How do you minimize casualties when assaulting?

[phonicsmonkey]

hi all,

in my current campaign I am only allowed to take rebel held settlements by force - this means I've been turning a lot of settlements rebel by assasinating royal families

so most of them have pretty decent sized garrisons of high-quality troops, due to the automatic garrison script that magically drops them in there when the city rebels.

to get to the point, I've been taking high levels of casualties (almost a 1:1 ratio in some cases) as the assault inevitably degenerates into a bloody toe-to-toe slugfest in the city square...

is there something I'm missing here? what are your tips for reducing your own casualties when assaulting castles and cities?

[heynow21]

archers/cats with infantry traps between them and the bad guys.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I have a tactic that works (occasionally)

I assault the gate with the battering ram and make a feint toward the walls with seige towers/ladders. This forces the AI to keep their units on the walls to defend them. Then, when the gate is down, I drop all seige equipment and make a break for the city center.

Having lots of Generals or melee cavalry will help pull this off.

Bum rush the city center, and take care of the two or three units that might be there. Then, let the timer wind down as the idiots on the walls attempt to retake their own city. They will lose morale very quickly this way, and will probably rout, especially if you throw some archers of your own on top of the very walls they just withdrew from and fire some flaming arrows into the mix.

Use heavy infantry to guard your rear as you make your way to the city center, and use heavy spearmen to take out any mounted fools in the city center. Archers and weak infantry should stay away from the fighting. At the most, they can be used to surround the enemy at the town center during the final push, and attack them from behind.

You can usually take out an entire full garrison using this method with minimal casualties.

Doesn't work for fortresses or citadels. Tough luck on those. This is of course, the tactic to use if you have no catapults. If you have those... what are you waiting for? Rain death upon them.

[crpcarrot]

1:1 casualties when assaulting are too good, one of the reasons i think assoulting is too easy in M2

to answer your question
use artilerry to bring down towers and walls
use ranged units
dont fight on walls or in the square (H2H)
stay out of range of enemy fire

[Galapagos]

Well just take your time when assaulting and think any move you do.Use pause button often and be aware at all enemy troops.Use artillery and missile troops and you should be fine.But 1:1 casualties isn't so bad.

[icek]

spies,put one or two so they can open gates for you. artillery, find a place in walls far from gate and make a hole and destroy two towers beside your entry hole. if you have long range missile units use them on enemy that guard the entry hole. when you enter into city walls and have large army stop, wait and see if enemy forces are going into you. try to eliminate them one by one.

[sapi]

Doesn't work for fortresses or citadels. Tough luck on those. This is of course, the tactic to use if you have no catapults. If you have those... what are you waiting for? Rain death upon them.

If you have those, well, repeat as above, but without the ram to tip them off that the gate will collapse until it's too late

Just sprint for the gate with all siege units aimed at it from the beginning, and get through before they can react and pull men off the walls...

[Didz]

What are your tips for reducing your own casualties when assaulting castles and cities?

I avoid situations where casualties are likely to be high, and try instead to force the defenders into situations where they have to incur those casualties instead.

That obviously sounds a bit glib and obvious, so I thought I would list a few of the things I try and do to bring this situation about.

1) I avoid attacking choke points. e.g. through gates, breeches, streets etc.

Getting into a defended city is the first challenge, and you can either go at it bald-headed or using a bit of guile. I normally go over the walls, even if the gates are open, rather than try and barge my way in through a gate or breech. However, when going over the walls, remember that seige towers and ladders are by definition choke points in their own right, so either use them en-masse against a defended section of wall, or ideally try to use them against underdefended sections. Frequently, the defenders are unable to man all their defences and so an element of deception can frequently cause them to leave a vital spot unguarded long enough to get troops over the wall. If your really lucky this then causes the defenders to redeploy and actually leave other area's unguarded.

2) Use the walls to your advantage.

Once you have a wall under your control the next priority is to make it work against the defenders. The best way to do this is to rush your archers and missile units onto it as quickly as possible (remember to inhibit skirmish mode). Massing your missile troops on the enemies walls enables you to inflict heavy casualties on defending troops (particularly cavalry) trying to deploy through the streets below or defend other sections of wall. Just be careful not to waste too much ammunition firing at masked targets hidden behind buildings etc.

3) Capture the Gates.

