Does any one starve the enemy???

[Darius]

Well, that's appropriate if you're a Casse general, or any barbarian general. Barbarians are impatient, easily bored, and don't enjoy long seiges. They like fighting and killing, cutting off the enemy's heads, plundering their town, ravishing their women, and then getting absolutely blind drunk!

So IMO it's quite realistic for your bored, disgruntled warriors to label you an "Indecisive Attacker." In their eyes, that's exactly what you are! You're delaying them from doing what they enjoy most, and not letting them go home to their wives and children either. In fact, they probably call you a lot worse things than "Indecisive Attacker" behind your back. Things like "Woman", "Greek Merchant", or even "Ball-less Wonder"!

The problem is that I'm getting it with my Romani generals, and if anything I'd expect to start maybe seeing a trait like "Troops getting bored, -1 morale" rather than "Indecisive Attacker because you don't want to commit suicide".

[Cute Wolf]

Well, I normally shuttle my FM when laying siege... a FM most often only lay siege just in one year, and then back to my territory.... while another FM joining and lead the troops.... (order the First FM to leave the army alone, and the second FM than joining the siege)... This was roleplaying logistical support don't you

[the man with no name]

Naaw i never

[Aemilius Paulus]

Yeah, me neither. I reload all the time, but never starve. Feels like cheating and takes the fun/adversity away.

[Vasiliyi]

Starving takes too long, and I only do it if the enemy army is hugely outnumbering me, or i have a full horse archer stack

[Ashery]

Maybe my technique would be considered an AI exploit, but when I was playing Casse, (Just last night, actually) I was assaulting the nearby towns with 10-15% to 100% losses...and the sieges started out somewhere around 0% to 70%.

The great thing about Celtic towns with just a palisade (when assaulting at least) is that there will always be a direction that you can attack from that won't be covered by any guard towers. But before I get into that, my stack: 3x slingers, 4x skirmishers, 2x naked spearmen, 2x axemen, 1x Belgae Swordsmen, and my general that rarely saw action. This was the first time I played Casse, so I'm sure that the initial setup (esp the "core" of the force) could be improved.

Anyways, the strategy is fairly simple, attack the wall with three rams and place two skirmishers between each. After that, place the slingers a bit behind them and your two unused infantry can go wherever. Enable fire at will on all infantry.

That's it.

The rest is basically exploiting the AI advancing for the initial defense. They'll only take light casualties as they advance towards you, but the moment they turn to regroup, they'll be massacred. Even better is when the AI will try to move a troop along their side of the wall. With all those javelin comps, any company that decides to try that will wide up completely destroyed (You could save ammo once they get down to only a handful of survivors and just kill the last couple in the square).

Using that technique, I was able to take all eight of the territories and return to retrain only once (I had taken four and my naked spearmen were down to 20-30 in a stack (used the large setting, started with 80)).

Having the infantry use their javelins is also a fairly good way to train them, as my slingers average ~4.5xp and my axemen and swordsmen average ~3.5. The only companies below three are my general (who just got his second while chasing down routing units) and one of the skirmishers.

[Darius]

So how do I get rid of these damnable "Bad Attacker" traits. I've been having my afflicted FM attacking everything in site at the first opportunity from full blown armies and entire cities to a single depleted unit of rebls and villages but has so far only gone further down the path for the trait.

[Andy1984]

In my Seleucid siege of a Ptolemean large town, my foe ended up sending relieve force after relieve force, only to loose over 5000 soldiers. Sadly for them, not one soldier belonged to their beloved garrisson, as they never showed up on the battle field. After 8 turns, their numbers had dwindled down to some 50% of their original strength. Their faction leader (supported by some 1200 soldiers) still managed to kill 900 soldiers of my 2500 men army.

[Cute Wolf]

Bet you siege Memphis, with tons of Klerouchon Agema and Pezhetairoi (maybe some Galatikoi) inside....

This city ALWAYS get tons of elite units as Garrison....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Alexandria did also, but you can deploy your troops inside Alexandrian walls, so no problem.....

[Andy1984]

I besieged the large town south of Memphis (forgot it's name). Apart from a 100+ bodyguard cavalry, they did have several klerouchoi phalangitai, a unit of Galatians and the dreaded thorakitai. I moved my phalanxes towards their gates once they sallied, where they horribly *****ed up a fight that should have been easy... My phezetairoi got decimated, my klerouchoi routed, half of my beloved podromoi died in the mess,... If the Ptolemeans hadn't decided to rout, I would have found myself entering the city to fight phalangitai with missile units, chariots, and some depleted troops that couldn't be trusted to do any more than rout.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I've never really bothered to starve. I'm one of those speed is the key to war advocates, and usually take cities as soon as possible, usually only taking one turn to build siege equipment. For me, I rarely go on the offensive unless I have a well prepared army to do the work, and I know I have enough forces to take the city in an assault.


Those opening stages of the Casse campaign can be killer. The important part is to really take your time. There is no rush, and I find it very easy to get a sense of isolation, which is a good thing. Take some time to build up your economy a little but, and be very stingy, and soon you'll find yourself in the green. Then reinvest that into a decent sized army, and slowly start expanding. Once you get the first couple settlements under your belt, then it starts snowballing, and you find that you have the economy and production ccapability to the extent that losing a few Lugoae or Kluddabro really doesn't matter anymore. Once you unify the island, I like to industrialize it and get the cities building infrastructure, of course then you really have to watch your economy, mine crashed extremely in my game (from 70k to 20k in a couple years). However once you weather that, the game is basically yours. Unisolate yourself, and start choosing sides in the various conflicts, and then pick off your neighbors one by one until victory is yours.

I find the Casse to be a very fun campaign. I love how easily it is for you to get wrapped up in your own little island and forget about everyone else entirely.

[A Very Super Market]

As Casse, I uh, spammed as many units as my starting funds could allow and took the midlands first thing. A real tough fight, since even the Caledonians charged downwards to attack me.

Then I disbanded the ones that had no experience and waited for around until I could afford to build anything.

I actually started playing at around 250 BC

[Ghaust the Moor]

Well here is what I did. I first spammed all the Urodusios's that I could with my starting funds (a.k.a. 2) and then took my entire army and loaded them onto that little tiny fleet. Meanwhile, One fm guards the capital. After making sure no eleuthureoi fleets were near. I set sail for caledonia. Once there I attacked the city, asap. I caputured it easily no problem. I waited several years and got some money and then sent the majority of my army down south into London. I recruited a few more urodusios and, with my new Balroe, besieged Icitis. I constantly broke the siege and resiege unitl their numbers had been depleted about 50%. I repeted this patten until all of england and Irland war mine. By the time I was done it was 234BC.

[geala]

I just started a Casse campaign a few days ago and am a bit wondering why I haven't had so much problems (on vh/m).

I always starve cities until the very end, when they attack me. During the waiting time I can beat the release armies (I like it to be the defender in battles). I did so with my Epirotes, Macedonians, Ptolemaioi, Bactrians, KH and Lusotannans and I do it with the Casse. I just recruited four cheap units (one slinger) from the starting treasure and sieged the town north of the starting city (it's a shame that I don't have the names ready). You go in depths but with the second town you make enough money. The only problem was that I was attacked by two release armies in the first and second turn; never had this before with Eleutheroi except at Numantia. I lifted the sieges shortly, so I could fight against the field army alone.

Casse are nice to play and nice to look at (but I changed some units appearance), different from what I had by now in EB, and I like especially the Goidelic units, but the poor boys get their bellies ripped open so easily . I'm now fighting against Carthage in Spain and I get a headache when I think of my heavily armoured enemies.

[kuroiya88]

I play as a Romani most of the time. If its a well defended city I create full stacks of mercenaries and send them to die at the walls, then send in a roman army to occupy it. I only do this cuz i have tons of cash sitting around but yeah, I'm too impatient and disregard virtual human life too much to be waiting around for them to start getting hungry.

[Satyros]

I started my campaign earlier today so after three turns ( during which I trained 2 Imannae[ Militia Skirmishers ] units and 1 Uirodusios [ Celtic Naked Spearmen ] unit with my starting money) I assembled all of my army ( 2 Botroas [ Southern Gallic Swordsmen ] , 2 Gaeroas [ Celtic Spearmen ] , 2 Uirodusios , 2 Imannae ) , took with me two of my three FM's , marched north and laid siege .

Same thing happened here the caledonian marauders' march found me and I decided to kill them all , the caledonians and the garisson in the same battle .

I put my two Uirodusios at the two edges of the line respectively , at the centre were my Gaeroas , all on guard mode , then deployed at the flanks slightly behind my main line on either side the Botroas , and kept the Imannae and FM's together further back , but close . Fire at will was only enabled for the FM's .

As soon as the battle begun , I rushed towards the Caledonians so that they wouldn't be able to throw their deadly javelins , all the time watching the horizon for the approaching garisson . The line held , not much losses , when the line cracked one of my FM's flanked peppered their backs with javelins , charged , killed their general , and proceeded with their chase to avoid them regrouping . Simultaneously a single unit was chasing my general , he retreated a bit ( so that the unit should feel insecure about flanks ) and as soon as battle was joined ( risky business when your general is a chariot I must say ) I charged my Imannae and soon they collapsed too .

As my FM's were chasing the Caledonians ( I was hoping the Uirodusios would pull off the encouraging business of my tired , wounded battle line ) I rearranged my battered infantry line again ( just in time for the second enemy charge ) , as described above , but with the Imannae on its right back side behind the Botroas , hoping to flank them with my young 'uns . All units were given fire at will orders except for the Imannae .

The second charge was fierce given the fact they too had Uirodusios ( if I recall correctly ) , Teceitos [Celtic Axemen] plus they had full numbers and less fatigue , so 80% of my line collapsed seconds before my general had returned from the chase . It was at that point that I made the flanking move with the youngsters , killed their chariot general with my one unbroken unit of Gaeroas and with help from my second FM ( who also returned after a while ) engaged their units to give time for the few men I had running to regroup and return to finish them off .

The gods favored us and in the wake of this triumph I managed to rout both armies and capture the city , didn't lost any units but the majority were on 20% strength .

After this battle , I had about 1.5k profit per turn so I was soon out of debt , gathered enough funds to retrain and train another 2 units of Gaeroas and begin my campaign to dominate the isles .

Needless to say , I plunged into debt , about -13k , which I didn't erase until after I captured the third city ( bringing the total of my cities to five ) and I was starving my opponents to minimize losses . The remaining three provinces I stormed them since I was financially stable .

Now I control the isles , I also control the northwestern edge of modern day france , because I want to built a great fleet and send an expedition somewhere FAR away , perhaps Galatia . It rains money so I regularly give gifts to my allies the Aedui , to halt Roman expansion , but I believe I will have to take a couple of cities from them and give them to the Aedui . Perhaps I will strike at the Arverni instead .

I 've had me first reforms a long time ago , I build up to have my second reforms , but I am currently experiencing ( I think ) some problems with my first reforms , see relevant post in another relevant thread if you'd like please .

So , I don't consider the Casse that difficult ( I play on vh/m ) but you really need to achieve some epic ( at least one ) victories in the early game . Might I also add that if you are starving them , you surely aren't blitzing , which is a good thing methinks .

Sorry for the big post , I got really excited about my first battle in this campaign .

Satyros

[Fierro]

Sometimes I wait until the enemy sallies. Sometimes I let the town be captured without the enemy sallying. Sometimes I attack as soon as I have equipment. I never pull back and siege again.
The only reason I don't attack the settlement every time is that losing two full units of mercenary gaestatae to a unit of akonkistai and pandatapoi (sp?) phalangites in a wall fight left me with a nasty memory of city fights.

[mountaingoat]

The only reason I don't attack the settlement every time is that losing two full units of mercenary gaestatae to a unit of akonkistai and pandatapoi (sp?) phalangites in a wall

think of the mnai you will make in the next turn

[godsakes]

does starving work on enemy generals? i'm curently seiging the last city of a faction and eventhough my army sigificantly outnumbers them the 5 enemy generals (noble calvary) just cut through my cheap casse shortswordsmens

[Alsatia]

Generals don't starve.

I normally charge them next turn unless there is a full stack in there.

[ARCHIPPOS]

I used to look down on starving your opponent until very recently when reaching Taksashilla in my Baktrian campaign ... stone walls , elephants,taxillan agema, indian longbowmen and guild infantry (have you seen those guys in wall action???) against my low-tech half stack of an army of pantodapoi Phallangites,archer-spearmen, archers, slingers and eastern skirmishers... so after reading this thread i said why not starve them out??? fast forward 8 (!!! ) rounds later with all their units reduced to 1/2-1/3 of their original strength they sallied forth... by then my FM's had acquired -3 morale , hesitant attacker and starving traits... so they sally... only they don't come out!!!theu just sit on their city walls and wait...playing my battles with no battle limit i decided to attack myself... sent my archer spearmen on the walls with my towers followed by skirmishers, archers and slingers... i routed his taxilan agema two units of his elephants which fled the city in frenzy, and wiped out one unit of his guild infantry then i had to clean the walls from enemies, ... so then i had the choice of moving my phallanxes and skirmishers towards the city centre and engage the remaining FM elephants OR clean the walls of the remaining enemy infantry first ,then move in...i go for the second option... BIG MISTAKE!!! the enemy gave me one hell of a fight with his remaining spearmen and 1Xguildslayers and longbowmen(which took out their machettes)and started slaughtering my poor light troops in wall melee... in the end my units prevailed but at a terrible cost ... reduced to 20-50% of their original strength... so frankly i didn't feel like cheating... even at such terrible loses from starvation those Indians gave me hell

[ARCHIPPOS]

i think enemy generals DO starve but at a significantly slower pace ... when eveybody else was 30-50% down from losses the enemy general had gone down perhaps 15% or sth... this bastard was hiding rations from the rest of his troops and feeding it to his bodyguard!!!

[Mediteran]

i think enemy generals DO starve but at a significantly slower pace ... when eveybody else was 30-50% down from losses the enemy general had gone down perhaps 15% or sth... this bastard was hiding rations from the rest of his troops and feeding it to his bodyguard!!!

the bastard!

i like to wait sometimes, only to wait for them to sally, i dont break off sieges and then start again

[ARCHIPPOS]

whatever happened to Alexander's "if my men can't get any ,neither will I !!!" attitude???? HUH???

[Mikhail Mengsk]

I starve the enemy every time, i attack only when the city is poorly defended or if i have to conquer that city FAST for some reason. I don't think it's cheating, i don't see any reason to call it so, because sieges are sieges.

Attacking full-defended fortified city was a slaughter, in antiquity. An intelligent general won't risks its veterans in such a risky way, unless there was some GOOD reason. So do I.

[Satyros]

I starve the enemy every time, i attack only when the city is poorly defended or if i have to conquer that city FAST for some reason. I don't think it's cheating, i don't see any reason to call it so, because sieges are sieges.

Attacking full-defended fortified city was a slaughter, in antiquity. An intelligent general won't risks its veterans in such a risky way, unless there was some GOOD reason. So do I.

Exactly .

Never storm unless sure to crush them , or other reason of great ( financial/roleplay ) importance .

Satyros

[Constantius III]

I try not to storm unless I'm pressed for cash or time. Besides, if I sit around besieging the city for long enough, the enemy will send some stacks to relieve it, and the field battles that ensue can be pretty fun.

I used to look down on starving your opponent until very recently when reaching Taksashilla in my Baktrian campaign ... stone walls , elephants,taxillan agema, indian longbowmen and guild infantry (have you seen those guys in wall action???) against my low-tech half stack of an army of pantodapoi Phallangites,archer-spearmen, archers, slingers and eastern skirmishers...

Mhm. Whenever I play Baktria I try to RP not attacking India until at the very least after Asoka dies...so I don't usually have your "low-tech" problem (but getting rid of the constantly-attacking-AS-that-ignores-your-alliance-even-if-you-don't-break-it-at-the-very-beginning is pure hell).

[penguinking]

I hate stone wall seige battles (the rate of fire for those towers is ridiculous), so I often seige or autoresolve those battles. Wooden walls I usually just attack.

[Satyros]

I hate stone wall seige battles (the rate of fire for those towers is ridiculous), so I often seige or autoresolve those battles. Wooden walls I usually just attack.

You just have to concentrate on a one ( or two maximum ) wall sections and ensure you take and hold them . For that you will need skilled units perhaps some big choppa elites of some sort I guess . I've also read somewhere in the forum ( not tested ) that Galatikoi Kludolon do a great job at walls , available at many places .

After that if you feel like exploitiing A.I. dumbness send some crappy unit to take the rest of the walls and gates , but at the very least clear the sections where ( /if ) you're going to fight close to and get some extra help while fighting the defenders .

THEN Enter the city with the rest of the army and butcher them .

That should cut your losses .

Me ? I got issues with the town square unbreakable troops + bonus the s****y pathfinding around there . I always try my best to rout them and push the end battle button , to save some more people .

It seems the last stand of the defenders comes with a stupidity penalty for my troops . God I hate that .

Satyros

[mountaingoat]

Well here is what I did. I first spammed all the Urodusios's that I could with my starting funds (a.k.a. 2) and then took my entire army and loaded them onto that little tiny fleet. Meanwhile, One fm guards the capital. After making sure no eleuthureoi fleets were near. I set sail for caledonia. Once there I attacked the city, asap. I caputured it easily no problem. I waited several years and got some money and then sent the majority of my army down south into London. I recruited a few more urodusios and, with my new Balroe, besieged Icitis. I constantly broke the siege and resiege unitl their numbers had been depleted about 50%. I repeted this patten until all of england and Irland war mine. By the time I was done it was 234BC.

interesting start ..i like