The best way to assault a settlement?

[EvilNed]

I was just wondering, since I am not that good at this game yet, what is the best way of assaulting a settlement? I'm talking about the big sieges, with stone walls and siege towers, not the little, puny ones that are over in a couple of minutes. I just came from my second big siege, and I noticed that even though I won, my casualties were rather high (You should have seen the other guy, tho ;) ). I lost 36 war elephants! That is an outrage! Arrh!

Anyway, if I have onagers in my army, is it even worth getting Siege Towers and battering rams? I found that my Onagers can do both of their jobs well. Sege towers are used to break the walls and then capture the gateway and then open the gates. But if I destroy the gateway and gates with my onagers, that kinda renders the siege towers obsolete. Only good thing is that when the fighting takes place inside the gate, it can be good to have soldiers pouring out through the gatehouse, as they sometimes land behind the enemy...

Oh, and other tips for sieges, please. I don't want to loose another 36 elephants!

[The_Doctor]

Personaly, I take the walls with siege towers/ladders. I send some heavy troops to do the fighting and light (fast) troops to capture all of the towers and gatehouses. The arrows coming from the captured towers/gatehouses forces the enermy away from the walls and makes it easier to get troops into the city move them around. It also means that my troops don't get shot at when they are inside and can go where they like.

Then I send my troops at the enermy from every direction, making it easier to destroy them.

I hope that helps

[Quietus]

You have to take the walls first!! Why? You need to turn off the arrow towers. The arrow towers will shoot at the enemy depending who controls it.

Also try to put your archers on top after you've controlled them. Concentrate on a single side of the settlement as well. Lastly, pay attention to the timer (if you have it, that's usually the big problem).

[Lochar]

I used to use my onagers for the gates and towers as it was too hard to hit anything inside.

But I rely on towers and ladders as well, the hard part atm for me tho is playing a pike heavy faction where you cant use the pikes on the walls so you have to win with secondary troops. Most of my generals are merc captains due to this tho as I draft mercs to assault walls.

I dont like sapping, or trying to take down walls, if the enemy has the walls packed with archers, your forces will get chewed up trying to charge the breaches. Same with elephants, if I can get the gates open I pad the walls with archers and just let them elephants loose in town for a few minutes before I bring in anything else. Their rampages always seem to affect my troops more, especially if they get routed, so I give em free reign and then if their still ok , send the troops in or off the walls. If time is running down and only then will I try to charge the square with everything.

[katank]

Depends on the faction. If cav heavy like Parthians, use multiple sap points and rush a mass of heavy cav straight to the city square will result in the least casualties and quickest (least likely to run out timer).

If you have multiple onagers (preferably 4+), then just use those and you can assault on the same turn that you siege, target the towers/gatehouse and once those are destroyed, likely wall section will be torn down too. Then thrash them by pouring through many breaches.

Otherwise, use as many siege towers as possible and spend the other build points on ladders. Remember to turn on fire at will to enable the machine guns on the siege towers (especially valuable for larger walls). Ladders should be used to quickly dump mobile troops onto an undefended section of the wall so that they can take towers and surprise defenders. ie. a unit of enemy is pinned by troops from your siege tower. Drop a ladder and rear attack the enemy will enable a break through. This is most likely to run out the timer and is best for facitons like the Romans.

Dumbass way is to use rams. The gatehouse will first burn your ram and then the troops going through them. Any form of semicompetent opposition on the other side of the gate will ensure your defeat. Even if you win, expect 80+% casualties.

All of this is pertinent to stone walls or higher defences.

[Divinus Arma]

I prefer to take out towers where necessary and do as little damage as possible. Then I use multiple seige towers to take the walls. Use your elite units for the seige towers to iniate the attack and have reinforcements ready to charge up the seige tower as soon as the tower gate drops.

Heres a crappy drawing:

.................................................
.................................................
#=====#====H====#=====#===
................................................
......O........O........O.........O..........
.%.......................................%...
........_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _..........
.....................^..........................
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Legend:

#: Tower
=: Wall
H: Gate
O: Seige Tower
%: Onager
_ = Unit
^= General
...= space. I have to do it to format the drawing correctly.

Take out the outside towers first with your Onagers. You don't need them shooting at you and you won't need to go that way anyhow. One a tower is destroyed you cannot travel through it on the wall or use it to go up and down. Keep the center towers and the gate house intact.

After the outside towers are down, advance your seige towers forward. Sure, men will die. You may even lose a seige tower.

As soon as the men are all piled inside and the gate drops, rush a unit of men from your safe battle line up to climb the tower.
At least one of your seige towers will probably face no initial resistance. The goal is to move inward towards the gates. Keep sending troops up the seige towers unitl you have enough to finish the job on the walls.

Once you have taken the center towers in your control, move your general forward but somewhere outside of the range of the gatehouse. The closer he is, the better it is for your men. I have no idea what the actual computer bonuses are programmed at or at what distance they take affect.

