How should you go about a siege without quality infantry?

I am playing as the Carthaginians, and I am having hard time sieging roman cities. In the field battle, I am absolutely having the time of my life with elephants running over hastati and principe. However, when I'm sieging, it's hard to deal with Roman since they have quality infantry, so I can't just use a siege tower or ladder to take the walls. I think my best option is to break the wall in some way, and rush in with elephnats. but then, I can't take the towers, and they will be shooting at me doing bad damamges.

How do I go about sieging if I'm Carthage?

Build catapults or onagers. Use them to break the walls and destroy the towers. Other than that, you can wait for the city to surrender or sally out. It's not supposed to be easy to assault Roman cities, of all the factions in the game they are the best in siege warfare.

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Originally Posted by Conqueror

Build catapults or onagers. Use them to break the walls and destroy the towers. Other than that, you can wait for the city to surrender or sally out. It's not supposed to be easy to assault Roman cities, of all the factions in the game they are the best in siege warfare.

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Agreed. With Onagers you can break open the gates/smash the walls open and charge your elephants in.

I've also been having a problem with sieges, when the enemy does 'sally forth' they usually just sit in their walls and do not 'sally forth' at all!

This is enough to break the siege and gains them extra time (resets the time till surrender counter).

Any one know why, or how you get the enemy to actually 'sally forth' instead of dilly-dallying in the walls?

Spies. With a few decent spies you can get into a settlement on the first turn without the lumbering slowness of onagers or the upkeep. The chance of opening the gates is a factor I suppose, but it makes small difference if you have lots of them.

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Not a very good idea if you're up against large or epic stone walls. The automated turrets in the towers will give your soldiers a world of hurt. And if the defenders on the walls have missile weapons (like most Roman infantry have) then you'll get a nice shower from them too.

Recruit mercs and use saps. Saps, in particular are the most effective way to assault stone walls, IMO. Once the walls come down, charge home with your cav. The more saps the better, but two is usually enough.

Onagers are the other option, but they slow you down on the campaign map.

Spies? Only use them to open gates in cities with palisades or stockades. Otherwise, they are there for strategic as opposed to tactical purposes.

A lot depends on the composition of troops inside, of course. Infantry-heavy defenders will kill Cav if you attack, so maybe its best to just seige till they surrender or sally.

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Originally Posted by Jonnyuk

I've also been having a problem with sieges, when the enemy does 'sally forth' they usually just sit in their walls and do not 'sally forth' at all!

This is enough to break the siege and gains them extra time (resets the time till surrender counter).

Any one know why, or how you get the enemy to actually 'sally forth' instead of dilly-dallying in the walls?

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One way is to make the computer think they have a chance to win. You have to fight out numbered and win with tactical skill, not luck or pure strength .

Or you can wait for another enemy army to come and relive them then fight both armies in the feild.

Use multiple towers on "fire at will" to clear the walls of defenders in a section (using your weaker infantry), then put your infantry on the wall somewhere and start taking towers and gates. You don't have to fight much on the walls, just sieze what you need, that way the wall towers will start killing enemy forces for you. You don't want to be inside the city without control of the walls, they will inflict too many casualties you cannot afford.

Use cavalry to do the hard work of smashing Roman infantry. Use Balearic slingers to kill what you can, and to draw out individual Roman units so that they can be smashed by cavalry, etc.

Iberian infantry and Libyan spearmen are worthless against other infantry. Iberian infantry are about half a step from town militia. The Libyan spearman have an attack rating of 5 attack * 0.73 "lethality" = 3.65. ~:eek: They might also be taking a hit vs. infantry for the "spear" attribute. They can't kill much of anything. They do have decent armour and shield so they can hold out versus early troop types, but that doesn't help much against legionary troops.

Poeni are considerably better than the spearmen. Sacred Band are pretty tough.

How do you do this with the timer on? I don't know.

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Originally Posted by Destroyer of Hope

One way is to make the computer think they have a chance to win. You have to fight out numbered and win with tactical skill, not luck or pure strength.

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You can try to lure them out by separating your general from the rest of the army. Have both the general and the army sieging the same city. The AI might be tricked into attacking the "lone" general, while your army will join as reinforcements (make sure that you're set to control them). This can be very dangerous if your computer doesn't do large battles well, as you might get delayed reinforcements which puts your general in danger.

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Originally Posted by Conqueror

You can try to lure them out by separating your general from the rest of the army. Have both the general and the army sieging the same city. The AI might be tricked into attacking the "lone" general, while your army will join as reinforcements (make sure that you're set to control them). This can be very dangerous if your computer doesn't do large battles well, as you might get delayed reinforcements which puts your general in danger.

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And you have to be careful about the 1.3 bug with this too...the AI can sally against the stack, rather than the general. If it does so you won't be able to control the family member, even if you have the box set to player control.

Not to mention the potential for night attacks in BI (if the city defenders have a general capable to do it). You will not get reinforcements in a night battle unless the reinforcing army is led by a general with the night attacker trait. Like I said, it's dangerous, but potentially very useful trick if you are playing with a cavalry-heavy army.

