Siegeing Tactics for stone walled cities

[bosh]

Sorry if this is an annoying repeat post but i searched and couldnt find anything.

Im playing standard RTW 1.5 for the first time on a long campaign as Julli. Iv easily conqured France, Spain most of Germany and Britain.....and im now looking toward the wall cites of greece and recapturing the odd region of mine that has rebelled.....the only problem is these cites are mostly stone walled, and i can get in the @~$£%*(.

My armies get destory in a hail of arrow fire,my seige towers get destoryed, if i manage to knock a wall down i cant fight my way in coz my men are under a hail of fire and are exhausted, futhermore the game seem cluncky and bugging during the siege.

Can anyone give me a few tactical tips that makes things as easier or point me in the direction of a guide.

[GORE]

have you tried spies yet?

just get a few spies in there to raise their chances of opening the gates, and also i find sapping points most effective against stone walls. just stand all your troops back and wait for the sappers to finish their work, then you have fresh troops to send in.

[Trajan]

Moved to Total War Battle Planning.

[Dreygon]

Well I had intended to reply and give some advice but this POS military laptop is not cooperating.

Use sappers

[John Wayne]

I suggest a combination of sappers and ladders. Saping points open up the walls, makeing perfect entry ways for your cavalry, and ladders are the fastest way to get soldiers up onto the walls, thataway you can take control of the towers and reign arrowy death upon your enemy! Siege towers are okay, but really slow so they should only be used on there own and in LARGE numbers (at least one per unit that is getting sent onto the walls). If you sent in some spies beforehand and the city gates are open, DO NOT CHARGE YOUR REGULAR TROOPS IN!!!! This is just asking for a slaughter, as the gates drop burning oil down on your troops. Send in a useless/berserk unit instead!!! Depending on your version, I suggest German Berserkers, War Dogs, and Incendiary Pigs. All three can cause MASS amounts of damage to your enemy and are really best suited for this kind of thing anyway.

[Severous]

Against Athens stone walls I built 2 seige towers and 2 ladders. There were only 4 defending units. Was able to find a blind spot for the ladder. Troops went in unopposed and ran around the wall top without casualties.

Two Ballista can just break open a door on h/h difficulty.

I use spies most of the time. Just a few casulaties from the tower as you rush an undefended gate. Capture the gateway then run the walls capturing towers and gateways. The towers then fire on the enemy. Possible to win big capturing stone walled cities.

[John Wayne]

Just a few casulaties from the tower as you rush an undefended gate.

There is no such thing as 'just a few casualties'. There is only to many, especially for those elite units!

[blobber]

2 Onagers to knock the gate defense down(boiling oil), the gate down, the 2 towers adjacent to the hole you made and other miscellanous bombardment on the city defenses with fire bombardment. Alternatively send several seige towers to capture the gates and the various tower. When you send in the first unit to through the gate after such a feat. The enemy will send various troops to defeat the incursion. that is when the captured tower and defense comes in place.

[Draugdur]

It depends on the type of troops defending the city...I haven't time to write essays right now, so just a few tips.

-AI *never* places phalanx infantry on the walls, but puts them under the walls very often...if you siege the city defended by phalanx alone scale the walls with missile infantry, and slaughter can commence
-rams can be used as a diversion for the towers: build 2 stowers and one ram, send the ramm to the gate and the towers to the walls adjacent to the gate - gateway tower will shoot at the ram, thus giving the siege towers time to reach the walls
-Never, and I mean NEVER try to pass the gateway unless controlling it, even if your spy has opened it - boiling oil does wonders.

[Melchior]

this is a pretty cool site.

I like to seige stone walls with a sap point, a ladder, and some catapults. I'll run some men up on the ladder while I sap a wall and shoot my catapults at other points. Sometimes I'll use a battering ram to draw fire away from the men carrying the ladder. I don't really care for taking the walls but after the breach is made by my catapults and sap point, I run all my men inside at once. First at one point to draw the enemy there. Then my horses in the other to flank. Then I just run all my men to the center at once and completely overwhelm the square.

