Bizzare Sieges

[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.