Assaulting Cities.. How to fight these battles using different factions?

[Chelifer]

Try archer heavy armies if the faction has good ones. It worked for me.

The outlines of the strategy.

Wooden walls:

Line up 10-14 units of archers along the red line (you may have to use a deeper rank to concentrate fire). If you have onagers have them demoish nearby towers.
Battle begins. Battering rams forward. Archers do their stuff. After a while the AI moves its remaining units to the plaza area, away from your archers. Infantry enters the cleared area of the town. Archers move closer (if the towers are down). AI tries to get to your infantry - your archers are in business again. Archers are out of ammo and join the infantry. All the crowd moves to plaza. Usually there are only a few shaken enemy units to defeat by the moment.


Stone walls:

Similar, but siege towers instead of rams, and the "archers move closer" bit should be replaced with "archers are placed on top of the captured walls."


I reckon it is not historical, but still works :)
By the way, preferably you need the battle timer disabled, as it may take longer than 30 minutes.

[RollingWave]

DGB the Egyptians and Selucids could also accomplish the same thing though prehaps not as well. or at least as fast (for the Selucids getting to legionareis will take a while... for the Egyptians desert axeman may or may not be as good as bastarnea)

[Productivity]

DGB the Egyptians and Selucids could also accomplish the same thing though prehaps not as well. or at least as fast (for the Selucids getting to legionareis will take a while... for the Egyptians desert axeman may or may not be as good as bastarnea)

Not sure, I might do a bit of testing on it...

[hoom]

I always go for wall capture with stone.
I've taken to only using 2 max of siege machines & never ownagers.
Rams for wood walls (might make it harder with only 1 ram), ladders/towers for stone, towers for large/epic.
Actually I think I'll quit capturing the full circuit of the wall due to the towers shooting the (already normally too few) defenders.

Unfortunately, there's hardly ever much effort put into defending the walls by the AI.

Anyway, capture the gate & your troops can enter safely.

It can be pretty hard getting a phalanx unit (esp the Macedonians) to reform within the walls in time to defend against the inevitable rush of defenders.

Sometimes an Elephant charge can be a big boon on assault, but quite risky with the new weak elephants.

I tend to leapfrog my units down the street so there is generally a formed unit ready to take the repeated counter charges.

[HarunTaiwan]

While playing Pontus, I found Phalanx Pikemen did allright on the walls fighting with secondary weapons. You can also send more up if you've sapped a hole.

Also, Thracian mercenaries do well - and cheap. Not so well against principes, though.

[The Stranger]

for defending i would use Egypt cause they have very good archers and some good phalanx units. for assaulting the best faction is probably Germany or Thrace as said above let your melee fighters clean up the walls and then get your chosen archers on the wall to and get your axemen on the street and let your cavalry and infantry do the rest while your archers burn down the city or shoot the leftovers.