[NobleNick]

Welcome to the forum, bosh!

It depends on the type of troops defending the city...

Severous, blobber, Americ, and Draugdur have given some comments, much of which jibes with my experience.

I love sieging cities almost as much as I love defending them. I've fought about a hundred such battles in stone walled cities (regular, large and epic) on Hard setting; which I realize is maybe not enough to nudge me out of "noob" status. Still I rarely lose these battles (have lost maybe 3 out of the 70 or so attacks I have made on stone-walled cities); and I've observed a few things that you might find helpful. Unless specifically stated otherwise, these tactics have been battle tested on campaign/battle difficulty of H/H or VH/H

1.) Sapping is (IMHO) not the best option: There are cleaner ways to get into a city: ways that do not require you to repair the walls. I never build sap points. That said, I *am* keen to use previously made sap point breaches that the AI has stupidly neglected to repair. More on that later.

2.) Onagers can take out gates and towers; but one Heavy Onager is often -NOT- enough. Two Heavy Onagers will reliably take out an Epic wall's gate (and its defending towers). Two regular Onagers MAY also be enough. I don't know: haven't tried it. The benefit of using this method is that you can do it with NO wait to build siege equipment. The drawback is that, like sapping, you must immediately spend money to repair the walls, or risk getting attacked with no gates to defend you. (Gates in wooden walls that are broken in by Onagers will automatically get repaired. Gates in Epic walls will not. I forget what happens for regular and large stone walls.) I often use this method, despite the cost to rebuild, because it allows "Blitzkrieg" attacks (no waiting in the campaign map with a sign on your army's back saying "kick me, kick me!") But, again, there are cleaner ways to get into a city.

3.) One other, relatively bloodless, way: Starve them out. With stone walled cities this can take 9 turns or more; and has 2 serious drawbacks: A.) It leaves your army standing out in the breeze waiting to get attacked for those 9-10 turns or so; and B.) It is expensive: Assuming you have a full stack, averaging 150 upkeep per unit per turn, this strategy costs you 30,000 denarii --PER TURN--, which is roughly 300K denarii total if the city holds out for 10 turns. *PLUS* the lost income which you could have been getting from the city for those 9-10 turns. OUCH!! It would take at least 50 turns to get that money back in city earnings. I have done this exactly -ZERO- times; but, for completeness, mention it as an option.

4.) My preferred way to take a stone walled city: Siege towers and ladders. The A.I. is pretty stupid about defending walls: Tends to keep most units on the ground. Often there will be *NO* units defending the walls. In which case, just run 2 units up the walls in siege towers, and then run them around the tops of the walls in opposite directions, capturing every gate and tower there is, and march your main army through the gates after they are captured.

5.) Are your siege towers geting burned? Try this: Pick sections of the wall to attack that are relatively lightly defended. Under no circumstances should you attack the recessed wall sections that are common to Epic stone walls. Instead, pick corners and other areas that have fewer towers per wall section. Set up in pre-battle, so that your men do not have to move the towers far. Set up so that you can attack at least 3 closely positioned sections of wall that are defended with 2 towers or less (this is always possible). This strategy locally overloads the wall defenses, so that AT LEAST one (and typically all 3) towers make it to the walls.

6.) Often, as Draugdur mentioned, enemy units will be on the ground, not on the walls where they should be. So if you build enough siege towers and ladders to get your archers up on the walls, it is a turkey shoot. The kills are so easy this should be outlawed.

7.) If there are enemy units on the walls to greet attackers, make sure it is **MULTIPLE TOWERS** full of your **HEAVY INFANTRY** that they greet.

8.) Siege with a full stack, unless the resistance is so paltry that you can use less and still have at least a 2:1 numerical advantage. And no "fluff." You should have at least 6 upgraded heavy infantry (e.g., if playing Roman, like you are: Legionary Cohorts or better), at least 4 upgraded archers/slingers (use slingers only if you can not get archers), at least 4 heavy cav, plus the general. Leave the Peasants, Town Watch and even the Hastati at home, unless you are really strapped for cash and want to trade in some cav for an expendable unit or 2 to push the siege towers up into position.

