When the city gate breaks

[darklite]

Really depends on numbers attacking versus my own defending.

My usual frontline cities will have two-three spear militia solely for the gates, and two heavy cavalry (lance wielding preferably). The spearmen will attack and hold the gatehouse when the gate is broken. Usually cavalry units will make it past the spearmen in the initial rush, so I use one unit of cavalry to mop them up. The last unit is either to rush from the side if my defense is breaking, or to move out of a side gate to hopefully attack from the rear once they're fully committed. (aiming at either the general, or taking the gatehouse troops from the rear)

Lastly if I can afford it I'll have one heavy swordsmen unit reading to help the spearmen blocking the gate. But honestly I can rarely afford the extra unit. The cavalry already make this expensive enough of a defense, but they've saved so many cities, especially when my gates have been opened by spies.

Personally I can't stand pikes, unless they're fully upgraded. I find they're slaughtered by any modern infantry unit, and while cavalry are a threat, their charges can be stopped in the gatehouse by the spear militia.

Lastly I'll have my general unit close to the gatehouse (but not attacking), simply because its these units that need the morale modifier the most. Those on the walls already have enough bonuses as it is. The troops on the ground benefit the most from his/her presence.

Note (1). The morale banner unit of the Italian states is an excellent gate defender. Park the unit right at the gates, and the actual equipment will block the gate, allowing only small numbers of enemies through. Trebs also work this way, although for some reason, the AI is more likely to destroy the treb if its in the way.

Note (2) Archer spikes. England and few other archer units (Turks I think) have the ability to plant stakes. I'd recommend trying to plant stakes as close to the gatehouse as possible from the wall. As said before your troops on the wall already have the advantage, so the stakes are best used against the units milling around outside the gatehouse trying to push their way in, & reinforcements waiting to the side. They can do some nifty damage.

Note (3) Those Eastern units (I know Egypt & Turks get them, not sure about other eastern factions) with the fire grenades are awesome for gate defense. just put one or two units at the top of the gatehouse (I like having two units, one for either side), and fire away. Awesome unit. Just try to give them an armour upgrade.

[Steph]

Depending on the amount I am overnumbered (it is always the case because all my forces are for attack ;)):

- Not too many enemies: I form a U with the side made of cavalry if possible. I let them attack my central unit and charge the sides.

- If they are really too many, the first strategy does not work because you are not squeezing 1 unit but each of your unit faces at least 1 enemy unit and they don't feel surrounded this way. In this case it is pretty disperate, but I try to block the entry directly, not allow them to surround me (it is a forced 1vs1). I place some archers on the walls and after a while I charge from the outside with cavalry. The combination of combat+arrows+charges accumulates the malus on their morale and there is a chance that they flee. If they don't flee you lost, but if they flee they are just fresh meat for your cavalry.

Stéphane

[General Zhukov]

Am I the only one that doesn't usually use castle units (swords, cav) to defend sieges? Certainly not in cities. I assumed discussion of the most effective way to use militia units would have the widest usefullness.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Schiltron spearmen in a U-shape around the gate hold very well. Pikes are great at holding wall breaches.

[IvarrWolfsong]

I use a formation of spears shaped like this \__/. It is a little cup that the enemy will soon fill with their dead. I put the general nearby unless he is the ONLY cavalry unit I have.

Next I always put any cavalry at a side gate. Once the ram starts ramming, I begin to move the Cav out of the city and towards the outside of the gate. Once the gate is down and the majority of the enemies are battling in the Cup O' Death, I charge the rear with my cav. Even a crappy mounted sgt unit can often cause a chain route.

[FactionHeir]

Depends on your attacker's units. I usually in defending against an assault set up a bubble in front of the gate the attacker comes from. This looks kind of like

XXXXGGXXXX
----P---P----
------P------
----S---S----

Where P are spears and S are swords. Sometimes the S can be spears too, depending on your force.
If you got javelin infantry (not cavalry as those friendly fire too often), place em behind the bubble or on the walls (except if the enemy takes your walls using ladders/towers)

This way the enemy is limited in the number of troops he can send through and a lot of crowding prevents his troops from getting through effectively due to a few laggers holding them back. This also allows you to assault the enemy from both flanks and the front and is fairly airtight (move in second row if your first row dies too quickly) It is detrimental to enemy morale and also stops significant hoardes of cav getting in at all. Just make sure your general is nearby to boost your morale or the enemy by sheer weight of numbers will kill your morale.

If your enemy is mainly having sword or halberd units, you probably don't want to try holding him at the gates but crowd all your units in the townsquare. Why? Because they NEVER rout in the square and your enemy has to take it.

[Foz]

In MTW, I loved having one unit of Swiss Armoured Pikemen holding a gate and butchering everyone. When I tried this in M2TW, I was appalled: My unit of Scots Noble Pikemen right in front of the gate was imediately breached and destroyed to the last man. I don't think they killed more than 10 enemies!
I'm actually quite confused why so many people on these boards like pikemen so much. I ran a few test battles, and once, a comlpletely braced Noble Pikemen unit (112 men) was wiped out by one General's bodyguard (31 men) charging them head-on in a street!!! The surviving bodyguards even went ahead and brought another unit of pikes down to half strength before they finally broke. I was like WTF?!?!

This is because the pikemen have really weird issues that people have posted about on here before. One of the main ones is that if an enemy unit gets in the pike formation, they put pikes away and become swordsmen... which is not what they're good at. It doesn't appear to be the only thing wrong with the unit though, they also are horrible at attacking into an enemy unit, as they often just walk through the unit without attack, or so I'm told. Truthfully I've been avoiding them after hearing the many comments on how screwed up and useless they are.

