How to Win Sieges?

[Honeycone]

Hi!

So I've been utterly crushed both times I've attempted to assualt a castle. Both times my forces have been killed by their archers before my army even gets on their walls. What do I do?

EDIT: What I learned from this thread:
It seems to be best to have archers of your own to take out the enemy archers. While your archers are at work, place heavy sheild infantry close to the castle so the enemy archers have something to shoot at. Charge with your infantry.

[JonnyBoi]

I would have all my infantry (assuming they have sheilds) stand in front of my archers covering them as they fire upon the enemy soldiers, during this time the enemy should run out of most of their ammunition and assuming you have a good nordic army with tough sheilds then I would wait till I hear the first sheild crack, and then I would move forward with my infantry.

[Honeycone]

Originally posted by 120th Ben Perkins:

I would have all my infantry (assuming they have sheilds) stand in front of my archers covering them as they fire upon the enemy soldiers, during this time the enemy should run out of most of their ammunition and assuming you have a good nordic army with tough sheilds then I would wait till I hear the first sheild crack, and then I would move forward with my infantry.

Hm... wait for the enemy to run out of ammo, okay! I'll gladly hear more ideas because I doubt that's the only viable solution.

[Miiiiiiiiiiiiike]

Outnumber their archers by 2 to 1.
Equipped yourself with a bow and arrow, and take out multiple enemies.
If you, and your allies you are sieging a castle with outnumber the defenders, just let the battle autocalculate. Chances are you will win, but be prepared to potentially take more losses than you would have if you led the troops yourself.

[Brewtifull]

nord hurscarls have nice strong shields, 40 of them in your first wave shoud see you safely onto the walls. Also make sure to get up there with an axe to help carve a path for the dodgy AI

[Arcajus]

Originally posted by 120th Ben Perkins:

I would have all my infantry (assuming they have sheilds) stand in front of my archers covering them as they fire upon the enemy soldiers, during this time the enemy should run out of most of their ammunition and assuming you have a good nordic army with tough sheilds then I would wait till I hear the first sheild crack, and then I would move forward with my infantry.

I never thought the enemy soliders could run out of arrows...might try this strategy thank you.

[Father Ribs]

If you are using troops without shields (ie just archers or units that use two-handed weapons), you're going to lose lots of people in the charge. I swap out army compositions depending if I am going to do field battles or city/castle assaults.

[Honeycone]

Originally posted by Brewtifull™:

nord hurscarls have nice strong shields, 40 of them in your first wave shoud see you safely onto the walls. Also make sure to get up there with an axe to help carve a path for the dodgy AI

Tactics:

1: Let the enemy archers run out of ammo.
2: Charge with large shield infantry.
3: Have twice as many archers as them and (pressumably) let your archers do the killing.

[ate50eggs]

First things first. Get close to the castle in the map screen and hover over it to see how many units they have and what kind. If they have many more or their troops are way better than yours, don't attack.

In the siege, I like to put my archers one pace behind my infantry and trade shots for a while (orders: 0, F1, F1, 2, F2, F1). Make sure most of them are actually shooting. Then go have a sandwich (or shoot arrows yourself).

If your unit composition is good, you can whittle down a few waves of enemies this way (works better on some castles than others). It's best to charge (orders: 0, F1, F3) right before a new wave is triggered, although I rarely get this right.

[Darius]

Keep a save game for practice. Seiges are mostly straight foreward, with a couple notable exceptions.. Grunwalder Caste beyond a shadow of a doubt is the worst of the lot. A few require seige towers, most just require ladders. This equates to time, and more importantly -- food reserves.

Disposable, but handy units.. generic Rhodok Crossbowman are available in a single upgrade, rescued Bandits of all varieties, ect... one of the reasons I never 'civilize' bandits is they are more useful than going through making them recruits.

The biggest thing is getting to know the castles and towns you are working with... you will learn where the troops get auto-deployed to at the start and what adjustments you will need to make. Almerra, for example, you're best served my moving defending archers to the back wall of the 1st courtyard immediately as well as having your infantry/cavalry hold at the top of the stairs. Vyincord is a ♥♥♥♥♥ to defend because there are 2 ladders... Weyyah has 2 as well, but they both go to the same choke point. Seige towers allow alot of time to do damage, or hit the seige camp, but once the tower has docked, it's going to be hard to choke the attackers because its a wide avenue.

