Ladders or Siege Tower?

[Petrobras]

I was wondering... wich one is better? Or how do you apply each one?

I mean... I always thought that the siege tower was better in putting your troops in the walls to fight, but I notice I suffer more casualties with it. So... the only advantage of the siege tower is the defence from missiles!?

[PapaRosario]

You really suffer more casualties with the siege tower? I've never really used the ladders much to be honest, because I notice the AI always getting massacred with it. The major benefit of the siege tower seems to be being able to put a lot of soldiers on the wall at once. Whereas with ladders, you're getting a small trickle of soldiers onto the wall and they're more vulnerable to enemies that way.

[Petrobras]

You really suffer more casualties with the siege tower? I've never really used the ladders much to be honest, because I notice the AI always getting massacred with it. The major benefit of the siege tower seems to be being able to put a lot of soldiers on the wall at once. Whereas with ladders, you're getting a small trickle of soldiers onto the wall and they're more vulnerable to enemies that way.

Yes, I used to think the same, but that is not what is happening.
With the siege tower units arrive in greater numbers, but all clustered at the same point... so they seem to be trapped and slaughtered.

I dont know... With ladders I'm having much less casualties and the units endure for more time.

[jado818]

I like to do a battering ram and as many ladders as I can build.


I don't normally like to wait out the enemy castle or cities turn limit for siege.


A few extra casualties in taking the city but faster conquering as the siege towers take considerable longer to build.

[Theseus1234]

I generally build a siege tower, 4 sets of ladders, and a battering ram (or 2 towers, 3 ladders, and a ram). I'll target the wall with my ladders to spread out the defenders as much as possible and send my tower to wherever I think the heaviest fighting will occur. The general strategy is to engage the enemy with the troops climbing up the ladder and then have the siege tower deposit right in the midst of the fighting, often demoralizing the enemy and causing many casualties.

[PapaRosario]

I pretty much always just take siege weapons. I don't like fighting on walls and the siege weapons allow me to avoid the boiling oil.

[Bringer Of Storms]

I agree with PapaRosario. Siege towers and ladders both bring many casualties. Especially if the settlement is abundant in archers, or ballista towers. Basically your men are happily climbing the siege tower, then it begins to burn, and they all die. As for the ladders, if they have quality units on the walls, your guys get cut down one by one. Then on top of all this, if you want to avoid the boiling oil, you have to empty the walls near the oil dispenser. All very tolling on your numbers when you could just get siege weapons.

[MagicCuboid]

I can't stand how slow your army becomes when marching with siege weapons. To avoid the boiling oil, I just send peasants or militia in front of my more expensive units - it takes time for the oil to splash twice!

As far as towers or ladders, I usually do both. I'll hit the center of a walled unit's formation with a tower, and flank that same unit with a ladder. This avoids my ladder troops from getting cut down one by one, but the advantage is they can run with ladders and climb faster, making it easier to make last-minute tactical movements if the wall garrison moves.

[jado818]

I can't stand how slow your army becomes when marching with siege weapons. To avoid the boiling oil, I just send peasants or militia in front of my more expensive units - it takes time for the oil to splash twice!

As far as towers or ladders, I usually do both. I'll hit the center of a walled unit's formation with a tower, and flank that same unit with a ladder. This avoids my ladder troops from getting cut down one by one, but the advantage is they can run with ladders and climb faster, making it easier to make last-minute tactical movements if the wall garrison moves.

Exactly the strategy I like to use lol


Ill send peasants in with ladders and a battering ram to soak up arrows and wear down the enemy units a bit so they are tired when my stronger units are ready.


The big thing is to not send the ladders in until the gate is about to break and if the enemy decide to try and rout your peasants on the ram you need to be ready to rush a cavalry unit up to hold the gate open and support the peasants till your main force can start pushing in.

but this only works on sieges that you have the superior numbers.

If you get trapped in melee too long at the gate and don't push inside a bit your forces will be eaten alive by the walls arrows. Once you capture the gate by pushing enough units inside.. the enemies units that are on the wall will run down to fight you (I think they might be forced down even.. it seems to happen so regularly)


I do like to bring my own siege equipment (catapults / trebuchets) when taking on citadels.. but there are so few of them I don't often need too.

[The Kybrothilian]

Ladders are useful, as they can be moved in place very fast and can also be delivered inside the settlement if you're attacking a fortress or a citadel.

