Does the AI every assult your cities?

[WhiteSkull]

they always lay siege to mine but NEVER attack, they always try and starve me out , sorta lame as it forces me to try and break the siege and that forces the AI to walk up to my walls and die lol.

[Morindin]

They usually attack around the few remaining turns.

[Akka]

I've rarely been attacked either. Sometimes, but not often.

[TigerVX]

Really? In my Macedonian campgien I'm always attacked. But I don't like it, because they're using that trickle bug, so they always attacka city with 5 +3 archers, a crapload of Phalanges, with like 4 falxmen.

[Tamur]

Maybe it depends on the faction? In my playing, it seems like the Gauls and the Dacians will seige forever, while the post-Alexandriads (GC, Seleucids, Macedonia, Egypt) will attack as soon as they've got the seige equipment.

[khelvan]

I get attacked when I send a relief force (by land or sea) to lift the siege. Rather than face the combined army the AI often assaults the city before my force can arrive, once it is in line of sight. I was quite impressed by this, actually.

[Red Harvest]

I was attacked when my relief force reached the city. Sucked too because I was given command of the city's lone non-family member captain, while the AI controlled my nice relief force with family member general. Can anyone say: "BUG?" I was looking forward to defending with the whole force if the AI attacked. Instead, I had command of a javelin unit while the AI suicided my family member general. Hey, the AI got 50 kills or so with 2/3 stack...in a siege defense... ARRGGGGG, did I mention the AI sucks when it controls your units?

[DisruptorX]

I have only once seen the AI wait untill a city surrendered. They assualt 99% of the time.

[Patricius]

They usually assault from experience of playing rather than wait.

[Arakasi]

Problem with your relief force RH is that when they attack the city that gets picked as a primary defender. Hence your general is left on the outside. I get around that by when I relieve the city I tend to attack the besiegers. If that is not an option due to power of the attackers I just make sure that I don't send a general in with the outside group.

[Grifman]

Egyptians came at me with 2 siege towers and 4 sets of ladders.

Grifman

[Colovion]

Yeah I just fought the biggest siege vs the Brutii I've done yet. They sieged for 2 years and then Assualted. They had 1400 and I had 1000 or so. Their rams got burnt up and the wall battles were a joke - they sent their Hastati and Mercs up the ladders and the Siege Towers while their heavy infantry just sat in front getting pegged by the arrow towers. They have another stack which is heading my way now. Potus has also been relentlessly attacking with hoards and hoards of men.

Basically if anyone has decared war on me it has been by sieging a settlement or a naval battle.

[Oaty]

The A.I. will assault when the odds look good and need better odds if it's a stonewall. I remember starving out a greek city mainly due to the fact there were 2000 troops inside there. My first game with the Julii the Gauls assaulted quite a few of my cities mainly due to learning the game and they would sneak in due to fog of war, so I'd sometimes get very little warning of there presence.

[Colovion]

I like how Settlements can hold out a lot longer than they could in MTW, makes starving them out more of a chore than it used to be.

[hoom]

AIs assaulted me lots of times on medium.
Poor old Siwa from my Scipii campaign faced down repeated Egyptian seiges with about 3 or 4 seperate relief forces still only ever arriving just in time to fend off defeat, only for the last to be caught by the split army reinforcement with the bigger part controlled by the AI & me stuck with the depleted defenders on open dunes :(

[The_Emperor]

I was besieged a few times by the AI, but I often end up sallying forth to lift the siege.

But I have had a few AI assaults. It is great fun when they try it.

[Bob the Insane]

Had the egyptains break an alliance with my Scipii faction and lay seige to a settlement, next run they attacked with three rams (I had wooded walls)...

Very dramatic and even the generals speech was good, explaining that you where all that stood between the good people of the town and the evils that would befall them...

I had a couple of units of archers and plenty of town watch, but the egyptains had a full stack army and while we held them at the gate for a while once the walls broke and the chariots got in it was a slaughter...

But Carthage has good stone walls and lots of defenders and the bulk of my army will be arriving in a couple of years... Then the Pharaoh and the fools who follow him will learn the meaning of suffering, oh yes they will....

[Bhruic]

I always counter-attack when I get sieged. I can't see any reason not to. Even if I don't engage a single unit, the towers are going to get kills. And it's not like I can possibly lose, because they don't have any units to get inside. And the nice (ie, incredibly stupid) thing about it is you can "sally" multiple times. So even if you don't get many kills the first time, hey, keep doing it, and eventually you will.

There needs to be some way for the attackers to get into the city if the defenders sally. Otherwise, the way the system is set up, there is no reason not to do so.

