Anyone else hate assaulting a city?

Wow. Syrakousai. Quite a weak army defending it if you considered fighting it in the open right? Well I just assaulted it and took so many casualties I actually quit the battle :inquisitive: weird innit?

But it's not just Syrakousai I'm trying to make a point about- has anyone else noticed how assaulting a city always seems incredibly difficult? I mean, fair enough, towers and missile troops picking off some of the men from my units as they advance to the wall is fair enough, but it just seems that once they're actually on the walls it's simply a massacre! Even after sapping the walls the surrounding towers make you wish you'd just invested in a ladder or siege tower instead.

Does anyone else dislike assaulting a city as much as me? I mean, don't get me wrong, they're really tense and epic battles, but it just wrecks the units so much I actually wonder if I should have just waited the set number of turns for them to try and rally out, but then, some might call that an exploit :beam:

assaulting cities ARE suppose to be nasty....this is a fact of real life, so you might as well face it.

I usually let the mercs to the besieging while my army dances around the region killing any reinforcements that comes.

Actually, it is far too easy to assault a city in this game.
If there are wooden walls, it is a piece of cake and far easier than an open battle.
Cities with stone walls are slightly more difficult, but still not difficult enough.

Yes, but only becasuse of the stupid AI making charging cavalry, and maintaining a street-wide phalanx impossible. Or the fact that when capturing a tower, youre men wait underneath it for a good five minutes getting shot to pieces before finally deciding to move in. Also, the inability to retreat off walls. JUST RUN THROUGH THE TOWER DAMN IT!

I also think battles in cities are way too easy.

Main problem posed here is simply the dumb AI which has absolutly no clue how to use its superior position to any advantage and can quickly be outsmarted.

If there's only wooden palisades there actually is no siege, it's way too easy to pick off the stupid chickens running around behind the walls with some missile troops, eliminating half of the defense before you set one step across the wall line...the rest then easily routs on the first impact of some heavy melee troops due to their casualty ratio (no kills made, but half of your corps dead? That sucks bigtime moral-wise ;) )

When it's about stone walls it gets trickier, but if the enemy has only few troops (that is up to ~8 units) most of them are stationed at the city square (who the hell needs them there??), the rest waits behind the gate while PERHAPS one or two missile units stand around on the walls...
Just bring some siege towers in, slay and massacre the wall troops with your heavy infantry and then send one unit around half the city to conquer all towers and gates. While those towers then again kill half of the army which waited behind the gates until they retreat or rout, you just walk in with your main force having all the time in the world to position yourself behind the walls for your march towards the city square.


But the most annoying part actually is that most of the battles take place around towns and cities...which in the end all look VERY similar, making the battles a bit repetitive...after I'm a bit into a campaign, I tend to auto-calc some sieges (or cheat auto_win/lose if e.g. a 10-star rebel general with his 100 men would slay my 2000 men thanks to autocalc stupidity) and only play the field battles. Or I siege the towns long enough for the enemy to sally forth...

and it makes you even happier when you take city.....you understand it's value. More realistic IMO.

Originally Posted by Recoil:
Wow. Syrakousai. Quite a weak army defending it if you considered fighting it in the open right? Well I just assaulted it and took so many casualties I actually quit the battle :inquisitive: weird innit?

But it's not just Syrakousai I'm trying to make a point about- has anyone else noticed how assaulting a city always seems incredibly difficult? I mean, fair enough, towers and missile troops picking off some of the men from my units as they advance to the wall is fair enough, but it just seems that once they're actually on the walls it's simply a massacre! Even after sapping the walls the surrounding towers make you wish you'd just invested in a ladder or siege tower instead.

Does anyone else dislike assaulting a city as much as me? I mean, don't get me wrong, they're really tense and epic battles, but it just wrecks the units so much I actually wonder if I should have just waited the set number of turns for them to try and rally out, but then, some might call that an exploit :beam:

The hard thing about assaulting cities for me is when all the troops are in the town center and fight to the die to a man. This can make an army that would easily route have unlimited moral, and thus cause some serious casualties.

Often I DO wait the required ammount of turns for the enemy to sally out, but sometimes some of the heavier units will simply not leave the town, and I'll be forced to assault them or the game declares it a Draw when the time runs out.

Since if they don't sally out I get the settlement without a fight, shouldn't it be an autowin if I outlast the battle timer on their sally?