9.) Spies will often be able to open the gates for you; but I don't like to rely on this. I plan for a full military operation, and if the gates are open for me, that is just icing on the cake.

10.) Taking too many hits due to arrow fire? I usually build enough towers that I can string them out over an entire side of the city. When I have done this I have -NEVER- run into a situation where the enemy had enough firepower on the walls to adequately cover all my positions. I then pick the most lightly defended positions to start the attack. With the towers pre-positioned correctly before battle, it is a quick trip to the walls. My gold shield, gold sword Legionary Cohort arrive at the top of the wall FRESH or WARMED UP with 75 of 81 men, and if the defender has only archers/slingers/light infantry to meet them, it is **GAME OVER** on the walls.

11.) If you get a unit onto the walls at a lightly defended spot, you can run this unit along the wall in the direction that your other siege towers are waiting, as your wall unit passes the wall towers, it captures them. Immediately start moving you other siege towers up as the portion of wall that they are facing comes under your control. This way only the very first unit has to face tower fire.

12.) Your guys do not have enough gusto to march through that gate or sapping point? Then you are not using the right stuff. Ditch the Hastati and whatever else you are using and get yourself some upgraded Legionary Cohort. That is spelled L-E-G-I-O-N-A-R-Y C-O-H-O-R-T. Make one of your starting cities have a foundry and the temple that gives military upgrades (forgot the name, except that I know it is not Saturn). Ship all of your Legionary Cohort to this city for retraining. They will be Gold/Gold/2-chevron when retrained. There are only two types of units that these upgraded Legionary can not whip face-to-face: Phalanx/spears and Elephants. Everything else, light infantry, heavy infantry, light cav, heavy cav, even heavy chariots, EVERYTHING, wets their pants and runs after several seconds of contact with these guys. Even spears/phalanx do not hold up well against their ranged attack; and I have even had 4 units of Cohorts kill an almost full unit of War Elephants (yes, it was while I was attacking a stone-walled city, and it was on Hard battle difficulty).

EDIT: Oops! Forgot that you are playing Julii. The temple I am thinking of might only be available to Scipii. Well, you can still get upgrades from the foundry, and that should be plenty, even if there are no temple upgrades available.

Roman heavy infantry is the king of heavy infantry. Use your advantage. If you bring 6 units of these upgraded Legionary Cohort to a seige, with proper supporting troops, it is impossible to lose (unless you are trying to lose, or just plain not paying attention). The only tactic effective against the Cohort (other than elephants and spears) is light ranged units that can keep their distance, which is why you bring your own archers and heavy cavalry: to stop that nonsense. So, just RUN the Cohort up to the walls and through the gate or sapping point and ANNIHILATE anything that has the audacity to not simply run away.

13.) If the enemy is heavy on Phalanx, like the Greeks you mentioned, it is best to do siege towers and obliterate everything on the walls. If the Phalanx come up the walls to meet you, do a 2-on-1 sandwich of Cohort on the Phalanx. This would be hard to do with an intellignt defender; but can usually be accomplished against the rat-brained AI you face. Just be sure you build lots of towers, so as to have lots of troop insertion points on the walls. The Phalanx have to face one way -OR- the other, and so one unit of Cohort will always have a flank attack on them. Phalanx wilt extraordinarily quickly under these conditions. A Cohort-Archer sandwich also works, as long as your Archers are the flank attackers. Don't leave Cohort one-on-one against spears on the wall. Upgraded Cohorts will probably win; but it will be a costly "win."

14.) When your spy enters the city, or in the pre-battle set-up, scan the walls for damaged sections. Often the A.I. will not repair sapping points that it used to take the city. Just as often, the A.I. thinks one unit of spears is plenty to defend this breach.

