Defending Castles

[TheDude]

How do you guys do it and win?

With a more experienced and expensive general I can usually only fund 2 units, a vet Naginata for around 780 and then maybe a vet bow ashigaru or a regular bow unit and that is it. I obviously have no chance when the enemy had 3X the units and can sit back and shoot with archers or just mob me with guys. What build should I use and what do you guys use that works?

[Sinner Khan]

Get more units of a lower quality....

[Thefallenhun]

I personally think its poorly calculated, I have yet to see a defender win.

[Amelorn]

My friend and I defended in a siege and won. We expected to lose, but I then decided to charge my general from behind the fort into his archers, and then their generals. The enemy army was 2/3 archers and the melee units were all dead in the courtyard after a desperate struggle. A panic ensued and we won by a hair's breadth. I am having my friend e-mail the replay and should have it ready for tomorrow.

It helps when 2 people play in the same room.

Army build:
Me: General, 1 samurai archer, 2 ashiguru archers, 1 yari ashiguru
Friend: General: 2 muskets, 2 loan swords, one bow

Them: 2 generals, 6 loan swords/yari ashiguru, many more bowmen.

Timeline:
We open fire and soon are subjected to withering but poorly deployed arrow fire.

Loan swords come up and melee rises to the defences. They are killed, though the enemy suffers from hostile and friendly fire.

Melee soldiers dead. The last few battered enemy loan-sword units jump onto the wall and face 1.5 volleys of ashigaru muskets. My samurai archers charge through as the gunfire halts and engage with devastating effect.

Our courtyard troops are being shot to pieces by the substantial archery force outside.

I pull a Last Samurai/Helm's Deep last-ditch cav charge with my friend (two intact generals). He goes through the side, and I from the back. I left 10 seconds earlier, so we make contact at the same time. I had the sense to target and kill/wound a few hapless enemy bodyguards. The archers break and my friend and I coordinate against one general's unit, then the other.

We win.

[Alkarin]

I personally think its poorly calculated, I have yet to see a defender win.

ive won. but barely mind you...barely. its all about the towers

[daniu]

I can usually only fund 2 units, a vet Naginata for around 780 and then maybe a vet bow ashigaru or a regular bow unit and that is it.

Go cheap, few bows.
It's hard; close almost every time.

ive won. but barely mind you...barely. its all about the towers

Yeah towers are really important.
Still, I would have said "it's all about the timing": when you start burning the towers so they don't fall into enemy's hands, when you start withdrawing your archers from the wall to let melee troops stop the climbers, when you start the retreat to the next inner level so you won't get intercepted by the enemies pouring in.

[Dragooon]

I personally think its poorly calculated, I have yet to see a defender win.

I've lost a few times as an attacker, its hard for both sites to tell you the truth. The defender managed to really whip my due to some really intelligent play between archers and katana samurai, by the time I reached the top he put his katana samurai forward which routed all 4 of my yari ashigaru. The maximum number of units a defender should have in a high level castle(4 and above) are the archers, some katana for those who manage to survive.

[Amelorn]

As promised, please see the attachment for our siege.

Defenders: Us
Result: Won

Unzip and put in the following directory: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\replays

[Nathan2]

Me and my friend have fought 5 siege battles and won...every single time. Edit: And we've been defenders every time too, never get to use our veteran cannons in an attack =/

Our armies usually look like this:

Me: General, Elite Monk Gunners (Rank 7), Elite Naginata (rank 5), Loan sword ashigaru and a ashigaru archer.

Friend General, Elite Monk Archers (rank 5), 2 Loan Swords, 2 Ashigaru Archers.

It is a little different if its medium or small, and the mediums tended to be easier. The trick is to put the elite monks on the wall at the right time (and not get them killed to archers) They can literally ruin a infantry unit from full health to half dead in about 5-10 seconds. Especially with the damage upgrade...every shot is a kill. They seem to shoot a LOT FASTER than normally when on the wall too.

It also helps that both are generals are specced full melee tree...our general can literally kill the enemy general in 10 seconds in a charge and are immune to spears. Only vulnerable to arrows.

The loan swords can defeat anyone charging up the wall, and the nagi can defeat anyone charging up a gate ramp (and are arrow proof almost with 10 armor)

[daniu]

It is a little different if its medium or small, and the mediums tended to be easier.

