After some further testing using this system i can say that it works pretty much everywhere. Another thing to keep in mind is that if left there the Ballistas will actually cause some real damage especially in long sieges. i recommend taking "ALL" Siege Engines out before starting the Siege and build towers. Towers will be key if you happen to go down or if not will lure the defenders out on the walls, so they can be picked by the archers. If you want to see this system being used in more situations just stop by my twitch channel and watch some vods. it works in most places. Thanks for your time
Park your archers in a mass near the bottom of the ladders. A few of your soldiers will prop up the ladders, and the enemy will send troops to push the ladders back down. If you get on the ladder and stand on the bottom rung, the enemy will rush as many troops as possible to block the top of the ladder. Either way, the top of the walls will be a feast for your archers, and the enemy troops will tend to crowd each other so badly that they won't be able to effectively shoot back. I suggest bringing max onagers of the normal variety. They have the most fearsome projectiles, which can both destroy wall-top fortifications and wipe out tons of enemy troops in a large area every time they hit. Try not to allow the enemy to have any siege weapons of their own, so they will be mostly defenseless as your archers and onagers pick them off the walls. You won't need any other siege equipment. If you caused breaches in the walls on the campaign map, park your archers outside of the breach and bait the defending troops out by running in just far enough to get them to come after you, then backpedal so that your archers can shoot them. Repeat this until the enemy no longer has enough troops to effectively defend the breach. If you do this, you should be able to capture any castle or town without needing to bring an army. A party of about 120 troops ought to suffice.
How many days does it take excactly if you don't bring an army? i am sorry but i don't see much fit for such tactic outside of your very first settlement to start a kingdom without needing the vassal route. The reason of this video is about efficency. a siege every around 5 days at worst while having the strenght to be capable of defending yourself and your territories from enemies by keeping around 1000 troops in your army. i am yet to find anything better in the game that is faster and causes less casualties.
@@LyonExodus Yeah, that's basically what it's about. Merc until a settlement rebels, then cut your contract and capture it to start your own kingdom without immediately making enemies. Then you have some leisure to coax the friends you made while merc'ing into joining your kingdom for a comfy start. Either way, the battle tactics work well regardless of whether you brought an army or a party. Archer/Onager dominates siege battles.
When building siege engines you can remove them immediately after completion and then build another in its place. After having built a bunch of them place them all the same time to overwhelm the castle's defenses. Building one at a time usually means you'll have fewer engines when the battle starts, but placing all at once you'll have a bunch and the defenders will often have none. Never seen anyone mentioning this. Edit: just looked it up and someone made a post about it on reddit 25 days ago, almost no one in the comments seemed to know this. I've been doing this since launch, every single siege.
don't know how you have never seen anyone mention it since we have been doing it for years. i can't watch the vid right now but if i haven't done it it's because i tought i could save same time since they were building ballistas. but with hindsight 4 catapults, waiting and destroying the ballistas would have been better.
To take down battlements, just get 4 onagers, during the battle, they will get kills and bring down the enemy battlements, allowing better results for your archers
Well yes, taking down the upper part of the walls will definately help but that is not the point of the video. The video is made to showcase the fastest and most casualty efficent way to siege. there are many other methods even better than this one but that will take far more time than 7-8 in game minutes
I just successfully siege a castle (278 defenders )and a town (360+ defenders) using my 165 troops only lost 2. It was fun I just used my bow and climbed the ladder half way and picked out my targets in front of me while my archers picked out the rest. Then used my shield wall to draw the arrows away from my archers also tip use shield wall on archers so they won’t scatter around during the siege.
Could you do a very basic tutorial for how to command the different infantry groups and such. I got 300 hours but everything is always way to fast to let me try things out.. Maybe a generl tutorial about commands?
Yes i can. i Have gathered a lot of footage lately from large battles. Let me know if you want me to focus on some groups rather than others. If you have a Twitch Account you can scroll trough the vods section of my channel (link in the description of this video) and see if it can help you out while i start working on a general explanation of tactics and formations. Thanks for the suggestion.
