Assulting Cites is near impossible...

I enjoy seiges. It would be nice if you could extend the timer to 40 minutes though, without having to remove it entirely.

I had a few pathfinding problems in the streets, but telling my men to assume deep and narrow column formations helped a lot. I haven't really noticed much oddity at the town square - usually by the time I get there there is one enemy unit (Maybe 2) and a bunch of destroyed units.

I've seen a single unit carry 3 seige ladders and just race up to the wall tops at high speeds.

I've had town watch get stuck on the walls and not advance or attack to where I told them. I don't really know what the problem was, they all just stood there.

Iv'e also had problems telling men to move up seige towers - the inital bunch does fine, but if they get into combat, the rest of them seem to want to walk around in the seige tower instead of climb it.

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Originally Posted by Ulstan

Iv'e also had problems telling men to move up seige towers - the inital bunch does fine, but if they get into combat, the rest of them seem to want to walk around in the seige tower instead of climb it.

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I have noticed that you can get into problems trying to force multiple units up a seige tower as they get mixed up and entangled and this slows the exit from the tower for all units involved. I now have better results letting units go up one at a time and taking the time to build more seige towers. Four is a good number, one either side of the gate and one either side of the next towers from the gate... This allows you to hopfully shut down the towers and gate archers so you can queue other units up closer to the walls...

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Originally Posted by Big King Sanctaphrax

I must admit, I have found the city battles nothing less than a joy to play since I removed the time limit. I haven't run in to any pathfinding problems whatsoever-just as I haven't run into a lot of other issues people mention here.

It really is bizarre, it's like some people are playing a different game.

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I agree, it´s really fun, instead of men falling down siege towers, I had them move onto the walls when the tower was still closed, but it´s very rare and only few men do it. I think the time limit would make me lose almost all siege battles, I had 10 min or so fights on the walls between my hoplites and different other units, was very interesting to strengthen your position, call reinforcements and finally capture the gate and invade with the rest of your army. The towers are no big problem, keep all of your army out of range while assaulting with 2 siege towers and lett reinforcements run to the siege towers worked very well for me on medium.

I had an immensly enjoyable siege last night where my men were duking it out on the walls for AGES, like the entire time. Without the timer I could have sat around waiting for the men on the walls to die, but because of it I had to rush a small token force towards the town square to try and capture it.

The numidian enemy had a ton of cavalry in there and all I had spare was a unit of Triarii, Mercinary War Elephants, and my general. Most of my other 17 units were either dead or fighting on the walls, with 4 minutes to go.

My Triarii died fairly quickly against the enemy cavalry and my elephants saved the day, wading through around 300 units (Im playing on huge) they made it to the town square and I managed to kill all but 2 cavalry units before the timer ran out. That's right, TWO left.

Oh well. I killed their king (only family member) in the siege and all their cities turned to rebel cities, so I practically won.

My point is that while I lost because of the timer, the timer made it way more fun (altho not very realistic).

I find thread titles like this funny, if not ridiculous. It's quite obviously not impossible since so many of us are assaulting cities and assaulting them successfully. I think it says more about the lack of generalship of the posted than anything else :)

Grifman

assaulting cities should be hard... the key though is to get some heavy ornagers, which take out even the strongest towers and gates pretty quickely.

my only complaint is that the timer is so short.

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Originally Posted by Grifman

I find thread titles like this funny, if not ridiculous. It's quite obviously not impossible since so many of us are assaulting cities and assaulting them successfully. I think it says more about the lack of generalship of the posted than anything else :)

Grifman

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true to a point

if someone could siege in MTW pretty well then Rome should be easier because they already would know the basic controls as well as a general idea of what to do. Rome is supposed to be easier for beginers - shouldn't it be that much easier for veterans?

Sapping seems reasonably easy if the sapping point can be protected. My problem is that troops seem to be awkward in the cities - pathing problems?

Maybe not.

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Originally Posted by Grifman

I find thread titles like this funny, if not ridiculous. It's quite obviously not impossible since so many of us are assaulting cities and assaulting them successfully. I think it says more about the lack of generalship of the posted than anything else :)

Grifman

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I don't think it's a lack of generalship. Some people are just prone to exaggerate, which I'm guilty of from time to time. Assaulting cities isn't really that hard in RTW. It's just that there are too many WTF? moments that makes you want to bang your head on the table and wonder if CA thought that Hashish or whatever they're on was popular among soldiers during Roman times.

it isn't hard, but every once in a while you are forced into a situation where you have to assault a large garisson, and possibly some reinforcements.

At the end of such a battle you'll be cursing "I would of succeeded if it wasn't for tha pesky clock!"

Perhaps a part of the problem is that different tactics have to be used to assault depending on the forces at hand.

If you have a pikemen army with no swordsmen (such as the selucids), forget trying to take the walls. Smash em down and get your pikes into the streets!

On the other hand, I almost lost an defense where I was facing a much smaller Brutii army. I had just smashed their large army before the gates as it sallied forth from Corinth with virtually no losses (except for my light cav - and I dont know what happened there since I was focussed on another part of the battle) and I figured it would be a breeze. Sure enough my archers and towers burnt their ram and I figured it was gonna be a turkey shoot. Next thing you know scaling ladders go up and principii are efficiently clearing the walls of my hoplites and archers. Realizing my error, I sent forth my cats and elephants and obliterated the army not yet on the walls. I withdrew the few men remaining from the walls and the brutii on the walls entered the city then routed.

The funny thing was I lost an elephant to oil from the "captured" gate as it chased after the miscreants from the city!

The key to an assault (as I'm still learning) is to vary your tactics and use the weapons at hand. This isnt MTW.