It's also different between 1v1 and 2v2; as soon as the defenders have enough units to fill all wall positions, they have a pretty easy time. The main problems arise if you have to decide what unit should go where.

[dmcheatw]

matchmaking has put my friend and I in sieges 5 times. the first time we played as defenders and were defeated, we didn't even know it was a siege until it loaded. Every time after that it has placed us as defenders, and we have declined to load. we never get to be attackers, so even starting the game is out of the question.

[Samurai Warrior]

Keep the general nearby to help moral, use the rally button and the regroup position, make sure to keep possession of the towers and keep all your units together.

[Nathan2]

Just did my first 1v1 siege defending, I almost lost, it came down to my general at the end smashing his way through the wounded units at the top then sallying and hunting down his few remaining archers.

The enemy had 7 bow samurai, 3 nagi samurai, 1 katana samurai, 1 light cavalry, and 1 yari ashigaru.

I brought 3 veteran monk matchlocks, 1 ashigaru archer, and 1 katana cavalry.

The first thing I did was charge my katana out and attack his archers, they ended up getting caught and destroyed by his nagi, but not before killing half his katana samurai half of one of his samurai archers, about 20 out of 2 more archers, and about 5-6 out of each of his nagi.

Then he approached with his forces. My ashigaru were on the wall to meet him, and he quickly killed them with his dismounted archer general and all his archer samurai, but before I died I ran them back dragging his archers closer, then I quickly put my monks on the wall and then he retargeted the monks.

Before he could fire a volely all 3 of my monks turned on their rapid fire ability boosting their reload to 110. The resulting massacre was very very scary to watch. His general died in in the first volley and his archers soon started to be shot at. It looked like they were firing semi-automatic rifles to be honest! His archers despite being in loose formation took terrible losses...but so were my monks. I retreated them when they were down to 20 men each to the back of the castle. They were also almost out of ammo.

He then charged his men up onto the walls. My monks fired their remaining shots onto them as they got on the walls but then ran out of ammo. So then I charged with them and they held for a short bit.

I waited until his men were mostly into the courtyard and in formation, then charged with my general on his men. My general has everything but morale in the melee skill tree, so he is extremely strong. He completely destroyed his yari ashigaru and the katana before wheeling about and going back to the rear of the keep to do another charge, this time into his nagi samurai. It was very tense but my general managed to hack enough of them to rout all three groups at once! My general was down to half strength and then sallied out to kill his 2 groups of 20 samurai archers.

I saved the replay but apparently it is 1kb in size and won't load...annoying.

[Patrizio]

MP sieges in this game are difficult, intense, and a lot of fun. I have had several come down to my general and the enemy general in one final duel for victory. Some people complain about the battles being short, but a good siege can easily take 20+ minutes.

Anyway, as Daniu and Nathan have already stated, a lot of it comes down to timing. You have to know when to push back. Don't underestimate the power of morale breaking retainers for your general. If your opponent fields large ashigaru forces and you do enough damage to them on their approach, your general can rout entire armies.

For example: I had one siege match where the assaulting force had a huge ashigaru army. I fielded a mangonel with increased accuracy and some bow samurai. It looked bleak, but my opponent had to cross a bridge to get to the castle. As his men blobbed around the bridge trying to cross, I nailed them with fire. In a panic, he charged his men across, general in the lead. My general was waiting at the end of the bridge, bottlenecking his forces and emitting a morale reducing aura. His general fell to mine, his entire army ran, some units without even taking casualties. I lost 3 men.

However, it all depends on the wit of your opponent. If he had attacked from multiple directions, I would have been screwed. This is even truer for team battles. I've won some epic team battles against larger forces, but I believe these victories were only possible because the attacking team either (1) did not all attack at the same time or (2) all attacked from the same direction. If your enemy swarms the castle from all sides, fall back to a position where you can defend every wall and pray.

[Alexander_Paines]

I managed to win a defence of a castle even without the ability to choose my troops. I was lumbered with a catapult and a lot of loan sword ashagaru. Thats right, NO ranged units. My oppomment and 4-5 katana samurai and a lot of archers. Somehow, i have no idea how, i won. I guess his archers focusing my catapult meant that my troops on the walls could destroy his attacking samurai. Towers also helped, whitiling down 5 units of archer ashugaru so much that even a heavily depleated loan ashugaru unit managed to rout them in seconds. Its not impossible