Capture the gates by attacking along the wall, not through the gate, or along the street. And if possible capture more than one gate. The advantage of holding more than one gate is that it gives you multiple access options to the city, which means that you can distract the defenders at one gate whilst you rush the city centre via the other. Always watch the defenders deployment and keep an eye open for an opportunity to rush the city centre.

4) Don't let them regroup.

Having secured the walls, and captured the gates the garrison will usually try to re-group in the city centre. Do everything you can to stop them. This is the moment to block streets with spearmen and heavy infantry so that the garrison is forced to fight its way to the city centre. The most likely result are a series of routs which enable garrison units to be slaughtered on their way to the rally point. Just watch your own back whilst your doing this and avoid getting sandwiched between enemy units.

5) Give them nothing but bad options.

With the walls secured, the gates open and the surviving garrison now cowering in the city centre the next stage is to force them to do the very thing they don't want to do. Which is to attack you.

There are various way to do this but the best method is to use a blocking force of spearmen or heavy infantry backed up by missile troops. Very often in the beginning the garrison is quite willing to attack any infantry force which deploys in the street. So placing a spear unit across the street on 'Hold Formation' will often result in the garrison launching an attack along the street which can be heavily punished by your missile troops on the walls. Let them keep doing this as long as they like as every man you kill is one less to deal with later.

Once the garrison tire of this, its time to up the anti. Begin moving the spear unit forward in small jumps along the street backed up but missile troops behind them until the garrison once more feels compelled to attack. Rinse and repeat until you reach the city centre.

If the garrison refuses to attack your spearmen, then you can force them too simply by moving the missile unit through the spearmen and engaging the defenders directly with missile fire. This will usually trigger the 'Attack Missile Unit' do something trigger which forces the enemy to charge the missile unit. As soon as you see this trigger take effect withdraw your missile troops through the spear unit so that the charging enemy hit them and not their target. Again rinse and repeat.

6) Meanwhile, infiltration and chaos.

Whilst your infantry and archers are wearing down the garrison by forcing them to attack you down the narrow streets. It might be worth using any missile cavalry you have to infiltrate through the city and spread chaos. Use the waypoint system (SHIFT&CLICK) to move any missile cavalry around the city centre through the backstreets. Put them in Skirmish mode which will keep them out of trouble to a certain extent, but generally avoid any direct contact with the enemy and just try and plot a route for them which will have them arrive at the city centre by one of the other roads to the one you are moving your infantry and missile troops along. At worst this will confuse the AI. However, the most likely result is that the garrison finds itself being shot in the back whilst trying to attack your infantry advance, and if you are really lucky you may find that these horse archers are actually able to capture the city centre because the enemy garrison is busy attacking your infantry.

7) The last stand of Sparta.

Having reached the city centre keep goading the garrison to attack you for as long as you can. Once they finally stop, and can't be persuaded to move anymore, bring up you missile troops and like Xerxes, finish the last of them off with concentrated missile fire.

NOTE: Steps 1-6 must be repeated several times for large fortresses.

ARTILLERY: First priority for artillery is to smash in the gate. However, once that is done concentrate on destroying the towers around your planned point of assault. Personally I don't destroy walls, unless there is a chance that this might kill a lot of the defenders on them, and then I never bother making a breach. The main reason being that I need those walls intact for step 2, and that I never assault breeches anyway.

[imnothere]

1. waste some money on mercenaries or pilgrims/meat shields

2. promote the captain of the mercenaries to Vanguard General.

3. order the vanguards to directly assault the front(gate).

4. at mean time - 2 flanking elite units assault gates from other sides. (AI shouldnt be able to defend everything)

5. meat shield died to a man, saving you from paying them wages.

6. 1 or more of flanking assault push through. either help clearing the gate or bum-rush the city square.

try to use 2 units of pikes, otherwise spearmen are just as well if you can schiltroned them at choke-points for AI to kill its units with.

if AI units managed to rushed back to city square, dont worry. spearwall or schiltron the choke points and use your archers to rain death. let them come to YOU. mop up the stranglers AI units that failed to get back to the city squares as well.

DO: try auto-resolve if it gives u a less painful win.

DONT: bring your expensive cavalry units.

IF: (willing to sieged and wait for enemy to sally) - if enemy have ALOT of archers - built lots of siege tower that you wont be using to block the sky - place the infantry to defend BEHIND the siege towers.

