Siege towers?

[Ascarona]

What is so good and handy about Siege towers? They catch fire fast, go very slow and don't offer much protection when your traveling to the walls, you might as well just pick ladders, at least you can run with them and they won't catch fire. So why taking siege towers?

[Owain Glyndŵr]

I think they offer a decent amount of protection; you've just got to use expendable troops with ladders or multiple siege towers to disperse the enemy's fire. They're better than fire once they reach the walls because your men will move onto the wall in a much more immediate, concentrated manner rather than moving on gradually from a couple ladders.

I'd recommend using the siege towers to deliver your more elite troops to a well-defended wall section while using your ladders to dump reinforcements or flankers weaker parts of the wall where they won't meet such stiff resistance as they attempt to climb on to the wall.

[Muagan_ra]

It's more difficult for your troops to fight from the Ladders as they are from the Siege Towers.

[Soulghast]

Well, they can be effective in large sieges, if you use them along with other siege equipment. Some of them will definitely catch fire, but if used in conjuction with many ladders and a couple of rams, you can have pretty good results.

[Pink Beard]

The con of a siege tower is that ur men will attack as a whole. If ur using ladders ur units will take a heavy beating because they have to climb up 1 by 1...

[Callawyn]

The con of a siege tower is that ur men will attack as a whole. If ur using ladders ur units will take a heavy beating because they have to climb up 1 by 1...

Well, that's supposed to be what happens, and for a long time I believed it. In practice though, they don't seem to take much damage getting onto the walls and making room for themselves. I never used to use ladders, lately I use them often and never build towers. Being able to run with ladders and not worrying about your tower burning are both nice plusses.

[Conquistatore]

Siege towers allow your men to overwhelm the enemy when the small bridge drops. They do catch on fire fairly often though but most of the time they will make it to the walls. When used in conjuction with other siege equipment they are very good. Always divide your siege equipment when attacking, do not bunch them altogether or have them attack the same part of the wall. Remember, divide and conquer.

[Surgeon]

Another thing that's scary about siege towers - they can still get destroyed once they've reached the wall. One time my trebuchet tried to fling a stone over the wall at the enemy general, but the (damaged) enemy siege tower happened to be in the way just as it was dropping the bridge. The entire unit of Janissary Heavies that was on it at that moment perished :O

[Conquistatore]

o.O Ouch poor janissaries!
My siege towers have caught fire as they were unloading troops onto the wall... somehow they didn't get burnt though??

[Pink Beard]

I rarely build ladders/siege towers anyway... I either use artillery or rams... The only downside is that I play mods with boiling oil... auch


why are there no sap points like in rtw?

[Ascarona]

I still say they are useless, the troops 'wave' that are supposed to overwhelm the enemy isn't even that big, the first 'wave' is about 6 troops that jump on the wall and believe it or not, I lose way less troops with the fast ladders. And getting from the ladders onto the walls isn't that slow. about 10-20 troops are on there in a few seconds. But yeah using peasants to use the siege towers is a good combination I guess.

[Flavius Silvanus]

The worst part about Seige Towers is that troops seem to get stuck up on them quite often.

They were more useful in RTW where if you got one unit on top of the wall, you could often capture all the Arrow Towers which would then shoot inside the city. Just run the unit all the way around the wall.

In Medieval you have to occupy the Tower to get it to shoot arrows.

[Robbespierre]

In my opinion ladders are much better. The soldiers are much faster at the walls.
Siege towers:
-are very slow
-burn fast
-don't protect people ('normal' arrows fly through them)
-have a terrible bad path finding
-need much more time to be built

[Viking Prince]

The key for me is to use both towers and ladders. I usually go to only one side of the main gate and wrap around to another side of the castle after deployment. The ladders are faster and they make the "linebacker" shift. If artillery is available, all men and equipment are kept out of tower range until after the artilery has done their work. Depending on the situation, the seige towers are then not used. Ladders are rushed in to help broaden the attack from the breaches and to take the main gate from the inside.

The seige towers are indeed slow to move into place and the men are also slow to gather at the top of the towers, but I think that you will find the loses within a unit are still less than a unit using a ladder facing opposition on the wall.

