Rome TW city assault troop management

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Rip
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Rome TW city assault troop management

Post by Rip »

I just love this game, but I like open field engagements much more than city siege. Managing large groups of troops in a city can be hell. Sometimes I can barely fit them all within the gates. Anybody have any kick ass approaches/strategies?
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Coskesh
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Post by Coskesh »

Rip, there were some great suggestions in the GG RTW FAQ, hopefully that will end up here as well.

I recall one of the tips was to use sappers to level a couple of walls so you can just move your forces in more easily. I tried leveling some buildings (as well) in order to navigate better to the center of the city, but it just replaces the building with some impassable rubble.

Wish I could be of more help. I'm still 0 for 6 on beating the city square timer. I guess as long as their general is alive, the timer will continue.
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Post by Rip »

Coskesh wrote:Rip, there were some great suggestions in the GG RTW FAQ, hopefully that will end up here as well.

I recall one of the tips was to use sappers to level a couple of walls so you can just move your forces in more easily. I tried leveling some buildings (as well) in order to navigate better to the center of the city, but it just replaces the building with some impassable rubble.

Wish I could be of more help. I'm still 0 for 6 on beating the city square timer. I guess as long as their general is alive, the timer will continue.
Yea I read the FAQ and it kicked ass. I'm twice the Emporer I was before reading it. I really like group formations though and in the city it's pretty much move a unit at a time. The only column group formation puts the calvary in the front. Nothing sucks more than watching your General go down with 90% of his men standing around watching :oops:
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Post by knob »

Getting through the door has always been very difficult for me. I was once attacking FROM my city, so that meant I had to exit it to actually attack the people outside. Well, in the process of creating a large clusterfuck at the door, the enemy moved in and basically locked me in, so that my units were being slaughtered easily.



Personally, once I am INSIDE of a city, I'll almost always send my infantry down the closest road to clear stuff out, and send my calvary to another major road to come up behind them. Spearmen are so easy to take out when you get them from behind.
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Post by Rip »

Valael wrote:Getting through the door has always been very difficult for me. I was once attacking FROM my city, so that meant I had to exit it to actually attack the people outside. Well, in the process of creating a large clusterfuck at the door, the enemy moved in and basically locked me in, so that my units were being slaughtered easily.



Personally, once I am INSIDE of a city, I'll almost always send my infantry down the closest road to clear stuff out, and send my calvary to another major road to come up behind them. Spearmen are so easy to take out when you get them from behind.
That's a good idea. I think I need to shift to small squad tactics. I guess I'll have to figure out making the unit line up narrow as well.
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Post by knob »

I don't know if you know, unit grouping seems to be a little buggy in cities. In cities, I just pause a lot and issue orders to each unit type individually.
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Post by Rip »

Valael wrote:I don't know if you know, unit grouping seems to be a little buggy in cities. In cities, I just pause a lot and issue orders to each unit type individually.
I do as well, but I hate it. I have to pause and issue orders and even then it's hard to get an organized progression of units entering whatever holes you have made in the defenses. I'm thinking about going with a big force but have a small number of expert units that I will actually use for entering the city. Just use the rest to take over the walls/gates/SAP etc.
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Post by Ronin »

Its in the FAQ, but the first key to sieges is multiple entry points. I always make at least 3 breaches, forcing your opponent to try and deal with them all at once. I also make sure to wait until all three breaches are actually open before sending my units through. The simultaneous breaches at three points are usually too much and one will be able to enter the city with little or no resistance.

Against high walled cities it is important to clear out the walls. Especially of missile troops. Troops on the walls can also capture the gatehouse so that you don't have to use Rams to get through the gate.