Ditto with battering rams - if YOU have a lot of archers, this way you still get some headroom for your archers to fire on the enemies.

Both siege towers and battering rams present as an obstacle - the enemies wont get full charge with his cavalry and infantry. Any dread spear-walled units will lose their coherency when passing through the obstacles.

If you feel confident, simply massed your infantry units, rush them up to the city gate, block them and slaughter the units as they ran outside. be warn that you will lose a few to the defending structures.

[TeutonicKnight]

I take a very measured method of attack. I use seige weaponry to break down the towers on the side I intend to attack. Then I break the gate. If I have enough ammo left after that, I put a hole in the walls, but not right next to the gate. Usually a section or two farther away on either side.

Then I send my heaviest footknights forward with ladders or seige towers to the sections of the wall on either side of the gate. That gets the scrum started, but on top of the walls where the knights can't be trounced by cavalry. Once the enemy archers on the walls are occupied, I move up my own archers (except for a pair for reserve) to shoot through the open gate and breaches at whatever I can hit. Usually by the time my footknights have secured the top of the wall, my archers are close to out of ammo.

Now I move the bulk of my infantry and cavalry into the breaches to break the will of the defenders. I move my knights down off the wall, and move the pair of archers I held in reserve up the ladders/seige tower to the sections next to the gatehouse. There, they can launch flaming arrows into the defender's mob, and really create a panic.

Once the mob has broken, I pursue to near the square, and fight in the streets for as long as they keep coming back. I use more archer fire to motivate them to attack, but eventually I'm either out of arrows, or they are no longer willing to come to me. That's when I park whatever is left with ammo near the square and do a Xerxes.

If anything is left after I'm completely out of arrows, well, I send in whatever is the best counter I've got (usually the remaining footknights), and finish the fight.

I never let the two minute warning interfere with my battles, either. Slaughter them to the last man I say.

Using seige weapons to take down the towers really cuts down on the casualties. Yes, the gates are a good target, but they can be bypassed and taken from within if needed. This is where cannon really shine. Plenty of ammo to do it all - kill all the towers, kill the gates, and kill the walls.

[TeutonicKnight]

Oh, one other thing. If you are assaulting a fortress or citadel, forget it. The only way to 'minimize casualties' is put seige weapons in your stack and auto-calc.

The defending towers are too numerous to kill, and will wreak havoc on your troops.

[Ramses II CP]

The obvious answer is auto-calc. :(

If you're following the dread path, use spies extensively, three per conquest will almost certainly get you over 100% chance to pop the gates.

Don't fight in the city square. The enemy has effectively infinite morale standing there, so force him out of there before you engage. A single unit of artillery is usually enough to drive him out, or at least reduce him sufficiently that a good charge will clear most of the remaining troops away.

Attack along multiple angles, as others have described very well.

Don't fight in the gates or choke points, also handled well elsewhere in the thread.

Finally, if you have high quality troops or trust your tactical sense, incite the AI to sally out against you by bringing an apparently inferior force to the siege. You should win 99% of the AI's sallies just by charging him immediately and trapping his men in the gates.

[Doug-Thompson]

1. Destroy towers with catapults, trebuchets, cannons — whatever's available.

2. If possible, take the walls first and then put your archers on them. Have them climb up the siege towers or ladders after your infantry have cleared away the opposition. Then send melee units through the gate. Anything that fights you there will now get rained upon by your missiles.

3. Use well-armored troops or troops with shields. They don't have to be fancy. Saracen Infantry, Armored Sergeants or Pavaise Spearmen do fine. Just something with a good anti-missile defense. Casualties from garrison fire add up.

4. Have some cavalry handy to chase routed enemy units, taking them before they reach the city center or the next ring of defense. Try to lure enemy units toward your archers too.

5. If you can move infantry archers along the walls until they can get a shot at surviving enemy units, do so.

6. Finally, bury survivors in the city square with arrows. Be sure to send them down side streets until you have close-range fire coming from more than one direction. Nothing thins out a city square like close-range crossfire.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Finally, if you have high quality troops or trust your tactical sense, incite the AI to sally out against you by bringing an apparently inferior force to the siege. You should win 99% of the AI's sallies just by charging him immediately and trapping his men in the gates.

That is precisely the method I use. Well done, Ramses II Trojan Magnum Shiek.