The best advice is to memorize a few codes for movement and formations. Not having to look through the orders interface can make things much more manageable: Movement: F1>F4 = Advance (allows you to have your lines close distance to the enemy without breaking formation). F1>F3 = Charge (Use if attacking the enemy line with melee troops, be it infantry or cavalry. Troops will break formation and attack the nearest target). F1>F6 = Halt (Pretty straight forward. Useful for archers who have received the advance order to prevent them from backing up once they are within range of the enemy [they try to keep at max range]). Formations F2>F1 = Line (This is the default stance and is best employed in melee fighting. Troops have tight formations but no mobility loss). F2>F2 = Shield wall (Formation gets very tight, and troops with an equipped shield will raise it. For shield infantry, this will protect against projectiles. For anything else, it will make the formation more vulnerable to projectiles. Good against cavalry charges as the raised shield can block lances and the density increases the odds of someone hitting the horse/horseman as they push through) F2>F3= Loose (Formation spreads out, making projectiles less effective. Useful for deep formations of ranged units as it is also easier to fire over the head of the rank in front. Makes the unit weak against all melee, and very weak against cavalry charges. Cavalry will often attack one model and pass through without losing speed or taking damage). If you can commit these three movements and three formations to memory, you will have a much easier time controlling the battlefield.
@@bombidil3 i would also add the square in there. especially good for defensive formatiosn when using archers wings. really gets the enemy infatnry trapped in there. The toggle fuature is key, as it allows you to split and merge formations on the fly. especially good for archers and a very much underrated or unknowon feature by many. for commands i prefer using customized keys for example charging is E -> C . much faster and closer to my left hand than leaving control of MC to go and press all of the F buttons up top. For anyone interested in tactics i always advice dropping by the Twitch channel and see what i do in real time. stuff gets funky in there. thanks for the very informative comment
@@LyonExodus I agree. I meant to start with the very basics of movement and form, but more specialized orders significantly increase your force's capability.
What I need too know is how the AI works in Siege Battles? How do I tell Soldiers to use the Siege weapons? Do they do it automatically? How do they attack? Do i just F1, F3 or F4 them, or what? Do they do it all automatically?
The soldiers will be taken out of a formation and assigned to siege weapons (catapults, trebs...) and engines (towers and rams) For ladders if you take control of the troops you will have to manually tell the formation to set them, if you don't touch any button the troops will move towards the ladders than set them up on their own. For towers the towers: after they are set at times you have to tell the formation to use them as well. To do that: 1)Select the formation you want to use the tower. 2) Click on the tower. 3) Give the Charge command. After that the soldiers will start creating lines and climbing up. I generally prefer to use the main gate and a ram in most places. That way after the main gate is taken down a group of soldiers will be selected to take down the other door. If this doesn't happen select the formation and click on the gate. After the second gate is taken down you can simply charge your men in and it should be fine. I don't advise to take down the walls since it will take a lot of days and after you destroyed them the town/castle will need time to fix them. During that time they are very vulnerable to being taken back since the fortification bonus for the simulation will be much, much lower. But if you were to take the walls down, moving your troops near the hole and charge should do. Generally i prefer to use a similar tactic to the one you see in this video, as getting used to manually control the troops during assaults can save you some headaches that a bugged AI might cause.
For sieges Cavalry and horse archers both get dismounted. Cavalry is usually formation 3. In this video i was mainly fighting in the North-West so Horse archers were nowhere to be found. There are some field battles where you want to dismount your units and have them join the foot formations but that's in some more unique than rare scenarios. I plan to make videos about general tactics and map/situation specific ones in the future. i unfortunatly can't be fast at making them cause of my limited time and Streaming.
U can have zero loses if you go with fire onager and just tell everyone to hold back. Just retreat when I run out of fire bombs and repeat till every one is dead
yes you sure can. but i don't think many people want to spend 20-30 minutes like that when a siege can take just a little over 10. The point of the video is efficency and effectivness. not quicker or without casualties
You mean the formations? how i managed to split them? There is a command. i think in the "toggle" section, it's called: TRANSFER. What you do is: 1) Select the formation you want to split or merge. 2) Use the TRANSFER command 3) Chose the Formation you want to send the troops in.
Generally i either take then prisoners or release them for increasing relations. I don't execute, because generally you either start to kill everyone or you kill nobody. there are some big penalties regarding relations when you kill someone after capture.
