A Basic Guide to Taking Settlements the Easy Way

This is my first guide, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated if I decide to do more of these. In short, this is a compilation of several ways to take settlements from the AI incredibly easily.

Warning

I'd just like to mention that by "the easy way," I of course mean exploits. These methods can sap a lot of the fun and difficulty out of the campaign, so just keep that in mind before reading, especially if you're someone who has a hard time not "cheating" if given the chance.

Sally Out Loop

This method can be used to take any settlement from any size garrison, with only one of your own units. The only downside is that you have to wait the amount of turns that it takes to starve out the settlement.

To begin with, besiege the settlement you want to take; don't worry about using spies or building siege equipment; it isn't necessary. As the name suggests, we want to get the AI to sally out during their turn, so besiege the settlement with as weak a unit as you can. This generally won't matter too much, but occasionally there will be incredibly small garrisons (such as a single general or Rhodes' rebel garrison) that might not sally if you use a full strength spearmen unit, for example.

If everything goes to plan, the AI will sally out on their turn. All you have to do now is pause the battle as soon as you get into it, then exit. The result will be a draw, but your unit will still be left starving out the settlement.

As you can probably guess, now all you have to do is keep repeating this until the garrison runs out of food, and the settlement is yours. Just make sure to watch out for enemy relief armies (if besieging a faction) and to be quick with pausing; if the AI manage to pass through the gates before you've paused, this won't work.

Distracting & Capturing

Unlike the above tactic, this method allows you to take a settlement within one turn, but requires that you use a cavalry unit, and can only be used against all infantry rebel garrisons, for the most part.

As usual, just pick out the settlement you want to take and besiege it with a single cavalry unit. Of course, we're waiting for the AI to sally out on their turn, so don't bother using spies or making equipment. Once the AI sallies out, all you have to do is lure them to the corner of the map, and then run back to the fort, careful to avoid archer fire. Because rebels aren't organized, they'll all have rushed out, leaving the gates open, so you'll be able to waltz in and easily capture the settlement before they get back. Of course, the faster your cavalry unit the easier this is, but I've found it to be irrelevant in most cases.

Normal factions, on the other hand, will generally leave their general unit in the center, so that the gates (in my experience) might not be opened, and if they are you'd still have to fight off an entire unit before capping the point, all while the other enemy troops are rushing back.

However, you can use a slightly modified method to take factional settlements. To begin with, you'll need to assault with a spy opening the gates this time, to get past the fact that a unit is usually left in the center. Otherwise, besiege the enemy settlement like before, but make sure you have some extra units, preferably cavalry. This is because you'll need to have at least one unit free to fight whatever remains in the center while your other troops lure the enemy away, so this works much better against large armies that will still sally out even with that addition. Since the AI will leave their general to defend the center of the settlement, you can win even if they have cavalry, as long as the only cavalry is their general.

Once the battle starts, position the troops that will go into the center a bit further back (preferably hidden), and then have a slightly larger luring force near the gates to pull the enemy army away. In my experience, the AI will prioritize following your general or larger groups of units, so make sure that your luring group follows those characteristics. As soon as the enemy has been pulled to the corner of the map, charge through the gates with your "fighters" and kill whatever unit is the AI's general; usually a bodyguard or cavalry unit. Javelin cavalry and horse archers are by far the best way of going about this, since they can slaughter the enemy at close range while not losing men in melee, meaning the cap will begin earlier. Of course, if the general is an archer for whatever reason, you'd want to use more standard melee cavalry and simply charge then.

You can also try and get the general to move out by luring away the other units then moving another unit in to distract the general. Sometimes you can get them to leave by running in or out of the gates; just move into the town and see how the general unit reacts. This is very fiddly though, and unfortunately, I don't have a lot of experience with it, but it's something that I've seen work here and there.

Here are some images in case my descriptions were hard to follow:

Town Center Exploits

Stacking the Center: This is pretty well known, but I'll mention it anyways. The main use of this exploit is to take a town center with only melee units while avoiding a costly assault. Once you've reduced the enemy force to only their general unit left in the settlement center, and you have enough men, you can simply stack your troops on top of each other, with only one or two ranks inside of the cap. Once you get four times as many men as the enemy in the cap, the counter will tick down and you'll eventually win.
This can also be done when the AI has missile troops in the town center; just move a unit behind a building while in range and wait for the enemy to use up all their ammo, then proceed normally. Casualties on your side should be relatively light, as the AI will be firing at a very inefficient angle.
The only thing to keep an eye out for is that the enemy may charge if you get even a tiny bit too close, so be careful when moving troops in initially.



