How do you use Testudo properly?

[Jonny Dangerously]

move them into arrow range to get enemy to waste arrows, and then go in for the kill in normal formation.

Here, here.

I've read some quotes here about the testudo "being the most over rated tactic in history" etc. The testudo is very cool but only if used in specific ways. eg. Use it for soaking off arrow fire, particularly useful when assaulting a breach in the city walls. But break them out just before you go hand to hand.

The testudo does NOT turn your unit into a tank......

[FURRY_BOOTS]

pre 1.2 i used testudo when besieging a city(stone walls), i found because of limited time i just built rams & rammed the gates, towers were a joke, sapping took too long & ladders were used by lesser troops like archers, mainly to distract attention from the main attack, but once the gates were open i marched me pratorians through the gates in testudo
post 1.2, i havent got that far yet, so ive no experiance with them

[PubliusVarrus]

It acutally does turn your unit of Legionaries into a tank. They absorb missle fire. They are high in morale and attack, breaking out of the testudo just before the enemy attacks or they attack. They broke out of the testudo easlily during the Empire because they had the commands and formations hard coded. Simple.

[Jonny Dangerously]

The testudo does NOT turn your unit into a tank......

Well it doesn't really, does it. It's great defensively, it's great for missile fire.... but a lot of people got miffed with it because they mistakenly thought that if the unit went into the testudo it somehow became invulnerable. In testudo the unit is well shielded, but slow and inflexible. It's great for getting your unit from a to b under missile fire but you have to break out for combat.

If the testudo turns your unit into a tank then you'd win every assault by just marching your testudos through the hole in the wall and onto the parade ground. By all means try this...... but I wouldn't use any units that you've become emotionally attached to.

[_Aetius_]

Lol I love people who see the testudo in movies and when they play games with romans in think that its a tactic that cant lose. Like on Time Commanders they used testudo when hordes of Britons surrounded them and wondered (when they got massacred) with that brilliant clueless expression on there faces "but but but we used the testudo!!! why did they lose"

Priceless!