Ribaults/defending your city

[vopohame]

Holy Crap, for some reason I never really used them before and I dont know why.... It almost feels like cheating to place 2 ribault in front of the city gates or a bridge... I just wiped out dozens of armies in several battles with them. It was a nice break though to see the enemy die in droves when I was clearly outnumbered 6 to 1 in armies in the field...

Also has anyone had a truly legendary defense where you fought all the way to your Citadels core?

[Tan Zhi Han]

I had a battle where I defended Cordoba against two armies of Moors.
I only had a general (who was being punished for disobeying orders), 3 spearmen units, 2 crossbow units, and 4 militia cavalry.
The enemy had 1 and a half stacks total, with 2 generals, 4 enemy skirmish cavalry, 2 bow units, and 8 spearmen units. The enemy came with ladders, ram, and siege.

I tried several times to hold the wall and use the gate's boiling oil to win, but it was futile. Every time, they would push past my troops and slaughter me. I let them use their ladders and siege towers, leaving my general near the gates to use the towers. The enemy spearmen came down and I retreated to the city square where my crossbowmen were ready to shoot. My spearmen were in schiltrom at either side of the road behind buildings (to give cover from enemy missiles). My militia cavalry were behind my crossbowmen ready to charge. The two spearmen units that reached me took two volleys of bolts before charging into my spears. I ordered the Xbows to halt and charged with my cavalry. Both units fled within seconds of contact. I tried to capture as many as I could before more enemy units charged down the road from climbing the ladders and tower. The enemy's ram broke through the gate and the enemy flooded forth. The enemy all charged down the road, skirmishers and melee both. Their cavalry couldn't get a proper charge at my spears because of the buildings. My Xbows continued to rain metal upon the enemy. I continually charged my cavalry in and out of battles, leaving my General to rally troops behind my Xbows. Once the enemy generals were dedicated to my spears, I aimed my Xbows just for them, using my cavalry to strike in and out against enemy missile cav. The battle was roaring and my spears were losing fast. I made a desperate move and charged my xbows into the enemy. I then pulled all cavalry out and then together with my general charged straight into the heart of battle. The enemy commander could not take the onslaught of a 5 way charge, and he perished, and with his death, began the end. The other enemy general fled at the sight of his ally's death. I charged out and back in with my cav, taking many of the enemy spears and bowmen out. Now there was almost a complete rout, with one or two spear units still marching into the battle to cover their general's retreat. I continuted charging right on through, routing all who dared to oppose me. I couldn't reach the enemy general in time with my cavalry, but my crossbowmen were able to get on the walls and take a few more bodyguards out before the enemy general escaped...

That was 3-5 turns ago. That same general is back to attack Cordoba with much more men and with artillery this time. My numbers are much diminished from the constant enemy raids... Can I make it?

[Beowulf1990]

I would like to state that 'Xbow' is probably the worst term used on this forum.
Is crossbow really that hard to remember/type?

[Callawyn]

Ballista work pretty well for the same purpose.

You can use them inside as well as outside of the gates.

What I do is, instead of surrounding the gate/breach with spearmen, I'll leave one side open and have a ballista set on the street pretty far back from the gate. Have some infantry lined up against the houses between the fight at the gate and the ballista to intercept any enemy that tries to get to your ballista.

This gives the ballista a clear direct fire path into the mob of enemy units pushing through the gate. Ballista have quite good accuracy, and firing into a mob like this is just devastating.

[vopohame]

I was defending Cordoba with what was most spear units, one unit of highland nobles and some archer units and 2 units of that spear mercenary. I just sent out a spy out and noticed what seemed to me an endless supply of moor stacks, kinda made me feel like the mongols were at the border.. I had one more army coming south with 2 ribault and the rest mostly archer types, longbowman, basque, scottish etc and a motley of infantry with 2 units of knights. I was able to make the river crossing and planted the army right there. I decided to line up the 2 ribault right up at the end of bridge and support it with all the archers. It was a good decision as 3 moor armies decided to make the same crossing moments later.

I was a little nervous at the start as the moor army facing me across the bridge decided to wait for his reinforcements to arrive before charging across the bridge. I had successfully defeated many armies before at bridge crossings but rarely faced anything this large and I had no pike units or strong defensive troops to hold the bridge while the archers killed many.