15.) If the walls aren't too tall, and the defense is light, you can substitute ladders for some or all of the siege towers; but the basic strategy remains the same.

16.) If your Cohorts on the walls are facing imminent attack from spearmen, and the option is available, run the Cohort away from the attack, through the nearest tower. Then turn the Cohort to face the spears coming out of the tower. Don't give the enemy spears enough room to form a solid line as they emerge from the tower. This works even better at taking out slingers and archers with minimal losses. The flip side of this is: Don't get caught by the enemy as your unit is just emerging from a tower.

17.) Stretching enemy defenses is a good idea, but I prefer to not use a ram to do it; because the ram drivers are very exposed to fire. I -DO- use rams; but often prefer to just build an extra siege tower.

So, let's put this all together, from start to finish. Here are two examples of how, as a Roman, I would take an EPIC stone-walled city (no previous wall damage) :

A.) BLITZKRIEG METHOD (no wait on the campaign map to build siege equipment):

2 heavy Onagers, Gold/Gold/2-chevron (Two heavy Onagers, not one)
1 General
4-5 Legionary Cavalry, Gold/Gold/2-chevron
6-7 Legionary Cohort, Gold/Gold/2-chevron
6 Archer Auxilia, Silver/Gold/2-chevron (or Gold/Gold/2-chevron, if you have captured a Greek city with the correct temple.)

Pre-battle position picked near a gate that is NOT on a recessed portion of wall. Near a corner is best. Target both Onagers on the same gate. The Onagers will destroy the entire gate house, including towers. If there is any ammo is left over, take out any nearby towers that migh be able to shoot at your guys near the gate.

RUN three units of Cohort up to the wall: One to the left of the gate, one to the right, and one to quick-attack the unit guarding the gate. Put the two units next to the gate (your back-up) right up next to the wall, to avoid arrow fire, and put them in Testudo if desired. (I typically don't, since they should not be there long.) Run one of the two back-up Cohort units through the gate behind the first one, picking an enemy unit to attack that will help protect the first unit's flank (if this is needed). Do the same with the other back-up unit. If resistance is light (as is typically the case) run the two back-up units up the walls on either side of the gate, to cream whatever is up there (typically archers). If resistance is heavy run the 4th, 5th and 6th units of Cohort through the gates, and use the 4th and 5th units through the gates to go up the walls.

As soon as the Cohort control a large enough area inside the gate, RUN all the archer units (which have been just beyond enemy arrow fire until now) inside the gates. If there are enemy units on the ground, especially Phalanx/spears or cav, run archer units up the walls behind the Cohorts and start the Turkey Shoot. Otherwise, stay on the ground and get to the side and behind the enemy wall units and turn loose massive arrow-power on those wall units.

Run all units through the gates in a timed manner: you do not want lone units getting all the attention of the archers on the walls, but you also do not want all the units bunched up and milling around trying to get through the gate and coming out on the other side piecemeal.

Take as many towers as are needed to not get shot at by enemy wall towers. Once the walls are controlled, send 2 or 3 Cohort, each backed by 1 or 2 Archers (use all your Archers) to each of 2 or 3 routes into the town square. Use the Cohort to plug the street, while the Archers fire away at the enemy in the town square with impunity. Try to time it so that all three groups arrive at the square simultaneously and from all different directions; so that at least 2 of the 3 groups get in flanking arrow attacks. If the enemy has more than one unit, they will not stand for this abuse for long; so double up on LC or place the general behind the group you think will receive the most abuse.

Bring in the rest of the cav if you want, but these guys came along mostly for their value at keeping your army balanced and safe in the field; and they are also good for messing with the enemy in the event of a counter-siege. Keep them away from the spears. One of the reasons for the many Archers is also because they are very valuable in making the enemy pay dearly for a counter-siege.


