Bizzare Sieges

[Frankmuddy]

I just resisted two very strange sieges.

In the first siege, Denmark attacked my Russian Citadel at Hamburg. They had more heavy infantry than my garrison, and I had no cavalry or siege equipment with which to damage their siege gear. When the battle started I received the dread message that an enemy spy had opened the gates. So I prepared myself for certain and terrible doom and drew up my Boyars in front of the gates. Well, to my utter amazement the enemy totally ignored the gates and rushed their entire contingent of about ten troops up on ladder onto my walls, right into the loving embrace of two units of heavy infantry. I was dumbfounded. The castle was theirs for the taking, but the AI dropped the ball and allowed it's troops to be slaughtered.

The next siege, in the same round, is equally befuddling. As the ram reached the gates my general, sensing that he was almost certainly a dead man, decided to rush three units of Norse War Clerics. So the bodyguard unit, unsupported except by a few units of peasant arches, took on three times it's number of elite heavy cavalry and was slaughtered to a man, leaving my general standing, to my disbelief, victorious and alone on the courtyard behind the gate.

Is there any rhyme or reason to how these things go? Usually sieges are rather straight forward affairs, but every so often the AI throws an odd curveball at you.

[Carl]

In the first siege, Denmark attacked my Russian Citadel at Hamburg. They had more heavy infantry than my garrison, and I had no cavalry or siege equipment with which to damage their siege gear. When the battle started I received the dread message that an enemy spy had opened the gates. So I prepared myself for certain and terrible doom and drew up my Boyars in front of the gates. Well, to my utter amazement the enemy totally ignored the gates and rushed their entire contingent of about ten troops up on ladder onto my walls, right into the loving embrace of two units of heavy infantry. I was dumbfounded. The castle was theirs for the taking, but the AI dropped the ball and allowed it's troops to be slaughtered.

This is a Known Bug.

So the bodyguard unit, unsupported except by a few units of peasant arches, took on three times it's number of elite heavy cavalry and was slaughtered to a man, leaving my general standing, to my disbelief, victorious and alone on the courtyard behind the gate.

3 Points here:

1. The Bodyguard has 2HP each so they are nearly as good as double their number of cav.

2. They have highier attack and nearly the same defence as the War Clerics so they are slightly better individually anyway than the Clerics.

3. generals have VERY fast and powerful atack animations and can thus kill 5 10 or more enemy with ease before dying.

You still did well, but it isn't inmpossibile to have this happen IMHO. Any expiriance his unit had would have only helped here.

[Empirate]

Still, Norse War Clerics wield maces, making their attacks AP. They have proven somewhere in the range between "difficult" and "deadly" every time I had to face them. But weird things happen...

Concerning the ladder-idiocy: I have seen this kind of behaviour, and as Carl says, it's a known bug. But I have also played one siege defense in which the enemy brought catapults, ladders, siege towers and ballistas, AND their spy had opened the gates. So they basically had all possible siege assault options available. Still, at first they held back and threw some rocks until I had two breaches in my (wooden) walls. Then, they sent cavalry through the breaches and the gate, walked infantry up with ladders and attacked a section of wall that was still standing, and continued to shoot my turrets and missile troops with catapults and ballistas. The only way I won through this multi-pronged assault was sending my cavalry out of the side gates beforehand. Just when part of their infantry was on the ladders and trying to get footholds on the wall; another part was still carrying their scaling equipment to other sections of wall; and their cavalry had been met by spear militia in the streets, I attacked. I slaughtered their artillery crews, killed the heavy infantry before it could drop ladders/siege towers, and bottled up the enemy cavalry by rushing the wall breaches from behind. All this time, my missile troops on the walls kept dealing death to both sides, inside and outside the city. When the "enemy general killed" message came up, I saw that it had actually been my own general (and heir) that had killed him (their king) in single combat! This battle was so awesome, so epic, that I have been very lenient in AI-bashing afterwards.

[caius britannicus]

I've seen the same ladder behaviour, sort of, except it happened to my troops. I assaulted a lightly defended city (just a single flemish and swiss pikemen unit and a couple of town militia as a garrison) with an army of high era knights (full plate armor swords and 2hd weapons). Aways I used ladders to speed up my attack and since I had 4 ladders per unit I figured my knights would have no problem assaulting the single row of pikemen on the walls. Problem was when my knights got the ladders to the wall they all bunched around a single ladder and went up one at a time to be easily slaughtered and picked off by tower arrow fire since they were so bunched up. Very pathetic.