So a nord walks into a castle garisoned by sixty mameluks...

[Frankmuddy]

So, to put this simply, I can't kill enough dudes to take over castles. I'm level twenty four, I can get up a decent corps of hardened killers, and there is just no way that I can take on sixty mameluks and sixty master archers, plus anoth 60 assorted trash. Help. Explain to me how this is done.

 

[The_Beast]

what skills do you have for your character?

 

[JRB823]

It shouldn't be easy to take castles period.  You almost have to have help from other faction lords to take the heavily garrisoned castles.  I usually have to do some scouting to find one that I have a chance to take.  On more than one occasions I have had several unsuccessful assaults with heavy losses before I could whittle down the garrison to a manageable level.

 

[Frankmuddy]

So life just sucks until you luck out and get a castle where you can stash troops?

 

[Kaizoku]

There are a couple of ways to accomplish this. First of all, if you are unable to raise an army of top-tier soldiers, you CANNOT capture a castle without cheating somehow. Only the best soldiers can survive the brutal uphill battle (literally) of a siege.

The first way is extremely expensive. If you are capable of raising sizable armies of higher level troops fairly quickly and the defending castle doesn't have too many more troops than you, having the battle fought without you can often times yield better results. Even if you lose 20 for 5 of theirs, that is possibly quite a lot better than what would have occurred had you taken it personally. It's a war of attrition by this method, and is not recommended if you are not a vassal of another kingdom.

The second way is to go all melee or all archers. One or the other. A combination of both seems like a good idea, but often results in a hopeless circumstance of insufficiency. Your foot soldiers will not be plentiful enough to put pressure and archers may clog the ladder/tower (which can be avoided with direct commands) while your archers won't have enough firepower to keep enemy archers from taking out everyone. By going all melee, you stand the best chance of making a breakthrough -- once a few soldiers of yours have entered the enemy castle it is very likely that the rest of your soldiers will spill in and give you an edge enough to seize the day. By going all archers, you can wield your own bow/crossbow and take down one by one from behind your lines. In the mean time, your archers will do a good job of picking off enemies as well -- this is due to the fact that AI tends to be very accurate against targets that aren't moving, even if they are peeking through narrow cavities in the castle walls. Since many castles don't allow melee soldiers to descend, once you've taken out the archers enough you will enjoy decimating their melee soldiers at no risk or cost to your own.

Remember, the best thing you can do in a siege is wield a ranged weapon. There is no point in carrying a melee weapon unless you are cheating or have a special technique that I do not know. In most cases you will be taken down rather quickly by archers and/or the typically high level soldiers waiting for you at the top of the wall.

And the best way to get a good army is RAISE YOUR PLAYER CHARACTER'S TRAINING SKILL!!!! Running your own kingdom is HOPELESS unless you do that, since enemy lords can raise armies extremely fast and you can't possibly keep up without it. I recommend training level 5. Any additional points spent is wasted, since even at that you can get a full army of top tier troops in a few weeks.

 

[Kaizoku]

Also, never attack a castle with more than 100 high level defenders. It's a waste of time, unless you're a combat genius. Or are cheating. And I mention cheating a lot because a huge percentage of Warband players cheat in the single player campaign. This is either by use of mods (which is technically cheating if it reduces difficulty of vanilla) or enabling cheats and buffing their character to godlike power.

There will be numerous opportunities where border towns/castles have 100 or less high level defenders. Keep an eye out, and encourage everyone to war against each other!

 

[user1324865215]

The easiest way to attack a castle is too have a force that is 80% Archers and the rest is either Swadian or Rhodock Seargents. The archers will Kill most of the enemy archers, while you and your 5 seargents charge the walls. The AI retreats into the castle (on good campaign level) then you tell your seargents to block the staircase while your archers are posted ontop of the wall firing into the keep. This ususaly equals victory for me.

 

[Thorkel]

So, to put this simply, I can't kill enough dudes to take over castles. I'm level twenty four, I can get up a decent corps of hardened killers, and there is just no way that I can take on sixty mameluks and sixty master archers, plus anoth 60 assorted trash. Help. Explain to me how this is done.

It was very much possible to take not only castles but even towns relatively straightforward before v1.123 or so. I think they really overdid it there with the troop distribution. These all top-tier armies kill variety imho. Maybe I'll alternate between Good and Average campaign AI with that hopefully resulting in a lot stronger lord armies and garrisons than in v1.113 but still not godlike...

 

[CryoNomad]

So, to put this simply, I can't kill enough dudes to take over castles. I'm level twenty four, I can get up a decent corps of hardened killers, and there is just no way that I can take on sixty mameluks and sixty master archers, plus anoth 60 assorted trash. Help. Explain to me how this is done.

Lower the battlesizer to as low as you can. Then walk in and slaughter. Otherwise don't even try it alone.

 

[siprus]

try to level your troops patiently against sea riders. and maybe get other lords to help if you have high enough relations to get castle anyway.

 

[Frankmuddy]

Gah. I miss the good old days, when things were simple and it was just about leveling up until you could tangle with dark knights and dark hunters.

 

[levache]

Remember, the best thing you can do in a siege is wield a ranged weapon. There is no point in carrying a melee weapon unless you are cheating or have a special technique that I do not know. In most cases you will be taken down rather quickly by archers and/or the typically high level soldiers waiting for you at the top of the wall.
And the best way to get a good army is RAISE YOUR PLAYER CHARACTER'S TRAINING SKILL!!!! Running your own kingdom is HOPELESS unless you do that, since enemy lords can raise armies extremely fast and you can't possibly keep up without it. I recommend training level 5. Any additional points spent is wasted, since even at that you can get a full army of top tier troops in a few weeks.

