help assaulting stone walls

[hoom]

Bearing in mind that I've not played as Hayasdan (who I understand have pretty weak infantry) and I play on Huge:

Most of the time I find the AI generally has only fairly light defences but I've done pretty well with this technique (& really you should be taking pretty heavy casualties attacking a heavily defended town)

For assaults, you want an infantry heavy army with at least a couple of your heaviest, baddest mofos.

I generally build only one ladder & one tower or two towers.
I never bother with artillery, rams or saps.

Missiles are great against wooden walls which they can shoot over but generally hit a lot of stone & little flesh vs. stone walls so I take only 2 or maybe 3 on wall attacks.

Its important to understand the strengths & weaknesses of the ladder & tower. When you understand these, it makes your attacks easier.

The ladder.
Pros:
5 ladders enable you to put lots of soldiers onto the walls fast.
Can't be stopped without killing your whole unit (& you can just pick them up with another unit)
Cons:
Don't shoot or give any shelter to the carrying unit
Direction changes can get hairy.
The biggie is this though; If there is a good combat unit at the top, they get to surround your 5 ladder heads & chop your guys as they come over the parapet.

The tower.
Pros:
They can shoot at the guys on the walls (I only really use this as they approach but it is historically accurate to sit back & shoot the heck out of the guys on the wall)
Provide a modicum of shelter to your guys as they approach.
Your guys climb up, collect at the top & come out in a big bunch.
Cons:
They can be collapsed if exposed to too much enemy fire.
After that initial rush, your guys only trickle up one by one. (towers for large stone walls are faster but often bugged such that heaps of your guys will run in & out of the base & not go up)

So the deal is this:
Once you have a group of guys who span the width of the wall, its much harder for them to push you back off so you want to get this asap.

If you can get a bunch of guys up largely unchallenged (no defender or weak missile units), you can use ladders to reinforce quickly & continuously to win by attrition.

If you have weaker infantry or just a strong defender, the tower is the better option as you get that initial bunch of guys who can easily get a beach head.
You win as long as your reinforcements come up faster than the guys already there are dying.

A perfect attack would go something like this:
Your heaviest baddest ass mofos should man particularly the tower but if you think the ladder will take casualties, put them there too (yup you want the elite guys you hate taking casualties in the forefront, thats what they're for).
Assuming you are able to get the beach head with the ladder, attack heavy troops are better than defensive.

Attack one on each side of the gateway, go for the wall section near the towers rather than the gateway. (the gateway gets more shots off at your guys)
Preferably (but I normally forget) you want to have the ladder guys start scaling the wall just after the first guys pop out of the tower.
The AI will rush its wall infantry to attempt to push off the first on the wall.
With the AI concentrating on your tower units, you quickly take the other side of the gate (you'll normally be fighting light missiles initially & typcially from only one direction).
If its going to be a bit of a battle near the ladders, you want to get your guys to run in the direction the enemy is coming from asap.
Guys coming up from a ladder into even quite light units = lots of your guys dead.

Once you have control of one side of the gate, send guys through to start chopping the rear of the guys taking on your tower assault unit.
Sometimes its a good idea to send someone down, past & then back up to flank the defenders. (difficult if there are heavy cav/other heavy ground units hanging around down there)
Having gained control of both bits of wall, send some depleted guys around to capture enough towers to secure your route to the town centre & bring in fresh troops through the gate for the push to the town centre. (your wall troops are going to be exhausted & depleted)