B.) SIEGE TOWER METHOD:

1 General
6 Legionary Cavalry, Gold/Gold/2-chevron
7 Legionary Cohort, Gold/Gold/2-chevron
6 Archer Auxilia, Silver/Gold/2-chevron (or Gold/Gold/2-chevron, if you have captured a Greek city with the correct temple.)

Pre-battle, buld 4 to 8 towers, depending on how well manned the defender is. The idea is to stretch the enemy thin. 8 towers will cover an entire side of the city and wrap around the corners. Position towers in clusters adjacent to relative weak points. Corners are best. Be careful to map every tower to its own wall section, or you might find that a tower has nowhere to attack. Avoid recessed wall sections. Pick about a 2-to-1 ratio of Cohort to Archers to man the towers, if the walls are well-manned by the enemy. Reverse the ratio if defense is very light or non-existent (as it often is). Pick the most lightly defended enemy wall "flank," and run 2 or 3 siege towers up simultaneously to assault the wall (2 will do if lightly defended by towers/Archers). Make both of the initial attacking units Cohorts, unless there are few or no wall defenders.

If both flanks are lightly defended, attack both flanks simultaneously.

For each flank, fight one unit of Cohorts along the wall towards the middle of your battle line. Use the other to back it up, if needed; or, if resistance is light, run the second unit of Cohort in the other direction to capture gates and towers, and to get set to approach the central plaza from the enemy's rear. Move siege towers of Archers up to the walls as the Cohorts capture the wall towers that would have otherwise fired on them. Use your Archers on the walls to target enemy units on the walls that are fighting your Cohorts. Or, if your Cohorts are having a picnic, use the wall archers to kill anything in the streets. As you move along and capture towers, the enemy in the street will retreat from (or get annihilated by) the combined might of the towers and your archers.

Once you capture a gate, you can abandon use of the siege towers or continue with them, basing your choice on wherever resistance is lightest, and giving preference to continuing with siege towers. I will often use captured gates as an opportunity to sneak another unit or two of Archers up onto the walls.

Once you have control of the walls and wall towers, the enemy will have retreated to the city center. Proceed as in Example A.).

Again, your cav are fairly useless during the siege, proper. They are there to add balance in case you get jumped by a full stack in the field while getting to the city or sieging it.

Hope you found this interesting.

[Aemilianus]

I was thinking of all the things I was going to add, and I think you got them all. I'm not as strategic as that, and I tend to starve cities out (no loss of troops), but that way works perfectly. Another thing I would suggest, NobleNick, that I'm not sure if you mentioned- if you have Onagers, build towers anyway and you can destroy one or two of their walltowers at the point of attack. That way, you can send your full-chevron cohort up there with a full complement of 81 men, capturing the rest of the towers on the way to the gate. Once the gate falls, don't even send the remainder of your army, simply use your Legionaries to clear any attempts at retaking the walls and let the towers fire into anybody below the gate. This will allow you to simply walk your entire army, in full battle array, straight into the city with no casualties to speak of, except those the Legionaries took on the walls. Using NN's method, then advance to the city center, use archer attacks supported by "fire at will" pila, and stay outside the square. If you keep everyone outside the square as you fire the arrows, I don't believe you get attacked at all, and if you are, the constant arrowfire coupled with sharp fighting will quickly rout the enemy back in. Keep this up until all ammo is exhausted, then advance from multiple sides- the first division with a toe in the square is the one the enemy will try to kill, and the rest becomes a flank battle. By that point it should be a joke.

[NobleNick]

Another thing I would suggest, NobleNick, that I'm not sure if you mentioned- if you have Onagers, build towers anyway and you can destroy one or two of their walltowers at the point of attack. That way, you can send your full-chevron cohort up there with a full complement of 81 men, capturing the rest of the towers on the way to the gate. Once the gate falls, don't even send the remainder of your army, simply use your Legionaries to clear any attempts at retaking the walls and let the towers fire into anybody below the gate. This will allow you to simply walk your entire army, in full battle array, straight into the city with no casualties to speak of, except those the Legionaries took on the walls.

