Castle assaults

[hoom]

I have been trying some different approaches to castle assaults and getting mixed results.

I'm quite interested to see what units people use for going into the castle and killing the defenders.
And what parts you attack with artilliery.

Basically I see a few different possibilities for going into the castle:
1. Send in a whole heap of medium/low quality, easily replaceable troops and win by numbers but sustain high casualties (often even 2-3 * the number of defenders).

2. Send in a few high quality infantry. With fewer there, better melee and likely more armour/shield, they should suffer fewer casualties but what you do lose will be high valour, expensive guys.

3. Send in the cavalry. Send in your heavy cavalry to smash the normally depleted defenders. Because they can traverse around the interiors faster they should wind up taking less time and so not be exposed to so many possible deaths from arrows. But again, any losses will be expensive and generally high valour guys.

4. Send in a bunch of missile troops and shoot em dead.
Missile units are generally fairly cheap and replaceable, but killing depleted units outright is normally quite slow and meanwhile your guys are standing around getting shot up by the walls.

I have had some success with each but haven't really settled on which is best.
Though probably (hopefully even) like everything else about this game, there is no such thing as 'best' and it all depends on what troops you have, what kind of castle, what troops the enemy has and where they are located.

With the artillery, I almost always go for the bit where the outer section of the castle meets the stronger, 'inner' section.
There, you can knock down 3 wall sections, going for the wall of the outer part closest to the join first.
Misses have a good chance of doing damage to the wall section behind that leads to the inner section.
Once the first section is down, I go for the section of wall on the inner side of the join. This one is generally stronger and its important to have access to both sections of the castle.
Once that is down, I go for the section that was damaged previously when taking down the first wall section. This will provide a shorter route for your guys to help out the others when their section of the castle is cleared.

Its rather more tricky with the fully concentric ones that some factions have, but still then I try to knock one hole in each ring of walls so that I don't have to attack gates.

Of course, all that is much easier to do with cannons...

[Red Harvest]

My own strategy:

1. Use what arty/siege gear I have to bring down big flat sections of wall--usually on either section of the inner-to outer-joint as you describe it. Continue busting adjacent wall sections or even the keep until I'm out of ammo. This should reduce archer fire volume (fewer sections = fewer archers.)
2. Send infantry rushing in. Armoured/shielded troops work best (except in desert) because the main killer is archer fire. Troop selection depends on what opponents are inside castle. If there are just a few then FMAA can handle it rapidly. If there are a lot of cav/camel/royal knights then sergeants/spearmen are needed.
3. Route some infantry units to flanks/rear of defenders rather than all rush in headlong. This ends things much faster.

Lots of ifs, ands, and butts related to types of defenses, terrain, weather that could be added. I've been selecting wet weather for attacks when I lack siege equipment and must bust down gates. Should reduce the archer defender accuracy.

[mav3434]

auto-resolve

[PoLsKa_HuSaRiA]

Hear Hear mav3434 Auto-resolve all the way

However, if your intent on taking on the enemy, just let loose with your artillery and try to lessen the amount of archer towers there are.

Then i like to move in with loads of infantry. Generally spearmen. However, get peasants just outside of the wall sections that your attacking just before the wall is about to collapse. It doesnt matter if most of them die. Use them to quickly charge in and occuy the defenders of the castles so that your other, more expensive troops such as Royal knights can have enough time to get into the action without suffering too many losses due to archers (the archers will be firing at the peasants first - let them take the hits, and send in the good stuff as they die - evil i know, but it works )

[BDC]

Don't send in cavalry, keep them back and shoot them a bit first.

Talking of defending, try Longbowman, they are surprisingly good at holding a breech if there are enough, and they can't be flanked. Plus they can fire volleys of arrows at any attacks to reduce their numbers first.

[Foreign Devil]

Castle assaults have two parts to them- getting your units inside, and killing the enemy units once you are inside. Since most of the time when you face a castle garrison it is made up of units that broke and routed when you initially invaded, the tricky part is to get in the walls.

There are two ways of doing this:

Preferably, you will use siege engines to open a breach in the walls from a distance, taking out arrow/artillery towers with any remaining ammo. At this point, you send in what forces you have and hope that they do the job before too many of them are killed by arrows.