=/ i think it does, u may have a draw on the battle, but it also meant their sally was a failure...last it happened to me i basically took the settlement after a 45 minute wait ( i played tetris while waiting)...

...and yes i prefer fighting them in an open battle, where i can cut the lot of them down as they rout. Sometimes u even simply win cuz the whole lot of them are routing back to the square.

Sieges are not to difficult they are way to easy. Unfortunately there is no way to make them as difficult as they where in reality.

Exactly, LorDBulA, It's just they shouldn't be hard because of crappy AI. If you don't have phalanxes or anything that needs to charge or skirmish, you're fine though.

I really hate assulting so I wait till the enemy sally's out or tell they give me the city. THe only time I attack is when there is 1 unit in the city.

Personally I'm not really fond of city assault. I like movement and therefore space!!! And by the way I'm really bad at maneuvring in small streets (which are still probably bigger than they really were.)

Regards

Martel

I could have sworn I made a post about being better at stone wall assaults than palisade assaults. :/


Anyway, I prefer to starve the city and force a sally. At least on EB. In vanilla, the pace is much faster and you want to take the city ASAP.

I usually assault, if not on the 2nd turn of the siege then almost certainly later. The reason being that for most cities the general leading the siege will acquire the "starving" trait giving -3 morale before the enemy sallies. I don't think it would matter so much, but the AI doesn't seem to get any supply traits, and I don't want them to have so much more morale than me.

I always wait for them to sally because sometimes they attack from behind with reinforcements which makes the fight 10 times more fun.

they actually get morale deductions depending on their personalities...and they don't really matter much truth be told, unless you did something overly dumb like leaving the thing going while driving out for chicken...

Actually, I LOVE assaulting cities. The larger, the better for me. I just think of the loot I'm gonna get and I find it a good motive. If it's a small city, it's very easy. You just take advantage of the AI's stupidity by firing death upon them from over the wooden walls. If it's a larger city, I like to play as long as it takes to minimize my casualties. I have even played a near 1,5 hour battle assaulting Syrakousai round late 200's, but I almost lost no man (almost).

I do have to admit it can be a bit frustrating at some times though :P

Maion

P.S.: Ohhhhh, satalexton I see your balloons are beggining to grow nicely... I was just wondering if I could have one at the end? Pretty please??? Maybe just touch one? :P

sure, remember to treat him nicely though =] :balloon3:

A million thanks, satalexton! I'm going to treat this little fella like my very own child, no worries!

Maion

P.S.: I named him Vinnie, btw :P

If you don't like sieges, stay with EB. From my experience, EB has less sieges than most other mods (with the exception of mods that place an emphasis on endless stacks of armies derived from 0-turn recruitment). I recall that RTR in particular has a lot of sieges because its settlements are so densely packed together (don't lynch me for comparing the two mods).

Originally Posted by TWFanatic:
If you don't like sieges, stay with EB. From my experience, EB has less sieges than most other mods (with the exception of mods that place an emphasis on endless stacks of armies derived from 0-turn recruitment). I recall that RTR in particular has a lot of sieges because its settlements are so densely packed together (don't lynch me for comparing the two mods).

Yeah, EB's more slow-paced than other mods so I guess you can avoid some sieges.

Maion

City assaults are simply no fun for me, no matter how easy or hard they may be. I wait out the turns.

I find the siges to be rather boring... so... usually I just autocalc whitout cheating... of course....:rolleyes:

The problem is that autocalculating battles usually results in far higher casualties than the player would recieve if he fought the battle out himself. For that reason I play all my battles and sieges, no matter how small, with very few exceptions. Tedious, yes, but it always ticks me off when I needlessly take heavy casualties from autocalculating.

the pathfinding inside settlements tend to tick me off so much I start screaming gibberish at my laptop D=

Originally Posted by satalexton:
the pathfinding inside settlements tend to tick me off so much I start screaming gibberish at my laptop D=

<.< las time I lost like 150 skirmishers cause they "retreated" straight to the enemy... :shifty:

They annoy me too, not because of difficulty or lack thereof, but because of the fact that units in the town square never flee and seem to take forever to kill. Which means I have to sit and watch my 3 or 4 units of shock troops take on a shattered unit of levy spearmen who just refuse to die in any timely fashion.

The one glaring exception to this rule is when I'm playing as Carthage and trying to subjugate Africa. Few things please me more than filling those Numidian skirmishers with arrows as they dash about like headless chickens behind their feeble walls. :beam:

It depends on what's defending. if the unit(s) is a nightmare to fght on a sreet, then I wait it out-that way in the open, I can surround and neutralize it quickly. I also usually prepare a special force (usually shock troops), to assault the walls. normally they can just charge in (afte they use a ram of course), but if the enemy is shooting at me with much missile fire, I send in some mercenary light infantry as cannon fodder; I prefer the mercenary gallic swordsmen for cannon fodder, since they take a lttle longer to die= more enemy missiles wasted. I also tend to fire over me troops if the enemy has a stone wall, so as to cover them in an assault (esp. with battering rams and ladders). If they sally, I send missile troops out to shoot at tehm as they leave the gate, since usually the AI is dumb enough to just cram into a single gate. I once killed off 75% of an enemy force by shooting at them with slingshot and javelin, and getting them to charge through 1 gate (anyone seen the 1931 movie gallipolli? never mind). I lost only 3-5% casualties, most from friendly fire.

and yes, i hate to assault cities. the siege I mentioned up there was an exception to the rule; typically, 10-15% is considered acceptable in a siege, mostly due to plaza fighting. but to defeat the enemy, I must deprive them of their cities, so I do it anyways. also, since I prefer to minimize field battles, by out manuevering the enemy, sieges are far more common than with most players; 80% of all me engagements in the AS campaign i played last year were assaults on cities. a romani game had the most field battles, at c.40%. but even with the romani, its mostly siege.

Ones that tick me off are when the enemy repetitively besieges my cities with 4-5 units - and I have a full stack.

As to assaulting... Phalanx dude! Assuming wooden walls, massacre the headless chooks with archers/slingers. Then knock two holes in the wall. Run a phalanx into the street behind the wall and form a street filling phalanx, or as close as the re-eff%$#-tarded pathfinding will let you... When the enemy charge into the front of the phalanx as is inevitible, let them wear down somewhat then charge heavy cavalry (preferably) or heavy infantry into their rear. Run down survivors, rinse and repeat.

Bar the final square you should capture the town with less than 1% casualties.

Yeah, and that's exactly the thing which is no fun -_-

It's absolutely stupid if you can conquer a whole capital with such minimal losses, and rather unreal...

I noticed that if the city garrison has no general as a leader, normal auto-calcing gives pretty accurate results (slightly higher losses on your side), but if they have a general (who most the times also has like 9 command stars) it doesn't matter if you attack with your 2000 men highly experienced elite troops and he only has a garrison of 400, autocalcing massacres your army and there even is a high propability of being defeated...
Here typing "auto_win attacker" in console first tends to give you accurate results, still adequate losses on your side, but you win the battle obviously.
If battles are really tough and the outcome is not 90% clear, I of course play the battle, because these battles are the most thrilling ones!:smash:

If youre really stuck with a walled city, there are ways around it. For a start, building lots of siege equipment will allow you to attack from multiple fronts, dividing the defenders.

Or if youre being sneaky, you can make a feigned attack on one side. Let me explain.
Place your entire army plus a siege unit on one side of the city, except for one other siege unit, which you ready to attack a different side. Click "start battle" and you'll see the AI has placed all its defenders on the wall facing your main army. Then you simply take the undefended wall, completely unopposed, while you move your main army.

This creates a new problem though - assaults go from being too hard to a bit too easy.

I personally don't like assaulting cities, but given I like to roleplay the game I'll siege a city until it surrenders. I feel this gives a more realistic timescale, especially when you are really subduing a province not just one city.
There are a couple of exceptions, when a siege is longer than 8 turns in which case on turn 8 I autocalc and take the losses hit, and as the Romans when it's Carthage! Though, on reflection next time I wont and fight of the relief forces.

I lose autocalc battles more often than I win them, it seems.

In my ''experimental'' Epeiros campain i used storming parties composed of thureophoroi and mercenaries and this worked quite well but now i prefer to siege a city until it´s surrender.

if you the enemy outnumbers you twice retreat,
if you have same men with the enemy you can attack or defend,
if you outnumber the enemy twice attack,
to assault a city with stone wall (that is the most diffucult battle) you have to outnumber them 10 times...

Sun Tszu Art Of War