Towers and ladders are more effective when there is a second unit of better infantry available to use the equippment. There losses are much less since the first unit is already engaged on the wall. For this reason I use weaker units in the first wave and the veteran units follow and victory should follow.

Also, a key is to kill and rout the enemy only after the cavalry has access to the inside roads to run down the enemy. Do not rout the enemy to just reform in the town center square or your job will be more challanging.

[RMSN NIKE]

I answered a question in RTW board about siege towers, but it also apply here.

Siege tower is the best siege engine. No damage done to the wall and low casualty done to the unit. Even when 5 archer units and 2 towers were shooting at me, since their target was the siege tower, not the unit.

When you use multiple towers, be very careful on the units that pushed them. It happened to me before that when I had 3 towers close together, the unit in the middle left its position and run into the left tower. When 2 units in 1 tower, they will get tangled in the tower and not moving forward. So always wait for the first unit to reach the top of the tower before sending in the second unit.

If you noticed too late about the merging of 2 units in one tower, move the second one out of the tower and move it in front of the tower they suppose to use, then double click(run) on the wall in front of the exit of this tower, not attack, but moving command, they will run up this tower without any problem. Then select the unit supposed to use the tower that got tangled up, also double click(run) moving command at the exit of this tower. They will move normally now.

I noticed this this problem from Kingdoms, where the Battle Position AI, I believe is better then Rome. Since in Rome, I can place majority of my troops in front of the gate, and the enemy will also do that, and left empty walls for my towers to land. But in Kingdoms, if the enemy has enough troops, they will spread all their troops on top of the gate, and in front of all tower landing points. And also it is easier to get archers in Kingdoms then Rome. Like when I was moving 3 towers with Order Swordsmen toward a city wall filled with 6 or more Mongolian Infantry. I lost about 2 soldiers per unit before reaching the wall, and then 3 or 4 more because of the tail of the unit did not fit into the tower for protection. And another time I realized 1 unit will not be useful on the wall except get shoot at by Mongol archers, I halted their movement inside the tower, with the walk plank closed, I only lost 3 or 4 soldiers due their horse archers run out of the city to shoot at the units tail. I only moved this unit onto the wall after all enemy units retreated from the attacks of my other 2 units that got onto the wall.

Oh, you will lose a lot more soldiers with ladders then towers, and morale too. since one time, also in kingdoms, I used 1 unit of Spear Militia to defend a piece of wall of Hamburg, against 3 units of Dismounted Huscarls. They came up 3 at a time from the ladder, and 1 unit at time. The first unit had lost at least 15 soldiers out of 60, maybe more, from my towers attack and my Pavise Crossbowmen, who has slow shooting and I placed them in the wrong position. Even though the DH has scare infantry trait, my Spear Militia held its ground and fought off the invaders. And this is only one of 3 ladder landing points. I held them off all with Spear Militias, and a pike mercenary at the broken gate against mounted Huscarls and the general, with help of my own general. Even though the casualty was high, but I destroyed the Danesh attackers with militia units, and they had more soldiers and units then me.

[Conquistatore]

An interesting tactic VP, the 'linebacker'. I never considered moving my siege equipment after the deployment phase. I guess it is just easier to split up your forces and your avenues of attack when everything is frozen, rather than in the heat of battle. I will have to try your strategy in my next siege!

[Hunter Makoy]

I think on the huge cities you have to have siege towers to get over the walls, atleast in Rome thats how they had it set up. Siege towers don't necessarily catch fire all that fast, it just depends on what the AI has guarding the walls. If they don't have archers with flaming arrows they you should be alright.

[Owain Glyndŵr]

I'll usually knock out towers with artillery before storming the walls. Archers with flaming arrows have a much lower chance of catching towers on fire for some screwed-up reason.

[whitesoxfan]

Siege towers fire arrow and ballistas at the units on the walls! Hasn't anyone mentioned that?

[Sumonious]

Siege towers fire arrow and ballistas at the units on the walls! Hasn't anyone mentioned that?

I noticed that too. Siege tower shoots ballista arrows and normal arrows at an insane rate. Too bad they have low ammo