Or, you can use a unit to break down the gates. It is best to do this with mercs- I use Byzintine Infantry, which can usually be found if you have several inns that are in provences with favorable buildings (i.e., not too many). You can also use peasants, but these are less effective, as once they break down the gates, they will be unable to effectively kill whatever is inside. The Byzintines are armoured, reducing lossed from arrows, and are effective fighters against most units.

Foot Knights are also usefull, especially when from your king or prince's unit, as they often have high valour.

[Red Harvest]

Quote[/b] (Foreign Devil @ Mar. 04 2003,19:13)]Foot Knights are also usefull, especially when from your king or prince's unit, as they often have high valour.

Perhaps, but princes and kings wear a giant bullseye on their helmet for catapults, ballistae and even archers during castle assault. I never let anyone like that get near fortifications (or artillery.)

[hoom]

I've only ever lost one general to arrows/catapaults.

I was mainly trying to get an idea on what methods best minimise losses on your side when killing the people inside the castle.

Autoresolve doesn't count because it is an obvious bug.

I have had some cases where having my cavalry doing the killing has seemingly worked better than I would expect infantry to do, presumably because of fewer possible targets & they could traverse around the castle faster so were exposed to defensive fire for less time = less casualties.

Sometimes you can kill the defenders with missiles but I am not sure that it is an effective method (might try it with pavise arbalesters)

Masses of infantry make a big target for arrows and catapaults and they can take a long time to move about the castle.

(I'm really going to have to actually try using significant numbers of CMAA one of these days, because lots of ppl seem to and my limited experience with them is that other units get better kills with less loss...)

[NateEngle]

More often than not these days I've been auto-resolving sieges (although I'll always go into tactical mode when I've got a few light cav to attack siege engines - there's nothing I like better than seeing those enemy catapults and trebuchets breaking into kindling).

In the cases where I actually do an assault in tactical mode I think it would depend largely on the lay of the land and the types of siege equipment and assault troops I'm packing. I did one attack with a bunch of culverins where I basically just crunched the wall sections and ignored towers, then rode several squadrons of chivalric knights through the gaps to chop up the defenders (who were mostly crossbowmen as I recall). After the battle I discovered that my culverins had actually punched all the way through and knocked down a couple of wall sections on the far side of the castle. Great guns, culverins.

[BDC]

600 Longbowman in good armour + with high valour, backed up by a few cannons = pwnage (to quote from CS). In loose formation hardly any die, their volleys are deadly and they can hold their own against already reduced units.

[Hamburglar]

I always take castles with urban militia. It works pretty well.

Just pound the walls down with artillery and then swarm in with the urbans.


As for knocking down the gates with Byzantine infantry as someone said, it is best to knock down the gate with some crappy peasants, and THEN have the Byzantines charge through the hole. No point in having good troops get killed by arrows knocking out a gate....

Especially in Viking Invasion when they are adding hot boiling oil to pour on guys. And fire arrows.


Viking Invasion is also making it so the sieging army takes losses just like the defenders do, so theres a bigger chance people will storm the caslte because it might save lives.

[andrewt]

I just pound at the gates using my infantry. I usually leave all cavalry and archer units out of range and never use them until really needed. Thing is, if you are storming a castle, that means either the AI lost or retreated. If there are many troops inside the castle, you can just starve them out because it will only take a few years. If you want to preserve the castle level, just storm during the last year so there are fewer units inside the castle.

Generally, I've found 100 unit troops like spearmen and Byzantine infantry to be really good in assaulting castles. I don't even bother using artillery most of the time until citadels or castles with the extra upgrade. 100 unit troops are usually easy to replace, knock down stockades and gates fast enough and well armored. I usually send them and the 60 unit Varangians or CMAA behind them for killing power against the units inside while helping tear down the gates.

Against Citadels and Castles w/ Ringwall or Catapult upgrades, I send in a unit or two of cavalry to arrive inside the castle to coincide with the main battle finishing. These guys are to chase around the units hiding in the castle since citadels are larger.

I haven't stormed fortresses yet. There are usually only one or two in a game and I save them for last. It's not a good idea to assault these w/ out siege.