From what I know, the night attacker trait is only in BI, while Carthaginians aren´t.
Legionaries are tough on the walls, but it can help to use 3 or 4 siege towers, attack with two and delay the other one or two, when the Legions are engaged with your first troops, the units from the 3rd and 4th tower should deploy behind the legionaries to attack them from behind. Haven´t tried that with Carthaginians, but I think it should work well with Poeni Infantry.

Attack the city at two locations. The computer must split his forces then.

...Or simply transfer assault tower operations to another gate/wall area away from your strating position, then land a holding force to capture the gate and buy time while you pile your army into the gate. Once you move your entire army into the city, move down your wall force if they have not engaged the wall defenders, and leave them to die if they have. Just mass-charge to break the enemy within the city (since they're romans they have no phalanxes so use massed cavalry to break them and follow up with infantry) and bulldoze your way to the town square, and hold for 3 minutes. No finesse, no elegance, but with no quality and no archers you can't hope to demonstrate the art of assault.

I must disagree with HarunTaiwan's assertion that you divide your forces. It's the no.1 military rule that you should never divide your forces, especially in this case when the enemy is qualitatively stronger than you and will take your split forces apart even when he has split his. One on one hastati > iberian infantry/town militia. Your best bet (and the one with minimum casualties) is to form your troops into a massive battering ram and wear down the enemy via cavalry charge and demoralisation.

Hmmmmmm, attacking from two directions or flanking is also sound military strategy. Split attacks were often done during sieges where you have one misdirecting attack to cover the real one.

It's especially useful if you know the besieged enemy on has so many good units to go around. By forcing him to parcel them out you can achieve better results than forcing your way through that single sap point where he can simply keep the bulk of his good forces and bottle you up.

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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi

I must disagree with HarunTaiwan's assertion that you divide your forces. It's the no.1 military rule that you should never divide your forces, especially in this case when the enemy is qualitatively stronger than you and will take your split forces apart even when he has split his.

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And yet great generals have routinely violated this maxim to win "brilliant" victories. ~;) Much depends on what you hope to acheive by doing so and the type of forces at your disposal. Diversions, raids, flanking, too many possibilities to name.

It depends on the quality of generalship of which I must say the AI is pretty low on the totem pole.

There are no rules for war, just what you can make work in a situtation.

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Originally Posted by pezhetairoi

It's the no.1 military rule that you should never divide your forces, especially in this case when the enemy is qualitatively stronger than you and will take your split forces apart even when he has split his. One on one hastati > iberian infantry/town militia. Your best bet (and the one with minimum casualties) is to form your troops into a massive battering ram and wear down the enemy via cavalry charge and demoralisation.

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Let me add my voice to the shouts of protest! I find it hard to believe that that is "the number 1 military rule" - indeed, another number 1 military rule says "march divided, fight concentrated" - especially important when the enemy is stronger than you.

A favourite RTW battle strategy of mine, particularly when seriously outnumbered, is to deploy my forces in two groups: a main body, and a highly mobile group (cavalry, or Arcani if I have them). The AI must either divide its forces, or choose one of my groups to go after. If they don't divide, then I'm well on the way to having them flanked from the outset. If they do divide, my highly mobile group evades its pursuers and falls upon the rear of the other enemy group - ideally just around the time they engage my main body. I can then fight this part of engagement against somewhat better odds, and usually have time to regroup (or split again) before the remaining enemy force arrives, panting and exhausted, at the scene of battle.

Against infantry-only armies, such as the Germans, you can often erode away a full enemy stack like this with no more than two cavalry units.

Yep, that's the way to take down those phalanx armies, especially on VH where I can't afford to engage frontally with inferior troops. I remember in 1.2 destroying full hoplite stacks (including a few armoured hoplites) using only a few peltasts some roundshield cav, and a few units of Iberian infantry.

Learn the heavy cavalry "blitzkrieg".

Buy 2 Onagers and break a hole in the wall, then pile all your heavy cavalry through the hole while sending your infantry (or light cavalry) close behind....the cavalry destroys whatever is guarding the breach, and then you speed your heavy cavalry to the square and the infantry (or light cavalry) tangles up any forces coming back down from the walls....kill everything in the square with your cavalry, wait 3 minutes....you win.

Perfected this technique with the Armenians and Scythians. You don't need any infantry to perform well in sieges....probably the best "doctrine" for sieging in RTW

However hard it may seem to get into a walled town, it was much tougher for actual armies than the game infers. In R:TW, stone walls fall neatly and leave a perfectly smooth flat breach. How likely was that! Cavalry could not negotiate a rubble filled gap or a collapsed mine which is exactly what the infantry had to clamor over. Horses and formations would have been out of the question in a breach.

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Originally Posted by Jonnyuk

I've also been having a problem with sieges, when the enemy does 'sally forth' they usually just sit in their walls and do not 'sally forth' at all!

This is enough to break the siege and gains them extra time (resets the time till surrender counter).

Any one know why, or how you get the enemy to actually 'sally forth' instead of dilly-dallying in the walls?

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In my experience they always come out. They are the attacker and you are the defender. They may hang around for awhile hoping to take advantage of their better position (just as they do sometimes in the open field) but if you just stare at them for awhile they eventually come to you.

Also, I don't believe a sally-out "draw" (e.g., time runs out while they hide inside the walls) breaks the siege. I know it's not the case when you are the defender. I have plenty of "draws" as a siege defender. The siege is still on, but it buys the boys some time to make arrows.