I usually take my warbow+ 2x bodkins + my warcleaver when attacking. Sit around and snipe sharpshooters/archers, then once my sergeants have hit the top and pushed out I rush up, and resume sniping/help in the melee. Also, I have found a few maps with alternate routes in the castle/city. In Durquba I bashed through a door on the left side of the field, which leads to the courtyard/staircase up to the archers nest... Archers just die when i've got the warcleaver out . And at Jamayyed castle you can run up the hill to the right side and then walk onto the walls... and again go take out the archers ... And I'm sure there are a number of other situations where having the melee weapon is useful. I've often found my assault troops get beaten, and i'm the last guy on the wall until the next wave of reinforcements gets up (In... Asugan (?) or a castle near there, the attackers have to walk alllll the way around to the other side of the castle from their spawning point to get to the ladders.

Your companions training skills also add to the general training. And level 10 is much better than level 5... My character, My doctor and pathfinder all have level 10 training, and my other companions often have 4-5 points in it... Anyways, I can get a full tier army from recruits in 5-6 days . Unfortunately I didn't invest much in strength/agility early on... still trying to get power draw up to 6 lol .

 

[Falcon Critical]

If you must take this castle garrisoned by 120 top tier units (as you mentioned), either ask some Jarls to follow you if you're actually in the Nord faction, or train a legion of huscarls.  Either have high archery skill or decent crossbow skill and a siege xbow, with lots of bolts.  As your huscarls charge up the ramp/tower, hang around at ground level picking off enemy archers with headshots.  At least against the Sarranids their archers keep their heads up (unlike crossbowmen).

Or just take a different castle. Asugan Castle between Khanate and Sultanate is possibly the easiest to siege of them all.  I took that castle from 150 mid-tier troops with ~80 mid tier troops/companions.  The reason its so easy is that defenders spawn at the back of the castle, and you can be up on the parapets before the defenders get to the ladder/chokepoint.

 

[Nesterus]

I took Alburq Castle alone with about 30 troops without cheating by simply taking my bow and shooting everyone down and when I ran out of arrows I just ran back to where my troops were spread out holding position and picked up 64 more arrows off the ground lol. The enemy archers shot more than enough and it was easy for me to just keep scavenging enemy arrows, I used a Sword of War to dance up the ladder smack the melee soldiers that blocked the parapet and back down back and forth until I had them mostly killed, then I sent in my troops to mop up

 

[Porcorosso]

Best plan - ask your army to back off so they are safe(ish) from fire,  you then zig zag up close to the call where you find the blindspots and snipe them all in the head. I take a warbow and 99 arrows. Just whittle them down until they have few troops manning the walls but dont kill them all - then order your army to charge their very weakened defences! GAME OVER (for them)   

also if you find a castle with few archers (or ones with few javs)- then kill them all first, then walk up the ladder and casually snipe them from 1 metre away in the eye...its a great feeling

 

[iffy]

Just for the record, it's not "Impossible" to take a castle without cheating.  I took a Rhoduk castle last night.  I have an army of 125.  ~100 knights and ~20 swad sharpshooters. 

There were 133 guys in the castle and no lords. 

I attacked the first time and killed about 60 guys.  When I was down to 20 guys I retreated.  I had to leave and get my morale back up which took several days, but when I came back the castle was still at 55 or so.  I had about 35 guys left when I killed their last man. 

I'm playing 1.125 and it's normal damage for everyone and good/normal.

I will agree that it was MUCH harder than ever before.  This morning I took a shot at Grumwalder castle.  I lost about 100 guys (I started with 100 swad knights and 20 swad sharpshooters).  I killed about 10 of their guys before retreating... 

1.126 lists less top tier troops for NPC lords as a change.  Hopefully it will help.

 

 

[Wilsonrtf]

Indeed, 1.126 reverted back to very easy.

I wished there was a configuration option to define the percentage of top tier troops lords would carry.

 

[Kaizoku]

Your companions training skills also add to the general training. And level 10 is much better than level 5... My character, My doctor and pathfinder all have level 10 training, and my other companions often have 4-5 points in it... Anyways, I can get a full tier army from recruits in 5-6 days . Unfortunately I didn't invest much in strength/agility early on... still trying to get power draw up to 6 lol .

I am aware, but until your companions reach level 20+ they cannot train top tier troops. To get companions to such a high level, it either takes a lot of time/effort or the player character with a decent amount of points in training. The player character should invest in lvl ~5 training ASAP. I think lvl 10 on a player character is overkill, because any amount of intelligence beyond 15 is wasted and should instead be spent on charisma. But other player styles may differ from mine, as I own my own kingdom, and focus on what is most effective for a self-ruled campaign.

Off topic, Jeremus should have LVL 10 on all party skills that use INT and always be on the bottom of your party list. He is the man.

 

[iffy]

You can have 5 trainer skill and it does a hell of a lot more when you are level 30 than it does when you are level 15. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that 1.126 is easy again...  Somewhere in the middle would be fine...

 

[Wilsonrtf]

It would be nice to have at least the option to play a hard game. The way it is now, the hardest settings are pretty easy, again.