[TheRomanRuler]

I usually take 1-2 siege towers, and rest ladders (possibly 1 battering ram). I send my siege tower where i want to make a breaktrough, and ladders simply EVERYWHERE. When my men are fighting at walls, i send battering ram to smash down gates, and becouse they had to send at least 5 (or like 10) of their unit on top of the walls, they are unlikely reply to my attack, after all, garrison units are most time Militia.

[Petrobras]

I rarely use advanced strategies in sieges. The AI is unable to put a got fight even when fighting with good numbers.
I do not always have siege weapons. I'm on the beginning of this campaign and only now I started to produce catapults. Also, I never use battering rams when fighting walls. Spies are much better on this task. In the early turns with Genoa, storming enemy walls with superior militia gets the job done.

With 6 ladders/tower, is easy to surround the enemy in they very on walls. The AI dont bring more mans and dont put the missile troops on the ground, in the inner side of the walls, to pepper enemy arriving front ladders or towers. Even if you open a hole in the wall with siege weapons, they dont trap you there...

I LOVE siege battles, but the AI dont stand a chance...
I only wonder how I can get minimum casualties when butchering then.

[jado818]

I always thought the siege warfare could have been fleshed out a little better.


but MTW2 was so much better than any other strategy game of the time that I really couldn't complain too much.


One example would be none of the castles in the game have moats. I know not all castles have moats but some probably should have.


Sapping and Mining aren't available as options for siege warfare either. It dates back to antiquity.. greeks used it somewhat I think.. could google it some if somebody is really interested but thats just whats off the top of my head.


I can't tell you how often I think to myself how nice it would be to dig a ditch and knock down some of the arrow towers before rushing a castle lol. They would use carts similar to battering rams covered in animal hides as protection while they slowly dug a trench forward toward the wall.

I think sappers originally just used like crowbars and hammers to weaken a wall till it collapsed and compromised the rest of the structure.. then moved onto gunpowder and explosives when that become more available.


I'm pretty sure sappers were the reasons castles had moats.. kind of hard to dig a tunnel under a moat ;p.. but idk.. not some huge expert on it.

[Strengelicher]

In vanilla, I never used ladders, as my unit climbing the ladders would have such a disadvantage when fighting at the top, resulting in devatating casualties, and usually, a rout. My feeling is that this has been changed in SS 6.4, units coming up ladders seem to hardly have any problem fighting at the top now. So I can confirm what the OP is expressing. This higher usefulness of ladders renders siege towers quite useless in my view, as they are a lot slower and can be put on fire, so in SS 6.4 I hardly use them anymore.

I have read that the siege tower offers the possibility to man them with a missile unit, which can fire from the tower (once it has opened the front) if put in guard mode at the right moment. I have never tried this though, it feels like some kind of exploit.

[Felius]

An alternative is to set ladders somewhere empty in the wall, somewhat away from the archers and then attack them. If the walls are small and the units many, it isn't very likely to work though.

[Son of Mars]

Ladders, you can sprint with ladders! Also, they don't burn or get destroyed by artillery

[Liandro]

I use ladders, but only if I have really good troops to run with them, otherwise I just wait til I have artillery, trebuchets or catapults, the loss of manpower on the walls is staggering sometimes, , especially when it's basic spearmen holding out against really good troops and where normally they'd run, but instead they hold their ground and wreck the crap out of my forces.

[Cello]

Well definetly ladders for me faster to move and since costs less constr. points u can make more than towers in short number of turns.if u worry about losing much more troops with ladder use some lower rank units with ladder and stay under wall just beneath where defence has strong units and just wait there so they wont move becuz u might climb meantime atack weak points(or just empty wall areas) with your stronger troops.

[Stannis Baratheon]

Ladders are hugely overpowered. They are much faster, both to build and to move, are portable everywhere, and can't be destroyed. In SS 6.4 i notice that units climbing the ladders stack up almost one over another so at least a dozen men climbs the wall at once. And enemy cannot do nothing what they could in RL-push ladders, bend over the wall and kill enemies as they climb, nothing. There was a reason siege towers were so useful in RL.
It would be really great if ladders could somehow be pushed by enemy unit. That would make assaulting much more costly and the player would usually choose to starve the enemy out.

[k/t]

Combustion values for towers should be much lower, since it should be really hard to get them to burn.