Wall assault 101

[djsway]

Ok so I assaulted my first stone wall last night, it was the capital of Carthage and they had like 40 cavalry defenders. Go figure, anyways, I have a few questions.

1) Can other troops besides the one that manned the siege towers and ladders use these tools after the first troops break through?

2) Does it make a difference if you use archers to push a siege tower? Hence can they shoot from it?

3) I had reinforcement come in and they were right where I positioned my troops, however, since that they were behind the red line and AI controlled (I think), they never moved??

4)When receiving reinforcements, can you control them by not assigning a general to that group?

[drone]

You might not want to use missile troops to push towers, the towers have their own artillery, and I think you can't use it if the unit pushing it is a missile unit. This might also apply to units like hastati, not sure. See this thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=40510

If you want reinforments to be somewhat useful, do not have a general in the reinforcement stack, this gives you control over the stack's units when they arrive. If there is a general in the stack, he controls the stack, and will usually get himself and a lot of his men killed.

[Maltz]

1) Can other troops besides the one that manned the siege towers and ladders use these tools after the first troops break through?

YES. You can assign units to "go up the wall" and they will find the route through the siege towers and ladders.

2) Does it make a difference if you use archers to push a siege tower? Hence can they shoot from it?

Archers can't shoot when they are walking (in the siege tower). Siege tower comes with its own arrow towers, but can only function if the pushing unit does not have missles (that excludes all nicer Roman infantry, unfortunately).

3) I had reinforcement come in and they were right where I positioned my troops, however, since that they were behind the red line and AI controlled (I think), they never moved??

Besides the AI controled general issue, this might be because your 20-max unit limit is reached, so they can't enter the battlefield yet. This also happens in non-siege situations. (btw, without reinforcement, your opponent has mostly 20 units of cavalry, too.)

4)When receiving reinforcements, can you control them by not assigning a general to that group?

YES. Actually you should always do that unless you want to experience one of the 7 "RTW player's rages".

[Ziu]

YES. Actually you should always do that unless you want to experience one of the 7 "RTW player's rages".

LOL. Aint that the truth!!

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I am on my 5th campaign in Rome, 4 of them were full campaigns and I have only come across one battle where the AI did well. They were outnumbered but heavily outclassed the enemy units, because m men were Companions and Cataphracts. They charged and quickly routed the opposing army. Other than that do not assign a general to an army because you should be better...

[TheDuck]

Ok so I assaulted my first stone wall last night, it was the capital of Carthage and they had like 40 cavalry defenders. Go figure, anyways, I have a few questions.

1) Can other troops besides the one that manned the siege towers and ladders use these tools after the first troops break through?

2) Does it make a difference if you use archers to push a siege tower? Hence can they shoot from it?

3) I had reinforcement come in and they were right where I positioned my troops, however, since that they were behind the red line and AI controlled (I think), they never moved??

4)When receiving reinforcements, can you control them by not assigning a general to that group?

If you haven't, you should read the guides to playing total war on these forums, they are excellent (see stickies in the Colosseum thread).

You also might want to turn the battle timer off before starting a campaign (there are tools for doing it in an active campaign, again I refer you to the stickies in the Colosseum). To turn it off before starting a campaign:

(if I blow this, someone correct me.. doing it from memory)
Click on single player.
Click on Historical Battles. Do NOT play a historical battle... just exit this screen back to the single player page.
Now click on the Campaign choice (I think its 'Imperial Campaign').

Now pick your faction and start... all battles will be without the battle timer.

Hope this helps.

[Maltz]

Actually I love your thread topic - Wall Assault 101. I was thinking you were about to give a seminar but it is ok. Wall (settlement) assault of RTW is a distinctive class of battles that are totally separated from field battles. If handled with experience and care, you can beat an army 3 times of your size on VH even without any archers - provided you are lucky enough to have enough time.

Tonight I fought a 3300 vs. 3500 settlement assault on huge unit size, took me about one real hour to finish it. (I turned the timer off.) The enemy's bar was way over mine, about 3:7, but finally I managed to kill them all, losing about 1/3 of my men. It was very fun! Couldn't have done the same if it is an open field battle.