Invasion from the inside

[rockoutloud1213]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

[Ironside]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

You have to treat the castle defenders as somewhat neutral troops that surrenders and switches sides when all the loyal troops are dead. Sworn to location, not leader.
Gamemechanics vs realism you know.

[Zathernon]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

If your general at the time of the assault was a weak general, i.e. no-command, low or negative valour, low or negative morale and the opposing general had positive traits, consider yourself lucky to have won at all.

If perchance you had done a "quick-save" in the pre-battle screen, try doing it in 3D. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Once while defending against The Golden Horde, they had lost over 2800 in order to take the fortress. Sometimes the enemy will stand around as if drunk and be eliminated by arrow fire.

Most resurgent factions have no command or valour so their bark is much more than their bite. The Sultan/King may also be old and die-off as quickly as they appeared.

[rockoutloud1213]

Today, I tried assaulting again with about 200 troops and played it out myself. Here's what happened. I figured last time, all my troops must have died from arrow towers. Not so. Only about 10 troops died from arrows or boiling oil. What happened was that the computer made the 1 Kataphraktos gaurding the castle a god. He himself killed almost 200 men, down to my one last soldier. Then, the Kataphraktos and my Urban Militia traded blows for about 15 minutes. THey would still probably be fighting now, hours later, had I not just routed the soldier to get it over with.


Simply put, the game hates me. Is this some glitch I am experiencing, or are Kataphraktos supposed to be able to kill that many people. IF so, why couldn't he kill my last man?


WTF?

[Agent Miles]

From the Numerology thread about hitpoints:
"The system looks like this:
Base hitpoints: 4
King: +6
Prince: +4
Command: Adds +1 per rank
V&V: 1/3 of Health bonus, rounding down. +5 to Health means +1 hitpoint.

So a king of Rank 6 with the Virtue Mighty Warrior (+ 10 Health) would look like this:
4
+6
+6
+(1/3 * 10 = 3)
= 19 hitpoints. Not bad at all.

I was told by a dev once, I believe it was Mike, that the max hitpoints lies at 30, but then you would need a good number of V&Vs."
Also, defenders with no retreat possible get an extra 8 points of morale.

The defender was most likely totally exhausted and couldn't finish off your last man. Javelins are great against well armoured defenders. What kind of units did you have?

[rockoutloud1213]

about 50 royal knights, let's start there. some jinettes, I believe. And a mess of other small units. But 50 royal knights could not have killed it? What about the rest of my army? It wasn't a King, not a Prince, nor did it have more than 1 command. Just a Kataphraktos who somehow killed a total now of 700 men.

[Tratorix]

Not that i'm doubting you, but are you sure the kataphractoi didn't have anything special about it? Unless your royal knights really sucked, it shouldn't have been able to do that kataphractoi aren't as good as most knights once the charge factor is done with.

[Martok]

Well as you can see from Agent Miles' post, even a vanilla general has at least 4 hitpoints. That can make a big difference when you realize that most troops only have 1 HP. Add to that his abilities as a Katank unit, and you can be assured that he can probably do some serious damage before he goes down....and that's not even factoring in any hitpoint-boosting virtues he may have.

In the end, you've simply been a victim of MTW's "Jedi Generals" phenomenon; even lesser generals like the one you fought can be tough to take down. It's a big reason why many players include specially designated "general-killers" their armies -- usually a unit that fires armour-piercing projectiles, such as mounted crossbowmen. In your particular case, rockoutloud1213, those Jinnettes you mentioned would probably have a decent shot at killing him.

[Zathernon]

Sorry , double post.

[Bregil the Bowman]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

I recently took on a citadel with 8 defenders, played it out in full and got horrendous casualties. Getting past all those walls and towers ain't pleasant.

Auto-calc will often give you worse casualties than playing out the attack. I once had a bridge battle where I had about 400 men and the AI had 2. Not to waste time I auto-calced - 250 casualties and I lost the battle! I went back and played it out - it turned out the bridge defenders were two "Jedi" Royal Knights. I hit them with two units of jinettes - lost two men in the melee and one to friendly fire, both knights went down with javelins through them. It's the biggest difference I have ever seen between auto-calc and a full battle.

[Roark]

The siege auto-calc is pretty damn generous. It's a total cheese play to auto-calc sieges, in my humble opinion.

Assaulting the big structures is tres painful.