MTW - Early Castle (Fort) Assaults

[Tomcat]

In Shogun I found it very easy to assault castles with minimal losses. You simply lined up a unit of archers in loose formation and took out what you could inside the castle with them while any archers inside the castle expended all their arrows. Then simply bring up all your other archer units to take out the majority of the castle occupiers without having to worry about anybody shooting at them and finish off any remaining defenders with melee infantry. You took very few losses indeed, and often none at all if there were no defending archers .

In MTW, I am finding a Fort assault is a rather different kettle of fish . I am talking about Early Period where you have no siege equipment and are only attacking a Fort with maybe a Motte and Bailey.

This is the topic I wanted to do a Search on - see earlier post https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=35803 since none of the otherwise excellent Frogbeastegg MTW primers and Guides on other threads I read here or elsewhere seemed to address this point in detail. Remember you have no siege equipment as yet!

In MTW you start off the battle already under arrow attack from the Fort as opposed to the long walk you have in Shogun to reach the Fort. I realise in MTW archers can fire burning arrows at the stockade walls and these will come down eventually, but the archers can take quite a fair amount of losses in doing this even on loose formation. Then I tried Holibars attacking the gates and they seemed reasonably well protected from arrows by the stockade wall until the gate was close to opening when they started taking losses. By the time they had killed all the defenders in the outer area of the fort there were not too many left to attack the inner gate. Then I discovered archers seemed to be just as effective in taking down the gates with their melee weapons as are Holibars and suffered far few losses in the process than if they tried to take down the stockade walls with burning arrows.

So I ended up finding the most effective way to assault a Fort with minimum losses was as follows. This specific example is using the English, since they were attacking France :

1. Immediately Run all troops back out of range of the arrows coming from the Fort, except:

2. Run one archer unit in loose formation straight up to the first Fort gate, close the formation at the last minute and attack the gate in melee mode. When this was about 50% demolished, charge one Holibar unit in loose formation straight for the nearly demolished gate with the aim that it reached the gate just as it came open and to continue charging through it, changing to wedge or close formation to take out any occupants of the outer area of the Fort.

3. Depending on how many enemy units there may be in the outer area of the Fort for the Holibars to kill, the archers would either be retreated (run) immediately in loose formation or run to attack the 2nd gate in melee mode with minimal delay. In any event, after a possible short retreat, they would be run to attack the second gate while the Holibars were retreated (run) in loose mode.

4. When the second gate was about 50% demolished by the archers, the Holibars would again be charged at the second gate with the intention of arriving just as it opened. Other Holibar units may be charged in at the same time in loose formation, changing to wedge or close formation at the last moment, depending upon the number of defenders present. The archers may then either be used against the remaining defenders as well or retreated (run) as soon as the second gate was opened.

Any views on this or other approaches to assaulting a Fort with minimal loss and without siege equipment? I would hate to think I have missed something else very obvious !

Tomcat

[Ldvs]

Firstly, I never send archers in any siege, they're more than useless and would get slaughtered. Then, if you have no siege equipment, use either peasants, spearmen or mercenaries to attack the stockade, not the gate. They will take casualties but that's no big loss.

[Sociopsychoactive]

YOur missing a very important point.

In MTW sieges both the attacker AND defender get to deploy their troops wherever they wish. The defenders within a short radius of the castle, the attacker anywhere outside that radious.

The way I tend to do for, or even keep sieges when I have no siege equipment is find a partial unit with reasonable attack, FMAA, militia seargents, something like that, preferably not one vulnerable to missiles.

Every other unit gets moved back to start way out of arrow range, with maybe another partial unit ready to move in if the first one falls, but still out of arrow range. A cavalry unit is on standby to rush in if the first unit needs help with killing units, not wall's.

THe first partial gets positioned as close to a wall as possible, if it's a forte motte and bailey then a wall that leads to the inner part, and charges straight at it. They ususally lose less than 10% in attacking the wall, then up to or over 50% of whats left killing the defenders, depending on numbers and how spread out they are. The cavalry charge in if needed, and bam, the forst is mine with only losses to one partial unit.

[Accounting Troll]

Even in early, ballistas, catapults and mangonels are available to build. Hire them as mercenaries if you don't want to go to the effort to build a seige engineer and upgrade it. The maintenance costs of a few mercenary artillery units will not place a large burden on your treasury.

You can choose where to position artillery units on the battlefield before the battle begins, but once there you can't shift them. Catapults and ballistae have a greater range than the defensive fire. Use them to batter down the walls and use any ammo left over to destroy any towers so you suffer less casualties in the assault.

[Boris of Bohemia]

Bypass the gate. It's easy to knock down the wooden walls with peasants or some fodder unit. A single ballista has enough ammo to knock down a wooden wall. Once inside, the fort can be attacked too.

[Tomcat]

Thanks for the replies folks. Some useful info there.

To those who suggested acquiring siege equipment by any means possible, I should just add that I wanted to know the best way to assault without using any siege units on this occasion.

Hehe! Now that I have had the AI assault me today for the first time in Sweden just using Vikings, I know the best way to break the Fort walls down .

The reason I found myself in this unexpected position was that I tried bribing the Swedish Fort successfully, and expected the whole of Sweden to become English the following turn. I did not realise the separate Rebel army in Sweden would not be bribed at the same time although I did think the 2 halves of the Swedish army was a pretty good deal . Hence I found myself unexpectedly on the wrong end of a castle assault and losing Sweden faster than I had acquired it . That'll teach me not to bribe like that again!

Presumably you have to either bribe both the Fort garrison and the Rebel Army in the field at the same time with 2 Emissaries for it to work effectively or to at least try bribing the stronger faction first!

Tomcat