No, I didnt mention it... cause I never even thought of it. Awesome. I think that would work beautifully. I am envious.

I don't believe you get attacked at all...

I think it is possible, but tough if it is the only unit. However, if there are multiple units in the square, you can easily provoke at least one of them to come out and play. The more units there are, the easier it is.

A neat trick I have found is that if there is only one defending unit, and it is running towards the edge of the square to attack, you can instantly get it to go back by retreating your unit and also moving one of your other units onto the opposite edge of the town square. Then move them off and move your first unit back on. The lone enemy unit goes back and forth, back and forth... Add your archers nearby for loads of fun.

[Severous]

Attack an army that is next to the city you want. The city garrison will act as reinforcements in that battle outside the city. Kill them and the city is undefended and you walk in irrespective of seige/spy/walls.

Sparta captured...h/h difficulty.


Unit scale may make a difference to tactics. I play large scale...Velites = 80men. These cheap fast units suffer few casualties when run directly into a stone walled city where the gate has been opened by a spy. The only defense is the gate towers. Once inside they hesitate a few seconds before climbing the gate towers..thats the most annoying period of losses. Once above the gate the towers stop firing and the entrance is yours.

PS..Great post NN

[Aemilianus]

That is usually the way I gain cities, in fact. I've never actually tried to pull the strategy I advocated two posts ago, because I don't usually attempt attacks on Epic cities. I should try that more often, though. In any case, yes, I usually besiege a settlement and watch an enemy relief army come by and try to knock me off of it. I hold a defensive position, destroy the entire enemy army in a set-piece battle (removing their wall advantage), and then walk into the city. Unfortunately, there have been instances in which I have had to face upwards of 30 total engaged divisions (extreme case), so I always go in with a powerful force- rule of thumb is at least 15 divisions in and after the Middle Game. The bright side to that is, if I fight the battle well I can totally annihilate 20-30 enemy divisions, which by rule have to come at me in pieces, and really help myself in the game (unless I'm playing against the Brutii Legion Spammers).

[Draugdur]

I was thinking of all the things I was going to add, and I think you got them all.

Amen to this...great post, NobleNick Just to add a few things, if I may:

-I've written that spies should never be used...weeeell, it's not entirely corect When fighting a blitzkrieg, I found spies to be generaly more useful than onagers. Why? Well...OK, it's been a while since I played a campaign with onagers available, but as far as I remeber, they're slow...very slow. So it's kinda difficult to reach enemy's city quick enough to actually find it unmanned...and if it *is* well defended, then it's better to use the tactics Aemilianus mentioned in previous post...at least it worked better for me. And if you do try to use spies, then charge the gates with cheap, light infantry, as Severous said (Numidian Javelinmen in RTR for example,I use them)
-@NN: you've written about what to do if AI sends phalanx on the walls... Has it ever happened to you? Not to me, I've always thought it's some kind of bug.
-Bringing light inf to sieges *might* be a good idea when the enemy has archers... climb your infantry on the unprotected part of the wall, then charge them against the archers - they're faster than heavies, and once they engage in hand-to-hand with archers, it quite the same - archers get killed.

[NobleNick]

...you've written about what to do if AI sends phalanx on the walls... Has it ever happened to you? Not to me, I've always thought it's some kind of bug.

Thanks for the compliment.

I don't recall ever having Phalanx start on the walls. I am pretty sure that I've had defender spearmen come up after I got on the walls; but, at best, the vast majority of the time they have not done so. It is honestly hard to remember if they ever came up, since I have fought so many battles with enemy Hoplites/spearmen on the walls when they were attacking (I was defender).

... -Bringing light inf to sieges *might* be a good idea when the enemy has archers... climb your infantry on the unprotected part of the wall, then charge them against the archers - they're faster than heavies, and once they engage in hand-to-hand with archers, it quite the same - archers get killed.

