Castle Sieges

[Kommodus]

I just achieved total domination of Europe as the Byzantines That's only the second time I've done it (first was with the Spanish). I probably won't do it again; it just gets too boring at the end. I've played a small number of campaigns, and usually I don't play all the way till the end; just until it stops being interesting. For some reason I felt like completing this one, though.

Anyway, I've got a question about castle assaults. Most of the time I just autoresolve, but near the end I decided to assault a Danish castle myself, since I had some cannons. They had a castle with a lot of arrow towers and some catapult towers. With my army out of range of their defenses (except for one catapult tower), I battered two holes in the outer wall and one in the inner wall. I then sent in the assault, led by a unit of Varangian Guard and a unit of Kataphracts, followed by three units of Byzantine infantry.

Our forces rushed through the breaches, and the Kataphracts went straight into the center of the castle, killing the defenders there. However, the rest of the troops faced a long march around the outer courtyard, killing each defender they met. Along the way, the arrow towers and catapult towers (the ones on both the inner and outer walls) riddled them with shot. Even though we lost very few men to the actual defenders, the towers ended up killing almost 300 men.

Is there a way to stop the towers from firing? I originally thought that once you got men inside a wall, the towers on that wall wouldn't be able to shoot anymore. Instead, they shoot endlessly - even into their own castle, damaging their own buildings Thus, even if I breach the wall and get men inside right away, I still lose a lot of men. Is there a way to keep casualties down in this type of battle?

[katank]

you have to kill all defenders within each ring to stop the outer walls from firing.

with large castles, even charging around to the back to kill off a lone peasant using heavy cav woudl take a long time and cause severe casualties.

I suggest blasting down as much as you can while having your men out of the range before going in.

try to punch holes in two sides and then charge in from both using units.

heavy cav works well.

use 15 cannons and then after the ammo is up, reinforce with actual storming party.

hint: target the towers with arty and most of the time they'll hit the adjacent walls and the towers themselves get destroyed at about the same rate as the walls so less to worry about.

[Marquis of Roland]

VERY GOOD advice on that 15 cannon and then switching them out for assault force katank now I can bring enough art. to take out those pesky towers.

Question tho: if all troops in an outer ring are killed and the defenders move more troops out from the inner ring do the towers start firing again?

[cutepuppy]

I would do as katank suggests: in the initial deployment, use 15 cannons. Don't aim for the walls, but destroy as much catapult/gun/ballista towers as possible. Your guns will probably miss a few times and breach the walls. If you have some ammo left, you can allways destroy the keep.

[Ludens]

Quote[/b] (Marquis of Roland @ June 21 2004,06:52)]Question tho: if all troops in an outer ring are killed and the defenders move more troops out from the inner ring do the towers start firing again?

I believe not. I've played a custom game yesterday in which I stormed a citadel together with an ally. The AI had placed all its units in the outer court. My ally reached the middle and inner courts quite quickly, but was bogged down in a slow melee in the outer court.

I haven't seen the inner court towers fire, even when there wasn't anybody in the inner court anymore, but the artillery towers on the outer wall were definitly active.

So from this observation I would conclude that once disabled, the towers stay disabled.

[Papewaio]

Has the autoresolve castle seiges been resolved?

It used to be too efficient for the attacker.