Assaulting Cities.. How to fight these battles using different factions?

I've been trying a few custom battles assaulting different cities, and i've been having a lot of difficulty using factions other than the Romans.

The Roman tactics i've been using to assault cities:

Wooden walls: Using battering rams, break a hole in a gate + wall, then rushing my infantry en masse to attack the centre of the settlement.

Stone walls: Siege towers, capture a section of the wall and continue rushing infantry up to the wall, attempting to capture a gatehouse and then (again) rushing my infantry to the centre with heavy fighting in the streets.


However, these tactics don't work on some factions, and the custom battles i've been fighting gave me crushing defeats again and again (ESPECIALLY against the romans).

Just would like some advice on how to take cities using factions other than the Romans. My battlefield tactics seem to be okay, but assaulting a city, especially a heavily fortified one, is a completely different matter.

The main other approach involves the phalanx factions (which is pretty much every greek faction +cartahge and German)

Phalanx are junk on walls, but they are invincible in the street, reason being it's impossible to flank them, and u basically have a super bulldozer.

The key is to open breachsin the wall (preferablly with Onagers, but if not avalible than use sapping.) and push through with ur phalanx units, just ignor the people on the wall until they come down and fight you. this can be tricky at times as phalanx behaviors are often weird, sometimes u don't get the results u should.

use seige towers to weaken the wall defense enemies, but don't acturally go on the wall itself until the enemy there are pretty screwed already.

If you have onagers the main priorities is to disable the gate and towers.

Using higher defense phalanx tend to be better, as they will suffer much less losses from missile fires and can sustain charges much better.

If you are using barbarians like the Gauls, ur approach should be more similar to the Romans, mass seige towers and go up the walls. go up with ur best stuff (such as Chosen swordsmen) war cry before the fight starts, combined together u should do alright. although the lack of onager hurts.

If you are using Eastern factions espcially Pathia, then the best u can do is open a hole with sap or onager then charge for the square with mass calvary.

In terms of campaign remember u could always starve the oppenet out, if ur army is not well suited for seiging then just surrond and wait till they try to sally you.

Just as a side note, the thracians are probably the best for assaulting walls in the game. They have melee fighters for hitting the walls (bastarnae and falxmen) and then once they have won the walls and opened the gates, they have phalanx pikemen to do the bulldozer trick.

Try archer heavy armies if the faction has good ones. It worked for me.

The outlines of the strategy.

Wooden walls:

Line up 10-14 units of archers along the red line (you may have to use a deeper rank to concentrate fire). If you have onagers have them demoish nearby towers.
Battle begins. Battering rams forward. Archers do their stuff. After a while the AI moves its remaining units to the plaza area, away from your archers. Infantry enters the cleared area of the town. Archers move closer (if the towers are down). AI tries to get to your infantry - your archers are in business again. Archers are out of ammo and join the infantry. All the crowd moves to plaza. Usually there are only a few shaken enemy units to defeat by the moment.


Stone walls:

Similar, but siege towers instead of rams, and the "archers move closer" bit should be replaced with "archers are placed on top of the captured walls."


I reckon it is not historical, but still works :)
By the way, preferably you need the battle timer disabled, as it may take longer than 30 minutes.

DGB the Egyptians and Selucids could also accomplish the same thing though prehaps not as well. or at least as fast (for the Selucids getting to legionareis will take a while... for the Egyptians desert axeman may or may not be as good as bastarnea)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RollingWave

DGB the Egyptians and Selucids could also accomplish the same thing though prehaps not as well. or at least as fast (for the Selucids getting to legionareis will take a while... for the Egyptians desert axeman may or may not be as good as bastarnea)

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Not sure, I might do a bit of testing on it...

I always go for wall capture with stone.
I've taken to only using 2 max of siege machines & never ownagers.
Rams for wood walls (might make it harder with only 1 ram), ladders/towers for stone, towers for large/epic.
Actually I think I'll quit capturing the full circuit of the wall due to the towers shooting the (already normally too few) defenders.

Unfortunately, there's hardly ever much effort put into defending the walls by the AI.

Anyway, capture the gate & your troops can enter safely.

It can be pretty hard getting a phalanx unit (esp the Macedonians) to reform within the walls in time to defend against the inevitable rush of defenders.

Sometimes an Elephant charge can be a big boon on assault, but quite risky with the new weak elephants.

I tend to leapfrog my units down the street so there is generally a formed unit ready to take the repeated counter charges.

While playing Pontus, I found Phalanx Pikemen did allright on the walls fighting with secondary weapons. You can also send more up if you've sapped a hole.

Also, Thracian mercenaries do well - and cheap. Not so well against principes, though.

for defending i would use Egypt cause they have very good archers and some good phalanx units. for assaulting the best faction is probably Germany or Thrace as said above let your melee fighters clean up the walls and then get your chosen archers on the wall to and get your axemen on the street and let your cavalry and infantry do the rest while your archers burn down the city or shoot the leftovers.