Ladders vs. Towers

[homefry]

I think ladders are way more useful than towers. What do you think? This is for sieging cities, so the muti-use of the equipment is a non-issue.

You can run with them and they don't get destroyed. And when your troops get off the ladders vs towers, I see the same numbers getting deployed.

[SirRobin]

Yep, you got it. All the towers, rams, catapults, cannons, etc. in the game are useless to put it bluntly. Unnecessary at least. Because a couple of ladders that any army can build in one turn will be enough to conquer any castle.

[homefry]

They should've made the towers more robust.

[thursgun]

Towers

Pros:
- Chances are that your infantry units will not rout until they give a good fight. That is, their morale will not drop before the entire unit is on the wall fighting.

Cons:
- Slow movement.
- Can be set aflame and therefore easily destroyed.

Ladders

Pros:
- Fast movement.
- Can be moved through the gates to assault an inner wall.

Cons:
- Units morale is severely affected and might trigger an early rout.


What to use? It depends on the settlement been besieged. But most of the time I use a ram and towers only. I don't want my units to just reach the walls, I want them to go up there and fight. With ladders the early routs are very common in my campaigns. I used them on rare occasions.

[Incomitatus]

It depends entirely on the composition of the defending army.

Ladders reach the wall faster, and take less time to put the entire unit onto the wall. The downside of ladders is that nothing protects the men from arrow fire when approaching the walls, and if a good enough unit of infantry is defending the wall the men coming off the ladders are cut down before they can assemble sufficient numbers to hold their own, thus routing early.

Towers, on the other hand, do a pretty good job of shielding their crew from arrow fire, provided the tower doesn't get ignited, and they dump enough men onto the wall at once to create a good toehold. Towers work best when the enemy has a lot of archers (build extra towers in case of ignition).

Personally, I like to use both. Send a tower or two up to the wall, wait for them to arrive, then rush up with ladders to the sections of wall to sides of the towers. Then roll up a ram or two. The whole time have the trebuchets take out the enemy towers.... It's the Sultan Mehmet approach - overwhelming force.

I also 'push' infantry, usually spearmen of some sort, through the gate defenders (which often triggers an enemy rout) and race them up the street towards the city center, then have them about face and seal off the road so routing enemies get impaled on spears instead of regrouping in the plaza.

With luck you can rout the whole defending army at the gate/on the walls and not have to fight in the center at all. That makes me a happy crusader!