Tricks for assaulting castles? (My understanding of the AI)

Consistently win city/castle assault with 20 or less men loss

Note: I like to play on VH/VH and exploit the AI with every oppurtunity to get even (cheaters vs. cheater hehe). So if you love exploiting the AI, this one is for you. It will be a pretty long read, but I hope you find it useful.

I think I have got a reproducible protocol here. Requirements:

(1) At least two cavalry unit (heavy cavalry preferred). The general's bodyguards are the best. One unit of melee light cavalry helps, too. Throughout my 50 sieges I have got my generals killed 0 time. But I have lost a second general (not in command) once. So if you are bringing a second general, don't let him take too much fire (but do use him). A reasonable ratio is 2 cavalry unit per 4 enemy units. So if you assault a castle with 10 units, bring about 5 cavalry units.

(2) Spies to open the gate. The game seems to predetermine whether a spy can open a gate at a given turn. So no matter how I reset the random number thing by re-saving the game, the result is the same. Therefore, for the best result, always travel with 4 spies or so to make sure the open-gate percentage reaches 100%.

(3) Merc crossbowmen x 1 (2 if there are 7 or more untis in the town). These guys have longer range than regular archers, and is very easily to retrain.

(4) (Optional) Sithtrom or Spearwall units x 2.

(5) No battle timer (as you get more familiar with how this works, you can restore the timer to give more challenge).

(6) No battle camera restriction (in Options). This helps you plan better.

Cities and castles work quite differently, so I will discuss them separately.

[A. Town & Cities]

Stage 0 - Deployment
Observe the town center. Pick a gate that allows you to cut the return trip to the town center. Explaination: There is usually an alley from the gate to the town center, but there is a T section in the middle of it. Therefore, you can easily cut off the routed units way back to the town center by sending a fast cavalry to their back after the prey passes that intersection. Most towns/cities offer at least one such alley.

Once you choose your gate, deploy your cavalry units close to it. If you have no time restriction, you can just start the battle anyway and then slowly march there.

Expected loss: 0

Stage 1 - Start the battle
After the spy message, see how the AI distribute their defenders. Move your generals close to the gate that is least guarded, preferrably with no spear units or better, no unit at all. Rush your generals in to cut down arrow tower fire. Now your cavalry are in the city.

You may be able to intercept some wall-defenders as they are trying to come off the wall. Rout them and catch them, of course. They rout very easily when they are just coming down from the wall.

Expected loss: <10. (If you meet defenders and got shot by the arrow towers in the process of routing them. Once they start white flagging, the arrow tower stops.)

Stage 2 - Pick off defenders (optional)

Depending on how many units of defenders there are, the AI will send out units to block the alleys leading to the town center. You can pick them off one by one if you have access to both ends of a given unit (and it is not a spear unit able to do a Sithtrom). Don't worry if you can't pick them all out one by one at this stage.

Expected loss: almost none. If you time your sandwich attacks well, and know that a good HA lance charge starts about 20 meters ahead, the defender should route almost instantly. You may lose more units if you are battling heavy cavalry.

The AI retreats all units to the town center when they feel the town center is threatened. You can induce them by sending any unit near the town center. Or when the AI does not have enough units left, they also retreat to the town center.

Stage 3 - Catch ranged untis

After falling back to the town center, the AI starts sending out ranged untis (sometimes all together). Now your picked alley works to your advantage, as you can cut off their return trip and eliminate them in one go. You might need to move your cavalry away from the town center more to lure them further out.

If you do miss a few, though, they are going to have all the ammo of their missing comrades, and will shoot at you for eternity. Plus they will not have enough morale for your cavalry to get close enough to catch them. So better get them all.

Repeat until there is no ranged unit left.

Expected loss: almost none. You will bite one volley during your frontal charge to these ranged unit. Use your general's bodyguard for this, as they have 2 hit points (and your general does not die easily).

Note 3a: Same as in RTW, there is a bug at chasing routers that the cavalry will suddenly stop when they almost reach the routing unit. The best way to catch routers is to ask them to run slightly ahead of the routing unit, and attack. This way you can catch them all in one go!

Note 3b: You will have significantly more loss if you are battling ranged cavalry, as they are usually very fast and hard to catch the few that escaped (and kept coming back). If this happens, move in your crossbowmen and duel them off.

Stage 4 - Lure them out further

Now is time to pick another alley that faces the town center. This alley must have a clear view of the town center. Ideally, this alley also offers an oppurtunity for an alternative exit (see explaination below). Move your crossbowmen there and protect them with your spearwall. Disable fire at will. Disable skirmish. Manually ask them to fire at the cavalry for one volley and stop them immediately after they release the arrows.

Explination: Imagine a T. On the left is the town center with the defenders, on the right is your crossbowmen, who have a clear shot of the units at the town center. You block of their access to the crossbowmen with your sithtrom or better, the spearwall. When the AI rushes out after your crossbowmen shoot at them, they are smart enough to to charge your spear wall, but to go to the bottom of the T to get access to you.

Needless to say, you have arranged an ambush from 2-3 sides, waiting to cut off their return trip. :) Even if they do charge at your spear wall (infantry are stupid enough to do this sometimes), you can still flank them with a nice HA lance charge. Send them flying and instantly rout them.

