Defensive Siege AI...

[rvg]

There seems to be a very easy way to beat the defending A.I. in *city* sieges with absolutely minimal casualties for the attacker. All you need is basically a standard siege army with lots of melee infantry, a few archers and most importantly, 2 or more Catapults (basically, anything other than ballista will do. No need to construct any siege towers nor ladders nor rams.

Now for the minimizing casualties part: when the city siege begins, the AI faced with catapults abandons the walls and withdraws all its troops to the city center. With the setup above it does so in EVERY city battle and of course it is a fatal flaw: as soon as the Catapults have busted down the gates, I am able to rush *my* archers onto their empty walls, while my melee troops flood the gate area. A.I. rushes back for a counterattack only to run into my solid mass of defending infantry and get shot to bits by my archers (paivse xbows work even better) thanks to the perfect shooting spots from their ramparts.
Once the A.I. gives up on counterattacking, I can wheel in my catapults (who will be covered by the archers on the ramparts and the melee infantry), get them close to the city square and burn the remaining defenders with some nice fireballs.

Now, I have successfully used this strategy with both Milanese and Byzantines and it works both with archers and xbows (but better with xbows), and will not work vs Castles, Fortresses and Citadels.

However, for the city assaults it brings the attacker's casualties down to almost nil even when the defender has enough troops to make me pay dearly for the assault.

[DVX BELLORVM]

That is very good tactic, I also use it often, depending on a situation. The worst thing you can do during a siege, is to fight on the walls and central square.

[phonicsmonkey]

Hi - nice work

you might find some good ideas here if you get bored with that rinse-and-repeat tactic and want to try something else

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=88794

[ReiseReise]

Great strategy!!! Call me a fool, but I don't think taking cities should be too easy and therefore don't mind taking a few casualties doing it the traditional way ie meat waves. However I may have to try this out in my current Russia campaign because Const. has a huge garrison (~15 units), pretty unusual for the AI. I won't be ready to go down there for 20 turns or so but my spy has been checking it out. Right now I am torn between my original goal (and Victory Conditions) of an Asian Empire vs extending my recent conquest of Scandanavia over to the British Isles. I have all the steppe provinces except Bulgar, ready to build an army and pounce on Tblisi and Yerevan, but at the same time Britain is so much closer and richer... I have to decide between conquering and building up Asia and battling the mongols on my home turf (~50 turns away) or evicting England and Scotland (both have regions on the mainland, as Scotland took Bruges!?!?!?) which would give me a nicer economy to face the mongols from a safer distance (unless they appear by Sarkel ). The Britain route is much more interesting to me as a sort of alternate history, but the Asia route will be more difficult, which also makes it appealing.

[ReiseReise]

I've also found that once you punch a certain number of holes through the walls, the defending AI retreats to the city center, at which point they are at the mercy of your arty/missile units. Haven't experimented to find out how many holes, if it works on castles etc, its just something I noticed.

[Old Geezer]

From my experience in Kingdoms the AI does not always abandon the walls in such circumstances. I have shot the walls out from under men on the walls quite often when the AI has a large force in the settlement.