How to beat archers on a wall fortification?

[Reactiveisland5]

Hello.

So it's been pondering me what the direct counter is to archers positioned on walls in siege battles, i've tried counter archers along with several units to divert fire from them, but they usually end up getting slaughtered.

Is there any easy way to take out the walls without siege weapons? thanks to anyone who can respond.

[Fast Johnny]

I found that selecting a unit or two to divert the archers attention long enough to scale the walls or burn the gates somewhere else on the castle seems to work. The only thing is that you have to be prepared to sacrifice those units. Bow Kachi have a longer range than regular rifleman and so do light rifleman, if you are playing FOS.

In vanilla, I try to use a spear levy or two to burn the gates, that way you don't have to worry about a good unit getting beat up by archers. Once the gates are burned, you can rush in and also scale the walls making the archers back off. If you are able to burn more than one gate and attack the walls from several areas, that is even better. Once melee units come to grips with archers, the conclusion is pretty obvious.

Of course, using archers to help suppress and whittle down the archers on the wall, at the same time you burn and scale is going to help even more. But always have a couple of crap units in your army to do the dirty work.

[shiggies713]

if they don't have enough archers to man all sides of the fort, I will put one archer out by their archers just out of range so neither will fire at each other. This is a sort of "holding" move, it holds them there. Then I move my melee around (or other archers) and attack them from the flanks without getting shot up very much if at all.

if you have fire arrows you can coordinate attacks, if you get 3-4 archer units shooting fire arrows you can easily catch the wall/gate on fire and then back off a little and wait for it to blow up, if they have archers everywhere.... Bowmen are key for both sides of siege, not so important in open field. You'll find that out if you ever have an army that is ~50% archers go up against an AI army full of yari sams in the open field... Big difference if it was in a fort.

[Gorbad]

Just charge up sure you lose a few men in the charge but there weak so you will push through

[traveller]

If you are facing an army of equal size with archers around all the walls it will be difficult. If you can, keep the fortress under siege and force them to come out and face you.

[WellMad]

I normaly just flank low level and sam archers, and do not tend to move out untill I rush teched to Bow warrior monks, get 9 of them and you can petty much kill anything, 175 range over normal/sam at 150 range and also they have FAR more Accurcaty then others, meaning 1 unit can kill 2-3 on the walls with zero losses, also when they are dead can use whats left to kill high level Infantry inside for/cast/keep etc. and then just walk in with less than 50-200 deaths.
I use a few mods like expanded etc, but units untouched. my army looks like this -> 9xbow warrior monks, 8 nagit samu, and 2 x samu infanty. My open field tactic is to place some Samu at range from my army, they will charge it with Horses(for an easy kill) but I have some Nag in trees near them and I pwn them. when cav dead I slowly use the Bow warriors to move in slowly on 1 of the sides and kill 1 then 2, 3 units at some point they will Give up their defenive spot and rush my general who is behind all my infantry. I then change sam units around the edges and flank their infanty/general. and WIN WIN =] makes the game alittle boring but still, winning is the key, upkept on army is petty big tho, but with Mek towns petty easy to do.

[seabo_76]

Siege them out and fight in the field?
Was told that by another player and it's usually a better idea when it comes to massive defensive armies as defenders have the natural advantage

[Zonda Zecarius]

remember to factor in angle of fire when positioning troops. The game has two sets of firing angles from memory, high arc, which will cause almost all arrows to fly into the roof of the wall, and low/no arc, which pretty much makes them fly like bullets.
If you can get enough units firing low arc at good angles, your troops should be able to win some archer battles.

Alternatively, get guns and fire rockets.

[MrPurple33]

Lots of good Tactics from everyone above -- here's a specific (and fun) tactic -- use a group of spear ashis as a screen- then use 1 or 2 fire bomb throwers-- archers blowd up real gud

[Hellsteeth30]

In every single TW game I've played the AI will always sally in the last turn if it can't move reinforcements in. I like to maintain a cover force so any bright ideas of breaking the siege from the outside can't happen.

