Castle Towers
Who do you think is more likely to win a fight? A fresh squadron of Dismounted Feudal Knights attacking the walls, or a measly clump of peasants defending it, with their general nowhere in sight?
The knights, right? Yeah, that's what I thought too.
The assault got off smoothly enough. I only lost two unlucky souls to those blasted towers sniping at my units, having assembled them into loose formation before going in. My general watched confidently from afar as the knights began racing into the siege tower, shuffling up the ladder, and dropping onto the ramparts. The French peasants didn't even react - so intimidated were they that they had clustered near the entrance to one of the wall-towers, and were watching my troops assemble uncontested near the middle.
Smirking, my gneral orders the attack, and the knights charge towards the bunch of fork-wielding farmers. The towers begin their work - pew, pew - but my general's not terribly concerned. After all, they're just peasants. And the enemy's general was hiding with the rest of his bodyguard in the town square. Easy.
My knight's unit card starts dwindling. 58. 57. 56. 54, 53, 51. Pew, pew, goes the towers. No longer were the knights eager for blood, but were thankfully still in steady, good order. The peasants aren't very happy, either, losing droves of troops to my DFK's superior sword skills (Seriously, you expect to fight an armored knight with a pitchfork? Really?) They only have about 60 of the 75 that originally stood.
46, 44, 43... Both sides continue their grim work, as the towers continue to take potshots at my troops. 39, 38, 36...
32...
28...
24...
They're no longer confident in their victory. Their companions are dying all around them, and any second now, they could find an arrow lodged into their back. And the peasants weren't dying fast enough. Shaken, my knights look around for support, and find none. My general, and the rest of his army, were still far away, waiting impatiently for my knights to finish off the peasants and open the gates.
18, 17, 16...Their sword arms wavering, the knights begin to pray to god, to deliver them from death. Pew, pew. Another falls, and another, as the pitchfork-wielding devils advance, hardly able to believe what was happening.
"Flee!" No one knows who said it first, but the next moment, soldiers start breaking, dropping their swords and running for their lives, desperate to reach the siege tower before an arrow finds itself in their stomach. From a distance, my general watches in slack-jawed disbelief. England's best had just been defeated by an unwashed mob.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above was a very real VH battle. Forget bunkers and hills, if the Nazis had these on Normandy, no one would have gotten through. But in all seriousness -What's up with these towers? No matter if I'm the attacker or the defender, towers seem to be the biggest player on the field. I lose Mercenary Spearmen and knights to a couple of town militia just as often as I easily win battles with odds 1:4 against me as the defender. And it's always the towers. Not even upgraded towers, but the regular arrow towers that should honestly be renamed to "Machine Guns". They just slaughter everything, and take away what I consider to be the most fun part of a siege battle - the fight for the walls.
It just makes battles...not fun. If I'm attacking, and I see Armoured Sergeants or better sitting pretty up on the walls, then forget it, time to surge towards their town center. If I'm defending, I just stack two or three on the walls, put the rest in my town square, and watch in boredom as a thousand infantry race up the ramparts to get mown down by tower fire, and their cavalry charge unsupported towards my town square, to get slaughtered by the troops waiting for them. There's no excitement. And there's no real counterplay. Sure, I guess you can try flanking. But it's still no guarantee. And if you have that many men to spare, and they don't, you'll lose less just by gritting your teeth and rushing the town square. At least in Rome you could capture the towers to disable them, and give the attackers a fair fight. Here you could race your entire force through one and it'll still keep firing at you as long as there's a single soldier left standing on the walls. And it's not just one you have to deal with, but two. One on your right, and one on your left, both equally invincible.
The only thing to do, then, if you want to preserve some of the "realness" of a siege is to bring some artillery with your armies everywhere you go, and resign yourself glumly to halving your army's speed as they crawl like turtles towards the enemy's land. I'm not a blitz player, by any means, but nor do I want to wait a century to arrive at an enemy's city - especially since the AI spawns stacks out of thin air in VH/VH.
Does anyone have any strategies for making siege battles more fun?
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Originally Posted by Kataphractos
