How to "arm" your towers

**Divinus Arma** · 01-09-2007, 21:13

Have you ever noticed those little flags on the towers of your walls? Have you ever noticed that not all towers have flags?

Your towers, much like siege equipment, must be manned in order to work! Having a huge citadel does you no good if you do not have the men to man the walls and operate the tower weaponary.

In order to man your towers, a unit must simply be placed directly adjacent to them. Your men may be placed either on the walls or on the ground, but must be close enough to the tower to make the faction flag appear above the tower.

I only discovered this after a month of playing!

Did this help you?

**Goofball** · 01-09-2007, 21:46

I voted "No," but in fairness to you DA, if I had seen this post 3 days ago I would have voted "Yes." I've been playing for much longer than one month, and I only just discovered this myself on the weekend.

I'm a dork...

**Carl** · 01-09-2007, 21:47

It was documented and mentoned when the game came out actually, but still useful for the newbies to have as a reminder.

**BigTex** · 01-09-2007, 22:37

Going to have to vote gah on this one. There's yet to be a thread devoted to it, but it's been covered quite alot. Was one of the big sell points, known about before it went gold. Truly though it does make those peasants and town militia useful for something though.

**gardibolt** · 01-10-2007, 19:15

I posted 'yes' because although I knew you had to have troops by the towers, I thought they had to be up on the walls. If they can man the tower by being down on the ground, which is much safer, that's certainly useful information.

**Kraggenmor** · 01-10-2007, 19:41

Originally Posted by gardibolt

I posted 'yes' because although I knew you had to have troops by the towers, I thought they had to be up on the walls. If they can man the tower by being down on the ground, which is much safer, that's certainly useful information.

He's referring specifically to Ballista towers and Ballista crews. To man a Ballista tower you have to park your ballista and it's crew on the ground next to the tower.

**zulukiller** · 01-10-2007, 21:42

Originally Posted by gardibolt

I posted 'yes' because although I knew you had to have troops by the towers, I thought they had to be up on the walls. If they can man the tower by being down on the ground, which is much safer, that's certainly useful information.

Heres a good tactick for deffending citadels have your cavlary stand next to the towers on the first ring and pull all your men back to the second ring and man those walls. When it looks like your front walls are gone pull your cavalry back to the second ring fast when the enemy gets near that way you get the maximum amount of casualties to the enemy from your towers without loseing a single man. Doing that even with a small garison against a full stack of mongals ive never lost the second wall and wiped out there entire army on a VH/VH campaign.

You can do the same sort of thing for cities aswell use the cavalry to man the towers and then use pike/halbred/spearmen to block the main street directly facing the gate near the city square with archers/crossbowmen just to there rear. The towers will do maximum damage this way without any loses and you get plenty of time to setup your spearwall & schiltroms to grind the enemy down in the main street.

**metatron** · 01-11-2007, 02:12

Originally Posted by Divinus Arma

Have you ever noticed those little flags on the towers of your walls? Have you ever noticed that not all towers have flags?

Your towers, much like siege equipment, must be manned in order to work! Having a huge citadel does you no good if you do not have the men to man the walls and operate the tower weaponary.

In order to man your towers, a unit must simply be placed directly adjacent to them. Your men may be placed either on the walls or on the ground, but must be close enough to the tower to make the faction flag appear above the tower.

I only discovered this after a month of playing!

Did this help you?

I got that during the first day...

**sapi** · 01-11-2007, 11:17

Originally Posted by The Medieval 2: Total War Manual

Defensive fortifications need to be manned in order to be activated - It is not enough to simply build the fortification in the first place.
- If a unit of the defending faction is near a tower or gatehouse, the defensive missiles there will fire on enemy units that come into their firing range
- It is possible for the attacker to take control of fortifications once they gain control of the central square

So that's how it's supposed to be.

The second point is actually rather interesting, as it suggests that the irritating issue of defending units not using towers on captured walls may in fact be a 'feature'

**Soulitaire** · 01-11-2007, 12:41

concerning ballista towers:
I noticed them firing boulders.... more like a catapult tower then, eh?

**sapi** · 01-11-2007, 13:32

There's tons of bugs with the towers - what you saw was ballista towers firing cannons :P

Another notable bug is that huge cities get ballista and cannon towers for free with the default walls and lose them when they upgrade :P

**Goofball** · 01-11-2007, 20:22

Originally Posted by sapi

There's tons of bugs with the towers - what you saw was ballista towers firing cannons :P

Another notable bug is that huge cities get ballista and cannon towers for free with the default walls and lose them when they upgrade :P

That hasn't been my experience.

I fought a battle last night in a huge city that was in the process of but had not completed constructing ballista towers. The towers fired nothing but arrows. The city was attacked again a few turns later after the towers were complete, and they fired ballista bolts.