Sieging

[Saracen_Warrior]

Does anybody have a good tactics for seiging a castle without losing many forces. And i dont mean by laying seige, I mean by actually going in and killing the garrison inside it. Everytime I seige, i end up losing at least 200 men, even if most of them are usually just low teach units i'm getting rid of. And maybe some arbalesters (pavise if i have them) to kill the general.

When I attack, say a castle, ive never attacked a fortress, I usually bring 15 seige engines. Sometimes I have 10 seige engines and 5 pavise to distract the people in the towers. I destroy as many walls and arrow towers as I can, then I withdraw these units, bring in reinforcements and finish the job. This is where i lose the most units. Eventually I win, but with horrendous losses.

My last seige, I only laid siege, because the castle held, the Golden horde king and 54 of his men, he had no heirs. I wanted to eliminate the horde now, so i attacked it, since it said it would take 6 years to fall. The hungarians were preparing to attack so i didnt have time to wait 6 years. I attacked the castle. Well i lost 236 people( mostly seige people), which i dont really mind since im about to get cannons. Almost the next age. I was just wondering if anybody had some brilliant tactics for attacking castles.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Insane numbers ofd Culverins, 10 or so well trained, Janissary heavies and a bunch of cavalry. Bombard them then crash with heavy cavalry. Use the Janissaries to screen the culverins and as shock troops once the walls and towers have been destroyed.

[ichi]

UK is right, use a lot of arty (Culvs are best) to knock several holes in the walls in different places. I like to try to damage the points where interior walls meet the outer walls, you can kill two birds with one stone so to speak.

Once the walls are down use your remaining shots to destroy the nearest towers. Hold your infantry/cavalry back out of arrow/ballista range until ready to go in, then approach the castle in loose formation, with units side by side rather than in a column to reduce the rolling rock effect.

Try to get enough holes that you can get in and hit the defenders in the rear - this is a good use for cav. Heavy armor is the best to use in the frontal assault.

ichi

[fuddha]

Well, best tactic for sieging is not to attack. Those 54 men can be held with 100-200 men tops. Rest of your armies can then deploy as you wish. After all, you are still going to keep those 100-200 men as governor and basic defense.

Only time I attack a castle, is the time that it is absolutely imperative for me to control that province, so I can produce special units or smth like that.

And I don't see how 236 casualties could be a problem?? I've had many a seige with a lot more casualties...

[Ulair]

Assaulting a castle was, of course, a horribly messy business. The Forlorn Hope wasn't called that for nothing...

If you're really worried about casualties and really need to assault, you could make use of the (slightly cheesy) auto-resolve loophole: if you auto-resolve the assault you invariably lose fewer troops. I think I read once that this is because the comp forgets to apply the major morale bonus the defenders get in auto-resolve, but not in the real deal.

I always auto-resolve these days, partly because assaults get a bit dull after the initial "wow!" factor of the first half-dozen or so.


Ulair

[CherryDanish]

The only way to make an assault less costly, artillery and then send in heavy troops. That said, I employ slightly different tactics on using artillery.

I target towers first starting with catapaults, then balista, then arrow towers. If you miss a tower, chances are you'll hit a wall, if you miss a wall, chances are you'll miss completely. By the time I have half a dozen flat towers, I usually have as many flat walls and bagging key walls is usually easy with 1/3 or more of your ammo left. If you have ammo left with half the fortifications flat, target enemy troops.

Withdraw the artillery when out of ammo or destroyed and bring in loads of heavy infantry and cav. Send in the infantry on march, set them to run/charge when close to the walls. Send the cav in before you set the infantry to charge, try to channel your assault through different holes in the fortifications to avoid traffic jams. If done right your cav should hit the defenders seconds before your infantry arrives to support. When heavy troops are not available I use scores of archers to weed out and snipe the enemy general and cav units. On my asaults I usually walk away with a 2 to 1 kill ratio in my favour. The only fights I ever really lose anymore on "hard" are castle sieges when I play the muslims (too early for gunpowder and heavy troops by the time I reach the endgame).

Some minor advice. Castles really don't dish out much damage unless it's later in the game and they have gunpowder based artillery. Don't bother targeting artillery towers unless you are assulting an upgraded citidel and you are planning to storm the gates (take out the bastion outside the main gate). Although the AI seems to be pretty accurate on defending artillery, it's still not accurate enough to be a real threat, and will be a HUGE help to you when you get your troops inside. Their artillery will weed out your troops by the handfull, but since it will fire on you inside it's own walls, it will weed out it's own troops and knock down it's own walls.

The biggest ally for a castle defender is bad pathing. Assaulting troops will get stuck on walls where they will get torched and rained on by arrows. Always target wide open paths and use the waypoints (shift+click) to make short distances between the waypoints in straight line of sight bunny hops. Nothing sucks more than having your troops stuck on a wall somewhere when you're going after enemy missle troops with them and you're distracted because you've got the enemy general pinned with your cav.

Lastly, even if heavy troops are not available, ALWAYS use high morale troops and an expendable general. Holding a general back is likely going to get him a bad V&V, while sending him in will likely get him killed. The jedi tactic only works for defenders in siege assaults. Losing a general will likely route your troops who take a morale hit for assaulting a fortification.