Supporting your troops whilst avoiding a mass bundle!

[MortimerJazz]

First things first - I am very much a noobie.

My main problem when it comes to battle is that I ended up just pressing CTRL+A and then getting all my troops to run into the middle of a battle ... which really doesn't help my situation.

Take last night for example, I was trying to capture a city. Having knocked down the gates with my catapaults I sent a couple of calvary legions in to take out the archers.

However, they soon got isolated, so I ended up having to send more troops forward (a) to get through the gate (b) to support my general ... which resulted in an ugly pile of bodies trying to get through a small gate and general disorganisation once they did get through.

I guess I'm posting this to ask how you make quick, decisive attacks (such as when the gates fell in the above scenario) without alienating specific factions of your army?

Am I being too impatient? Should I have just marched the whole army forward and withstood the falling arrows rather than charging my caverly straight away?

[Valerius Maximus]

i'd suggest breaching the walls in more than one place, especially if they're wooden walls. use rams for this. Maybe you could use your own archers to engage enemy missile units, knowing the AI he will retreat his archers and then u could move in the city through the different breaches instead of rushing all troops in through the gate.

for cities with stone walls, i usually divide my army in 2 and take 2 different gates and the surrounding towers to avoid being shot at, and again knowing the AI , yr enemy will walk by the towers and sustain casualties

[MortimerJazz]

Thanks for the reply Maximus.

So therefore, I should have been more patient and not worried so much about the ariel attack from their archers? How dangerous are those attacks anyway? Would have it have been ok to withstand the arrows while I blasted another hole in the wall?

[Trajan]

Moved to the Total War Battle Planning sub-forum.


Playing as the Romans, in siege battles, I always have two archer and catapult/ballista units to support my men going inside. If I don't care about destroying the city, I'll pound it for a good 20 minutes or so and then make a couple of holes in the walls, take out the gate, and all nearby towers. Then I'll send six cohorts (Roman legionary units), in column formation, to the front of the gate while my archers and catapults continue to fire on any units guarding the openings. After fighting many sieges, I determined that six cohorts were good enough for conquering a city. The rest of the men will be in reserve. Once the six cohorts reach the front, I'll split them up into three squads, two cohorts each and place each squad in front of an opening in a wall. Archer and catapult units will cease fire of course, and then I'll have one of the squads push their way through one of the openings. The A.I. of course will send some units to the rescue and once there pinned downed, I'll send in a second squad through the other opening and have them deal with any enemy units, if any, guarding the entrance. Incase both squads are pinned down, the third squad will be the hammer and enter the city through the third opening (usually the main gate) and attack the enemy units, fighting with one of the two squads, at their rear. This should free up one side, giving me the opportunity to free up the other. Once the front of the city is cleared of all enemy units, the six cohorts will reform themselves back into a column formation and I'll just have them march in one big mass towards the center of the city and that should be all she wrote. I normally won't use cavalry in sieges because of the amount of space inside a city but I'll use them if the situation calls for it like if I see an opportune moment to hit the enemy's rear at the center of the city or using javelin armed cavalrymen to deal with any elephants before my men reach them.

How dangerous are those attacks anyway? Would have it have been ok to withstand the arrows while I blasted another hole in the wall?

Archer damage will depend on the armor of your troops and which direction their coming from. All in all, keep your men out of their range until your ready to storm the city.

[Darth Wong]

When I play as Rome against stone-walled cities, I don't hurt the walls at all. I send some of my best legionaries in siege towers to storm the walls and kill the defenders. In that kind of close-quarters fighting Roman legionaries generally have the advantage, especially against phalanx troops who can't employ their phalanx formation. I've found that fighting on the walls tends to heavily favour Roman troops, especially if you're talking about post-Marius legionary cohort or above. You can usually get your siege tower to the wall without taking casualties if you approach at the right spot between defense towers, and you can use the siege tower's built-in archers or ballista to inflict casualties on defenders before you make contact (although you're usually better off attacking at a point where the defenders will only attack you from one direction rather than swarming you from two sides).

Once I kill everyone on the walls, I can move around taking towers at leisure, which tends to drive his forces away from the walls so I can move in my own forces without much trouble. If they're stubborn, I put some archers on the walls to shoot down at them.

Against wooden-walled settlements, I tend to make lots of holes in the walls with rams or ballista so I can send my men pouring in all over the place, while archers stay outside the walls and shower defenders with arrows.

[NobleNick]

Mortimer Jazz,

Trajan, Darth Wong, and Valerius Maximus have all given good points. One of the best points I saw multiple times was to take advantage of the Roman infantry, especially Legionary Cohort.

Are you playing as a Roman faction? Are you post Marius (that means you can build Archer Auxilia instead of Archers, Early Legoinary Cohort or Legionary Cohort instead of Principes, and can train Legionary Cavalry)? I will assume you are post marius Roman.

I am a big cavalry fan; and have even used all-cav forces to take a city (wooden walls, brought elephants to knock down gate). But cav is not nearly as effective in town as they are out in the open. In town, your friend is heavy infantry.