[Papewaio]

woodsmen, woodsmen, oh and a couple of woodsmen...

generally one marches up at a time and starts hacking up the gates (I just select one tell it to attack the gates, move along select another to wander up and attack the gates etc) once they are about to encounter enemy then maybe a spear unit or two (feudals maybe).

The castle defenses kill too many to warrant wasting quality units. Also the units cannot run anywhere else if you don't breach the walls so time is not a problem (I play with limited time on), if you need heavy units then send them in once all the gates are breached.

[Tigger]

On a slightly different note has anyone ever actually commanded the defence of a castle in sp?

I'd like to try this but have never had the chance as the AI never seems to resolve sieges...

[Hamburglar]

It's happened to me a couple times. NEVER with a big castle, but during the courses of my campaigns I've defended...


About 5 or 6 tiny wooden forts during assaults. These are basic "automatic" lose scenarios. Those walls last about 2 minutes of guys hacking at them so basically if the enemy outnumbers you then you're dead meat.

And I've also fought 3 or 4 battles as defender in Keeps.

The AI only seems to attack if it has some siege weapons, so later in the game its more common. I failed to hold the castle everytime the AI assaulted me, but I did inflict heavy losses in my keeps, which is better than my men starving to death.

I wish the AI would be more willing to assault castles, espedially when the garrison is tiny.


I can't count how many garrisons of 10 men or less I've had hold out for decades because the AI is too dumb to just assault it and get it over with.

Sure, they may lose 200 men storming my 10 spearmen in the fortress but all that income they will make from owning the province earilier will easily pay for those men. Sieging it for 15 years ties up hundreds of troops that can't do anything else. Its annoying.

[Nikitas]

The A.I. assaulted a castle(no extra upgrades) when I as playing as the Italians. I had about 20 crossbow men, a full unit of royal knights, about 30 CMAA, and I believe I had a full-strenght urban militia unit. I was outnumbered by the A.I. by about 7 to 1 and it had catapults. I was sure I would lose when they broke down the gate. But the first unit just stood there while my crossbow men got a couple of shots off and routed. I was able to hold their next units around the gate with the CMAA and militia while crossbowmen flanked them. I didn't kill many but the whole army routed because I got lucky and killed the general and many of their units just marched around the gate, getting hit by arrows, while the unit in front of them trying to break threw.

Defending is failry easy once you get a castle, I doubt I could have won if I was in a keep or fort.

[Sultan]

I use low loyalty troops and overly expensive mercs that I dont need anymore to beat down the gates.

[hoom]

I am stunned by how many of you go for the gates

At gates, you have to sit there for ages while your guys knock it open.

Then when your guys go through, if they run into a vaguely decent unit sitting on the other side, your guys get munched because of the narrowness of the gate.

[Foreign Devil]

Well, if you don't have any seige weapons, you have to go for the gates. And if you assault then with a good attack unit, i.e., Byz. Infantry or Vikings (both of which can be had fairly easily as mercs, which then allow you to treat them as if they are expendable), then you can pretty much always handle what you find in the gates. Very rarely will there be quality troops defending a castle. If there are, they will be greatly reduced in numbers, as you usually will have defeated them in open battle the turn before.

[cugel]

Not only will your men get munched squeezing through gates but if you have artillery they will get shot to pieces if you place them in front of the gate This is because if you place the artillery close enough to the inner castle or citadel wall to be in range you'll be in easy bowshot of the walls and arrow towers of the outer wall (it's worse if there's a barbican and God help you if there are demi-culverin towers or something).

The only good way to use artillery against castles is to place it just within range of the side of the castle nearest to the join where the lower outer wall meets the higher thicker inner wall of the keep. Fortresses are a BITCH for that reason, since there are TWO walls you have to punch through to reach the inner bailey. Even with 4-5 catapults/mangonels its tough. You have to place them so that their shot strikes the angle where the inner and outer walls are closest, otherwise they're so close to the outer wall they get crushed by shot from the catapult towers (or worse) that the defenders have. Expect to lose some of your artillery anyway. Under the best of circumstances attacking a fortress is no fun (admitedly I've never tried it with cannon so it might be easier with them). I lost about 800+ men conquering Constantinople once, but the alternative was seeing that nice fortress and all those high end buildings degrade

[hoom]

Well, because of gates, I don't assault castles that have stone walls without taking along some seige weapons, so I was assuming that nearly everyone would be using seige weapons to knock down walls...