As far as inside the city. Make sure to get as many troops into the wall as you can before you start moving again. And Heavy Infantry is your friend inside the city. There are too many places where your cavalry can get pinched and destroyed, and I rarely use them in city streets.
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Post by Kraegor »

yar multiple breaches. I breach the gate and then breach on both sides of the gate. I send in my suicide squad thru the breach where the enemy is farthest from and see if the enemy moves to engage. if they move to engage i send my cavalry over to the opposite side's breach and slam into them from the rear.

usually works cept against chosen swordsmen who are just eevviill....

------------------
yup city siege can be pretty darn hectic but it truly does add the extra level of making you feel like yer fighting house to house...too bad you cant hide bowmen and javelineers in houses for an ambush...

most hectic was when i split my 2K sized army up into 3 prongs for each gate...the enemy had 2K defenders so we were evenly matched...messy messy....lost 3/4 of army but i somehow managed to win...course the damn city revolted the next turn..bastards!!
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Post by tals »

Yep going against a town is a pretty evil and at the same time an amazing experience. Still remeber when I had around 400 men going against a gaul army of around 2000. As I breached and my men went across I can only describe it as a swarm of humanity hit from both sides. Needless to say I was annhihalated on that one. But returned later to destroy them for their contempt :)

Archers are very useful for sieges and breaching the defences as they allow you to stay back and pick off the blighters.

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Post by Eduardo X »

The path finding for this part of the game is SOOOOOO FUCKED UP that you might as well not even try.
"Velites, attack the generals calvary! NOOO DON'T RUN THE FUCKING EXACT OPPOSITE WAY!"
WHY ARE YOU RUNNING OUT OF THE CITY WALLS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I SAID GO TO THE CITY CENTER!
It is borked. :x
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Post by Daveman »

I have yet to read up through the GG FAQ, but I'd second hitting multiple points. The AI will try to cover them all at least a little... and that alone helps immensely.

For towns with wooden walls, I rely on missile troops to fire over the walls at the defenders. Even if you don't kill many of them, it's often enough to scatter them away from your point of attack. The only problem is when the gate/wall comes down... then those troops have a tendency of wanting to enter the town instead of attacking. Cavalry rushing in first is often bad... featherweight missile troops is worse.

I just micromanage those first few troops like mad. A unit of infantry can often run in, form up in a line and screen the opening to let others through. Especially units with phalanx-capable troops. As the Greeks, if I can get one Hoplite unit in they can hold the door for my whole army so long as I can form them in a line. Otherwise, keep units in column formation, all lined up and ready to go. I've found tightening the width of the column to door/gap width before going in reduces any delays a little bit more. They'll have to do so anyway when you order them in... why not do so ahead of time?
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Post by $iljanus »

Yeah, moving troops through a breach is a pretty tricky thing in this game. One of the worse things I've had happen was that my lame AI reinforcement moved a unit into the breached city gate and I couldn't move the units I had outside the gate into the city since the AI wasn't budging. Had to take the city center with what I had in the city which almost turned a masterfully pulled off siege into a rout. Eventually one unit was able to dribble in rather slowly but I think in future sieges it's better in the final blow to combine armies as much as you can and spread them out on the deployment screen prior to starting the battle rather than positioning them on opposite sides of a city due to the lack of control over your reinforcements. Or at the very least, when attacking during a siege don't mistakenly lead the attack with the lesser of the two armies.
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Post by Snow »

The tip about missle troops is key. Against wooden walls, just move the archers about 50-100 meters outside the walls with fire at will. The enemy forces will take casualties and eventually run away to the city center.

Now against stone walls, waiting out a siege might not be a bad idea :) If you have to charge, go with your most expendable infantry and just know it's going to hurt.
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Post by Ronin »

Against stone walls, probably the only way to take the city without significant casualties is to have Onagers with you to take down the towers. Even large walls have heavy ballistas and Scorpions in their towers which the Testudo formation can't defend against.
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Post by Asharak »

Multiple entry points are definitely a key, as are having Onagers - they knock holes in walls, blow open gates, take down towers, and kill infantry. They're your one-stop all-siege-necessity unit. Failing the Onagers, 2-3 sap points and a couple siege towers (the latter only if the enemy doesn't have enough Archers to burn them to the ground) get you inside and safe from the towers quite well.

