low casualty settlement assault

Here's my tactic for assaulting an AI settlement with minimal casualties. My assault stack is:

1 general
1 ballista
1 spear militia
2 longbow archers or equivalent (no stakes needed)

Start by deploying all units far away from the gates. When you do this, the AI will deploy his units at the city center. After battle starts, inch the ballista forward toward the nearest gate until you can see the percent damage of the gate. At that point, stop and fire at the gate. At the same time, move all other units just behind the ballista. If done correctly, all of the AI units will stay at the city center and just wait for you to destroy the gate.

As soon as the gate is broken down, the AI will move his units toward that gate, but usually at a walk. Run your general into the settlement to block the AI units temporarily, while the infantry run up behind him. Put the spear militia in a blocking position on the main street, and pull the general back once the spearmen are in position. The archers move in behind the spear militia, either in the street or up on the walls, depending on the local geography, and fire past the spearmen into the enemy.

The kill ratio is usually close to 5:1 in my favor, and almost all of my casualties are the easy to replace spearmen. This makes settlement assaults so easy that it feels more like an exploit than a tactic. I wonder if there are any AI mods against which this doesn't work? I'm playing Kingdoms 1.5 with the Retrofit Mod, BTW.

If you then run your general around the 'block' of spearmen down parallel side streets to take the enemy from behind they will generally rout and cost you considerably fewer casualties. The only problem with forcing the AI to the center square that way is that it tends to get boring. Fighting to take the walls can be fun, and that's pretty much the only reason to do it. :laugh4:

:egypt:

I currently play as the Byzantine Empire, and as such I dislike attacking cities. I found a few ways to take them, though (in a war with Venice)

1. Attack with an inferior force of Horse Archers. The enemy will sally out, and you can shoot them fill of holes with no losses.

2. Attack a nearby stack of enemies, so that the garisson will come as reinforcements. Use your cavalry to massacre them, and execute the prisoners.

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Originally Posted by Flying Pig

2. Attack a nearby stack of enemies, so that the garisson will come as reinforcements. Use your cavalry to massacre them, and execute the prisoners.

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Very good advice.

In a similar vein, besiege a city with a large field army nearby. When the field army comes to relieve the city, wipe out both army and garrison.

For Fortresses and Citadels I like to use 2 or 3 spies to open the gates and rush the gate with cavalry to stop the tower archers. That way I don't have to haul slow siege equipment along. I use pikemen or good spearmen mainly and use archers very sparingly.

Take along at least 4 arty pieces to blow away the towers and open a couple of holes in the walls. Then use missile units: 1) mounted missile, 2) archers of x-bows to decimate the defenders. Best results if they have clear line-of-sight. If you have a ballista or 2 fire from close range into the city through the wall-gaps with flaming bolts that will increase enemy casualties. Finally infantry into the gaps and when they retreat to the centre, infantry follows while cavalry moves to hit them from either side, or even from behind.

In the unlikely event your general dies, burn the city.

If you have a spy in the city, forget the arty, get in fast with mixed mounted units and follow up with infantry and x-bows.

The easiest way to siege a settlement is to split your force into two. Your main force and a second small cavalry force. This will tempt the defenders to sally forth against the smaller force where you will have your main force joining as reinforcements. Just gallop your secondary cavalry force to join your main forces and form a defensive line without having to worry about walls, boiling oil, ballista towers etc.

The following exploit works with most settlements, (castle or town) that does not have more than a few cavalry units in its defending garrison. Two units of your own can easily defeat a halve stack of elite defending infantry and archers in one turn.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Just start a siege using just two cavalry units. When you end the turn the defenders will sally forth. As soon as you get control of your units in the battle map have them run to one of the two nearest corners. The defenders will follow you. Their cavalry will arrive first. Attack and destroy them, then wait for the rest of their force to arrive.
When it does arrive run your units quickly around them and straight to the town square. The slow moving infantry will not be able to get back to the square before the timer runs out. You win.

The type of cavalry unit you chooes should be strong enough to quickly demolish the defending cavalry.

If the defenders have no cavalry then you can do the above with only one depleted unit of light cavalry.

It can be fun dodging around 6 units of longbow men and 6 units of Armoured Swordsmen with 1 depleted unit of border horse..

I usually don't bother with assaulting a settlement. I just use the tried and true method of starving them out.
Or i just auto-resolve ...

I only like to fight open-field battles.. sieges take too long, and they are just kinda boring.. unless I am defending with a really small force, and am being attacked by a HUGE one..

I was using this tactic when playing as England: only I used more units since it was late period and the enemy had more units and would eventually break down the spearmen. This is the same principle you use to hold a bridge. It does feel like an exploit when fighting an infantry-based army. It didn't work well (for me) against the Monguls; their HA would take out too many spearmen.

Another consideration may be the damage caused to buildings by errant artillery shot. You may not want to bear the expense of repairing them depending upon the state of your treasury. I also give a lot of consideration to which units that I want to see promoted. Often I will put a unit in harms way to take a lot of casualties so that I can merge it with a high chevroned unit. I have frequently been able to merge a level 1 or 2 with a level 9 to get the lower chevroned all the way up to a level 7. I have even been known to park some units outside the walls to absorb arrows and take losses just to help get them promoted. Consider it a training exercise with live ammo.

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Originally Posted by PrestigeX

I usually don't bother with assaulting a settlement. I just use the tried and true method of starving them out.
Or i just auto-resolve ...

I only like to fight open-field battles.. sieges take too long, and they are just kinda boring.. unless I am defending with a really small force, and am being attacked by a HUGE one..

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I love seiges, both as attacker and as defender. As attacker, destroying the defences then breaking into the town and slaughtering the garrison; as defender sallying forth to weaken the beseigers, until they call off the seige or their eventual attack fails.

The relief force drawing off part of the attackers, fighting on the walls and at the gates; the desperate retreat to the centre of the town or the second (or third) walls. What's not to like? I honestly don't care about the so-called bugs in this part of the game.

A Troika of Spies makes even citadel assaults easy. They are the equivalent of the infiltration and bypass tactics developed by the Germans late in WWI which set the scene for WWII Blitzkieg.