Demi-culverins etc are very good for sieging, since you can set them up well clear of any defensive fire (presumably with the exception of culverin towers) due to their range
The disadvantage is that they have less ammo than catapaults.

As for not finding good troops beseiged, I have just today assaulted a castle with 80 Gothic Knights in it.
If I had tried to assault the gates, I would have lost badly.
As it was with me knocking down walls and attacking from 2 directions, I only barely managed to kill them, since the Byzantines don't get decent spear units.

[Foreign Devil]

Well, I was speaking in general terms. And I've never assaulted anything higher than a castle by going for the gates. I've assaulted a citidel, but only once. Luckily, there was a nice big hill nearby to place my catapults and mangonels.

Related question- does destrying the wall that leads to the barbican do anything usefull? Also, what about destrying the keep towers?

[Leet Eriksson]

Faisals solution to succesfully assualt a castle

Catholics:

1.Generally when commencing castle assualts always make sure you bring artiller with you and place them in a position that can reach enemy units behind the wall.

2.of you lack seige for whatever reason use men-at-arms or peasants to break the gate and charge in.

3.after breaching the castle and the foot troops clearing the entrance use the heavy cavalry to charge who ever is still running around.

Orthodox:

1.same as catholics,make sure you have seige,engines.

2.if you lack seige,byzantine infantry are a decent substitute,but so are peasantsfor russians use whatever foot units you have,or steppe cavalry.

3.boyars are really great heavy cavalry,use them to charge into castles.

Muslim:

1.same as both above,but the muslims do get a better seige engine in late,thats the cannon and demi-cannon.

2.if you lack seige,muslims can compensate with their cheap infantry and cavalry,ghazis,nizari,turcoman,even AUM.

3.since muslims lack "heavy" cavalry,use ghulams for elmos,mamelukes for egypt and armenian heavy cav for the turks.

small notes on castle assualts:

1.once you pass a breached wall,the archers inside mysteriously disappear and stop shooting at you.

2.make sure you do bring artillery,unless your assualting a fort.

3.keep a stack of reinforcements handy,just incase things turn badly,or you mistakingly assualted a fortress thinking its a castle.

4.Rush to the castles keep,this will disable all walls.effectively reducing casualties.

5.never use elites or high valour infantry to assualt the castle first,use the cheaper units or artillery to soften up its defences,then use your elites to mop the rest of the rabble.

I hope this helps when assualting castles.

EDIT:typos,LOTS OF THEM

[Red Harvest]

I've defended a few keeps and forts vs. AI sieges. Forts are hopeless most times because it is usually 5 or 6 to 1 and the defenses are nil, plus the AI will have a good general and I might have a no star guy in there. Keeps are interesting because the AI attacks so ineptly against fortifications. Several times I've won keep battles at about 5:1 odds with a serious leadership deficit. Typical is the following: AI King attacks with ~400 men vs. ~70 survivors in a standard keep. AI has some siege engines, parks them close by with little support. I rush out the gates with some horse archers as soon as an opportunity arises, knock out some siege engines, before AI's support arrives to spoil the fun. However, AI does manage to knock down a section of wall. AI spends a lot of time parading various royal knights, archers, and infantry around the walls in low ground, letting my arrow defenses annihilate them rather than rushing the gap. AI pokes some holes in the wooden walls but again fails to enter. AI army is slowly wiped out as I jockey troops about and meet it's scattered attempts at entry. My guys get killed off except for a handful in reserve in a corner of the inner wall. My last unit of light cav runs through inner gate to outer portion when the AI's king's royal knight unit slays other remaining defenders in breached inner wall. AI king comes back out and repeatedly charges the wooden wall on a side in which it is still contiguous. He is eventually the last one killed, battle over.

[Red Harvest]

Quote[/b] (Foreign Devil @ Mar. 08 2003,13:48)]Related question- does destrying the wall that leads to the barbican do anything usefull? Also, what about destrying the keep towers?

I destroy keeps and keep towers when I have enough engines to do so. It reduces the volume of archer fire in the final storming since the keeps and keep towers will be the last ones shooting. I don't think I've ever knocked down more than two of the keep towers plus the keep itself (although the other two were pretty heavily damaged.)

