taking towns

[Franconicus]

You know this situation: Your army approaches an enimal city and you expect them to open the gates welcome you. Usually this is exactly what these fools do not do. So what?
Of course you can wait, until hunger changes their minds. But usually you do not have the time or you just do not feel like it today.

What are your personal suggestions and experiences with different factions?

[Brutus]

If I've got enough decent infantry, I'll assault them as soon as possible. No good having an army standing outside a city for 7 turns doing nothing. Otherwise, it's usually a good idea to just besiege them and wait outside... mostly within a few turns, the enemy will sally forth and you can smash them in open ground. But that's only usefull when you don't have enough infantry good enough for an assault on the walls.

Oh, and never ever assault through the gates your spy opened for you when they've got stone walls or better...the gates will make toast of your men.

[Franconicus]

You are right! I tried!

How do you attack towns with stonewalls?

[tibilicus]

If theres desent infantry get in there and leave no enemy units alive. Unfortunatly playing as armenia resntly i have found there infantry so rubbish i normaly have to wait seiges out or let them sally out and come to me...................

[Viking]

I seldom have siege battles.

I use to wait for an enemy relief force to come and fight about the fate of the city on the battlefield. That`s much more fun!

If the relief force never come I`ll either wait for a sally, or starve them to death.

[Somebody Else]

I love a good siege - it helps me that I play with the timer off though. Two methods.

Wooden walls - smack two holes in the walls with a ram, ballistas, nellie, whatever - one being the gate - no sense damaging my property overly. Kill as many of the enemy as possible with archers, forcing them back away from the breach. Run in with some tough infantry, and allong the wall slightly - so that if the enemy is to engage, they have to attack down a narrow road - once they've gone past the opening, and possibly engaged my first troops, send in some more to hit them in the rear. That deals with the bulk of the defenders. Town square next - set up some heavy holders a little away from the centre, stick some archers behind them to lure the enemy out, flank at will.

Stone walls - hardest infantry I have goes up on the wall way off to the side of the wall-based defenders - if the assault troops are tough enough, it should be a matter of grinding along til the defenders are dead. Otherwise come in on the other side of the city, run to the town centre to lure them off the walls, and flank and destroy at leisure in the streets. Town centre, deal with as wooden walls. Note, I always have one or two units running around, capturing all the towers after the walls are cleared. Siege weapons (ballistas, scorpions, onagers and towers can be used to help clear the walls - but some hack'n'slash is likely needed)

I did have some fun once with cavalry heavy armies (including elephants - great fun in those packed streets). It's nice when two cavalry units converge in a city street, sandwiching some hapless isolated enemy unit.

[nanoboy]

I rarely do the starvation method when taking towns, but here are my observations.

Wooden walls are easy to beat, especially if you have phalanxes. The computer does not deal well with the phalanxes pressing through the breach. Having archers is a good way to wear down reserve units. Basically, you will want to send a quality infantry unit through the breach. Use whatever methods that you want to intimidate the enemy. If you are against phalanxes or other tough infantry, you may want to poke many holes to make flanking attacks possible.

Stone walls, of course, present a bigger challenge. If you have a faction with onagers, then I recommend using them. Breach a wall or two. I recommend also destroying the nearby towers. Scorpions and ballistae are useful, too. Their purpose is to wear down archers and infantry on the walls.

When without artillery, I recommend the seige tower. Use good non-phalanx infantry to fight it out on the walls. Their primary goal is to open the gate for your cavalry and other units to move in. Their secondary goal is to take over the relevant towers to reduce losses as you move into the city. Also, move your archers in loose formation forward to wear down the archers and infantry on the walls. Street fighting is similar to street fighting within wooden walls. You just have to keep in mind that maneuverability is very much reduced, so keep your infantry close and fight conservatively. Once you make it to the city square, your maneuverability returns, so use that.

