storming castles

magnate · #1 September 3rd, 2005, 07:18 AM

I think the OP was talking about actually taking the castle, not breaking down the walls. This can be a big problem for the tougher castles which only have a narrow entrance gate or barbican - if you have slow, lightly armoured troops (like flagellants) they will get massacred while getting into the castle to fight. Two solutions to this:

1. Get flying troops from somwhere. They get straight in and start pounding the defenders.

2. Put *fast* troops at the front, like cavalry, and charge straight in. Knights of the chalice would be particularly good here. Then follow with your slower troops.

Small squads will get through a bottleneck quicker than large squads (but small squads also rout more easily).

It can still be tough though, taking a big castle which has lots of mages in it. You lose a lot of units simply getting inside.

CC

sushiboat · #2 September 3rd, 2005, 11:25 AM

Mindless troops siege at full strength; they are 1/10 for defending only.

In addition to the above suggestions, use a flying supercombatant (SC). If it doesn't fly naturally, give it Winged Shoes. Put it in the front and to one side, with orders to hold (or cast buffing spells) for at least two turns. During the turns that the SC holds, the enemy troops will rush forward into the gate, where your other troops will be going. Then the SC will have a good chance of being able to attack enemy commanders quickly.

Chazar · #3 September 5th, 2005, 07:30 AM

Bah, actually storming a castle is not even difficult enough - or is there anyone here who would rather opt for a prolonged siege instead of storming right away?

A prolonged siege might starve the defenders, since a castle's supply bonus is halved for each subsequent sieged turn. However, starving units will only reveive diseases in the end. A disease will kill, but it takes too much time to actually wait for a sieged castle's garrision to diminish significantly due to starving/disease. Or did I miss a mechanism by which starving will cause more damage if the starving unit is already diseased? The decreased moral due to starving is useful, but thanks to wine skins and non-eating troops, a prolonged siege against human opponents is probably always a bad idea.

Another benefit of a prolonged siege is killing by preaching, but this only applies to the last castle of an opponent...

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BTW, I think that flying units receive +1 to sieging and defending.

Truper · #4 September 5th, 2005, 06:50 PM

Any unit (besides undead) that is diseased has a chance to pick up additional afflictions. In most instances, I prefer to storm a castle if I can, since otherwise I have an army just staring at stone walls...

Boron · #5 September 6th, 2005, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Chazar said:
Another benefit of a prolonged siege is killing by preaching, but this only applies to the last castle of an opponent...

Also applies to heavy use of immortals, especially by ermor or ulm bf. There waiting to get positive dominion also helps, as Marignon it should be possible to achieve positive dominion in 1 turn.

Folket · #6 September 8th, 2005, 10:05 AM

Using only meele units will give you huge looses unless they fly. Since only a few will be able to fight while the rest just hangs around beeing of no use.

So have some archer and crossbows to deliver some damage to thier units.

Mages with good evocations are also useful but spread them out as your opponents castle will fire at your commanders as well. Use of air shield might be useful.