't need to hold them off everywhere. This is an exceptionally imcompetent AI, sure they can scale the the walls from several points but don't be fooled that you need to hold them off at every breach. Usually after scaling the walls they just seem to stand around while you concentrate the breach at the gate or wherever the general is. Its important to remove him ASAP.

The ballista exploit is one off the easier to use. Too see this in action just fire up a custom battle, give yourself 3x militia + 1x archer & 1x ballista.

Give the enemy a near full stack of early troops (not feudal knights or something lol). If the enemy is cavalry heavy use 2x spear militia in schiltrom near the gate with ballista to the side. Use another unit of maybe town militia to engage the enemy using ladders/tower from one side only while your archers use fire arrows into their back. They should route rather quickly then use your archers to provide support fire into the enemy mass at the gate. Concentrate your archers to shoot unobstructed into the enemy rather then over the walls which has almost no effect. You may need to re-position them regularly.

Holding off a stack is really no drama. I've seen players kill off 2-3 full & partial stacks with this exploit. If the enemy is using mostly infantry don't use schiltrom but a V formation near the gate. All else remains the same.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t=city+defence

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Originally Posted by Nebuchadnezzar

Give the enemy a near full stack of early troops (not feudal knights or something lol).

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Well fighting peasants and militia isn't exactly a feat with these troops :tongue2:

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Well fighting peasants and militia isn't exactly a feat with these troops :tongue2:

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I thought you wanted to see a couple of militia/peasant archers beat a typical AI stack. If thats now to easy use 2 stacks :grin: