Questions about castle walls

**Daevyll** · 03-24-2011, 15:40

I switch archers with melee troops at the walls when the enemy is about halfway up the wall. So far all sieges have been absolute massacres.

Bowfire bonus/cover from walls is significant, to the point where 1 of your achers can trade fire with 3 of theirs to more or less a stalemate. Melee bonus seems even more powerful.

Two Bow Ashigaru and a General make for a very effective garrison, when combined with the free troops from the larger castles. Had absolutely no trouble defending against vastly superior enemy stacks. I might get worried though if there were a few units of mangonels in the attacking army, havent encountered them in sieges yet.

**Daveybaby** · 03-24-2011, 16:25

Another vote here for switching the archers out with melee troops just before the attackers reach the top of the wall. Very effective.

I've found that when youre the attacker, having a superior archer force makes you virtually unbeatable. You can shred defending archers in the initial stages (since you can bring your entire force to bear on one segment of the wall) and then just sit there and pound the the defending melee troops and cav into near oblivion. Usually by the time you've run out of arrows a couple of units of yari are sufficient to take out the remainder.

Larger castles make this only marginally more difficult to achieve, If some defenders are out of range of archery fire from outside the castle, just take the castle section by section until they are in range.

Castles really need some kind of shelter against indirectly fired arrows (or better still, just make indirect fire less effective overall vs direct fire). I do find it odd that boats provide better protection against archers than castles.

**Lord Benihana** · 03-24-2011, 17:13

I switch out as well, and have had some incredible defense battles (5 of my units hold off an entire stack of theirs) so I think it is beneficial to swap

Speaking of castles - does anyone see why they have moats? Some of the larger castles (and the Citadel in Kyoto) have a moat, but your men can march right across it, and shoot arrows while knee deep in water. I think this makes the larger castles a bit of a liability when compared to say, a fortress.

Thoughts?

**hamysho** · 03-24-2011, 17:20

I was wondering the same thing, like if units in the moat have penalties to movement or defense and if it's worth it to pin them in the water with a melee unit.

**Lord Benihana** · 03-24-2011, 17:23

I think the only "penalty" is that the units in the moat can't run... but if you are defending a citadel with a small force, a large army could really give you a headache if they spread out their assault

**Daveybaby** · 03-25-2011, 11:30

If i was gonna go to the trouble of building a moat around my fortress, i'd probably build it deeper than knee deep. Seriously, what contracters did they use? Went with the cheapest, i bet.

**Daevyll** · 03-25-2011, 11:36

Originally Posted by Daveybaby

If i was gonna go to the trouble of building a moat around my fortress, i'd probably build it deeper than knee deep. Seriously, what contracters did they use? Went with the cheapest, i bet.

Perhaps it was more intended for the benefit of the koi-carps than defense

**Kagemusha** · 03-26-2011, 08:37

Originally Posted by Daveybaby

If i was gonna go to the trouble of building a moat around my fortress, i'd probably build it deeper than knee deep. Seriously, what contracters did they use? Went with the cheapest, i bet.

According to Togukawa Ieyasu. He reprimanded his son Hidetada for initially making the moat of Edo castle too deep. I guess the idea was not to make them impassable, but rather slow the passing enemy down in order to make them better targets for Yumi and Teppo.