NEVER do this in a seige

[SIcilian]

I was on my selucid campaign and i was invading an egyption town. Mya rmy consisted of mostly battle hardend pikemen, archers and some cavalry. The enemy had mostly nile spearmen and some nubians and some other guys. The city had stone walls. When my army attacked thry had 3 ladders and two srigr towers. the ladders were manned by pikemen and 1 seige tower had a silver sheild pikemen. SO when the pike men went up the first ladder they got malled in seconds. But i was not worried, up goes the second unit, killed in seconds. Then i pumped the defending nile spearmen who had killed my men with arrows, so uip went the third wave of pikemen, killed.... now after this the battles on the other parts of the walls was going horribly, men killed left and right. the the entire army fled. yes thats right thw ENTIRE army. After this my troops were hit with a counter attack and destroyed completely near my capital. THE MORAL: DONT SEND PIKEMEN UP LADDERS

Sicilian fencer
en garde

[SpencerH]

Break the walls and use your pikes in the narrow streets where they rule (esp when backed by archers).

[Quillan]

As far as I can tell, all phalanx units on a wall are forced into using their secondary weapon, which generally sucks. The only phalanx unit I have seen stand up well on a wall is spartan hoplites. Apparently it applies to the attackers as well as the defender.

[hoof]

Here's another big issue with pikemen and wall assaults: They start with "guard" mode on. Turn it off and you'll see them fight *much* better with secondary weapons on the walls (and in phalanx formation on offence, btw). I've gotten into the habit of turning "guard" mode off for all phalanx units at battle start, unless I need them to hold a spearwall. (with "guard" off, phalanx units will rotate to keep the enemy in front of it, while with "guard" on, they'll hold their formation until the enemy is completely to one side)

Apparantly, guard mode makes soldiers not fight aggressively unless attacked first. Thus, your guys will get to the wall, then sit until attacked. Not good. Imagine a boxer who always waits for the other guy to swing first before punching.

Another fact: Men assaulting via ladder appear on the wall one at a time, inside a crowd of enemy men. I'd be surprised if Cohort Legionaries would do well in this situation, even against Barbarian Warbands. If you are going to use ladders, assault a section of wall not defended. This lets you get a bunch of your guys on the wall, then you can order them to attack the enemy unit en masse.

A similar situation is if the enemy is on the other side of a tower door. If you attack them your guys will appear one at a time and die horribly. Not good.

If you must send your guys against a defenced section of the wall, use towers. That dumps a bunch of your guys into their guys all at once and gives them the best chance of winning. If that initial group dies, then you're not going to win that particular fight so pull the rest of your guys out of the tower.

That's the trade-off between the different assault weapons. Towers take the longest to deploy, but give your guys the best chance against a defended wall section. Ladders are the fastest way onto the wall top (from the outside), but are virtually useless against defended wall sections (and towers tend to kill more of your guys as they approach). Saps will give you access to the inside of the settlement, but will do nothing to silence the tower archers (plus your sappers tend to take heavy casualties). Battering rams will get your guys shot up by archers, and scalded by boiling oil.

My preferred tactic against the AI is to use ladders, combined with one or two siege towers. The siege tower is mainly a distraction, to get the AI to concentrate on that section of wall when setting up defences. The ladders are then marched to an undefended wall section, allowing me wall access w/o opposition. I'll then run along the walls to both take the towers (which helps clear the AI troops on the inside of the wall), and take gates (which lets your guys in unopposed by oil or arrows). I'll then try to hit any wall defenders from equal footing, or if my guys are lesser melee soldiers (say Pikemen va Hastati), I'll try to get my guys attacking from both sides.

So far the AI has been unable to counter these tactics. IMO, the main reason is because it doesn't respond to me repositioning my ladder teams.