With Missile Troops: The AI will often retreat to the town center once you've captured the gates without entering melee, or if you blow 2-3 holes in the walls using siege equipment, even if the balance of power bar is in their favor. By using the method mentioned above to drain any enemy missile troops of ammo, you can open up the opportunity to shoot the troops in the town center virtually risk-free.

Once you fire a volley into the enemy group, their infantry will start charging, but will soon halt and return to the town center as long as you move away and stop firing, even if the AI's morale is sufficient. You can simply repeat this, volley by volley, until you run out of ammo or win the battle.
On the other hand, enemy cavalry will rarely, if ever, pull out of a charge, so to get rid of them you'll likely need to set up a group of spearmen that your archers can lure the cavalry into, while ensuring that you engage too far away for the enemy infantry to get involved.

In extreme circumstances (in terms of balance of power) this method will not work, unfortunately. If the balance of power is extremely in the AI's favor, you can usually expect them to charge out en masse and commit to it once you open fire. If the AI doesn't leave the town center at all then it is almost always because of crippled morale, so isn't really an exploit.

Triggering a Schiltron

This exploit involves moving a cavalry unit close to an enemy spearman while they're en route to the cap so that the spearman forms schiltron before gaining infinite moral inside the town center. Be warned however, that this requires incredibly specific circumstances; the AI can only have one spearmen unit in its army, and you must be attacking the settlement with a spy so that you can get in quickly. On top of this, you need some sort of ranged unit so that you can take out the trapped spearman.

In this situation above (which I discovered in a hotseat), the enemy spearmen started away from the town center, and upon moving my cavalry next to the cap (it's important that you don't move into it, as that will trigger a charge), the enemy spear militia simply stopped and formed schiltron. With some gaelic archers brought up, the battle was quickly won.

However, I've had a very hard time recreating this; I've had it work perfectly, caused the enemy to get glitched on a wall and stuck there, or simply nothing at all. In general, this seems to be a very unreliable and strange quirk of the AI. Because of that, this can only be used on rare occasions, and, admittedly, you could just skirmish spearmen regularly (the only advantage of this being that there's no risk of a charge), but an exploit is an exploit, and I thought I'd throw this in as it's something I've never seen anywhere before discovering it.

Unrecognized Reinforcements

This will allow you to get anything but the tiniest enemy armies to sally out on their turn while having a much larger force than them. To begin with, besiege the enemy with a single unit of cavalry (it doesn't have to be, but this allows you to prevent the unit from dying in the ensuing battle), then move your main army to a tile next to the settlement: make sure you aren't next to your besiegers though, and don't besiege the settlement with this army. On the AI's turn, they'll sally out, you'll get all the reinforcements, and the battle should be considerably easier.




The above images show the set-up and enemy's attack the next turn. The best part is that since the AI is technically attacking, their forces will all run out of the gates, making them very disorganized and exhausted by the time they reach your main army, allowing you to defeat them even more easily.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading my first guide! If you have any suggestions to improve it, or something I've left out, feel free to leave a comment, and I hope this has helped you make the AI look like even more of a blundering fool. ;)

[ChaffyExpert]

I could imagine the rebels during the "distract and capture" strategy are like

"Dude, where's my fort?"

[Kman]

Haha yeah I took like bologna turn one (on the end turn, HRE sallies out).

I took Zagreb and durazzo
Sieged Corinth in Greece and the settlement on the island of Rhodes. It felt so satisfying. I then got lucky with my spy next turn and took milan.

[Forest]

Yeah, I did the exact same thing after my first hotseat. When I finished that I started a Venice campaign using every exploit I new, and I can't go back now.

[Kman]

Ever since I started doing hotseats, I've been doing this kind of stuff forever. It's even gotten into my single-player campaigns, and to be honest it has ruined the fun of a lot of battles.

But I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who knows these tricks AND knows how it can ruin your experience in single player sometimes. Thanks for the guide though!

[Forest]

@aidenpons Thanks for the input. I finally got around to fixing up the guide. Also, I was aware of shooting enemies in the town center, but I realized (thanks to your reply) that it was a bit unclear, so I rewrote the section to involve the town center in general, and include more info.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

good old AI abusing

Shove a couple more line breaks in here and there, especially under the "Distracting and Capturing" section - it's rather a wall of text :|

Under "Stacking the Center," the AI will fairly often (not always) just sit there and let you pelt them with siege weaponry / crossbows. The best effect has been modded mortar catapults, but I've gotten very far with some mercenary crossbowmen.

[Chlorine]

Nice guide...