Cheesy or valid seige defence tactic?

**Zatoichi** · 11-01-2004, 14:50

I'm currently playing as the Carthaginians (H/H), and having taken all of the Italian mainland, I'm running into some problems from the last remaining Roman faction, the Brutii (?) - anyway, they weren't much of a threat until they had the Marian reforms, now they're constantly sieging my cities in the north of Italy with centurions and the like. So, that's the history out the way, bring on the cheese!

Now that they can field decent units, my only successful counter tactic when defending is to let them take the walls virtually unopposed (apart from a couple of slinger units to soften them up). I then have a unit of Sacred band and a couple of Poeni (?) infantry in phalanx formation in the streets in front of my town square, with some cav and Libyan spearmen behind them to plug any gaps/charge down routers. The basic effect is to channel them into my phalanx for some meat grinding fun. I've done this 3 times now, and although my supply of phalanx infantry is dwindling (the town I'm defending can't retrain them), I've killed more than I've lost. I may be able to reinforce them, depends if I can get the troops in before the next stack of Romans beseige me. My point being, if I'd left these troops on the walls to defend the towers/ladders, I'd have been wiped out.

So - is this a gamey exploit, or a valid tactic? Cheese or best use of available units? You decide...

(sorry for the poor historical unit/faction spellings!)

**CGS** · 11-01-2004, 15:00

Of course it is a valid tactic! You are not salling and waiting for the enemy to be killed byyour archers. Your goal is defending the square, and if fighting in the streets is the best way, do it. In fact, you partially lose the advantage of having walls, because your units don't fight well there.

**Vlad Tzepes** · 11-01-2004, 15:04

Zatoichi you just discovered urban guerilla warfare.

**Zatoichi** · 11-01-2004, 15:09

Yeah I guess you're right - I guess my definition of cheesy tactics can be viewed in different ways - I hadn't considered it in comparisson to the real gamey sallying tactic. Anyway, unless my reinforcements can make it through, this will be a moot point, as forming a phalanx with 8 sacred band infantry isn't going to be a siege winning street fighting tactic...

**discovery1** · 11-01-2004, 15:25

That's not cheesey. As stated above it's smart and not at all gamey. What is gamey is not repairing your walls so that the entire enemy army rushes the one breach point even if the hostile army is deployed far away from it.

**SpencerH** · 11-01-2004, 18:07

Its not cheesey, its all a matter of adapting your tactics to match your unit-types. If you dont have decent (or any) swordsmen (ie phalanx units) its ridiculous to defend the walls against the legions. If the AI is too stupid to bring up archers to slaughter the pikes thats not our problem.