[Sinner]

Or try using onagers and archers, lots of archers. For a minimum casualty - for you! - plan against stone walls, try the following:

- Spend a turn or two before assaulting to build ladders and or siege towers.
- Check the city plan before setting up your troops. I often find that there's a straighter route through to the central plaza from one of the side gates rather than the one you start in front of. If you have plenty of troops, you can place some of the spares as decoys near the other gates, since the defenders tend to leave a unit or two watching them.
- Onagers destroy the gatehouse, gate and all nearby towers at your chosen gate, so you have the required breach in the walls and no longer need to worry about burning oil and arrows from the fixed defences.
- Archers clear the walls of defenders, with enemy archers the first priority, then javelin-armed troops, then any infantry.
- Pin the enemy defenders to the gate area by moving troops just outside the gate, poised to attack.
- Fresh archers take the walls on either side of the gate using ladders and/or siege towers, they then start clearing enemy troops below the walls.
- Assuming your archers haven't killed the enemy or driven them away from the gate, send in your first initial infantry attack to clear the gates. I prefer to use mercenaries or obsolete troops at this stage.
- Once the gate is cleared send through your final assault troops. For this I prefer to use my best infantry, setting them in a formation one row thinner than the streets to avoid as much as possible the irritating shifting of formation before and after marching down the streets. I make sure that each unit is properly formed & ready before setting it off down the streets, using any turns as waypoints to halt and wait for the following troops.
- For the final plaza assault I try to use a minimum of 2 units, with one on each of the 2 sides of the plaza closest to my troops' entry point. One unit attacks, triggering the defender's final charge, the other waits for the melee to commence then charges into the enemy's flank/rear. Any additional troops are used to move around & attack the other flank, go after any scraps left from the fight at the walls or to block any reinforcements that might be lurking.

I no longer use the well-known exploit of sending missile troops to take the plaza, but if you really want to avoid any casualties, it's the way to go. Before I switched to infantry for the final attack, I'd sometimes take cities with over a 1000 defenders without losing a single man, other times my only losses were to friendly fire!

All this is possible even with the timer, however with lots of defenders it's better if you run without it.

[Hambut_bulge]

As far as I can tell, all phalanx units on a wall are forced into using their secondary weapon, which generally sucks. The only phalanx unit I have seen stand up well on a wall is spartan hoplites. Apparently it applies to the attackers as well as the defender.

Actually, that's probably quite realistic. Think about it: your hoplite/pikeman struggles up one of three flimsy little ladders, all spaced about 20 feet apart, with his 12 foot long sharp pointy stick. Having thus gained the wall you then expect him to somehow form a phalanx, on a narrow battlement, while surrounded by enemy soldiers, with his nearest buddy a good twenty feet away, and also facing down a horde of angry defenders... Just ain't going to work.

And the same applies of you've got hoplites or pikemen defending a wall. They do start out using the pointy stick, but as soon as a bunch of heavily armoured swordsmen crash into their midst, that pointy stick is about as useful as a large turnip. The reason Spartan hoplites do so much better of course, is that they're mean tough b*****d's.

[Sin Qua Non]

but as soon as a bunch of heavily armoured swordsmen crash into their midst, that pointy stick is about as useful as a large turnip.

How large of a turnip? I bet I could knock someone off of a wall with a really big turnip.

[Bob the Insane]

That being said... I have found that Merc Hoplites can hold their own in melee on the top of a wall...

[Quillan]

Baldric's 100,000 pound turnip, perhaps?

[Lord Ovaat]

Sieging stone walls? SAP, SAP, SAP. Beats anything going. If you have an onager to take out the arrow towers, all the better, but once the walls are down, your own archers can shoot through the gap, and as others have mentioned, you can then use your troops as intended. Could anyone fight well climbing a ladder or almost alone coming out of a siege tower? Nah, but it does look really cool. With sapping, even epic walls are no problem. I think they should be, however.

[Bob the Insane]

Not really sapped to much... Can you move the sap points to where you want? What happens if you collapse a wall with defenders on?

[Sociopsychoactive]

Actually, I find sapping terrible.

I tried it first when facing epic walls, defended by only a handfull of troops. I had sent in my three rams, all burn, my two siege towers, both destroyed, ladders seemed not to appear on the battlemap and I assumed this was a feature of epic walls, to tall for ladders.

So, all I had left with my thousand man strong army was sapping. I send in a junk unit to dig, they do so, the wall comes down, everything ios huny dory. I see the defenders moving to stand in the breach and charge in with three liegon cohorts. By the time they get to the breach (situated at a most awkward position by the AI sapping point) there are less than a hundred men in total, and when they engage the enemy they are all 'shaken' despite a good general being in command. When they routed, three, yes THREE men made it off the map, the rest being cut down by arrows.