Once inside, as Eduardo said, the pathfinding is seriously f*ed up. Trying to move more than one unit at a time results in all of those units leaving the city to reform, then walking back in. Idiots. This doesn't apply if you tell a group to attack someone, however, or if you move the units individually instead of as a group. So while it's definitely seriously bugged, it's not too difficult to work around.

Beyond that, all the usual tactics apply, with the aforementioned circle-round cavalry tactics being especially effective (depending on the city layout), since the troops that you sandwich have nowhere to run.

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Post by Zarathud »

I think the key to attacking cities successfully is to change formation. Form up in a 3-5 person wide group. Rush in, then redeploy in a wider formation. Micromanage your troops to charge into the city one at a time -- most of the battle is getting into the city.

A single missile unit can often force the enemy away from wooden walls, and can fire back at troops on the walls. Use heavy/phalanx as shock troops to take the initial hit as the other, lighter troops come for backup. If the battle is going to be tight and the first troop inside is guaranteed to get ground into the dirt, I send in mercenaries before heavy footmen. Wardogs are also great to sneak in an open gate behind the shock troops, and the fear effect can make a huge difference -- getting the troops guarding the door to rout first allows you space to bring in reinforcements so that you can defeat the rest of the troops.

Multiple breaching points is critical. I use 4+ rams against cities with wood walls. 3 in the main attack, plus 1 at a second point off to the side. Most of my cavalry comes in behind the 1 ram while my infantry rushes in the 3 breeches. Stick the enemy at the gates, then the cavalry rushes in for the kill from behind after making its way through the city. Watch as the enemy routs past the city center, then start the clean up.

I've used ladders against cities with stone walls that are guarded by few troops. I think towers target the ram first, so you can rush to the walls during the distraction. Take the towers as well as the gate, for good measure. Then leisurely clean up the city.
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Post by Lord Percy »

Playing as the Parthians (very cool faction) forced me to change my tactics a little, since they have no meaningful infantry.

What I usually do for cities with a wooden wall is position a large group of horse archers (usually about 4 units) close to the wall to really soften up the defense. Normally the enemy will turn back towards the square, but in about two minutes they will come back, allowing you to take out a few more. Usually, with a little patience, you can kill a couple of hundred units this way before entering the city. Since my horse archers scared away the defenders, I usually don't bother with using more than one ram to breach the gate or a wall. When I've created a breaching point, I send in either the eastern infantry or the hill men that used the ram, or a large group of mercenary horse or camel cavalry. They then charge into any defenders that might come back while the rest enters the city. After that you just have to mop up what's left in the city. I usually position my horse archers around the town center to bury the enemy general in a hail of arrows, while the mercenary cavalry run down any units that got hurt while I was still outside the city.

For cities with stone walls I like to find a spot where there's a U-shaped 'dent' in the wall. Since those spots are usually not very close to the gates and therefore lightly defended, I like send in either siege towers or ladders to capture the wall towers first. Once all towers around the 'dent' are captured, the infantry responsible get to run towards the gate to try and capture it, or take out any archers on the walls there. In any case they'll capture towers along the wall, aiding in your offense. Meanwhile my onagers move into the newly cleared space to so they can lay siege to the city center with flaming balls of death! So far the city center has always been within range for me. More often than not this tactic allows you to kill the enemy general before you're even inside the city! After a few minutes either my infantry capture the gate (I usually put siege towers or ladders on either side of it), or a sapping tunnel will have caused a breach. At that point I let my infantry get down from the walls (counts as a breach, really) while my cataphracts charge in through the gate / breach in the wall.

With my next city siege (the neutral Pontus are getting overly brave :twisted: ) I'm going to experiment with elephants. I've seen what they can do out in the open, and I hope they carry the same momentum in city streets.
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