Anyone Else Hate Assaulting Settlements?

[Forward Observer]

13F,

In general I try to avoid lugging arty around due to its slow speed. I'll have to try that out though to see just how effective it is. I wonder if I'd get similar results when I'm defending in a siege if I roll out a balista to deal with the attacking army?

I have found that a ballista can really make a difference in defending a walled settlement. Generally if you are assaulted by a large force with several pieces of siege artillery, they are not going to charge in after only taking out a section of wall, but are going to continue using their catapults,cannons, etc. to take out defensive towers and maybe knock a couple of more holes in the walls at different locations.

They will not commit troops until they have either finished doing this or run out of ammo. Instead of plugging that first hole with troops, I have had very good luck with running a ballista unit into the opening. So far when I have done this the enemy army has totally ignored it while it fired salvo after salvo of deadly ballistae bolts into their ranks. In a couple of instances this one unit has been able to take out all the enemy siege equipment before they could do any real further damage to the walls and towers.

At that point the ememy is forced to attack through that single opening, which of course I plug with my best ground troops while my archers on the walls continue to rain missiles on them. This has turned a potential loss into a victory every time I have been able to use it.

My other tactic when besieged has also won every time I have used it, but it is sort of an exploit and from what I have read it may not work as well after the next patch.

I always sally on the first turn. In the past this has meant that the besieging army would have no rams or towers--only the artillery that they brought with them. It also means that they will become generally passive, and do not try to assault in earnest, so all I do is run my ballista units out the side gates and whittle the besieging army down from their flanks. I always sent troops along to protect the ballista units, but the enemy rarely breaks off any troops in earnest to counter this cheap trick.

Here is a rather long thread where I had two posts praising the ballista and decribing some of these tactics in detail.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=76167


Like I said, some of these tactics or at least the more exploitive ones may not work after the upcoming patch, but part of the fun for me will be devising new ways to skin the proverbial cat with my beloved balista


Cheers