How to - garison defense for level 1 towns

[ThorHa]

So you are attacked in your tiny 4 units garrison by half a stack or more and press Autocalc due to the horrible chances? Wrong. Wrong as (unfortunately) many of the Let´s Play Videos on you tube, which leave the impression you should defend the inner town circle. For the tiny morale boost.

Instead you look at the 1 tower which is the easiest to defend due to limited space. Make sure you can set up a reliable and hard or impossible to flank defense outside of its yellow influence ring, otherwise the sheer number of enemy troops disables it quickly. Position your 1 lone light cavalry somewhere else and hidden from the enemy view.

Then just wait for the enemy, never leave defensive position and let the tower do its work. Your cavalry waits until the enemy is set up, swings around the town and moves against the unprotected archers/slingers. 1 light cav is good for 4 archers (yup), if you don´t chase routing units but instead continue attack. Chase routers only after all attacked units rout until numbers are below 20 (means destruction for a typical 120 size infantry unit). After that and if your tower defense still holds - attack the enemy in the rear. Move in, out after a few seconds of contact, in again.

Set up this way you may defeat up to triple the units of an attacker (which can be its stack size), especially if its general dies early in spears or tower fire. In any case you should be able to inflict way above 700 casualties to an infantry heavy attacker, including some annihilated units. Autocalc would give you may be 150 ...

Funny little anecdote: In my first defense in Attila ever (me ERE against Visigoths) I did it wrong. 2 spear infantry were set up for plaza defence, cavalry was successfully destroying archers, but it was over after my "general" died. Well, not really. I had for a reason of weird thinking a heavy sword infantry near a tower in light forest, thus hidden. The attacker never spotted it so I spent a minute watching the AI massing troops somewhere in the town and doing nothing. I got bored and my infantry showed up, then raced back to the tower. 2 cavalry came after me first, ran into tower fire and then a roman infantry in defensive testudo. Boom - 1 more cav annihilated, the other one routed :-).

Since then I never did autocalc on defense. You can hold your worst possible enemy stack for Romans (Mixed Hun stack of year 420 with 2 large onagers and some competent infantry) with just 7 heavy infantry in a level 2 town. Battle difficulty VH.

Regards,
Thorsten

[econ21]

Since then I never did autocalc on defense.

That's true - the downside is that it is time consuming and repetitive. ERE don't have it so bad but the first 5 or so years for WRE are garrison defence after garrison defence.

You can hold your worst possible enemy stack for Romans (Mixed Hun stack of year 420 with 2 large onagers and some competent infantry) with just 7 heavy infantry in a level 2 town. Battle difficulty VH.

What about morale? I fought the kind of battle you mention (and only against early Huns, not the post-420 stacks of doom) but it ended ignominiously because my garrison troops morale collapsed (-10 morale hit as Christians and as it was a garrison, no character general). Hun archers also seem more lethal than most other factions missiles and the volume of cavalry they field can be a problem. (Shock cavalry can wreck swords even in defensive tetsudo if they get a good charge off.)

For fighting Huns, I find it a risky proposition without either the +6 morale vs Huns army tradition or some ancillary that boosts morale (the +10 morale military diploma; the +10 morale for Latin Christians etc).

[ThorHa]

For fighting Huns, I find it a risky proposition without either the +6 morale vs Huns army tradition or some ancillary that boosts morale (the +10 morale military diploma; the +10 morale for Latin Christians etc).

I confirm that against Huns the morale breaks earlier. But I won 2 of these battles already. There might have been a portion of pure luck - the first defensive line was always spears (I normally set up a double line in the chokepoints because the first line WILL break anyway) and in both cases the Hun general charged early and died. Both attacking armies were harmed with attacks against morale by high level champions before in addition. Don´t know if the effect lasts after the end turn button though :-).

Edit: Forgot to mention spears were alredy lanciarii seniores. They have a significant better base moral than their predecessors.