Bh

[SpencerH]

I've found that the romans (unlike the other factions) are quite happy to assault stone walls and to sally forth while I'm beseiging them.

[Sleepy]

There needs to be some way for the attackers to get into the city if the defenders sally. Otherwise, the way the system is set up, there is no reason not to do so.

There is, the attackers can destroy the gate with artillery or enter throught the gate when its open to allow defenders passage.

med/med pm

I (Julli) was besieging Batavodurum (Britons) and on the last turn before the defenders surrendered they sallied forth in a last ditch effort to break the siege. Numbers were roughly equal, but because my army was cobbled together from various cities and other armies it had an unusually high number of archers for an army of mine. I quickly arranged my forces as the Britons started to exit the gate and my archers and onagers devastate every unit that exited.

One(?) miss from an onager destroyed the gate. After I killed about half the Brit army, I'd about run out of arrows but the brits had lost about half there army and the will to commit suicide, whilst I'd lost a couple of men to FF and a flanking attack by light chariots.

With plenty of time left on the timer I sent my infantry lead by my mercs (2hp guys with name begging with B) to take the gate After a brief but bloody struggle with the Brits defending the gate with virtually every unit in their roster My men took the gate and the square beyond it. It was then a straight forward march to the plaza whilst my cavalry chased down routers.

It was a very enjoyable battle won easily by my troops cos our two armies lined up opposite each other allowing me to use my superior missile capability to control the killing ground around the gate separating our two forces.

I did like the fact that the Brits sallied forth in one last desperate fling before defeat.

[Bob the Insane]

The AI is not as keen though...

If you sally against the AI it will defend itself and chase down routers, but only to the gates. It will not attempt to follow the routers in through the gates (as it is possible for you to do)...

Though I have not yet tried a sally and found the AI with seige equipment ready to be used, so that may change things...

[Ranika]

The Romans ALWAYS attack me, if they besiege one of my towns, especially as any of the barbarians (where the walls only get to stockade). As the Greeks, they still always attacked me, except in the instance of having the largest stone wall. Then, SOMETIMES, they'll wait it out, but much of the time, they just build up a huge army before attacking, and just wait till they have the equipment ready.

[Noong]

I can almost always get them to attack me in a siege rather than starve me out.
What I do is move a sizeable force close to the sieged city but not close enough to get swept into the battle as reinforcements. This will make the AI attack the city, or break off the siege and leave.
Oh and give it 2 or 3 turns so they have time to build their siege equipment, otherwise they'll probably just break off and leave the siege. Unless that is what you want.

[Bhruic]

I agree with Bob, I've never had the AI follow a unit through a gate. Even when they were chasing one of my units that routed, the pulled up and didn't go through the open gate.

And since I always attack them on the first turn of a siege, I've never seen them have any siege equipment constructed to let them in.

Bh

[AngryGerbil]

I can almost always get them to attack me in a siege rather than starve me out.
What I do is move a sizeable force close to the sieged city but not close enough to get swept into the battle as reinforcements. This will make the AI attack the city, or break off the siege and leave.
Oh and give it 2 or 3 turns so they have time to build their siege equipment, otherwise they'll probably just break off and leave the siege. Unless that is what you want.

On m/m I can also attest to this.

Moving a reinforcement army close to the beseiged city will often times cause the beseiging army to break off and attack the relief force in an apparent attempt to break up a combined attack. Just park an army 2 tiles from the enemy and he will likely (but not always it seems) break the seige to attack, which I like.

[Blodrast]

On m/m I can also attest to this.

Moving a reinforcement army close to the beseiged city will often times cause the beseiging army to break off and attack the relief force in an apparent attempt to break up a combined attack. Just park an army 2 tiles from the enemy and he will likely (but not always it seems) break the seige to attack, which I like.

laugh, I can already see a possible cheap exploit of this (which, btw, is really a pretty good reaction on behalf of the AI): keep a medium-sized army along your border with AI faction X (which you're at war with); each time one of your settlements is sieged, move the army close to it to distract the AI; don't engage; if the AI lifts the siege and attacks you (as it is likely to do), great. Don't engage, if possible, or, if not, then retreat from the battle (this isn't an army that you want to get experience for, it's only a decoy; so it doesn't matter if the captain will get poor vices). The idea is to keep your settlements without having to stock them with garrisons able to repel attacks, and make this as cost-effective as possible; at the same time, the AI is paying upkeep for all its besiegeing armies, without making any progress, because they periodically lift the siege and then restart it all over again.
Of course, it may not always be profitable to do this, but it can't hurt to try ;)
(and it's likely to be fun, too)

[GFX707]

The AI seems to attack on the second turn as soon as they have enough siege engines in my game....