I played the siege scenario 30 times. During the siege of Vostrum, I was given 500 defenders against 1000 attackers. The defenders were divided into 7 groups. 3 infantry (I think this depended on the fact that the enemy had 2 siege towers and a ram) to hold key points and 4 rifle.
- The infantry held key points, BUT, in some cases, reinforcements did not come to the detachments that protected the walls from the siege towers, but to the detachment that defended the gate and by the end of the battle there were more than 100 soldiers in it, although they would have been useful elsewhere. I am silent about the convenience of commanding detachments, because even from the highest tower it is not really possible to control detachments and send reinforcements.
- Siege weapons. There was a choice between ballistae and mangonels. I did not see the benefits of ballistae. With an arrow, they can overwhelm two or three soldiers at once, but that's all. It deals damage to siege towers and battering rams 74-80 units, that is, a penny. Mangonels hit the square, with one shot they can send a dozen soldiers to the next world. Also, 4 times the mangonels hit the ram and once the siege tower (this is from more than 30 battles), so the choice would seem obvious, if not for the fact that the mangonels also successfully send defenders to the next world. Several times I watched how the attackers fiercely fought with the defenders on the wall, receiving a decent rebuff, and then the operator of the Mangoneli gunner decides to support the exhausted defenders with aimed fire, the sight ... the bullet ... the rumble ... the dust ... the broken tooth ... and the enemy detachment alive and intact rushed further over the bodies of the defenders, thrown in the back by an overly zealous but very clumsy gunner.
- Archers. It would seem that having 250-300 archers in defense, you can meet the enemy with a shower of arrows, destroy and put him to flight, burn down siege towers and rams. But no. Archers go to firing positions somehow loose and one by one. There are a total of them on the line of defense + - three people per tower and one for each loophole. Well, maybe there are a couple more on the walls. And that's all. An all-sweeping shower of arrows did not work. Okay, I tried to put in manual units of shooters on the walls before the battle. He rubbed his pens, anticipating finally this long-awaited downpour .. and then it turned out that the shooters didn't even want to shoot. They shoot so-so. Through one. And even every third. At first I thought that there was not enough room for them to draw a bow, but then my gaze turned to one of the towers where there were 3 arrows of which only one shot.
On the positive side: many units behave sensibly, dragging stones, shooting from guns, throwing stones down. If you select a detachment and give it an order, then everyone will react, except for the shooters at the loopholes, they, as they should, remain firing at the enemy. From the negative: as I wrote above, the stupidity of managing the detachments, there is no way to give the shooters an order to attack siege weapons, they do not want to shoot from the walls. Perhaps this is the reason that in the management of the siege in a situation of 500: 1000, mine lost with losses of about 500: 500, and during the simulation they consistently won with losses of 300: 1000. That is, in the simulation, the potential of the units was fully revealed. Well, or crooked hands))))
