MTW Castle Assaults

Sometimes it is better, more expedient, or just plain required to storm a castle instead of starving the defenders out in a siege. The player can choose the assault method by picking up army stacks in the contested province and dropping them on the fortification piece on the campaign map. (only pieces dropped will take part?)

Deployment

The attacking faction can deploy anywhere outside of a square region around the fortification. This enables assaults to be made from all directions. Some fortifications have impassable cliffs on some sides, care should be taken by the attacking player to check the approaches for this.

The defender is usually limited to deploying within the fortification. In the Viking Invasion campaign, some early fortifications are too small, and the defenders can also deploy on the outside edges of the battlefield.

Castle Defenses

The fortification walls and towers can have built-in defenses, depending on the castle level and add-ons. These start at normal arrows, and go all the way up to cannons.

The defenses will fire for as long as defending troops remain inside them. With the layered fortifications, attackers will be targeted from both the outer and inner defenses until the outer ring defenders are dead, at which point the outer ring defenses will quit firing.

The defenses are not controllable, and the more powerful weapons can actually cause more damage to the fortification structure than to attackers once they get inside the walls.

Gates

Gates are the notorious weak point in castles. They can be targeted and destroyed by siege weapons, or taken out by brave, but not so smart, assault troops.

Normal troops may attempt to break down gates and other buildings. When a unit targets a fortification for combat, their weapon will shift to a special torch attack which will cause damage to structures.

Missile Statistics - Weapon Type: Torch
Ammo	Range(meters)	Accuracy	Lethality	Power	Armour Modifier	Reload Time
Unlimited	10	0.75	0.05	5	1	15

Troops attacking a gate will be subjected to several boiling oil attacks from the gate defenders. This was added in the Viking Invasion expansion to inflict damage on gate attackers. Prior to the expansion, once attackers got to the gate they took little damage from missiles due to the angles and could whittle away at the gate in relative peace.

Missile Statistics - Weapon Type: Boiling Oil
Ammo	Range(meters)	Accuracy	Lethality	Power	Armour Modifier	Reload Time
4	26	0.03	10	6	0	6

Walls and Towers

The walls and towers of a fortification are where the castle defenses fire from. Moving the cursor over a wall or tower will show it's structure type (wall, arrow tower, catapult tower, etc) and it's current damage percentage (100% means it is destroyed). Towers can be destroyed by siege engines to silence their missile defenses, and walls can be breached to allow for multiple entry points for the attack.

Tips

Pathing issues, placement of siege engines, multiple breaches, defending gates

Victory

The defenders in a castle assault will not flee or rout, so the attacker can only win by killing the garrison to the last man. The defenders will win if the attackers retreat or flee, or if the battle timer expires.