Regards,
Thorsten

[Aenima]

Whenever I've tried to defend a tower it's always ended up shooting my men to pieces so I just prefer to hold the town centre. As the WRE there are always 3 approaches to the town centre so I barricade one of them off and, if it's a map where the AI is deployed to attack it, place my archer on there to either rout or seriously ruin whatever comes that way. With the other entrances I work on defending them with the infantry and use the cavalry unit to attack the enemy missile troops/melee troops once battle is joined. Doesn't always work (due to numbers, troop quality, bad moves by me, settlement destruction level, etc) but it's the best method of defence I've found.

[Forward Observer]

Whenever I've tried to defend a tower it's always ended up shooting my men to pieces so I just prefer to hold the town centre. As the WRE there are always 3 approaches to the town centre so I barricade one of them off and, if it's a map where the AI is deployed to attack it, place my archer on there to either rout or seriously ruin whatever comes that way. With the other entrances I work on defending them with the infantry and use the cavalry unit to attack the enemy missile troops/melee troops once battle is joined. Doesn't always work (due to numbers, troop quality, bad moves by me, settlement destruction level, etc) but it's the best method of defence I've found.

Put your infantry units defending the tower on defensive testudo and problem with friendly fire will go way down. The whole point of this tactic is to let the tower do most of the killing. While putting your troops in the shields up formation limits their fighting potential, it also limits losses caused by either the enemy or your own tower.

Playing as the ERE, I've had some stellar wins using this tactic---like 300 troops soundly defeating an attacking force of almost 1100---see attachment below. This was on normal difficulty
It was Pyrrhic victory, but the net effect was that I wiped out almost a half stack army with only garrison units. My cavalry had a heyday with the routers.

Cheers




.

[ThorHa]

Heavy spears of German tribes have a good missile block chance earlier than East Roman ones and should work as well.

[Aenima]

Put your infantry units defending the tower on defensive testudo and problem with friendly fire will go way down. The whole point of this tactic is to let the tower do most of the killing. While putting your troops in the shields up formation limits their fighting potential, it also limits losses caused by either the enemy or your own tower.

Playing as the ERE, I've had some stellar wins using this tactic---like 300 troops soundly defeating an attacking force of almost 1100---see attachment below. This was on normal difficulty
It was Pyrrhic victory, but the net effect was that I wiped out almost a half stack army with only garrison units. My cavalry had a heyday with the routers.

Cheers




.

That's pretty impressive, any idea what the ratio of tower:unit kills was? And I've found that even in testudo my towers manage to kill a lot of my guys - and that's assuming the enemy don't mob the cap zone and destroy it! My positioning is probably all wrong but I've typically found I'm able to do better with my own style. Any chance of seeing some video/screenshots of this tactic in action?

[Forward Observer]

I made a save ofthe battle, but unfortunately since upgrading to Windows 10, I am having issues with all my media software including Windows movie maker and Windows media player. Even the FRAPS movie capture is giving me issues. Getting windows 10 as a free upgrade was a massive con on Microsoft's part to force users to have to buy replacements in their app store---for all the stuff they broke in the first place.

I'd go back to Win 7 if I could, but I went out of town right after I installed it, and now I've gone past the dead line

Anyway, the screen shot portion of FRAPS is still working, so here are someshots in sequence. The battle was during a dust storm, so I had to lighten the pictures with a photo editor to make them halfway visible.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

My two garrison infantry units in testudo. My light cav unit is hidden on the far side of the town

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Closer shot showing the tower control circle. I maybe should have moved the general's unit further back to keep the rear attackers out of the control circle, but felt safer having the two units back to back. I probably helps that the entrance is on an incline giving the outside attackers and uphill disadvantage.


At this point, my units are being attacked from both sides, and I figured it was just a matter of time unit they broke. The enemy archers stayed back to take out another tower at the far end of the city and are being surprised by my hidden cavalry (seen off in the direction of the front gate of the town)



Here is a shot of the tower falling. At this stage, the enemy had lost about 300 infantry and cavalry--I'm guessing that most were from tower fire including some losses that the enemy general's group took taking out the tower at the front of town.
My two infantry units had lost about 50 men in total by that point. My cavalry had knocked out 80 of their archers causing them to route, but they rallied. At this point my cavalry is about to hit the rallied archer and
eliminate them for good.