Ah the good old beat them with arrows classic strategy back in Warband. Btw i noticed you dont even need to exploit or be very smart player to win a siege. 95% of the time the atacker will win simply by numbers and better tier units ( u have militia defenders) . I tested it , my castle got atacked and i decided to just sit around and see how it goes. Well my troops held for a time but were surely losing overall. Then i tryed by joining armies who atack with just me and few dudes so that there is no (player ex machina) stuff going around and its just the AI. Well the atackers won again and again. I believe loses for the atackers can occur only in 2 scenerios - autoresolve or if something fucks up during the siege itself like the troops get mass stuck and the enemy has overwelming arty killing a dozen soldiers every time. In my sieges i dont use any exploits just plain old siege where my army atacks and i have yet to see me losing more men than i can replace right away after the battle. So i wonder how come there will be players who will need help with that. The game is easy in it self even in Realistic.
i do find the game to be easy myself, holding myself to use the best units to keep it interesting and other self limitations. A lot of players, especially new ones may struggle in the game overall, it is not one of the easiest to lern the mechanics and a lot of them are hard to come by, often relying on research, forums and the experience of other players. i do get those players and also not many can play a game for 3K hours in less than an year, i hope this vidoe can help them enjoy the game more
I'm the exception and I really appreciate this video man. I totally get what you're going for..efficiency. I've played for 3 or 4 most now and until I watched this video I had siege one or 2 castles because I kept losing so many troops and tje juice wasn't worth the squeeze when I can decimate them in the field as a merc. Thanks again, awesome video!
Anyone saying there's nothing to do during seige....😂 I solo 300 troops in every siege before allowing my troops to get a single kill, with cats and trebs, then moving to solo archery's, taking a walk and arrow bucket and going until bored of headshoting enemy's or finally being killed then my army mops up remaining troops
This guide was made around 1 year ago. Now the spawning system for troops has changes and sieges are a bit different. altough this tactic is still one of the best even if less effective in towns and castles where the main gate is heavily defended. Would you be interested in an extensive guide on how to siege all the different layouts in the future?
Good for you, hope you understand that this video is aimed at helping people out that don't know how to efficently siege, if you happen to have an already working strategy feel free to share it with the others
After some further testing using this system i can say that it works pretty much everywhere.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if left there the Ballistas will actually cause some real damage especially in long sieges.
i recommend taking "ALL" Siege Engines out before starting the Siege and build towers.
Towers will be key if you happen to go down or if not will lure the defenders out on the walls, so they can be picked by the archers.
If you want to see this system being used in more situations just stop by my twitch channel and watch some vods. it works in most places.
Thanks for your time
Park your archers in a mass near the bottom of the ladders. A few of your soldiers will prop up the ladders, and the enemy will send troops to push the ladders back down. If you get on the ladder and stand on the bottom rung, the enemy will rush as many troops as possible to block the top of the ladder. Either way, the top of the walls will be a feast for your archers, and the enemy troops will tend to crowd each other so badly that they won't be able to effectively shoot back.
I suggest bringing max onagers of the normal variety. They have the most fearsome projectiles, which can both destroy wall-top fortifications and wipe out tons of enemy troops in a large area every time they hit. Try not to allow the enemy to have any siege weapons of their own, so they will be mostly defenseless as your archers and onagers pick them off the walls. You won't need any other siege equipment.
If you caused breaches in the walls on the campaign map, park your archers outside of the breach and bait the defending troops out by running in just far enough to get them to come after you, then backpedal so that your archers can shoot them. Repeat this until the enemy no longer has enough troops to effectively defend the breach.
If you do this, you should be able to capture any castle or town without needing to bring an army. A party of about 120 troops ought to suffice.
How many days does it take excactly if you don't bring an army? i am sorry but i don't see much fit for such tactic outside of your very first settlement to start a kingdom without needing the vassal route.
The reason of this video is about efficency. a siege every around 5 days at worst while having the strenght to be capable of defending yourself and your territories from enemies by keeping around 1000 troops in your army. i am yet to find anything better in the game that is faster and causes less casualties.
@@LyonExodus
Yeah, that's basically what it's about. Merc until a settlement rebels, then cut your contract and capture it to start your own kingdom without immediately making enemies. Then you have some leisure to coax the friends you made while merc'ing into joining your kingdom for a comfy start.
Either way, the battle tactics work well regardless of whether you brought an army or a party. Archer/Onager dominates siege battles.
When building siege engines you can remove them immediately after completion and then build another in its place. After having built a bunch of them place them all the same time to overwhelm the castle's defenses. Building one at a time usually means you'll have fewer engines when the battle starts, but placing all at once you'll have a bunch and the defenders will often have none. Never seen anyone mentioning this.
Edit: just looked it up and someone made a post about it on reddit 25 days ago, almost no one in the comments seemed to know this. I've been doing this since launch, every single siege.
don't know how you have never seen anyone mention it since we have been doing it for years. i can't watch the vid right now but if i haven't done it it's because i tought i could save same time since they were building ballistas. but with hindsight 4 catapults, waiting and destroying the ballistas would have been better.