Well I noticed the moors decided to send the infantry first of all 3 armies before the calvary crossed so I waited until the nearly reached my side of the bridge before letting loose on the ribault...Needless to say the devastation was something I had never seen before. I saw the massacre of almost 4000 troops in a space of a few moments with the survivors fleeing as fast as their legs could carry them. The calvary of the moors charged across at the same time but were slowed down a bit from the retreating survivors so I waited till they were 2/3 across the bridge and the effect was almost the same. Hundreds of fallen calvary and I took that moment to charge across the bridge with my knights and infantyr as my ribault were depleted and took the field.

Over 6000 dead moor and I lost 39 I wish I had posted when it happened...

[SirRobin]

I would like to state that 'Xbow' is probably the worst term used on this forum.
Is crossbow really that hard to remember/type?

I second that.

Also on my list of too familiar shorthands:

"byzzies" (byzantines)

"fatties" (fatimids)

"cav"

EDIT:

On topic, I only had access to ribaults in one single siege battle, since usually I play in the early era, but I didnt not manage to kill more than a few enemy with them. If I found a sure-fire way to kill most the enemy army with them each time, I probably wouldn't use it... well, probably.

I liked your idea of sandwiching enemy on the walls with a melee and a missle unit though.

[k/t]

Uh...how can Ribaults kill so many? 2 of them? 4000 kills? In a few moments?

[Gogolometro]

Packed like sardines.
Still magdonels are better.

[vopohame]

They were packed like sardines and I didnt let the ribault fire until they were very close. Then I would shut the ribault down again until they came close again. I did this about 4 times until the infantry broke, of course I had 5 archer units as backup that probably killed many as well. I was wrong if I implied they were all killed by just the ribault. The bridge was entirely packed with troops with many still pooring in. The ribault directly front and center of the bridge peformed the best I think it had and dont quote me bc its memory from last week about 1700-1800 kills. I wish I had saved it.

There were somewhere around 6600 moors give or take.

[vopohame]

I did wait too long in a subsequent battle and got my army chopped to pieces. There is a fine line in there somewhere for maximum kills and getting slaughtered yourself.

[RollingWave]

Holy Crap, for some reason I never really used them before and I dont know why.... It almost feels like cheating to place 2 ribault in front of the city gates or a bridge... I just wiped out dozens of armies in several battles with them. It was a nice break though to see the enemy die in droves when I was clearly outnumbered 6 to 1 in armies in the field...

Also has anyone had a truly legendary defense where you fought all the way to your Citadels core?

Yes, just recently, I took Pskov with an army of basically nothing but horse archers (by attacking a army right outside the citadal and the garrison came out to try and help them only to get massacered ). but because my numbers were relatively few and it was already a citadal, I had to extreminate the population, which made it impossible for me to build units for awhile, and I could only reinforce with a few infantry pulled from elsewhere before the counterattack came.

the attackers were mostly senior rus militas and some dimounted boyars / druzina . so my few baltic spearmans were obviously no match even though they put up a valiant fight at the gate. while my horse archers waited until they came up to the walls / gates to fire. and did a serious number on them, but still the spearmans were eventually routed and I had to pull everyone back in. luckly the AI tend to react poorly to this sort of tactics, and took them a while to move ladders / rams. so I used the towers to contiually wittle down their numbers. and finally after they broke through the final gate I did a hail mary charge at the square and broke them

[newt]

Yes, just recently, I took Pskov with an army of basically nothing but horse archers (by attacking a army right outside the citadal and the garrison came out to try and help them only to get massacered ). but because my numbers were relatively few and it was already a citadal, I had to extreminate the population, which made it impossible for me to build units for awhile, and I could only reinforce with a few infantry pulled from elsewhere before the counterattack came.

This isn't Rome, population has no effect on recruitment.

[RollingWave]

hmmm, I had longer assimilation on so maybe that was the reason, but after I entered and looked around almost all units needed to wait 8-10 turns before I can build them.

[newt]

That would do it. You start with no units in a captured city, and the recruit pool is very slow to refill in 6.3

[vopohame]

I have found when highly outnumbered is to suicide charge a calvary unit right into the unit pushing the ram.. Half the time I lose most of the calvary unit but it takes a long time for them to get another ram going in place by that time most of their troops are lined up behind the other siege equipment and for some reason I have an easier time killing them there. I line up one unit on either side of the siege tower or ladder and one of those units are an archer/crossbow type. Put the archer/crossbow unit on guard mode and it does a good job of killing off the units on top of the wall as they are fighting the other unit.