Defending Choke Points

[Alden]

I'm a little frustrated that, so often, what is supposed to be an easily-defendable position isn't proving so easy to defend. I mean, mostly, gates of settlements and bridges. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong but it seems like despite my being in a position like this, I need as big a defense force as I would in a regular open field battle.

Just lost a city to Mongols. Mongols had maybe 50% more troops than me but they were mostly horse archers, and the lightweight variety at that. What little infantry they had rammed the gate then all those horse archers rushed in and just demolished the 7 silver-sheild Italian Spear Militia I had schiltronned around at the gate. It wasn't even slightly close. I don't think that this same army, charging me on the open field, would have so overwhelmed me. But who knows - mongols are tough.

However, similar things have happened when defending against crummy militia from Catholic Factions. The attackers pack into the gate at black-hole like densities - so tight it looks like fur or a head of broccoli spray-painted black and tan and there's just nothing you can do about it.

Or is there? I considered defending the town square itself but I reckoned they'd rock me with arrows. Couldn't have gone worse, though.

Any suggestions?

[Sarmatian]

Pray that their general gets killed. Or that you destroy their ram

[pevergreen]

One word: Cavalry Charge.
At the gates, at the bridge, unless you have multiple good pikes, Cav will just smash straight through.

For Defence, just burn their rams, and fight their infantry off at the walls, attacker gets penalty on the walls, you dont. Mongols dont have good infantry, you can.

[Alden]

Sound advice, certainly. But similar has happened with no cavalry involved at all.

What I do is I take my spears and schiltron them and make a sort of box around the choke point. The attackers come pouring in and if there arn't all that many, I kill a bunch, the rest rout and I'm in clover. But if there are a lot of them, they'll just keep packing into the box, denser and denser and then my formations will collapse. Then its all over.

They can't do this to you in the open field. But there's something that happens at these choke points - like there's a compressor behind them, pushing them in.

I mean, I've sorta answered my own question - make the box big enough that they can't acheive these crazy-high densities in it. But then you need a really big garrison.

It just seems like, even when successful, I take way more casualties defending a bridge or city than I would if the exact same armies were fighting in the open field. Seems sorta wrong.

[Whacker]

There does seem to be that interesting trash compactor-type action when all of our new violent friends try to squeeze through our gate at the same time. The best thing I can offer is just use your best defense troops directly across from the choke point, and put your best killers on either side to flank, and hope they mulch fast enough.

[sapi]

I think the reason that the AI acts as it does it that it orders its troops to move through the gate, not to attack yours. They'll only attack in self defense so the momentum of the charge is maintained and you're stuffed :P

[Alden]

I think the reason that the AI acts as it does it that it orders its troops to move through the gate, not to attack yours. They'll only attack in self defense so the momentum of the charge is maintained and you're stuffed :P

I guess that's it. Well, you can't win 'em all.

I order run-through when assaulting a lot but its a high-risk operation: run-through-ers usually take a lot of casualties. But then I never really thought to order everybody to run through. ^_^

I'd sorta forgotten how annoying horse archer factions are to fight. The worst part is when you have nearly their entire army routing and that one cav or general will go find some defenseless archers to slaughter, just out of spite. Bleh.

[Musashi]

Italian spear militia are somewhat lightly armored... Horse archers can shoot while charging...

[sapi]

Hey, that's what i'd do :P

[Koval]

Personally i find it ridiculous how closely compacted units can get. Next time you are deploying your units try this: put every single one of your units in the same place. Your entire army will be concentrated into one little block of metal and flesh! Thats hundreds and hundreds of men in a little Soylent Green cube.
Its frustrating and unrealistic, and i dont think the poor soldiers appreciate being crammed together like sardines. This is especially evident in sieges, when what appeared to be a huge army of hundreds of men is squeezed into a 4m x 4m gateway.
The only counter appears to be layering your own units together in the same fashion.
As mentioned before, it looks like the weight of massed troops is just about to rip open a black hole.

[Cheetah]

Sound advice, certainly. But similar has happened with no cavalry involved at all.

What I do is I take my spears and schiltron them and make a sort of box around the choke point. The attackers come pouring in and if there arn't all that many, I kill a bunch, the rest rout and I'm in clover. But if there are a lot of them, they'll just keep packing into the box, denser and denser and then my formations will collapse. Then its all over.

First of all dont put your troops into schiltron. The enemy comes from one direction, you want all of your troops facing them.

Second, dont just stand around. If the enemy pushing you should be counter pushing. Of course you can say that it easier to push one point than defend the whole perimeter of a circle. That is why: (a) your box (or rather U shape formation facing the gate) should be small and densly packed. (b) You should countercharge them as soon as the first unit enters the gate. Of course if you have cavs then use your cavs to support your spears charging/pushing.

So what I do is to deploy my spears in a U shape so that they should overlap. Deploy my cavs behind them leaving some room for the charge. Select all spears, when enemy breaks through the gate and the first unit enters doubleclick on the first unit with all spears. Then send in your cavs as the situation demands. If all goes well you kill the general leading the charge and after routing a few units they will chainrout. If not it is a though fight
Of course you need at least 7-8 spears (or perhaps more for a full stack). Once I routed this way 3 or 4 boyar sons, general, dzurinha, some archer and some woodsmen with 6 town militia and one half strength militia spearmen.

[Alden]

First of all dont put your troops into schiltron...

I used to not. Then I tried it once and it worked better than not-schiltron did and i've done it ever since. It *seems* to be more resistant to getting guys pushed inside the formation. And its this that, I think, causes a lot of the problems under these conditions.

I'll try it not-schiltroned next time. In this particular case, it may well be that I simply didn't have the juice to hold the city.

[sapi]

Schiltroms are great against infantry, but i think their tightly packed formation causes a huge increase in losses against cavalry charges.

[Whacker]

In this particular case, it may well be that I simply didn't have the juice to hold the city.

'Cause I get loose and I got troops
And crazy juice!

Name the song. If it's that hopeless of a situation, you can try and load a save prior to the battle and do what you can to alleviate the situation, or at least make em pay dearly for it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Eric B and Rakin - Juice (Know the Ledge)

[Whacker]

This doesn't work as well in the close confines of a city area, but you can force something like it in a pinch. This requires very precise unit micromanagement but it can be done, all I can say is USE PAUSE OFTEN!! Basically, you treat the bridgehead like a faucet. Position your strongest melee units in a fashion so that you have a long, narrow open space at the end of the bridge. Say maybe 15-20 meters beyond the end of the bridge. Now stick two more on either side of the bridge entrance, maybe 5 meters back on either side. What you want to do is lure the enemy units coming across the bridge to attack your melee unit (pikes works great here, anything with very strong def) directly in front of the bridge entrance, and then flank it with your two killers on either side. With some skill and a lot of luck, you can effectively engage and squash each unit piecemeal as it comes off the bridge, just periodically open and close that faucet to let some out, squash em like a bug, rinse and repeat. It's worked well for me in the past. The main thing that can ruin your day here is a missile/artillery heavy enemy. Sometimes if you pull back far enough, you can goad the (dumb) AI to sending everything it's go across the bridge, including the missile units instead of leaving them there to guard the passage like they should. Good luck!