[Conqueror]

You just can't go wrong with onagers. No waiting, no chance for the defenders to sally, no danger of being suddenly attacked by a relifef force. Just assault right away, make a nice big hole in the wall (or gate) and destroy those annoying machine gun towers.

If the defenders have good archers then it may be worth it to wait for one turn and build siege towers. Chances are they'll put their archers on the walls and then you'll want to send some infantry to take them. Onagers are still very good since you can scare some of the defenders off their walls (they'll abandon the wall when it's close to collapsing from artillery damage) and isolate parts of the walls for easier assault with siege towers. With large or epic walls you'll want at least 4 onagers since they'll need quite a bit of bombing to break.

[Mikeus Caesar]

When assaulting wooden walls, i destroy the gate and make a hole in a wall next to it. I use archers to eliminate some of the enemy. I then proceed to send some men through the gate. Most of the enemy will then converge on me, so now i send in my cavalry through the broken wall. After that, it's just a case of chasing them through the streets. With Stone Walls, i send my best infantry in first to capture the walls, landing the siege towers on either side of the gate. While the siege tower approaches, i make sure their insane machine ballista is turned on, because it usually eliminates an enemy unit. Once the siege towers are there, i pile the men in, slowly squeezing the enemy together until they're in the gatehouse. Having 400 men in such a small area means most of the enemy men on the walls end up falling to their deaths. Once i have captured the gatehouse, i bring in the rest of my men, and fight the enemy defenders until they route. Then, i just chase them through the city.

[pezhetairoi]

As a wooden wall breaker I like to break three holes in the wall, the centre one being the gate, and then pouring infantry units through. It's quite faction-specific, though. If i'm playing Roman or some other free-form melee infantry faction, they will just engage and fight it out. Three units in the first wave, with each breach having a second unit in reserve in case they can flank through the breach. Mutual support is assured, even if the enemy attacks not the centre but the flank units.

But if it's formation specific, like the Germans and the Macedonians, then I position my phalanxes in the breach, send in some depleted (or full) mercenary units, and lure the enemy into my phalanx while catch a nap until the slaughter is over.

Right now as Scythia, though, I just send my horse archer mobile armies to besiege, hire a unit of infantry mercs to man a ram and crash through the gate, then move aside while the horse archers deal with everything else up to and including general's cavalry, town square or no.

I'd feel very stymied if I had no ranged units and a titanic garrison that equals mine.

On stone walls I've only ever had -real- battles (i.e. one that wasn't one-sided) as Romans vs Macedon, so i'm not really experienced in stone-wall battles. I'd use cheapskate merc infantry as fodder for the gate defences in times of great need, but my tactics are always siege towers to attack the segments of wall immediately flanking the gatehouse, and ladders further to the side of the siege towers, attacking unmanned segments of wall. So each guard unit on the gatehouse either gets the weight of two units pressing on it, or it just dies and one unit goes down to ground level while the other runs along the wall disabling machinegun towers.

[Diadochoi]

How about defending wooden walls?

After several failed attempts trying to hold the walls and contain breaches (as the computer does), I've recently resorted to trying to hold the city square and not even contesting the entry. This seems to work better in some cities than others (Siwa is my personal favorite), as some cities seem to have windier, more circuituous routes to the square than others.

The only downside to this strategy is that I feel like I'm taking advantage of the AI's pathfinding problems. Against an egyptian army of 2600 with only 500 town militia and iberian infantry, I was able to drive them off with relative ease, since they'd only be able to get one or two chariots at a time into my packed formation.

[Franconicus]

How about defending wooden walls?

You can defend the walls easily, if you have the right garrison. It is very easy with the Germanians. You need one spearband for each hole in the wall. Just seal them and let the enemy attack. They will bleed. Skirmishers and archers can be good support. You also should have some cav. If the spears are getting tired and need to have a break or substitute, retreat them and attack the following enemy with cav in his flank. Axemen will do the same, screaming women can be sufficient, too.

Facit: Seal the holes in the wall with walls of spears and let the enemy commit suicide.