Notes for seiges:

1: Assign your healer, if not yourself, to a custom battle group and park them in a safe(r) place
2: Move your archers closer to the walls, you want to be able to have a line of sight to hit as many of the snipers as possible.
3: Be aware of your infantry's weapon load-outs - 2-handers, spears.. any long weapons are not optimal.
4: Often forgotten about, throwing weapons can be just as deadly as crossbows and will wreck shields fast
5: Always assign your archers to a posistion, if not they will filter into the ladder queue and stop to fire, slowing things down and possibly causing any infantry that has created a breach to get overwhlemed and slaughtered
6: Not all of the maps support this, but you can retreat units on some maps - spent archers, your medic, ect.. be careful with this as some maps have the exit point as in the castle/town
7: Stagger your party order - archer/infantry/archer/infantry if you have multiple groups of each. The game pulls your available troops from the first few groups and this will give you a more balanced composistion early.

[ate50eggs]

agree with Darius. 5 is critical. for 4, Nord infantry often have decent ranged attack.

[Chris]

When attacking I place my infantry fairly close to the castle walls to attract fire from the archers and while the archers are distracted my crossbowmen and myself pick the enemy archers off from behind the safety of the infantry’s shields. Once the enemy archers are dead I’ll start on the infantry and once most of them are dead I send my infantry over the wall to mop up.

When defending I pull my troops off the castle walls and place them in the courtyard. Infantry close to the stairs leading up to the castle walls and crossbowmen to the rear, usually on a small hill, steps, back wall or some other place that gives them a bit of height. As the attackers come onto the wall they’ll be attacked by my crossbowmen and if they survive they’ll filter across the wall, down the stairs and into my infantry.

Tevarin is the easiest to defend while Grunwalder is the easiest to capture and for me at the moment Yalen is the hardest to capture.

[MiKye200]

A lot of it comes down to knowing the layout of each castle(for both offense and defense).
If you have good bow skill, many castles allow you to position yourself to wipe out the enemy archers personally before sending your troops in.
In some maps, this won't work; your troops might start without cover or room to retreat out of range.

If the map is appropriate this is how it works.

Step 1: send your troops out of range(in some maps, it might be best to send the troops right up under the walls.
Step 2: Advance with your shield up to a position of cover; this might be just under the ramparts on a ladder, or behind a buttress, or right up under the wall; there are many variations, depending on the map.
Step 3: poke your head out and kill an enemy archer; pop back in before the enemy archers get a good shot at you.
Step 4: repeat step 3 until out of ammo.
Step 5: collect all the arrows the enemy have been shooting at you, preferably with your shield up..
Step 6: go to step 3; keep repeating process until defences have been wiped out.

Send in your troops; follow them in and take up a position where you can get easy shots at the defenders.

Celebrate victory!

Edit Note: This won't work too well against the Rhodoks, unless you also take crossbow as a secondary skill and arm yourself with a crossbow before the battle.
Rhodoks tend to specialize in crossbow missile troops; you'll run out of ammo quickly if you go into the battle with a bow.

[Honeycone]

Originally posted by MiKye200:

A lot of it comes down to knowing the layout of each castle(for both offense and defense).
If you have good bow skill, many castles allow you to position yourself to wipe out the enemy archers personally before sending your troops in.
In some maps, this won't work; your troops might start without cover or room to retreat out of range.

If the map is appropriate this is how it works.

Step 1: send your troops out of range(in some maps, it might be best to send the troops right up under the walls.
Step 2: Advance with your shield up to a position of cover; this might be just under the ramparts on a ladder, or behind a buttress, or right up under the wall; there are many variations, depending on the map.
Step 3: poke your head out and kill an enemy archer; pop back in before the enemy archers get a good shot at you.
Step 4: repeat step 3 until out of ammo.
Step 5: collect all the arrows the enemy have been shooting at you, preferably with your shield up..
Step 6: go to step 3; keep repeating process until defences have been wiped out.

Send in your troops; follow them in and take up a position where you can get easy shots at the defenders.

Celebrate victory!

If I wanted to do this I might as well just hack my way through the game :p What you described doesn't sound fun at all!

[MiKye200]

Well, it is fun!
And once you get good with the bow, the battles are over pretty quickly.
One of the advantages of using the bow: the enemy shoot your ammo at you...very nice of them :)

[mrbah]

how do you force them to surrender? is there a way to get peopleto supply you like giving them the cattle quest? or do you just get a full inventory of bread, grains and smoked fish/meat?
is this somehow different from defeating them in battle, do you get all the defenders as prisoners?