To take down battlements, just get 4 onagers, during the battle, they will get kills and bring down the enemy battlements, allowing better results for your archers
Well yes, taking down the upper part of the walls will definately help but that is not the point of the video. The video is made to showcase the fastest and most casualty efficent way to siege. there are many other methods even better than this one but that will take far more time than 7-8 in game minutes
I just successfully siege a castle (278 defenders )and a town (360+ defenders) using my 165 troops only lost 2. It was fun I just used my bow and climbed the ladder half way and picked out my targets in front of me while my archers picked out the rest. Then used my shield wall to draw the arrows away from my archers also tip use shield wall on archers so they won’t scatter around during the siege.
WHOAH you just showed up on my recommended list and you're my go to MB streamer! Great video dude!
Could you do a very basic tutorial for how to command the different infantry groups and such. I got 300 hours but everything is always way to fast to let me try things out.. Maybe a generl tutorial about commands?
Yes i can. i Have gathered a lot of footage lately from large battles. Let me know if you want me to focus on some groups rather than others.
If you have a Twitch Account you can scroll trough the vods section of my channel (link in the description of this video) and see if it can help you out while i start working on a general explanation of tactics and formations.
Thanks for the suggestion.
@@LyonExodus I'll check out the vods, thx!
The best advice is to memorize a few codes for movement and formations. Not having to look through the orders interface can make things much more manageable:
Movement:
F1>F4 = Advance (allows you to have your lines close distance to the enemy without breaking formation).
F1>F3 = Charge (Use if attacking the enemy line with melee troops, be it infantry or cavalry. Troops will break formation and attack the nearest target).
F1>F6 = Halt (Pretty straight forward. Useful for archers who have received the advance order to prevent them from backing up once they are within range of the enemy [they try to keep at max range]).
Formations
F2>F1 = Line (This is the default stance and is best employed in melee fighting. Troops have tight formations but no mobility loss).
F2>F2 = Shield wall (Formation gets very tight, and troops with an equipped shield will raise it. For shield infantry, this will protect against projectiles. For anything else, it will make the formation more vulnerable to projectiles. Good against cavalry charges as the raised shield can block lances and the density increases the odds of someone hitting the horse/horseman as they push through)
F2>F3= Loose (Formation spreads out, making projectiles less effective. Useful for deep formations of ranged units as it is also easier to fire over the head of the rank in front. Makes the unit weak against all melee, and very weak against cavalry charges. Cavalry will often attack one model and pass through without losing speed or taking damage).
If you can commit these three movements and three formations to memory, you will have a much easier time controlling the battlefield.
@@bombidil3 i would also add the square in there. especially good for defensive formatiosn when using archers wings. really gets the enemy infatnry trapped in there.
The toggle fuature is key, as it allows you to split and merge formations on the fly. especially good for archers and a very much underrated or unknowon feature by many.
for commands i prefer using customized keys for example charging is E -> C . much faster and closer to my left hand than leaving control of MC to go and press all of the F buttons up top.
For anyone interested in tactics i always advice dropping by the Twitch channel and see what i do in real time. stuff gets funky in there.
thanks for the very informative comment
@@LyonExodus I agree. I meant to start with the very basics of movement and form, but more specialized orders significantly increase your force's capability.
What I need too know is how the AI works in Siege Battles? How do I tell Soldiers to use the Siege weapons? Do they do it automatically? How do they attack? Do i just F1, F3 or F4 them, or what? Do they do it all automatically?
The soldiers will be taken out of a formation and assigned to siege weapons (catapults, trebs...) and engines (towers and rams) For ladders if you take control of the troops you will have to manually tell the formation to set them, if you don't touch any button the troops will move towards the ladders than set them up on their own.
For towers the towers: after they are set at times you have to tell the formation to use them as well.
To do that: 1)Select the formation you want to use the tower. 2) Click on the tower. 3) Give the Charge command.
After that the soldiers will start creating lines and climbing up.
I generally prefer to use the main gate and a ram in most places. That way after the main gate is taken down a group of soldiers will be selected to take down the other door. If this doesn't happen select the formation and click on the gate.
After the second gate is taken down you can simply charge your men in and it should be fine.
I don't advise to take down the walls since it will take a lot of days and after you destroyed them the town/castle will need time to fix them. During that time they are very vulnerable to being taken back since the fortification bonus for the simulation will be much, much lower.
