so generally when i spend the whole game slowly building a death squad that could demolish anyone on the field of battle i dont expect half of them to die taking a measly undefended castle. or die and fail to take it. so i switched around to 300 of the best inf and archers i could train. and the same result. the problem isnt the quantity, its the fact that almost half of their troops are high tier. the best inf hold the single choke point and heavy crossbows destroy my best soldiers. even when i make it a archery contest and just shoot at the walls i take crazy casualties. and they always have more.
and starving out isnt an option for the main factions. i took out the crete by starving them (Super boring by the way) but i cant go more then a day without there lords coming to there rescue. i could always just make my companions into vessels but i only have one village. and i would still be losing insane amounts of elite troops. and yes i have a medic but that still means half of my very valuable troops are dead.
i could always join a faction and rebel wen i have more land but thats not what i wanted to do with my char. and i would still have the same problem but with more land.
So am i missing something or do i just need to spend 50 days in between taking castles to build up my army again and again.
Hmm, usually I don't have that much trouble taking weakly defended castles.
- You should be sniping as many enemy marksmen as you can with a Bladed Crossbow or a high level bow to lower your unit losses.
- Use Battlecry (U key) to give your soldiers a massive group heal every 60 seconds.
- You don't have to send your units up the ladder straight away. You can position them outside the castle walls and just clear the enemy archers off the walls, and retreat if need be. Trying to take a castle in a single go with a weak army is a fool's errand.
- Because I'm lazy, I'm going to quote one of my old posts that dealt with defeating one of the hardest factions to siege in the game - the Elintor.
Talinoth said:
... Elves weren't that hard to kill...
I just move cavalry in front of archers and infantry in front of cavalry, while keeping Alindel (Surgeon 10/Wound Management 10/First Aid 10), Slyter (Engineer 10, Spotting 10, Pathfinding 10) and my Elintoran Master Scouts and Zann Monks as far away as possible;
It also helps massively that I bring a Darkforest Ranger Bow, 100 arrows, I have 430 proficiency, and I poach ammo liberally from my archers.
All companions are equipped with Bladed Crossbows/highest level bows they can wield (Zaira can use the Darkforest Ranger Bow too)/or Leaf Bombs.
I can't conquer the towns/castles in a single go though, because the Elintoran Noble Maidens are a very lethal infantry line and slice my knights/infantry into ribbons.
Instead, I clear all the archers I can from the walls, making sure to spam Battlecry for the sweet 42% group heal every time it's off cooldown, and retreat when my guys run out of ammo.
Trying to make the Big Push(TM) to win the siege in one go is always extremely costly because the AI is much better at defending from inside the walls than ON the walls. What happens, is if I use my Kingsman Poleaxe to knock out a Noble Maiden or two, the gap in the line allows 30 Rangers still at their spawn point to pincushion me with arrows. If I send my infantry/dismounted cavalry up, they just take insane losses as every gap from a dead Noble Maiden is filled with a hailstorm of arrows.
No, I find it's considerably more effective to fight from outside the walls, oddly enough, as that means more of my archers are firing at them than their archers are firing at me. As soon as I scale the walls I lose that advantage and sustain massive losses.
My archer line used to be comprised mainly of my own Elintoran troops, but attrition has meant that more of my archers are now Perisno Darkforest Rangers, rescued Tolranian Archers, and rescued Zann Longbowmen/Kheshigs/Swifthunters (I'm allied with the Zann). They're a bit weaker than the Elves but not THAT much weaker, and they get the job done.
I bring around 370 men, and occasionally 2-5 allied lords, and I'm winning. But only in sieges.
Open field combat is much more dangerous. The Elves excel at destroying my knights in hilly terrain. Oddly, I win easily in VERY long range archery matches or by directly ramming my entire army into them at close range on flat fields, but in mixed chaotic skirmishes on bumpy uneven ground where Elven horse archers can shine (see: most of the crappy terrain north-east of Lille), I take huge losses even when I bring a much larger army. Berlaeduil and his Moon Knights can go eat a gentleman's sausage.
- You'll only get so far with commoner troops a lot of the time, especially if they're only Tier 5 instead of Tier 6.
- It's practically essential to get Alindel to 10 in First Aid, Wound Management and Surgery.
- You lose a lot of your advantage when you make it onto the castle walls. It's very difficult to get archers into position to return fire, and all their archers have free reign to pincushion your army.
- Your companions will get a LOT of work done with Darkforest Ranger Bows, Bladed Crossbows, and Balanced Highelf Swords.
- You can break the meatgrinder at the top of the ladder by using Warcry (B key) to get enemies to back away from the breach.
- Soloing castles is not always a good idea unless you have a full party of 16 very well equipped and powerful companions, and 300 or more elite men including a non-trivial number of Knights.
- Bring friends! Even if you're not marshal, you can still suggest to lords that they might want to accompany you for a spot of war and carnage.
Most importantly;
- Be prepared to splash a lot of cash. In particularly bad sieges, recruiting 50 Household Guards and giving them extremely high level equipment may be exactly what is required.
- Make sure you have a solid source of wealth and income, including enterprises, land, taxes, and the huge slush fund you built by enslaving thousands of Volheere Raiders. I don't go starting wars with less than 300,000 aurums in the bank.
- Recruit as many noble troops as you can, and suck up the cost. They train up from Squires -> Knights quite quickly compared to commoners becoming elites.
A couple other tips:
1. You can set the size of battles to be small and it's easier to carry your force, especially if you have high archery. (I view this as cheesy, but it's still a strategy)
2. If you attack a castle while being severely outnumbered the defenders will rush out to meet you, generally in an open field. This can be to your advantage if you have a team of well-geared, high level companions. This is especially true with the ability to heal yourself and your companions.
3. Faster, shorter weapons with bonus vs shields / strike through blocks are better in mass cluster****s. In Perisno that means those hammers or if you want to grind an enemy down, some of those piercing weapons. I have my companions equipped with long cutting weapons for cavalry, and short piercing ones for sieges.
you can also put troops to deferent class, so you can manage their movements more efficient - like shielded (cavalry and infantry), ranged (archers, cav. archers and all other kind of throwing troops), companions (with household guards) and other (berserkers or non-shield soldiers)
now, as was mention before, it is not so hard:
1. order shielded troops to stand just before ladder or siege tower, with couple commands 'stand closer'
2. second 'wall' will be a shooting one - let them shoot at will
3. third will be companions (and household guards) with 'hold your fire' command - usually I wait till first wave of archers run out of arrows, then order them to shoot
4. all others, but send them on the walls before companions when you order to charge
repeat with next wave of reinforcement until you win...
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