sassanids infantery

**hoof** · 02-21-2006, 21:03

I forgot about sapping, because usually sapping costs me more men than I'm willing to lose.

The overall goal as a Sassanid army attacking a city is to get your Clibs/Cataphracts inside the walls. Once in, about the only thing that can stop them is a RTW-style Phalanx, and they don't exist in BI. Sapping works, as do onagers or other artillery. With those, you will be unstoppable.

An alternative I've used in my last Sassanid campaign was to recruit as many merc of the Roman front-line soldiers as I can (I forget their name). These guys are as tough as the best Roman soldiers, and I'll use them for tough sieges. If they start losing the wall-fight, I'll send in my clibs as fire-support, since their armor lets them shrug off most of the fire from the walls (at least the regular stone walls).

If you're interested in what I call an "exploit", you can turn on "fire at will" mode for your siege towers. On large/epic wall sizes, they fire gatling-style ballistae (this is a bug I think), which can clear a section of wall of any defenders in a very short timeframe. Even the arrows shot by regular stone wall siege towers are pretty effective. I don't use this because it's obvious this is a bug because there's no way that a single siege tower would be able to fire 30+ ballistae shots per minute with their tech. If they did, they'd use these in defensive towers (built into the walls), and/or in the field, and nothing else in the game has quite this kind of firepower.

**Garvanko** · 02-22-2006, 10:36

Originally Posted by hoof

I forgot about sapping, because usually sapping costs me more men than I'm willing to lose.

I don't how you're sapping then, as it doesn't cost me anything at all. If anything, using Seige towers and ladders is far, far more dangerous. More spectacular of course, but too much of a risk, imo.

Sapping is safer and more effective.

**Conqueror** · 02-22-2006, 11:30

To make sapping effective, you must build lots of sapping points. I'd say about 10 minimum. This way you have better chances to have at least one point in a place where it's out of the range of the wall towers and any archers that might be on the walls. You should also set the infantry unit to a very narrow formation before marching them to the sapping point. If they are in a wide formation they'll be more likely to take fire from towers/archers. You should sap as many sections of the wall as you can (safely). This will force the defenders to divide their units to guard every opening, while you can concentrate your attack on 1-2 holes and overwhelm them.

**Cras** · 02-22-2006, 13:14

I have never sapped... but 10 points sounds like a LOT..

one would need 10 units that can sap, and would they all have losses as they dig?

**Garvanko** · 02-22-2006, 13:42

10? I only ever build two or three..

**Conqueror** · 02-22-2006, 18:32

You only need *one* unit that is capable to sap. It can take care of multiple points, one at a time. And the reason why you want to queue up lots of sapping points is because they are automatically placed on the battle map; you can't choose where to put them. When you build many of them, there's much better chances that at least some of the points will be well-placed.

**Husar** · 02-22-2006, 18:57

I usually use mercs if I sap, mercs I hired only for that siege, so I don´t care much about their losses. I very often use mercs for sieges to spare my elite troops. As soon as there is a hole in the walls/the gate is open for me, I decide wether I need to use my regulars or wether the mercs can go on alone.