Am I the only one that doesn't usually use castle units (swords, cav) to defend sieges? Certainly not in cities. I assumed discussion of the most effective way to use militia units would have the widest usefullness.

Militia units are kinda plain, not much really different or interesting you can do with them aside from making sure they get spread thin to activate as many towers as possible, though default placement is often quite good at assuring this. Outside of that, you park them by the gate and wait for enemies to come, nothing really too fancy usually. I guess we all prefer to comment on situations other than when you get caught with only militia defending a settlement, as those are the situations that actually allow you to be more creative and utilize different options. One thing I will say though for cases where militia are your only defense, I find it's nice to have a few cav units rush to the scene of the crime, especially since they'll start the battle already outside of the walls in great flanking position. Since they have such great movement speed on the campaign map, you can usually spread a few cav units pretty thin and still cover your empire sufficiently, which for me at least has been well worth it. They're by far the bast choice for a siege-response unit.

I do consistently use castle units in castle sieges, as armies are always being built in the few castles I leave around. Of course it makes sense to take full advantage of parking free-upkeep militia in all your cities, but any that are likely to be attacked (bordering other countries directly) deserve more attention than that, at least a couple stout heavy infantry units. The amount you pay to keep the units around is pretty reasonable compared to the significant loss of income you take if you have the city snatched away from you for a few turns due to it being defended too lightly. Additionally, keeping a better garrison seems to help the opportunistic AI not decide to start a random war with you.

[Quillan]

Am I the only one that doesn't usually use castle units (swords, cav) to defend sieges? Certainly not in cities. I assumed discussion of the most effective way to use militia units would have the widest usefullness.

In cities near a hostile border, I've usually got a few castle units there (I put a couple archers to burn towers and the odd ram, and a unit or two of tough infantry so I have a little punch inside, plus always one unit of cavalry even if the city can't recruit any), but the rest is militia units or at least city recruitable units.

[Carl]

In MTW, I loved having one unit of Swiss Armoured Pikemen holding a gate and butchering everyone. When I tried this in M2TW, I was appalled: My unit of Scots Noble Pikemen right in front of the gate was imediately breached and destroyed to the last man. I don't think they killed more than 10 enemies!
I'm actually quite confused why so many people on these boards like pikemen so much. I ran a few test battles, and once, a comlpletely braced Noble Pikemen unit (112 men) was wiped out by one General's bodyguard (31 men) charging them head-on in a street!!! The surviving bodyguards even went ahead and brought another unit of pikes down to half strength before they finally broke. I was like WTF?!?!

The_Foz_4 is quite right in his reply regarding Pikes being bugged.

Their are the following issues with them, (some are my observations, others are second hand observations, primarily from Dopp):

1. If you do anything other than order them into a specific position, (e.g. order them to attack), they do a starburst and don't maintain Phalanx Formation. This makes them easy meat even with working Pikes.

2. If you don't take their Sword away in the unit file the entire unit will switch to swords as soon as more than one or two enemy models get in amongst the unit.

3. Pikes only effect enemy models when the enemy is charging or when the pike wieldier directs an attack animation at an enemy model. Otherwise the enemy can freely walk right through them without injury. This makes it relatively easy for the enemy to walk up to you and force their way close enough to make you switch to swords.

4. Pike units will only attack properly, (except when the enemy counts as charging), if you disable guard mode. However they will only brace for a charge when in guard mode. The problem in guard mode is that if anyone does make it to your first rank, the fourth and fifth ranks, (who are now in range to thrust with their pikes), won't attack and if you lose anyone, the spare from the fourth rank back won't simply step forward and attack, but actually step forward and try to take the place of the fallen before attacking. As a result the spares often get slaughtered without getting an attack off in Guard mode. Lastly, the unit as a whole won't advance whilst thrusting with their pikes and an enemy unit one to two ranks deep won't try to push into your pikes and because it sits at the very limit of Pike range, it takes forever to kill them. Take of Guard Mode with fixed pikes however and the fourth ranks back will attack if they are in range, and the formation closes up meaning more pike points over a given area. the combination means few enemies will close with your Pikemen from the front, and those that do will probably die before they get to swing. Lastly they step forward and can thus efficiently clean up those last few men and push the enemy out of breaches.


On the flip side, even Town Militia can massacre engaged pikes, (including Noble Pikemen), if they hit them from the Flank/Rear. This applies to both fixed and un-fixed Pikemen.

To illustrate how deadly Pikemen can be, I ran a Bridge battle with Noble Pikemen, (only the Papal States has better Pikes), against massive numbers of French Dismounted Chivalric Knights, (DCK).

It was Huge Unit Sizes and 2 Units of Noble Pikemen, each with 1 Bronze Chevron, 1 Armour Upgrade and 1 Weapon Upgrade. They where fighting 10 units of un-upgraded DCK.

I gave 2 commands during the whole battle. The first, in the deployment phase deployed both units side by side facing the bridge with the gap between the middle being lined up with the centre of the bridge and the units both being if equal width. The Second Command was to disable Guard Mode once enough enemy where in CC.

Here are the Post Battle Results

Bear in mind that this WAS a perfect situation for Pikemen to prevail in, (hard to get at their flanks), and that the AI is too stupid t try to get to them if you don’t make it very easy, (i.e. actually expose a flank to it). Thus, on an open battlefield the results would be rather more against the Pikemen.

In case no ones quite realised it, the kill ratio for the pikemen was 40-1 in their favour.