The enemy general's unit had just started to route when my light cavalry hit them--killing the general.


General's units routing allowing me to turn my rear guard to the remaining forces and send my cavalry around for a flanking hit.


All three spear unit that had been with the general almost immediately chain routed leaving only the four spear unit attacking from the outside. They were all at 1/2 to 3/5ths strength.


I sent my cavalry around to hit them from the rear, but they all chain routed just as the cavalry got there. I then set my cavalry to chasing down the routers which was easy as they were stretched in a long single line toward the corner of the map. The cav probably scored the most kills from taking out routers after the battle was won.

Final shot of the victors with dead piled thick behind. Nobody could have been more surprised than me--that I actually wont this in the first place. Maybe due to the attackers being low level, the enemy general only 2 stars, and a lot of luck.



Cheers

[ThorHa]

Tower defense works anyway, but it works more reliable in level 2 and 3 towns due to the positioning of the towers. Judging by the screenshots of forward Observer, his defense was not in a level 1. And I can confirm from several experiences that you can hold a level 2 with just 6 defenders against a whole stack, provided, the enemy general dies in between (he usually does, especially if he has a cavalry unit).

Regards,
Thorsten

[Forward Observer]

Tower defense works anyway, but it works more reliable in level 2 and 3 towns due to the positioning of the towers. Judging by the screenshots of forward Observer, his defense was not in a level 1. ----

I can confirm that it was only a level 1 settlement--hence the reason that my garrison force only consisted of two infantry units and a unit of scout equites. The force that attacked me had besieged the town for a turn, but I had a decent army that would have come to the rescue in one turn, so the enemy army went ahead and attacked on the next turn.

I was able to find the game save to match the time stamp on the replay, which I took the screenshots from.

Here's what the settlement looked like before end turn. You can see the rescue army that I never needed.




Cheers

[ThorHa]

Abdela must be unusually defensive then - already on a hill, with fences and with towers a bit backward from enemy influence. Okay, seems the layout of level 1 to 3 towns varies vastly in this TW installment.

But I beleive your battle record, no problem - hugging a tower, lone cav chasing archers, killing the general and having the enemy mass rout is entirely possible for Romans, just not so easy against Huns.

Edit: Defensive testudo seems to be incrediby powerful. It allows you to set up your cheapest Roman infantry unit in an open field and be confident that it survives missile fire, cavalry shock attacks and anything else quite fine. One of the keys seems to be reduced fatigue - in a recent town defense I had a Roman Armoured Legio (T3) reduced to just 6 men without breaking, when I investigated them and the enemy, enemy troops where "exhausted" while the Legio was just "very tired". So the combination of 400% more mass, better missile block chances and reduced fatigue in testudo (plus it still eats spears for breakfast) makes the Legio the most survivable unit I can think of. Which fits in very nicely in my preferred battle stance, which is defensive in a fort (yes, even against onagers).

Regards,
Thorsten

[Aenima]

Thanks, Forward, that's a great explanation of it, although I have to say I'm surprised it worked so well - maybe towers were patched and it's changed how they fire so friendly fire isn't so much of an issue? Or perhaps I'm just an unlucky git, as that kind of set up is a recipe for my own guys getting shot in the back! But either way thanks for the demonstration and well done on the battle - also nice final pic there, looks great!

[yupper]

Thanks, Forward, that's a great explanation of it, although I have to say I'm surprised it worked so well - maybe towers were patched and it's changed how they fire so friendly fire isn't so much of an issue? Or perhaps I'm just an unlucky git, as that kind of set up is a recipe for my own guys getting shot in the back! But either way thanks for the demonstration and well done on the battle - also nice final pic there, looks great!

There is a mod that is suppose to reduce friendly fire. You can try it and see if it helps. Although I haven't really much experience to share about how it works in sieges, because I also use a mod that nerfs arrow towers so as to force me to defend the inner walls of level 1 settlements.