What do you do???

[Jolt]

I find having a unit or two of archers stationed in settlements often helps, the fire arrows (with a little luck) can take out enemy rams and towers and either send the enemy packing or if they've brought ladders and/or sap points, decrease the number of chokepoints to hold the enemy at.

This topic reminds me of an epic battle I had in vanilla RTW. I was Scipii and began a war with Egypt. I took all of Egypt but Alexandria. At that time Egypt had steamrolled everyone all the way to Pontus and had really huge armies (I was playing in VH/M). After I took Thebes and Memphis, they came swooping down from Syria with their 10 Full Stack armies and one came to besiege Memphis (Which, thank god, already had Epic Walls) my army was faar far outnumbered and outgunned (They even had Heavy Onagers and Elephants) while my army was composed mainly of Auxilias and a few elite Units (The first Praetorian Cohorts I managed to have), as well as a few standard Legionary cohorts. I thought of razing the city to the ground due to the very likely defeat I was about to suffer. They attacked mainly through a wall and side through a gate.

When their army came through the wall, I put out most of my available army to cover the breach (They had 2 towers but didn't use them, and I had put my Elite Units on the walls. >_>) The elephants came charging and began killing everyone (One of the very first to die was my General).

The rest tried to cover the breach at all costs but they were basically slaughtered and began routing. I had to call my Elite units from the walls to act as a rear-guard for the routing units.
Anyways, as the Egyptian army attacked the gate with like 400 soldiers (3 Desert Infantry and 1 Eastern Inf merc.), I assigned my mere 80 spearmen to defend the gate when they broke through. After the gate broke, Desert Infantry began pouring in from all sides of the gate. One of my most valuable allies was the boiling oil which killed dozens. The auxilia's moral fell rapidly due to the difference in numbers, but managed to hold the line for a while.

Meanwhile my Elite units managed to defeat their main army who had already suffered somewhat in the passing through the wall. I managed to rout a few units, and some of my routing units recovered organization, and I sent them to kill the Elephants, who were already crushing my Praetorians. Fortunatly, the large contingents of auxilias quickly made the Elephants go berserk and managed to gang up on the coming enemies. With many deaths, I managed to counter a much larger army back through the wall. (By the end, I had somewhere around 90 survivors, of these. Total)

Anyways, back to the side attack, the auxilia valiantly held the line (but was being pushed back), and then for every Desert Infantry killed, two Eastern Infantry guys appeared in it's place. The only unit dispached to help was the only one whose organization did not recover until they reached the plaza (It was my former General's bodyguards, numbering a whooping total of 3.. And exhausted.) When they arrived, the auxilia line was basically more a semi circle with only 20 guys (With "Shaken" morale, or worse) trying to hold back 100. By then, I had managed to turn back the main army, and for some reason, when those three knights in dusty armor arrived, the side army began routing.

It was most likely, the most satisfying battle I ever played. And I used the save city to pump out Praetorians, which would some 10 years later kill the Egyptian tidal wave.