Light infantry are probably more cost effective than H.I. for this task. For instance: a force of 4 Cohorts and 4 Hastati is probably more flexible and about as cheap as a force of 6 Cohorts. Certainly there are more pila to throw; and the Light infantry have speed. And they are also cheaper targets for the enemy archers to waste arrows on. But I am also looking at how much raw power can be put into a stack. Going with all H.I. (especially Roman Cohorts) means that I have infantry covered with only 6 slots, and don't have to worry about what I will face: If it isn't Phalanx or Elephants (and neither one of those like to climb walls), it is dead. If your upgraded light infantry meet enemy light infantry backed by archers on the walls, or even 2 units of Pharaoh's Bowmen, you will almost certainly lose the unit; whereas a unit of upgraded Cohorts will grind through both, even if the archers are also good fighters (like Pharaoh's Bowmen).

In the example I just concocted, I would rather have the 6 heavies in a head-to-head brawl with 4 heavies and 4 light: I think the 6 heavies would win. If you fill out to 8 slots with Legionary Cavalry, then you have a force that clearly has more punch -AND- more defense -AND- more speed than the 4 and 4. So I think it comes down to philosophy, You can have a higher number of more cost effective units; or a smaller number of very solid units. I am a conservative old dog, and so go for the latter. Yes, it also costs more; and maybe when I play some of the harder factions, I will be forced to economize. But for now, when I siege a city, I **know** it is going down.

Oh, yes: Good point on the travel time of Onagers. They do slow you down on the campaign map, if you are traveling overland from city to city. I had forgotten about this, because I usually start an assault from sea; or am city hopping in tightly packed areas where the next city is only one turn's worth of Onager movement away. In these cases the slowness of the Onager is not a big deal. But there are vast areas that your point comes to play: Europe, north of Italy and the Aegean penninsula, Turkey, and just about anywhere in Africa.

I found that the Blitzkrieg strategy could be done in Europe by using Elephants. Surprisingly, Elephants can move just as far on the campaign map in a turn as regular cavalry. And they can bust down the gates of wooden-walled settlements, which is all that the barbarian tribes that live there can make. With a single full stack of 19 heavy cav plus one Armored Elephant unit you could wreak severe economic destruction on the Gauls using a conquer-exterminate-raze-and-repeat strategy. The exterminations would partially offset the army upkeep. I know this works, because I took several Gaul settlements using only half stacks of cavalry with one Elephant unit.

Attack an army that is next to the city you want. The city garrison will act as reinforcements in that battle outside the city. Kill them and the city is undefended and you walk in irrespective of seige/spy/walls.

Good point, Severous. I have benefitted from this many times; but never thought to do it on purpose. Yes, that is a good way to avoid the walls, as long as the combined might of the attacking armies doesn't out-number you by too much.

[Marcus Scaurus]

Surprisingly, Elephants can move just as far on the campaign map in a turn as regular cavalry. And they can bust down the gates of wooden-walled settlements, which is all that the barbarian tribes that live there can make. With a single full stack of 19 heavy cav plus one Armored Elephant unit you could wreak severe economic destruction on the Gauls using a conquer-exterminate-raze-and-repeat strategy. The exterminations would partially offset the army upkeep. I know this works, because I took several Gaul settlements using only half stacks of cavalry with one Elephant unit.

The only reason why I use elephants on a small scale in my campaigns, although it's better to have 3 or 4 spies near your army to open the gates in cities. They're not as expensive as elephants and they can discovered ambushing enemy armies (a great danger in Germany) too. Also, elephants are vulnerable to missile fire: I once witnessed the decimation of my 8 armoured elephants by two units of Cretan archers. The last elephants managed to reach the gates, but was killed by missile fire after inflicting 20% damage to the gate.

[John Wayne]

Wow. Great strategies NobleNick! Why don't you send this in to the Articles section, it deserves a spot there!

[MasterAdnin]

Well usually in Vanilla RTW, I had around 4 onagers, two were used to destroy the walls, the other two used to destroy the towers to prevent my troops from being killed.

Peace & Good luck,
Adnan