When you have the gate house under control, you are pretty much golden from there. Move your healthiest units in along with your general to assualkt the city square.

Be wary of any type of archer that abandons the city square and tries to get you to chase him. They will probably move towards towers that they control and you will get shot at. If you have a unit of archers, only use them for city square defense or to aid in taking the city square. Do not waste them shooting at the enemy up on the wall.

Finally, when assaulting Rome or another city with epic walls and a huge garrison, you may have to do the seige in two strikes: A first strike sent on a suicide mission solely to diminish the enemy's numbers and die while doing so, and a second strike to finish the job as detailed above. Never send a general with the first strike in this case.

I hope this helps.

[Sam Adams]

Well it all depends on what kind of troops are fighting. You must either take or destroy all the towers en route to the city center. Seige towers or catapults are really your only 2 good options. If you have superior melee infantry you can take the walls with towers. If you dont, then you have to smash the walls.

If you have phalanxes and are trying to take a city defended by lots of legions... dont even try to go over the walls... youll die. Smash the walls and the towers, and try to smash the wall underneath the archers too, killing them or forcing them to run or die. Your phalanxes really dont like city fighting so id move them slowly and keep archers behind them. Plananxes work much better if you set them in place and force the enemy to charge them or die slowly to archers.

phalanxes assaulting legions is the worst setup you can have in a siege... so if you can beat that you can beat anything. In this case the initial breech is the hardest, so youll want more than one...

...long range archers outrange towers... so they can kill lots of defenders on walls.

...dont ever send your general into the city center. Ever.

[Shadar]

My strategy, which i've tried recently and it working very well relies VERY heavily on a diversified army, infantry-wise anyways.

I wouldn't do what Divinus Arma would do, i.e. send all his troops at once in 4 towers. I would rather send armies up using surgical strikes to deal crushing blows to the enemy instead.

For Wooden Walls - i would simply batter holes in the walls and just rush the troops in. If i don't have enough troops. i simply have a LOAD of peltasts/other javeliners, slingers and archers to support my army while i rush the melee infantry in and hopefully manage to hold out (i know its one of the stupidest things you CAN do in a siege, just blindly rushing the troops in, but you'll do fine if YOUR troops do not break first, then as soon as their infantry breaks and runs.... charge with everything you have!

For Stone Walls - Send in at most TWO siege towers, this applies especially with large stone walls/epic stone walls. The repeating ballista on the top of the siege tower allows you to take ANY wall with infantry, no matter how crap they are (as long as they're decent meleers). I tend to build 9 siege towers for those MASSIVE battles, because so much hinges on it. push 2 siege towers forward, fire at will on, 3 more siege towers to support. Once you're near the wall, stop, and wait until ALL your ammo is spent before going onwards (this only works if your troops are safe from fire. i.e. in the middle of two defensive constructions).

On a SAFE section of the wall, the section which you just cut off by rushing your infantry up on, push a javelin/melee unit with ladders, like Mercenary Peltasts, Heavy Peltasts or Velites. No other skirmishers are good enough. As soon as the skirmishers are entirely on the wall, rush them to the battle (where hopefully the melee troops are still fighting it out). Then, fire your missiles (where they'll slaughter the defending troops, since they're so tightly packed, and THEN.. when the troops run out of missiles, rush them into the battle (this is why its so important for them to have battle stats!). When you got time, push a unit of Belearic slingers up to the walls in a safe position, with skirmish off, where they'll literally decimate anything thats in range (those slingers are crazy).

Eventually, if you continue to bring up more units of javeliners to pelt the enemy with missiles, and a melee unit when you need to, you'll gain control of the gateway. As soon as that happens, quickly push either durable heavy infantry OR a phalanx into the gate, and try to hold the gate while Slingers on top of the wall slaughter anything in range. Then, just push many many units of troops in support, in multiple prongs through the city, and eventually you'll be able to capture the city centre and thus win the siege.

And remember, due to the improved ranged weaponry on top of a siege tower, the 1st level stone wall is by FAR the hardest to assault since the missile is like an archer guy. But when it gets to epic stone wall, repeating ballista means you can take out ANYTHING with enough siege towers in support (must be manned with a unit though. but you can always move the unit away after the ammunition has been completely exhausted). In fact.. in a custom battle i took a stone wall with poeni infantry against Urban Cohorts in a siege in a city with epic stone walls (RTW:1.2) O.o

And i don't use Onaghers i found that a more flexible strategy is required when fighting out sieges, and every unit is of deadly importance. The pushing in of a reinforcement at exactly the right time, and exactly the right place means every difference between winning and losing. Onaghers just destroy the walls and isolate units, and i find that useless since my own "rules" for RTW involve getting crushing victories for ALL city assaults, no matter what. Usually that holds true, since their last stand is usually in the city centre, but if theres an army up on the walls i can't kill in time, i just put it to a draw (thus, defeat).