Don't recall on the barbican wall. I believe I've taken those out a few times while targeting the arty in the barbican. Don't think it stopped the barbican from firing but I could be wrong.

[cugel]

Two minor points:

1. I don't believe you can assault the gate of citadels or fortresses with swords or spears (I seem to remember that nothing happens). This would be logical, since these weapons would be useless at hacking down stone walls or steel gates.

2. If you destroy arrow, ballista, catapult towers they form impassable rubble, so you can't enter at that point, so make sure you have all the breaches in the walls you need to enter first before targeting the towers. Same should be true of barbican, but I haven't checked this. I only target these structures if I have ammo left over. If the enemy has a decent size army it might even be better to ignore the towers and knock 2 breaches in the wall so that your men can enter from 2 points and won't get hung up charging a into a narrow gap. Allows better flanking possibilities.

BTW: One interesting bug that allowed me to win one battle I should have lost:
If reinforcements entering game are outside the reaction range of enemy forces they don't do anything. In one fort siege I was defending, I was outnumbered about 7-1. After my first troops were wiped out I received reinforcements which entered from the rear of the map. I drew these up in a wood on the edge of the map and waited for the inevitable onslaught, but the AI just sat there in possession of the fort until time ran out. My men were outside the reaction range of the enemy, so the AI didn't chase them (my general was dead at the time).

Same thing happened again recently, but not in a siege. My army was defending in a very tough even battle, until my general died. Naturally my men routed, but before they all fled the map I brought on reinforcements. My reinforcements were almost all useless peasants, but I moved the rally flag way to the side and kept my men as far from the enemy as I could get. The AI just sat where they were and never pursued me until time ran out(my army was outside their reaction range). It was funny because my men had -2 to -4 morale and would have run if the enemy gave them a dirty look

As silly as this seems it has happened occasionally in history. It happened to Napoleon at Borodino in 1812. Prince Poniatowski's French 5th corps fought a brutal daylong battle to turn the Russian left flank at Borodino. Finally the Russians broke and the French advanced towards the rear of the Russian lines. As the exhausted French troops moved forward however, they saw another unbroken line of Russians waiting for them and they just stopped. Little did the French realize that the last line of defenders were just a group of hastily recruited militia pikemen (Get the picture out of your heads of tough veteran pikemen of MTW - these were peasant conscripts who were given pikes and told to go out and face veteran French soldiers armed with muskets and cannon). If the French had attacked, they could have swept the militia away and marched on into the rear of the Russian army, winning the battle for Napoleon. With victory at Borodino, Napoleon could have forced the Czar to make a favorable peace, saving his army from destruction in the long winter retreat of 1812. The destruction of Napoleon's Grand Army in Russia led inevitably to his downfall. Thus, if it hadn't been for a few peasants at Borodino, the Brits might be singing "Vive le Roi" today instead of "God Save the Queen"

So, sometimes a few peasants do make a difference

[Hamburglar]

Yeah but "winning by the timer" in MTW is nothing like the Napoleon example. Its just cheesy. That battle with the reinforcements - technically he took over your castle and achieved "victory". In real life the enemy king wouldn't give a rat's ass if there are a few stragglers hiding in the trees - he owns your castle.

I just think the timer in the game is something of a cheese factor. On defense it is really easy to avoid the attackers. Hell, if they're all infantry and you have horses you can run from them until the timer goes out and there you have "victory". The little "hide survivng ballista crew in the trees" trick can work too.

Play the game how you like, but I've always thought the timer system was lame. Put the game in 10x speed if you dont want to spend lots of time in a battle. The way I fight is if I'm on defense i put it into 10x speed until the enemy makes contact, then make it normal while there is fighting, and if they start routing I just order my men to chase them and putit back into 10x speed. Battles take like 10 minutes this way.

[HopAlongBunny]

I never assault unless I have 10 or more artillery; will go with 4 catapults for a fort. I blast until the arty runs out of ammo, withdraw them and assault. I will use good units if I have to; whatever makes the assault as short as possible is generally worth the cost.

I found (if you have money to burn and time to waste) building a dedicated seige train works nicely. That way you always know what you have to do the job, and if they are refitting...well the castle isn't going anywhere