Confessions of a siegeaphobic

[Sir Losealot]

Hello everyone, my name is Sir Losealot and I'm a siegeaphobic. I bravely run outnumbered into open field battles and dazzle the opponent with my tactical genious. Then I come to the fortress gates and tremble... It's time for the slaughter to begin.

Sure, I'll usually win, but it's gonna be a slugfest battle of attrition if he's got anything inside those walls. I'll end up with a good portion of my once great army dead on the city streets.

I do my best to try to surround pockets of the enemy. I use catapults to open multiple holes in the wall. But, alas it usually ends with another big battle in the city square against units that will not rout.

Short summary of my last siege: My army of Turkish Saracen spears, Ottoman infantry, mounted and dismounted Sapahi, and catapults takes on about 15 units of Hungarian crossbowmen, spearmen, light inf, and a few cav. After making a couple of holes in the wall, I quickly move in and take out a number of crossbowmen. I move up the main street and another parrallel street and surround more units. So far so good. Now I enter the edge of the square. I want to form a good line of spearmen and decimate them with Ottoman arrows and catapults but they don't let that happen. Hungarians attack on the edge of the square and things degenerate into a bloody mess. My catapults hit my own troops due to close quarters with the enemy. Hungarian king charges and routs some of my units. In the end I win with little better than a 1 to 1 loss ratio.

The saddest part of this story is that I'm much better at sieges now than I used to be. Feel free to heap scorn upon me.

[Per Ole]

I was (still am a little) in the same situation you are in. I found a trick though, try to lure them out of the town center, get them to rout and use cavalry to chase them while they're routing. Minimizes your losses. Also, use sword-and-shield men to kill the ones in the centre, very effective.

[IvarrWolfsong]

sieges are alway very costly for me too. I will autoresolve them whenever that seems heavily in my favor.

all i can say is to to try to attack the town center from multiple directions at once so you can bring the maximum amount of frontage to bear.

still... expect a ton of loses

[Bob the Insane]

What Per Ole said...

You would be surprise how easily (and with few casualties) a group of foot knights and cut through a city square full of militia and/or spearmen...

[Ramses II CP]

Don't fight in the square unless your forces are already dramatically superior. If you have catapults, use 'em against the square and the enemy will either come out for you to kill them or die standing there. It's really not much more cheesy than infinite morale.

[khaos83_2000]

Im glad that Crusades Campaign: Byzantium has Greek flamethrowers. Burn the hell out of them when they camp in the city square.

[crpcarrot]

use units with high attack vlues like halbeards and swords men when attacking a castle. spears kill too slowly thats whay u lose. dont take too many cavalry or mounted units into a city either. some realy heavy cavalry to come round the back if possible.

i also make sure i take plenty or archers as soon as i get the walls i put my archers on top of them to support my men fighting on the ground. i avoud figting on the walls as much as possible. the morale booste to defenders makes it hard to rout them and will make u take unecessary loses. similarly once the defenders rereat to the center square i use missles to kill most of them. use an infantru sehild to protect the archers and just shoot the defenders to death. if they come down the streets they dont last long agaisnt any street blockes with infantry. if they got cavalry use spears for this.

edit : i play LTC 3.1

[Delwack]

I'm actually quite happy that sieges cause a lot of causalities, as they should.

Most of my sieges battles look like this:

If the enemy has units on top of the walls, try to simultaneously cut off both sides of the wall before the computer can get the unit off. While difficult to do because it requires an insane amount of siege equipment or else a higher level of siege equipment than the walls you are destroying, it can be a very effective way to kill multiple units on the walls. Any soldiers that do not have any means to get off a wall (ie cannot get a tower because the walls on both sides of the unit are destroyed) will instantly die.

You really need to decide at the beginning of a siege if you want to force the AI to retreat to the city square or not. This includes a number of different factors. Do you want to spend artillery shoots at the towers and/or gatehouse? Do you want want to leverage your artillery against grouped units in the city square? Do you want to be able to chase down units routing to the city square? Does the enemy have a lot of Calvary that could potentially cause a lot of charge damage? When you force the enemy into the square, will you have a clear shot at it with your ranged weapons? How good are the ranged weapons you bought with you? How many ranged units does the enemy have? If you blow enough holes in the wall, the AI may opt to retreat to the city square.

If you do not want the AI to retreat to the city square, destroy towers that you feel will kill many of your attacking troops and/or the gatehouse, and don't blow so many holes in the wall that the AI will think to retreat. Don't get bottlenecked at the gatehouse if it is operational! The boiling oil can hurt. Try to route units wherever you can and try to capture as many routers as you can with calv before they reach the center. This is often not possible nor feasible if enemy units are group along one lane as units that aren't routing will often block your way.

As for combat in the city streets, I find swords are best for anti-infantry and spears best for anti-Calvary. If I have any AP units (billmen/halberds, etc.) I mix those up in there too, trying to let the shield units take the blows while the AP units help to destroy heavily armored enemies. I usually send a mix of all 3 when available down city streets, having them engage the appropriate units. I usually have calvary hang just behind the infantry until the mass-route begins, at which point that are unleashed to take as many as they can before they reach the city square.

If you want the AI to retreat to the city square, blow as many holes in the wall as you can. Ignore the towers and gatehouses, as they will not be shooting at you anyway once the AI has retreated.

