Ending sieges

[vladiator]

Hi

I play as England and one of my Citadels was besieged. I decided to battle on the battle map. I successfully rebutted all attacks and the enemy couldn't get through the first defensieve wall. Their artilery ran out off ammunition and they don't have any siege machinery. Now they are just standing lined up in front of my walls doing nothing.

It has been a while and they don't retreat. If I press the exit battle button now, will I retain the castle?

[Ciaran]

It depends, did you initiate the battle on the strategic map, that is, did you order the garrison to sally forth?
If so, you have to rout all enemy units in order to win the battle, if you exit it, or let the timer run out, the battle might end as a draw (with the enemy still besieging your castle), or, in the worst case, you lose it.
If, however, the enemy tried to storm the castle, you simply can wait for the time to run out (provided you play with limited time - I always do, for this very reason, among others).

[vladiator]

The enemy attacked me but I played without timer... I exited the battle and lost the castle.. This will teach me.. Is there any way to control the amount of time given by the timer?

[HoreTore]

I've always used the timer. But in M2TW, it is so incredibly long that it doesn't have an effect anyway, so I can't understand why some play without it. You wont notice it in normal battles, the only time you'll notice it, is when the AI stuffs up in siege and becomes passive... And then you'll be very glad you had it on.

[vladiator]

I understand it now, thanks guys!

[Ciaran]

Normally, in that situation which you described, the AI should have lost the battle automatically with their last shot fired, I wonder why they didn´t. Because that´s what happened in my games when I was assaulted and the AI was unable to breach my walls. Strange.
However, it confirms what I suspected, exiting a battle before the "you have won" message will default to a loss.

[HoreTore]

It may be because the AI screwed up somehow, and had a siege engine with ammo, but somehow didn't know about it...

[vonsch]

I understand it now, thanks guys!

You can click to 3x speed, if you aren't doing that. That helps with the long wait. But it's still enough time for a cup of coffee.

[TevashSzat]

Sometimes, the ai breaks through the first layer of defences, but then have a unit or two rout and then comes back, but those units don't move and just stay there. The units that I had weren't strong enough to beat them outright so I just had to wait it out

[vladiator]

Since I thought it was a bit unfair that I lost the castle coz of computer glitch, I decided to replay the battle (I saved just before) with timer running. The same result, they couldn't breach, now just standing around. I am at x3 speed, waiting for timer to run out, drinking my coffee.

How long is the timer? I can't see it anywhere, probably because I am defending.

[vladiator]

BTW, they might not be leaving because they still have a perfectly good ram. For some reason they drop it at the beginning off the assault and try to use towers, artilery elephants to penetrate the walls.

[sapi]

That's probably it then.

Sometimes the AI seems to take forever to remember that it does in fact have a ram

[vladiator]

Another problem... This very castle (Vilnus) is regularly being attacked. If I resolve battles automatically, I lose. However, when I fight in the battle mode, very often the game suddenly crashes. It is getting annoying. I play England and already conquered half Europe, but the crash only happens in Vilnus (although I often automatically resolve siege battles). I use version 1.1 of the game.

Anything like this ever happened to anyone? Is 1.1 the latest version of the game?

[sapi]

I haven't heard of that particular bug - sorry.

1.1 is the latest patch but 1.2 is coming out shortly

[vladiator]

Thanks, sapi.

[SadCat]

I thought if you started a game with timer OFF you could not turn it back on. Can you turn it on and off after the game starts? On topic I would sally out one unit to try to pull them in close to the walls and run around to the side gate. If you pull them away you can destroy their seige equipment. Please advise about the timer, did it work for you? SadCat

[vladiator]

SadCat, yes you can turn timer on/off. When in campaign map press Esc, select "game options" and tick/untick "No battle time limit".

[SadCat]

Thanks SadCat

[Skyline Pete]

Another problem... This very castle (Vilnus) is regularly being attacked. If I resolve battles automatically, I lose. However, when I fight in the battle mode, very often the game suddenly crashes. It is getting annoying. I play England and already conquered half Europe, but the crash only happens in Vilnus (although I often automatically resolve siege battles). I use version 1.1 of the game.

Anything like this ever happened to anyone? Is 1.1 the latest version of the game?

From my understanding if any of the elephant crews lose a member in a prior battle/siege the game will crash if they try to enter another battle on the field.

[vladiator]

From my understanding if any of the elephant crews lose a member in a prior battle/siege the game will crash if they try to enter another battle on the field.

That must be it, then.. They had a lot of enemies and the first siege went fine. But at some point during the second and third sieges, the game would crash.

Any way around it? Or do I just need to destroy that enemy's army completely?

[Unorthodox]

I've had particularly annoying (albeit helpful) situations where, even when the enemy has had a spy in my settlement to open the gates, the enemy has not come through the gates. They've had two siege towers, both of which I destroyed, and then they simply lined up outside my walls. They had 4 rams, which they obviously couldn't use - the gates were already open. Extremely annoying.

As to the earlier question, yeah, you should play with the timer for instances like those. If you don't want to wait, then a viable strategy is to place all your missile units on your walls, and lure the enemy in to thin down their ranks bit by bit. Move some units outside, and as soon as the enemy moves and gets close, run back inside your gates. Even if you're all out of ammo, your towers will cause them to take a few casualties. You can do this either until the timer goes off so they take more casualties, or you can do it to destroy a few of their troops to give you the upper hand so you can charge into the open and destroy them.

If you've got any missile cavalry, then you can also harass/retreat.