Unlike previous entries sallying enemies turns it into a field battle, then they're all yours.

However if you happen to be the Otomo or in FotS use a cannon or two. Or you can tie up the archers with some heavily armoured arrow sponges and send the bulk of your force where the archers aren't covering. Ninjas are great for fast wall assaults.

Of course on higher difficulties you don't get a free camera to survey things so you have to probe instead.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by shiggies713:

if they don't have enough archers to man all sides of the fort, I will put one archer out by their archers just out of range so neither will fire at each other. This is a sort of "holding" move, it holds them there. Then I move my melee around (or other archers) and attack them from the flanks without getting shot up very much if at all.

if you have fire arrows you can coordinate attacks, if you get 3-4 archer units shooting fire arrows you can easily catch the wall/gate on fire and then back off a little and wait for it to blow up, if they have archers everywhere.... Bowmen are key for both sides of siege, not so important in open field. You'll find that out if you ever have an army that is ~50% archers go up against an AI army full of yari sams in the open field... Big difference if it was in a fort.

This is usually the best tactic.

Archers on walls are hard to out shoot in a straight archery "duel" because they get buffs to their shooting rate when on the walls, and then you add the already existing buffs to shooting rate and accuracy on higher difficulties = your own archers getting mowed down.

[Ready. Steady. Fighty.]

Later in the campaign if you researched gunpowder, you can use firerockets to target the fortifications they are hiding behind. After reducing the health of fortification it will blow up killing a large portion of the enemy archers.

You can also use monks who outrange Ashis and Samurai to plink em off.

Finally you can siege the enemy and meet them in the open field when they try to break the siege.

[MrPurple33]

Originally posted by Ready. Steady. Fighty.:

Later in the campaign if you researched gunpowder, you can use firerockets to target the fortifications they are hiding behind. After reducing the health of fortification it will blow up killing a large portion of the enemy archers.

You can also use monks who outrange Ashis and Samurai to plink em off.

Finally you can siege the enemy and meet them in the open field when they try to break the siege.

A-ha-- thank you for that tidbit-- am playiing Uesugi for 1st time- crushing with Monks, been debating to get Monk Archers as well, good to know they have better range

[Tocki]

Always take some cheap meatshield like yari ashigaru, loose formation and climb the walls. Archers are effective, when they get the time to shoot enough volleys. If you instantly charge them, the less time they get to shoot.

[seabo_76]

Originally posted by MrPurple33:

Originally posted by Ready. Steady. Fighty.:

Later in the campaign if you researched gunpowder, you can use firerockets to target the fortifications they are hiding behind. After reducing the health of fortification it will blow up killing a large portion of the enemy archers.

You can also use monks who outrange Ashis and Samurai to plink em off.

Finally you can siege the enemy and meet them in the open field when they try to break the siege.

A-ha-- thank you for that tidbit-- am playiing Uesugi for 1st time- crushing with Monks, been debating to get Monk Archers as well, good to know they have better range

Same MrPurple.

Uesugai kick ass . 4-5 each Yari Ashigaru and Bowmen and then 6 and 4 of Nanginata and Bow Monks.
Insanely brutal armies that doesn't bust the koku vault as badly as all Samurai armies.
Still, would not like to attack any town with more then a couple archers. Much better to just siege then crush them in the field

[[TUUONCUOGB]BothChicken]

Usually I take advantage of the AI. Generally, the AI only puts archers to face your main army/general. So I put my entire army minus archers on the opposite area of my archers. My archers then move in and kill all the melee units in the fort. This works a good deal of the time, if they have more than one archer unit they move one to try to address you archers, but then you can evade them and continue firing. After I kill the melee units I go after the archers, shooting them in the back. Then, once my ammo is out, I move in. I usually climb the walls, I lose a couple guys since some fall of the wall and die as they climb, but it doesn't damage the fort so it works out. That's usually only a turns worth of recovery anyway. This depends on the garrison. Larger garrisons I light the gates on fire, this is more because the AI likes putting units in them so blowing them up lets me kill a decent number of them.