They killed about 40 defenders, thats all.

So, I think 'towers are my problem, tustedo is the solution' and send in three more, this time in tustedo formation. ten minutes later they finally reach the breach in the walls (gawd they're slow) having lost about ten men each, alot better than last time. So, I tell them to go into normal formation and charge, and they stand thee shuffling about for almost a ful minute getting shot at by the towers while forming up.

In the end, they did charge, killed about a hundred defenders then routed away from the one remaining enemy unit, the general with three horsemen left. At that point I said sod it and reloaded the previous save, then built more siege towers. Killed all defenders and lost about 50 men that way.

I tried sapping a few other times but the towers always kill so many men as they make for the breach that when they get there they are on the brink of running away.

Ladders are the best, send cohorts, principals or similar up there and they will manage to cut their way into the enemy in no time. Yeah, you'll ose a few but with siege towrs by the time your men come out of the tower the time is up. If you send multiple ladders then you can keep the enemy occupied on the wall with one (as long as you don't mind losing most of them) while flanking and capturing nearby towers with the others.


Oh, and rams are very good if you can make them work. Send a junk unit, send it in with another unit to draw enemy fire, and don't worry about them getting roasted by oil. The gates will break eventually and the junk unit can distrat any men on the walls long enough for your troops to rush in, far better than sapping as you have easy access to the walls from the gate, wheras from a sap point you have to fight your way through numerous defenders to get up there.

[Kraellin]

i love the siege towers. i've quit using onagers altogether, except to maybe take out the main gatehouse towers. with 2, 3, or ever 4 towers you can attack only the ramparts, which leaves the main body of defending soldiers down in the street. with good timing and even just two towers on separate walls, you also split the rampart defenders and can take the arrow towers intact. this leaves you holding ALL the high ground. if you then have archers that you've moved up on YOUR walls, it's death for all below.

the problem with onagers busting up the walls is that you can no longer move along the walls either. you cant jump the gaps to get at the other defenders. and yes, if you destroy a wall from underneath a defending unit, the defenders will fall to their death. so, that is VERY satisfying, but it's a bit tricky at times and the defenders arent complete morons. they do move away quite often from an attacked wall section.

i've also found the pathing quite good on ramparted walls with towers. your unit is on the ground and the enemy is on the wall. if your tower is in place and ready, you select your unit on the ground and give orders to attack the unit on the wall and it will find the path up the tower and attack the unit you ordered it to. this actually works pretty well in most instances. you do want to keep an eye on it, as sometimes your unit will get a bit confused, but in most cases i've seen, it works really well.

also, one note on capturing enemy towers. once you have a unit on the walls, simply move him near the enemy tower and they will 'capture it'. you dont actually have to move him info the defending wall tower or down through it. just move him right next to it.

K.

[phred]

Battering rams will get your guys shot up by archers, and scalded by boiling oil.

In my experience the AI loves to go after battering rams first. I usually build a ram and assign it to a unit I don't care about. The archers on the walls focus on the ram, allowing my siege towers to approach the walls unscathed.

[Lord Ovaat]

The arrow towers are killers, even on a simple palisade wall. I always try to take out just the towers and main gate, if necessary, with onagers, but rely on "multiple" sap points for entry. That's the trick. You need several to spread out the defenders. My biggest complaint with sapping is that you can't move the points where YOU want them, which would be farther away from the bloody towers. To be honest, I plain don't attack the larger walls without onagers to remove the towers. Hardly worth the cost, even if you succeed. Cheaper to bribe, but not as much fun. It has amazed me how staunch the defense can be against the trickle of men coming out of a tower. Not a pretty thing to watch. Then, again, prior to high explosives, forts, castles, etc., could be--and were--well defended by a relative handful of men. During the War of Scottish Independence, Sterling Castle held-out with 27 men against a Scott's Army. Without siege equipment, fortifications were almost impregnable. Towers were largely more effective than portrayed in this game, and sapping was far more difficult and time consuming. Actually, I'm becoming a little weary of sieges. I still remember the "good old days" of stand-up fights in the field. Seems now the only field fights I have are against rebels.

PS: If you collapse a wall with defenders on it, they tumble to their death. Now, that's kinda fun. Particularly if they're archers.