But if you were to take the walls down, moving your troops near the hole and charge should do.
Generally i prefer to use a similar tactic to the one you see in this video, as getting used to manually control the troops during assaults can save you some headaches that a bugged AI might cause.
Lyon, you don't use cav and horse archers? What if I have them in army? I tell them to dismount and join the infantry/archer groups?
For sieges Cavalry and horse archers both get dismounted. Cavalry is usually formation 3. In this video i was mainly fighting in the North-West so Horse archers were nowhere to be found.
There are some field battles where you want to dismount your units and have them join the foot formations but that's in some more unique than rare scenarios.
I plan to make videos about general tactics and map/situation specific ones in the future. i unfortunatly can't be fast at making them cause of my limited time and Streaming.
Very nice strat. Personally I always roleplay and siege the old fashioned way with bodies and cold steel, but this is cool.
I'm p sure armies always preferred to starve out the city or fortress, only sieging if they have a massive numerical advantage and no time
Progamers hate this man for his secret.
U can have zero loses if you go with fire onager and just tell everyone to hold back. Just retreat when I run out of fire bombs and repeat till every one is dead
yes you sure can. but i don't think many people want to spend 20-30 minutes like that when a siege can take just a little over 10. The point of the video is efficency and effectivness. not quicker or without casualties
This method is also more RP :-)
Need to up that volume bud can barely hear you
how did you make all these parties i am new in the game?
You mean the formations? how i managed to split them?
There is a command. i think in the "toggle" section, it's called: TRANSFER.
What you do is:
1) Select the formation you want to split or merge.
2) Use the TRANSFER command
3) Chose the Formation you want to send the troops in.
@@LyonExodus thanks a lot also what do i do with the heros i capture from winning the siege? Their leader i meab
Generally i either take then prisoners or release them for increasing relations.
I don't execute, because generally you either start to kill everyone or you kill nobody.
there are some big penalties regarding relations when you kill someone after capture.
@@LyonExodus do they benefit with something while they are taken prisoners? I have a lot of questions do you by any chance have discord?
I have one but it's not very public yet.
I can direct you to this one, where there are a lot of players in the chats: discord.gg/NBFhk8hw
Ah the good old beat them with arrows classic strategy back in Warband. Btw i noticed you dont even need to exploit or be very smart player to win a siege. 95% of the time the atacker will win simply by numbers and better tier units ( u have militia defenders) . I tested it , my castle got atacked and i decided to just sit around and see how it goes. Well my troops held for a time but were surely losing overall. Then i tryed by joining armies who atack with just me and few dudes so that there is no (player ex machina) stuff going around and its just the AI. Well the atackers won again and again. I believe loses for the atackers can occur only in 2 scenerios - autoresolve or if something fucks up during the siege itself like the troops get mass stuck and the enemy has overwelming arty killing a dozen soldiers every time. In my sieges i dont use any exploits just plain old siege where my army atacks and i have yet to see me losing more men than i can replace right away after the battle. So i wonder how come there will be players who will need help with that. The game is easy in it self even in Realistic.
i do find the game to be easy myself, holding myself to use the best units to keep it interesting and other self limitations. A lot of players, especially new ones may struggle in the game overall, it is not one of the easiest to lern the mechanics and a lot of them are hard to come by, often relying on research, forums and the experience of other players. i do get those players and also not many can play a game for 3K hours in less than an year, i hope this vidoe can help them enjoy the game more
I'm the exception and I really appreciate this video man.
I totally get what you're going for..efficiency.
I've played for 3 or 4 most now and until I watched this video I had siege one or 2 castles because I kept losing so many troops and tje juice wasn't worth the squeeze when I can decimate them in the field as a merc.
Thanks again, awesome video!
Anyone saying there's nothing to do during seige....😂 I solo 300 troops in every siege before allowing my troops to get a single kill, with cats and trebs, then moving to solo archery's, taking a walk and arrow bucket and going until bored of headshoting enemy's or finally being killed then my army mops up remaining troops
just put the max number of troops at 200
It doesn't work
This guide was made around 1 year ago. Now the spawning system for troops has changes and sieges are a bit different.
altough this tactic is still one of the best even if less effective in towns and castles where the main gate is heavily defended.
Would you be interested in an extensive guide on how to siege all the different layouts in the future?
didnt see anything special about this.
Good for you, hope you understand that this video is aimed at helping people out that don't know how to efficently siege, if you happen to have an already working strategy feel free to share it with the others