How to Defend in Siege/City Assualt Multiplayer

You kids must've played against that ther Artificial Intelligence too much.

Prebattle

What should compose your army:

• Make sure to focus on infantry
  
• Invest into 3-4 bow units
  
• Don't spam pikes because if the attacker brings lots of missle units you are sure to lose. They often times have less armor than hoplites and swordsmen and are slower. Bring 1 or 2 because they really are great for keeping a street or road, but they don't really make up a balanced army by themselves.
  
• Bring one unit of light or medium cav, once again though, be sure to focus on infantry.

Wait don't Ready Up Yet!

Make sure you bring equipment:

You have to select your whole army before you can get all of your equipment.

• Too many times people forget to bring equipment which can be vital in defending your city.
  
• For the most part, I find spike traps and Sharp Stones to be the best.
  
• The anticav stuff doesn't seem to be useful to me.

Video

This is a city assualt battle as a defender. I though some of you may want an illustration and what better way than a video?

All of what is in the video is already in the guide though except the prebattle section. So if you find me going too slow or fast in the video or you get too excited when you hear my beautiful voice or you just simply prefer text, you can just look to the rest of the guide.

Positioning of your Army

Don't spread out your army too much:

• As the defender, you get to see where your opponent will position his army
  
• I find defending the walls the easiest
  
• put your men close to the walls that your enemy is attacking

Assessing your opponent's army will affect how you position your army:

• Does he have siege towers and galleys?
  
  • If yes, then it is useless to put your bowmen on the walls and will be a loss of men
    
  • if no, then put your bowmen on the wall

If you put bowmen on the wall:

• be sure to put spread all of your bowmen out like this:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This allows them not only to shoot faster but makes them less likely to be hit by enemy missles
  

  Do not position your bowmen on the wall like this:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This allows only half of them to shoot and the other half to get shot in the back quite easily since they are bunched up

The Walls have been breeched

It's simple, put your men around the hole he made:

• Make a half circle around the breech with your infantry like this:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This will be a lot better than making just a straight line against his because you will get to attack from 3 sides instead of 1.
  
• Commit only some of your infantry and have others in reserve behind them
  
• Really, only 3 or 4 units can hold back his whole army if he tries to just shove them all through one hole
  
• Of course those 3 or 4 units you have fighting will die off
  
• When this happens just charge the units you have in reserve to fill the gap

Enemy Siege Towers Got your Men Down?

Don't waste arrows on siege towers:

• If you have any bowmen on the wall near where the siege towers are expected, order them to the ground long in advance to ensure you get them out safely
  
• Put infantry on the walls like this:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The yellowish gold it supposed to represent your men while red represents enemies
  
• Put your men on both sides of where all of the towers in a given area are supposed to be
  
• This allows your men to pinch them in instead of getting surrounded by his men
  
• be sure to have men on the ground to intercept if they is a way to get off the wall
  
• This is a great opportunity for your bowmen who couldn't get the previously protected enemies in the siege tower while they are on the wall fighting your men.
  
  • If possible, use heavy shot now

Cavalry

This is simple stuff so I'll keep it short:

• mid or late game is the time to pull your cav out
  
• This is because most of his melee troops are engaged in combat close to the action
  
• bowmen, slingers, or peltasts are usually not on the front lines though and are supporting from some distance away
  
• This is the time to spring your cav from a gate far from the battle so they don't get destroyed on the way out and kill the units that have missles when they have no support
  
• This is a great way to rack up a bunch of kills for a small price, but once again, don't spend too much on cav

Contingency Plan

If you are fighting against a veteran sieger who knocks many holes into your wall, there is no shame in falling back. I said earlier that defending the walls is usually the best way to win as a defender, but falling back is always valid when done correctly.

Equipment:

• Remember the Sharp Rock Beds and Spike traps that we got in the beginning?
  
• If you can't hold the walls this is when they will come into play
  
• put Spike traps in prominent roads or streets and sharp stone beds in clusters around corners
  
• However, make one road completely clear of these traps and hinderences for you to fall back to your city square

Your men

• This is when pikemen get to shine the most, put them in front
  
• If he has bowmen still, focus your firepower with your bowmen on his
  
• if your bowmen are out of ammo try to use them as bait for him to waste ammo on
  
• position your men so that they can surround his men if they attack a one of your units holding a street

Usually people are pretty good at city fighting, but they need to realize that defending wall can almost always get more kills since your opponent is more bottlenecked trying to get in instead of wandering around in your city. You want to inflict heavy damage when you are at the wall and if you can see that you will be outflanked somewhere you can't cover because most of all your men are tied up, that is the time to pull back and sacrifice one of your lesser units to hold them back while the rest of your army falls back.

Closing

I find that just like Chess, the opening moves in a siege battle usually can spell a win or a loss. Keep these things in mind and you'll sure to win some siege battles.

Did I miss anything that you think should be in this guide? Tell me in the comments section

Are there any grammar or spelling errors? Go ahead and point them out. I'm lazy with consistancy though.

[byzantine]

never bring pikemen and is best to keep archers off of walls as the scorpions on top of the siege towers will destroy them

[DAWG]

Thank you I found most of this stuff to be on the edge of my mind from many loses but to have it all spelled out clearly is great

[`RV|Pride]

the issue isnt they are brain dead players but that seiges are inherently hard to win against defenders, history has proven this why walls became the norm. pikes are very op and no you wont lose if you spam em. why? because you hunt down their archers because players dont protect them when seigeing down a settlement. counter attacks are easy. easy to break units if you have a two units on both side of a hole and jump the unit charging in and kill it pretty easy will few causalities its not skilled based but whoever has more units and quality units for the slaughter.

[JODEGAFUN]

Did anyone though about the use of one ore two units of ballistas as defender? You can put down siege towers (with burning shots from artillery the burn pretty fast) with them and if someone decide to bloob his units up in a road they gots dozend of kills with one shot even aiganst the top elite units. Several time i have use ballistas as defensive wapons in siege, you need only set them in the right place.

[TheEmperorNicolas]

thank u, thsi strategy helps me so much, im taking on former veterans that play 5 years and i only 1 and i beat them!

[GeneralHorst]

Sure If the enemy has a lot more missiles he will probably win, but most hoplites are quite well at tanking missiles so you really would need to expect it to bring enough missiles to kill enough of them. But not taking away from your strat, probably more fun to play as its not such a passive strategy and more flexible.

[Tap Breaker Offer]

@General Horst

I agree that's an ok strategy to defend, but if he has missle superiority you will be toast. I guess this is just the balanced way to go about it. I should've made a guide for the northern cities as well. This guide mostly has stone wall settlements in mind.

[GeneralHorst]

Would appreciate if you can tell me what makes your strategy more effective, while sure it might be more fun, I think just abandoning the wall is the best idea in most cases as those make you vulnerable for so many things.

[GeneralHorst]

I think the most effective tactic, which I have never lost with is investing most of your money in decent spears like thorax hoplites and then just defend the streets around the victory point, ignore the walls, those are just meatgrinders. With multiple defensive lines, that are really hard to break through, you can slowly whittle your enemy down.

[Klötenberg]

just spam Pikes