For wooden walls, bring an Onager if you want, and a few archer units. If you have archer superiority, pepper those enemy archers into oblivion. Then pepper anything else that has the audacity to stand near the walls. Use Onager fire to take out the gate and nearby arrow towers. (Or use rams if you didn't bring an Onager.) If you are attacking one of those cities where the gate leads directly to town square, and the enemy is congregating out in the open, use your onager to fire into the mess. Often you can achieve 40% enemy casualties before your guys even reach the walls with rams. Once enemy ranged fire has been suppressed, send in the rams and heavy infantry. If resistance is light, just break in the gate. If heavier, then make multiple breaches to spread the enemy thin.

A trick I like to use is to run several units in through the gate and put them back to back; so that they can not be flanked. Keep archers outside the gate and to the side from which the attackers will come. When the enemy attacks your infantry, your protected archers pour arrow fire into their unprotected flanks and backside. Try to make it their backs or right side, and they lose the shield bonus. Most troops drop like flies.

For stone walls, I use Darth Wong's method: Build lots of towers; put Legionary Cohort, followed by archers, on the walls; capture towers and gates by running the walls. Often you will find part of the wall undefended, except by arrow towers. Attack these sections with siege towers and run to capture the arrow towers. Then run more siege towers or ladders up to the walls that now have arrow towers that belong to you.

[nicotine]

One of the most important things to remember when laying siege to any town is to attack the walls in multiple places preferrably on different sides of the city/town. This will force them to spread their forces thin or concentrate more forces at one particular spot allowing you to easily break through at another point. By attacking on different sides it seperates their forces over a considerable difference eliminating last minute reinforcements. As others have said it's best to try and take out as many enemy defenders as you can before you even get your infantry close to the gates. For towns just use archers and skirmishers to rain down death on the defenders and then move forward to assault the walls with multiple rams. On stone walled cities be sure to make multiple siege towers and ladders and take all the towers and the gatehouse on whatever side you're assaulting. The AI will wander around on the streets along the wall getting killed by the towers you've captured.

[Professor420]

I'd just like to make a suggestion not in the vein of the rest:
If an enemy has a city garrisonned with more than 5 or 6 units, or any units that would be able to beat yours on walls (ie, your phalanx units will be manning the seige towers against Cohorts or Hearth troops), ignore the city. Move past it. Find a city that is barely garrisonned, behind enemy lines, and take that city. Eventually the enemy city will become isolated, or they will move out of their Large Stone Walls and be destroyed. This Sherman-esque approach has saved me many turns and saved me many troops that would undoubtedly be slaughtered upon the walls if I feel confident enough for a seige battle with my troops in the first place. Where this especially worked was in the Alexander campaign, with time of the essence.

[Surlethe]

I want to emphasize that when you're storming stone walls, never permit your troops to be flanked. Roman legionaries are pretty generally superior when they're facing the enemy, even if they're outnumbered (this is because the units are superior one-on-one, and there's not enough space on the top of the wall for the numbers to come into play on the flanks), but if another unit moves up behind them and cuts into their rear, they will (like anything else) become quickly demoralized and begin fighting to the death. When I'm assaulting a stone wall, I'll build three or four siege towers, move two into position on opposite sides of the city, and the other two will face the front, along with my main force. I'll land my men on the sides first; generally, they will be unopposed. They'll move around the city toward the front, capturing towers, and will eventually light into the main force of defenders; at that point, I'll move my forward seige towers up and drop onto the defenders, timed so that they'll jump into the rear of the defending units as the men who walked around the city attack the front. Afterwards, I'll liberate the gates and head to assault the city center.

[Darth Wong]

One tip about attacking cities with phalanxes: find a spot where there is no enemy infantry, take your phalanxes out of phalanx mode, rush them in with a formation pointing toward the most likely avenue of enemy attack, and then put them back in phalanx mode. Often times you only need to drive them a little way back from the walls with archers or javelineers in order to get enough breathing space to get a phalanx in there and put them in formation, and if you can get the phalanx together before the enemy brings up his men, you can often hold position even against rather heavy counterattacks.

I did this once while playing as the Seleucids against a wooden-walled city with a huge barbarian army inside. I ran in two phalanxes through a hole in the wall in non-phalanx formation and planted them back to back (one on each side of the hole), blocking an entire street because the streets were narrow. Then I put them in phalanx formation just before the barbarian horde came rushing toward the invaders. The barbarians took horrendous casualties and ended up being routed despite attacking 2 units with at least 10 units of their own.

[glorfindel87]

Box of phalanx around the city square will hold against all but lots of archers.
I actually prefer waiting out wooden walled cities unless it is imperative it goes down now.

[Surlethe]

Phalanxes are ideal for defending or assaulting narrow-street cities: draw up a line or two from building to building, and walk them down the street; I refer to the front of a phalanx formation as a "meat grinder". I actually defeated a four- or five-unit Macedonian force (composed of levy pikemen, and the Macedonian version of militia hoplites, IIRC) with two units of hoplites as the Greeks by taking the walls and then moving my men in under the cover of the towers' archers. I simply lured them from the city center to the wall, and then hit them with a wall of spears as the arrows from the towers attacked their undefended rear.

[Mobile Infantry]

if you are playing as the romans i know what i like to do is if i know the unit defending the gate area is say light infantry or isnt very effective against cavalry ill send my general charging in as soon as my rams knock down the gates and wipe them out but as iam doing this i usly have some infantry right behind them and i send my first infantry unit onto the side which the cavalry isnt facing (the side they have there backs to) and so on hope this helped a little bit