Once they hole up in the city square, things get a little more complicated. Trying to lure the enemy out of the city square will sometimes work, in which case you can try to force a route and chew them up while they are retreating back to the city square. If nothing else, this will eat up the enemy stamina and reduce their combat effectiveness. This often works well if you have long range missiles or siege equipment of some type, have already broken the units at least one, killed the general (or captain) and have spare Calvary units.

If they can't be lured out, leverage your archers and siege equipment to shoot at the largest concentrations of enemy troops for maximum effect. Protect your ranged units with strong mêlée, and you should decimate a good number of them. At this point, you have no choice but to send the foot infantry in to clean up, and that is often where the largest losses occur.

I usually find that city combat is not too bad, it's citadel and to a lesser degree fortress combat that inflict serious casualties. Attempting to take a well-garrison citadel requires the right balance of siege equipment and men. You need enough equipment to disable the walls and towers, but you need enough men to survive the street/city center/wall battles.

You need to position your artillery just right to knock out the appropriate towers and knock down the appropriate walls on the higher levels without getting shot at, and it is sometimes impossible to avoid costly choke point or wall battles. The static defenses will probably prove to be costly in some manner unless you have a lot of siege equipment. It is also very difficult to leverage siege equipment to effectively shoot at enemy units at the highest levels. It is however possible to cut off and trap retreating or routing units, preventing them from reaching the next fortification level. The last ring of walls often provide a ready ledge from which archers can shoot into the city square with great and deadly effect.

If you really are siegeaphobic, you can always opt to auto-battle the sieges. The computer manages to achieve some amazing casualty results in auto-battled sieges, especially if you fail to bring cannons/trebs with you. The only conclusion I can come to is it treats the siege battle almost exactly like a field battle, for some odd reason. I personally however find sieges, both on offense and defense, to be a heck of a lot of fun, and don't pass up many chances to fight them.

[Ramses II CP]

Auto-resolve does, in fact, ignore any benefit of walls or defensive positions in determining the outcome. It's almost an exploit to auto-calc a siege.

[Cheetah]

I too usually end up with a 1v1 kill:loss ratio but I consider it a good one.
The trick is to loose the kind of troops that you can replace easily (like militia spearmen, militia xbows, when attacking cities or peasant archers, castle troops when attacking castles) instead of losing your elite troops that you can retrain only in faraway castles.

I usually use a combination of siege artillery (catapults or even ballista is enough) and rams to get in. I split my army:
(1) main force: 1 catapult, 1 or two expandable archer/xbow covering it, 2 or 3 expendable spearmen (depends on the target if city then militia spear, etc), 2 or 3 elite speamen and or 2 or 3 footknights, 2 heavy cavs and 2 light cavs/heavy HA if I have them;
(2) "flanking force": 1 cheap spearmen with a ram, 1 expendable archer/xbow covering it, 1 or 2 more expendable spearmen, 1 heavy cav/ heavy HA.
I leave my general out of sige battles. Move in with it only if utterly necessary (which is usually never ).

I deploy the main force facing the "main" gate and flanking force facing some of the side gates.

I move in making the following steps:
1, knock down the gate with catapult; at the same time send the ram vs the side gate (use your archers/xbow to cover your cata/ram).
2, Once the main gate is down I charge in with the cheap spears first followed by the elite spears/footknights then the heavy cavs (ofc make good matchups: spears vs cavs, footknights vs spears). I force a flank (i.e. dirty pushthrough if needed) but usually the AI leaves room to move to one flank with footknigths and heavy cavs. On most occasion that is enough to rout the troops defending the gate. They start running towards the city square, move in light cavs/HA chase them down.
3, In the meantime ram takes the other gate, usually this is undefended, move in.
4, Once i have both gates I rest a bit if I can can and move in all concerned troops (I leave siege enginges out).
5, with both groups I set 1 cheap archer to lead and 2 or 3 cheap spears behind them. In the mean group elite spears/footknights follow, in the flanking group the 1 heavy cav/HA follows. The two light cav/heavy HA of the main group is sent into one of the paralell streats and waits (you should not be too eager with them, as you want your main group to call the attention of the defenders).
6, Once this set up I move forth with the main group within archer range of my lead archer. If the AI has many archers I send my heavy cavs first and charge in, pull out until: AI has no more archers, or more often it pulls back them behind its melee troops.
7, Once I start shooting AI melee troops (still from one of the streets, it is important!!!) usually the AI send its cav -if it has- or melee inf. That is what you want. Accept the fight on the street. Might sound a bad idea, costly streetfighting, but: usually the AI leaves both the city square and the paralell streets unguarded. Time to use your light cavs/heavy HA and the cav of the flanking group.
8, Run down the archers on the city square with your light cavs/heavy cav from the other group, and at the same time charge the rear of the AI troops fighting on the streets. Suddenly a good defensive position becomes a deathtrap for the AI. Chase down as many of the AI troops as you can.
9, Usually a few men escapes, move into the city square surround them and finish them off.

All in all the basic idea is to lure them out from the coty square and set up a trap. Cavalry is just as useful as anywhere else to close the trap, run down archers.
Casualties of course depend on the type of defending troops but usually I lose mostly my cheap troops: lead archers, cheap spears, that either can be retrained or can be left behind.

Once too I was afraid of sieges but now, unless it is a heavily garrisoned citadel, I can win it easily with affordable casualties.