siege battles

[mav3434]

Somewhere in the manual I believe it says that, during a castle siege battle, the castle ramparts and arrow towers, etc. will continue firing at you until 'control' that part of the castle. How do I do this, do I have to just get a bunch of guys around it or what? I do pretty good at the smashing walls part but then my guys get inside and just stand around and get shot before they can get past the last gate or get to the last enemy man.

[Naagi]

Well what it means is the outer wall stops firing at you till you breach the inner wall. Then the inner wall stops till you defeat the enemy, the keep will continue to fire the whole time I believe. Never took siege engines on my castle attacks, so not sure if you can knock the keep out or not.

Naagi

[mav3434]

Yeah, you can demolish the keep.

The reason why I was askin was that I was playing a custom battle of Turks v. Byzantines on late in one of the big, well developed castle maps with 3 sets of walls and gun towers, etc., but no matter how much I wrecked them, and I did wreck them, I was using 2 siege cannons and a serpentine gun and a mortar, and obliterated one side of walls and the center of the keep, a hail of arrows kept chasing my guys around and cutting them down.

[Cardinal]

Well, look on the bright side . At least the cannons were not firing, so you must have acheived something with your siege guns. I guess they were firing from the walls/Towers that were not rubble yet.

[FoundationII]

I don't knock down any towers, I just knock down a clear path to the keep and then fire on enemy troops.
After this I just cut the enemy who occupy the gaps to pieces with a wave of heavy cav let them retreat and let heavy inf finish the job.
Once I get in things start to get easy.
It's important if defending to stay in the gaps so the enemy can't get in, it's your best chance to win

[hoom]

Control is gained by having unopposed soldiers in a section of a castle.
The walls on the 'outer' side will stop shooting.

On some occasions but I don't think always, walls seem to begin shooting again if you then leave the section empty.

On defence, I have seen walls stop shooting merely by enemy coming past the line of the walls even though they are being engaged by defenders but I don't believe I have seen the same on offence.

Quote[/b] ]Never took siege engines on my castle attacks

You're missing out.
Build a bunch (8+) of Catapaults or preferably Culverins & go attack a castle Do it now

I find sieges to be one of the funnest aspects of M:TW.
You get to array your forces up behind the siege engines, all colourful & flapping banners, while your engines shoot down walls etc.
With eg 15 high valour Culverins, you have a reasonable chance of killing off the garrison outright with no losses.

[chris]

I love a good seige now and then. I don't call them a siege unless you have some seige weapons Trebs. And assorted cannons kick some serious butt. My little bro has managed to use cannons in such a way so that they are actually worth having on a standard battle field. I would rather have some mongolian heavy cav *enabled GH in my MTW game* to rip apart the enemy hand to hand, but if he can pull it off the more power to him.

[Jxrc]

Small trick to avoid costly siege battle :

if starving the defender off takes to long, leave the province and attack again in the next turn. The AI very rarely retreats directly to the castle, its troops usually abandon the province or fight. This means that when the keep was guarded by a single horse archer, you have got a good chance of killing him in the open rather than being peperred with arrows and stuff in the course of a siege.

Of course the above does not work each and every time, of course its not possible to do so if you are on the verge of being excommned , etc ...

[HawaiianHobbit]

Not to get off topic but everytime I'm defending in a seige the AI never forces open the gate. if they have seige weapons they knock down my walls, but if not they just march around and around the wall getting shot at untill the time runs out.Why?

[Zone]

Likewise. I had one horseman in a fortress The enemy attacked looking forward to a quick battle but only brought in a mortar and a catapault. The knocked down one section of outer wall and that was it. I just sat in the middle laughing at all the little men running round being slaughtered by arrows, ballista towers and catapault towers If only I'd had cannon towers

[The_Emperor]

Quote[/b] (HawaiianHobbit @ Nov. 29 2003,21:16)]Not to get off topic but everytime I'm defending in a seige the AI never forces open the gate. if they have seige weapons they knock down my walls, but if not they just march around and around the wall getting shot at untill the time runs out.Why?

From my experience the AI prefers to knock the walls down rather than batter down the gate if it has siege engines around.

I had a great battle as the Turks against the Golden Horde when they arrived in Khazar and assaulted the Garisson there (3 Futtuwas and Two Arm heavy Cav units).

The Horde ran out of ammo shooting at the wall and then finally after marching all of his units around towards the gate my Cav Sallied forth and rode down the Mongol Foot Warriors... Then the Mongol heavy cav Came up and my guys ran inside and the boiling oil killed most of the enemy Cav and the General withdrew, Finally the Mongols forced their way through the outer gate only to take a hail from the Futtuwas inside and then the Inner Gate fell after more "persuasion" from the endless tide of Mongols.

Sadly the battle was not on a timer so the Ai didn't "run around the castle", but had it been the assault would have certainly failed because it was LONG. All in all I had a kill ratio of over 400 Compared to my entire force of less than 200, and those Casualty figures don't take into account the arrow towers and Boiling Oil (And a lot of Mongols were withdrawn because of depleted numbers before my guys even saw combat)

Man Assault Defence can be fun