Defending Settlements

[Titus Vespasianus]

One of the most satisfying experiences playing this game is to successfully defend one of your settlements in the face of a massive siege assault by a hostile faction - In my case the HRE ("sausage-eating beer-swilling something or others" as my Generals call them) have been continually besieging Antwerp throwing more and more troops at the city every couple of years (with the help of Denmark). Despite being out-numbered by 4 or 5 to 1 my troops have never lost the city! The key is to attack their battering rams and siege towers with lightining calvary raids before the reach the gates/walls.

[kirroyale]

I don't get it - by the time I can get my cavalry to amble out of the gates ("take your time, gentlemen, thank you, never mind the pathfinding), the ram's already there - or else I get pounced on by the enemy cavalry.

[Soryn Arkayn]

As Titus said, the key to defending a settlement is destroying the besieging army's siege engines, particularly they're siege towers and battering rams.

Since I'm England, I have good archer units. I prefer to save my Longbowmen for my offensive armies, whereas a rely on Archer Militia for my garrisons. Recently the Scottish attacked York and I had to rely on my garrison of 2 Archer Militia and 2 Spear Militia. Since the Scots had a full army stack, they only waited a single turn before the attacked. They assaulted York with two Battering Rams, and Siege Tower, and a unit of Ladders. The sent one Battering Ram, Siege Tower, and Ladder first. I targeted the Battering Ram and Siege Tower with each archer unit and bombarded it with fire arrows. The ram was set ablaze quickly but the ST was more resistant, so I attacked it with my infantry. I managed to stall the ST long enough for my archers to light it afire, then retreated my spearmen back through my games. Unfortunately, the Scots were able to put up their ladders and suddenly half of their army rushed my walls. I chock this up to crappy pathfinding because all that happened was a writhing horde of infantry massed next to my wall where the ladders were, and I showered them with arrows as best I could (they were very close to the wall so the archers had to arc their shots; I'm not sure if this is effective or not, but I couldn't discern any casualties because the Scottish units were just a blob of soldiers). I sent my spearmen up onto the walls and attacked the Highlanders from both sides. This worked for a while and I slaughtered the first unit of ladder climbers (they were Highlanders so they didn't rout and fought to the last man), but eventually the Scottish heavy infantry overwhelmed my militia-men and they routed. I repositioned my archers so that one was on the wall 90-degrees from where the Scottish ladder climbers were, and the other unit was on the ground firing up. The pathfinding AI really screwed up because the Scots were stuck on the walls and the horde of soldiers couldn't climb up. Also, the horde was really bogging down my system (it ran smoothly when all of the units were organized, but as soon as they condensed into that mass my system started to chug) and it became unplayable. I knew that I had no hope of repelling the Scots and even though if the AI pathfinding problem might've granted me a cheap time-over victory eventually, I didn't feel like waiting so I exited the battle and lost the city.

So basically, if you're defending a settlement your only hope is to destroy the enemy's siege engines before they reach the walls. And that means have archers and preferably artillery to bombard the assaulting enemy. Once the enemy's siege enginer have reached the walls, your only hope is that you have sufficient and strong enough infantry to repel them, otherwise you're finished. For now, the AI's city pathfinding might enable you to wait out the clock for a cheap win, but I don't like to win this way, which is why I hope CA fixes this problem with the upcoming patch.

[Titus Vespasianus]

yep that pretty much sums it up - the tactic of stalling the siege engine's advance while arches and arrow towers set them a blaze. I once had 3 battering rams queud up one behind the other metres from the gate yet all destroyed.

[Ambrosius]

the AI seems to set fire to my rams regularly, to the point where i only build ladders now.
but for some reason i can never set fire to the enemy rams, even with 4-6 groups of muslim archers firing flaming arrows at them, and ballista towers. they take maybe 35% damage and thhen theyre at my walls and cant be fired down upon.

i actually dont mind: infantry scaling ladders are easy to take out, and siege towers go up in flames from point blank volleys from archers with flaming arrows, roasting the enemy within them. the enemy NEEDS a way in, otherwise theyll just stand there.
ive developed some pretty cruel and cheap ways to slaughter enemy troops pouring into the gate, and i love it... wouldnt miss it for the world

much better to kill the mass of enemies than to be at a standoff trying to draw the idling enemy to your walls so your archers and towers can kill them.

[Angmar_nite]

you can fire at them on the walls... I did that in RTW all the time at least. You have to reposition and not be directly in front. You have to shoot at an angle. Nothing is as fun as seeing a unit or two immolating.

[Trajan]

168 turns in and I've only had to defend the fortress of Caen from French besieging armies three times. They always attacked me with one siege tower, one ladder, and one battering ram but they never used it for some reason. I could never set ablaze their siege tower so I successfully defended the fortress three times by defeating the besieging armies on top of the walls. I have yet to defend of a castle/city from a huge besieging army. I welcome it though.

[sandbag0311]

I can normally repel enemy assaults on my towns, but my question is this. How does the boiling oil work? or does it even work at all?

[ghyslyn]

boiling oil works simply really, when the enemy is underneath or in front of ur gate, holes on top of the gate drop some black liquid on them and alot of them catch on fire, this happens when they try to ram or when theyre passing through, so if u can stall them while passing the gate the oil can make a significant change in their number, i once in RTW killed over 500 troops with the oil, surprised my wall didnt get experience:S

[Delexit]

boiling oil ????
ive never seen it;
ok thx ill look for it at the next siege

[ghyslyn]

well thats how it worked in RTW at least, i found it very useful with my old strat, which was very simple really. i usually had a moderately sized city with stone walls being defended by half a dozen units of barbarian spear infantry that werent good enough ot be part of my moving armies, they would all stack in front of the gate, so that when the enemy ram passes through they all charge through, half the kills would be inflicted by my wall of spears and bamboo shields, and the other half would be by burning oil following them, and surprisingly i usually had very little casualties, about 10-20% of how many casualties id get in a headon field battle

[sandbag0311]

I remember the oil from RTW, and that it worked easily enough. It seems though in M2TW that it doesent. There are the holes in the wall for the oil, but the enemy rams just batter away without a care in the world, cause the oil doesent want to drop.

[ghyslyn]

hmm, could this be a bug possibly?

[lawngnome]

I think they removed the oil because it was too powerful. There needs to be some substitute for gate defense, though. Bashing down the gate is too easy as it is.

[Revan The Great]

Anyone ever defended a citadel from the computer? Good luck to the A.I.