Note 4a: Space out your crossbowmen and your spearwall a little further. If they are too close, your crossbowmen will fire up, not forward, resulting in very poor accuracy. You also want to ask them to fire at units that's further away to reduce friendly fire casaulties on the spearwall. (It is hilarious to see, though).

Note 4b: You can do this without the spearwall or sithtroms, but you need to stop them firing immediately after they release a volley and run them back, so when the enemy's cavalry charges out, they will have retreated behind your cavalry. Once they start reloading, they cannot run and will get massacred.

Note 4c: The AI is stupid that they only activate those who come out. This means that you can even massacre them just in front of them town center and not getting the rest of the defenders angry and charge at you. But be careful do NOT step into the flagged town center area. Sometimes your rout chasers wonder in there - pull them back.

The priority is cavalry, since they can charge at your crossbowmen.

Expected loss: almost none, as long as you time your ambush nicely. It is sometimes hard to predict which way the AI wants to turn at a corner, so you may end up taking a frontal charge for a few seconds, giving you a few more casaulties.

Stage 5 - Firing squad time

Eventually you thin down the defenders so much that they stop coming out of the town center. Now you can remove the spearwall barrier and move the crossbowmen (or regular archers) closer to get better shots. Enable fire at all, enable skirmish (just in case they do charge out, happens sometimes, but since they are also infantry they can never reach you, lol).

Expected loss: 0

That's it!


[B] Castles

Catles and fortresses are a little different story, and each type of castle/fortress has its own variation of exploit. :P The general procedures are the same. I will only state the differences.

Stage 0. There is only one gate. You may split off some cavalry to a second gate if there is one, so you can flank some defenders easily.

Stage 1. After rushing your generals in, pick off units that comes to the gate for defense. Don't charge them when they are running towards the gate, charge them when they are entering the little black door - they can't attack you while they are marching!

Stage 2. There is no defenders blocking access to the town center.

Stage 3. The ranged units still foolishly come out to get creamed by you. However, sometimes a few units remain at the town center. You may need to use your general's bodygaurd to absorb the fires! Hide them behind any obstacle so they will have to fire up. Throughout my 20-30 experiences with this tactics, I have never lost my general (and mostly 2-3 HA bodyguards in their entire volley). So don't worry too much about it.

Stage 4. In certain castle or fortress, you have an access of a wall facing the town center. This way you do not need any spearwall to protect them; however, you do need to ambush the infantry that tries to climb on the wall to neutralize your archers (the biggest threat is actually the automatic arrow towers).

***

While I consistenly loss ~10 men or so in any city assault, for once I lost about 200 men when I assaulted a full-stacked Lisban (Portugal capital) with half of them cavalry. The reason is the AI had all of their cavalries (melee and misle) charging at me at once, and it is very hard to rout them when they are supported by their comrade.

The AI is awful at defending castles and cities. If your spies open the gates simply attack as many gates as you can reach, the AI will rarely defend more than one and almost always falls back as soon as it sees the gates open. Once your men are in the city the AI will definitely attempt to retreat to the square, but it retreats foolishly and will allow your cavalry to run down many of it's units. Concentrate especially on ranged units as they're the only ones that will really hurt you once the enemy has retreated to the square. After they're in the square shoot them at will. The AI will only sally one or two companies except when it nears the end and decides to rush everything. When it rushes everything out you need to be far enough back in the streets that it won't get the morale bonus from the square and then simply break their morale to end the battle.

If your spies haven't opened the gates the same strategy applies; align your attack along three sides with ladders and/or rams. One side will almost always be undefended, and even if all three have some forces you'll inevitably have a mismatch somewhere that you can exploit. Ladder teams can run while the defenders take forever to redeploy, so run them to an undefended stretch of wall before you send 'em up. Once they're in the city don't bother fighting, just run to an undefended gate and get it open. Once the gate is open and your men are pouring in the AI will try that retreat to the square thing again, allowing your cavalry to run down large numbers of them.

If you have artillery you only need to knock three holes in the walls and the AI will, once again, retreat to the square 95% of the time. If you have artillery and the AI retreats a large army to the square... prepare to have some veteran artillery after the battle. :laugh4:

You don't actually need a more powerful army either, as long as you have at least as many units as the city/castle has entry points the AI will generally retreat. Fought a battle in the BC hotseat not too long ago against 2200 men with two companies of elephants (~80 men) and because I split them between two different gates the AI immediately abandoned the walls and tried to retreat that whole mass of troops into the square. Rushed my elephants into the streets to prevent the towers firing at them, and the AI sallied to meet me at the gates, where about 800 of the tightly packed morons were slaughtered before the elephants routed.

The basic strategy is simple and obvious: get the enemy off the walls. After that it's just like a constricted field battle where the AI is very stupidly trying to concentrate all it's men in one tight little space. The only unexpected losses I've had against the AI in assaults have been where it behaved unpredictably, sallying in force to trap my men while they were split up in the streets or defending the walls despite my having entered the city elsewhere.

:egypt:

Edited and combined into the previous post.

Try this using my mod :grin: