Transition from MTW to M2TW (Sieges)

[Zild]

Well, this looks different...

Having played MTW fairly solidly for the last six years, I am finding the migration to M2TW a bit... challenging. Are there any other threads out there devoted to this arduous transition?

Siege battles are a particular source of confusion for me... I have seen Welsh Longbowmen (amdittedly rather bloody good, I suspect) turn numerous of my own siege towers to cinders in less volleys than I could count on a Simpsons character's hand, whilst my own peasant archers (okay, they sound pretty crummy - and admittedly were not set to use flaming arrows) barely killed a couple of attacking men as they pushed forward their battering ram in a separate battle.

My melee troops like to take all day to leisurely climb my siege towers, then it takes many repeated commands to move along the enemy's pallisades... And when they do finally charge the enemy standing there only a couple engage.

I still have not figured out where I need to place my men to capture the enemy's gate (I managed it by luck rather than judgement, which may explain why I kept losing it again soon afterward) and I don't even know what towers are for! (Although I suspect it may have to do with gaining access to and control of walls?)

Worst of all, I've played through the siege tutorials and read the manual in its entirity (was bored waiting for the game to arrive) and still can't seem to fathom it... :(

Not that this ist stopping me enjoying the game - I actually like not knowing what's going on! :D

[Raz]

You capture towers and gates when there aren't any enemy soldiers nearby. And I know how it's frustrating when your soldiers just can't seem to comprehend that climbing the tower or the ladder is for the greater good, I know that peasant folk in the day weren't very educated, but still... gah! I still haven't found a way to get around this "I would climb the ladder, but I don't wanna!" feature/bug.

To get around the problem of your siege equipment being shot to pieces, try making two or three rams and three or four towers (depending on your own army's size), also try sending your very cheap expendable soldiers (plain peasants) up front in loose formation to absorb the arrows from any archers on the walls this not only tires them defenders, but also drains their ammo. When those peasants are low on numbers send your archers up front in loose formation, the enemy will still target a few of your remaining peasants thus keeping your archers relatively safe. All the while your battering rams and siege towers will be closing in. Send the siege equipment in all at once, that way if one of those pesky defenders decide to target your ram instead, you'll still have another ram coming up behind it as a back up.

If your soldiers holding the siege equipment keep dying out, try using troops with large shields (like levy spearmen) to hold the equipment, shields are very effective at stopping missiles. If the enemy also sally out with cavalry etc. you'll have a unit of spears there to deal with it too.

If those tips don't work, maybe the good ol' fashioned MTW tactic of charging toward the gate with your entire army could work...
If you don't like the idea of all those casualties on the other hand, maybe just wait out the siege until you can start building catapults and trebuchets.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

Theres many similar threads on this..but heres some info


Archers should always be set to fire flaming arrows as the defender in a seige,they affectmorale,have a better kill rate and theres always the off-chance they could destroy an attacking tower/ram. Welsh longbowmen are much farther range than peasant archers so thats why they had an easier time of it. However,depending on your archers/towers to take out the attacking seige engines is risky. Far easier to sally a militia unit and attack the ram/tower troops. The AI wont reuse the seige engines you disengage them from.

Instead of using towers,if at all possible use ladders. You can assault all city and castle walls with ladders at least until the city has *huge stone walls* upgrade. Laddercarrying troops can run with the ladder and ladders are built faster than towers. Also, a tower "fills up" with troops b4 the ramp comes down and they engage your units on the walls,whereas a ladder will disembark the units soldier by soldier as they climb it.

A unit on your walls is in a tight area with enough room for only a few at a time to engage,which is why only a few appear to be engaged. It helps to pre-form your units before you attack, make them into a tighter line so they are "ready" to be on a wall or go through a breach/gate. A unit of spearmen for example will start at typically 4 ranks deep, which Ill usually change to about 6 ranks deep b4 the battle. This makes your unit size abit smaller so they move on/off walls better and also attack/defend better
because of a deeper unit size.

Towers are garrisoned by having troops nearby or on the walls next to them. In this sense, its required that you rout/destroy those forces in order to gain control over the towers.Towers that are garrisoned will have a flag above them.Towers w/o troops will not have a flag on them. Garrisoned towers shoot arrows! Even the crummiest settlement with the worst possible towers and no upgrades will shoot arrows from the towers on the walls...
so use them as often as possible.


Hope it helps.

[FactionHeir]

I would disagree with the notion that having defender archers firing flaming arrows is useful in M2TW. It seemed more useful back in RTW iirc.

Generally, when defending, place your archers in a bulk hugged against a tower far away from the enemies likely anchor point so the trajectory favors you and allows you to kill more. Flaming arrows are relatively useless at burning equipment unless you are the AI. Generally unless a missile is coded to do damage in the projectile file, its very unlikely it will ever set something alight.

Towers are better than ladders in that your units are protected while going up (as well as approaching the walls) and will arrive in bulk, meaning elss die as troops come forth. They are slower however and less maneuvrable.

To capture a gate, you need units standing near the inside portion of the gate. This means either on the ground or on the wall portion right above the gate. Towers are counted as manned if a nearby unit stands either right below it or stands on an adjacent wall. Regardless of unit number btw, so 1 peasant can man 2 cannon towers for instance.

If you have artillery inside your city while defending, never use flaming projectiles as those do less damage than normal projectiles and are less accurate against siege equipment.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

Flaming arrows reduce morale and at least give a chance to set stuff alight.In the case of sub-par archers (peasant,militia etc) It at least is more effective than just a regular arrow inasmuch as it CAN in limited cases either reduce morale OR set fires.

Have pics at home of a field battle (not a siege) in which there are 2 trebs that were set alight from the volume of fire-arrows being shot. Quite the sight...and in that case those are arrows that have "missed" their targets and hit the trebs instead since the treb unit was engaged in melee. Sooo ...some slim chance at least of success youd think.

Ive only noticed a tower unit massing pre-attack for the 1st unit, the others behind it simply climb up and file out, so unless its a hvy inf or something decent going in as the 1st unit,the advantages are few over speed,manuverability and the option to pick up the ladder and reuse it. Towers as well can get burned down whereas a ladder unit must lose all 3 ladders 1 at a time in order to become ineffective.

I do agree that if you have sufficient forces you should try to group as many
archers as possible to concentrate their fire. However, it can be said that having 2 groupsis superior to 1 since there are 2 flanks presented to attack.

[FactionHeir]

Generally speaking low level archers will hardly reduce morale because they will hardly kill any unit with flaming arrows due to horrible accuracy. The distance between siege equipment and archer plays some role in the chance of setting it alight due to loss of accuracy over range. However, I have yet to see a human player's archers on the walls shoot down a siege tower that is relatively close but has not yet latched on.
That said, normal arrows have almost double the accuracy of flaming arrows, so you will kill at a higher rate with them especially since you got the height advantage. To use it, you have to place your archers as I described in my previous post by having them hug a tower away from the enemy in square formation.

Towers vs ladders. The dispute can be endless, but generally towers will reduce your casualties as opposed to ladders.
1. Even a burned down tower is a large obstacle covering the exact same dimensions as an intact tower. Therefore you can use them as cover for your troops.
2. As a tower approaches the wall, you generally hardly lose any of its carriers while you lose significant amounts of your ladder carriers.
3. Units disembarking from ladders suffer a morale penalty.
4. As you disembark from ladders, you get 2 at most 3 units on per 3-4 seconds. If the enemy on the walls has one hand weapons that are not spears, they will easily kill your ladder troops, inflicting heavy casualties as those do not have a chance to fight back at all (immobilized for 1-2 seconds on reaching wall)
5. As you disembark from towers on the other hand, you get about 20 men rushing down with the rest close behind. You can also overload a tower to about 30 before opening the hatch if you know how to. Those push away the enemy breaking their formation which gives you an advantage and even if they kill the first few coming out, the rest due to sheer numbers and mass actually get to fight back more quickly and will prevent the wall unit from escaping unless in a rout, allowing you to focus your efforts elsewhere.

The only time I would advise ladders is when you are trying to exploit the AI or if you are storming a citadel or if you are attacking from 3 sides and need to be quick.