"Close Victory" All of hexoatls units extremely high tier, 4-5 ancient stegadons, Mazdamundi himself, Kroak, and a feral carnasaur, all dead with practically 0 kills Deployed 3153 troops, leaves with 3034, gained most of them back because replenishment Enemy army loses half their forces during the siege, loses all of them because they lost the siege mfw nearly 10:1 k/d ratio versus higher tier army yeah okay game.
I got a phyric victory when I lost 1549 out of 2700 something against 5402 vampires. I literally had 1100 kills on my companions of quenelles. HOW ISNT THAT A HEROIC VICTORY. Bruh I only got like 3 chiv points from that. I feel like i only get this shit in tw2 tho.
Imagine an army general dancing around in the middle of a battlefield to dodge projectiles while the rest of its army just stand in the back watching lol
Additionally, if you use up all of your ammo, and still aren't strong enough for an all-out attack, you can wait for the timer to end. It will give you a draw. You will still be besieging the settlement, so the enemy won't get replenishment, and next turn, you can just attack for the next time, usually winning without any casualties, since you don't have to shoot towers for the second time, saving ammo on your artillery (especially good on Skaven) and getting full ammo/magic.
@@RustlessPotato It can be changed mid campaign if you really want to in the campaign options. I like to have the classical 60 minutes, but 40 minutes would usually be the best time, when you can, use up all your ammo and magic, and then don't stand around for 10 minutes in triple speed. Depends on how many ranged units you have.
I won the star of avelorn quest battle with minimal loss, only 1 unit even took damage and it was minimal, barely used any ammo (alarielle with 6 resistant hand maidens can kill the frost wyrm in melee without ever getting hit). Close victory...
old as fuck comment but for some reason CA decided to add ammo to the formula which calculates heroic/clear/close/pyrrhic victories. I've had victories where I didn't lose a man outnumbered 2:1 on the autoresolve bar as dwarves and got "close victory" because I was almost out of ammo
I recently fought with 1100 dwarves against 2500 Norskans in a chokepoint. I lost 4, they lost 1500. It was a "close victory" because my artillery and Ironbreaker ammo was running slightly low...
20:25 "the trick to a good siege is patience" 100% and if i could add, make sure you use all your ammo and magic before throwing melee troops in, prio big beasts and top tier troops and enemy artillery if you have the means to.
Yeah as a new player myself, this was my big takeaway from this. Use your artillery to take out the towers, then use ranged to take out anything on the walls if you can, and THEN send in your melee units. Don't even try breaching the gate or send in siege towers until you've done all that, is what I'm getting.
Oh man, that battle was so close with how you wiped out all of their important stuff with barely any losses, you almost didn't win. Got to love how the game dictates stuff like that.
@@das_ollon Well recently in a Markus campaign, dark elves just kept going onto the walls (backside) while my arrows wiped them out. I kinda wish they had the intelligence to sally out in force.
Agreed, playing sieges the way the game encourages you to do (aka right click and assault walls) just doesn’t cut it. In a way doing sieges this way is more relaxing and less stressful
@@das_ollon It's cheese because it's taking advantage of how the AI works. Any normal halfway intelligent person would either pull their forces back or sally out if they saw their opponent using just ranged/casting troops. The AI not only leaves its troops on the walls even under artillery fire, but it also replaces lost forward troops with its reserves.
to be fair, i've used a similar tactic a few times as scaven in WH2, i position my main army on the opposite side of reinforcing army (skavenslaves). use careful shots using my main, and then rush with reinforcements to the walls to overwhelm ranged enemy units, then rush walls with main, didn't even bother with destroying towers, just used artillery to soften up melee wall defenders, worked like a charm so far every time
@@DIEGhostfish have you ever played, Rome 2 or Attila and played a Rome/Roma Siege, That map is HUGE, I think they could have managed a Warhammer mega city.
@@arthasmenethil7208 Can't tell if you're trolling or not. Since when does a mod making a bad aspect of the game good mean that the original aspect it fixed was also good?
When someone rushs into their enemy's fortified settlement, I always hear the garrison sing: ,,Win the battle, lose the war, Choice of evils lie before for your feet Retreat! retreat! reteat!" (Let's see how many still know this song ^^)
The real power of dark magic is power of darkness imo. Its literally the equivalent of 4 arcane conduits at once which lets you spam spells quickly. The only other good spell is soul stealer in certain situations (particularly if its a black dragon lord). But by having an extreme WOM recharge mage as a supreme sorceress lord, you can make room for a secondary caster such as fire or shadows for vortex damage vs infantry.
Chillwind is a foot speed debuff spell if you're building range centric Armies the -24 to speed on anything it touches for non overcast is good enough to put infantry to crawl speed. The overcast -48 to speed debuff is enough to put cavalry to crawl speed. It's single best field support spell for Armies already proficient for sieges. My Malekith Stacks has darkshards and reaper bolt throwers without any line holders because it's unnecessary if you can slow 3-4 of the Ais units they will lag behind if you slow other units as well you can pretty much have half the enemy army falling behind. This doesn't get overwhelmed either by enemy having full 2 stacks with simple corner camping. All that it takes for chillwind to shine is to recognize which units are fast to fast for range units to shoot down.
datuputi777 chillwind deals a lot of damage too. It does take 2-3 casts before you start getting kills but i’m quite confident it can deal over 2.5k damage if you align it perfectly
This. This is the video that saved my 150 turn Ikit Claw campaign. I was simply inexperienced that I thought all sieges should be fought on walls..y'know the traditional way. Needless to say countless Stormvermin and Plague Monks have died before taking the walls and the gate so that weapons teams would move in, and I would have only 3 Plagueclaws. To take care of their mortar or trebuchet or what-have-you. Not to mention 2 turns of siege tower building. But now? I just send in a plague monk beforehand to damage walls, open up breaches. And then send in the army which is now almost fully ranged. Catapults take out their ranged units, then weapons teams move in to shoot through the breaches. Even the toughest settlements taken with zero losses. So thanks,Legend. As always, love your content.
The best siege scenario I found was Ikit Claw with endless drums (ammo regen on ratlin gunners). You got the ideal artillery to create pockets in their walls, and then the gunners don't need to be efficient to whittle the army down.
It's based on relative HP damage taken so if you have like he did several heroes and big single entities which took damage it's relatively a 'close' victory. Same can happen in other experiences too.
Its dumb. Apparently it's the difference in Balance of Power, which is affected by ammunition. So the more ammo you use, the lower your victory type trends
Really liked how in this video you explained more than usual why you're doing what you're doing. Really helps a noob like me who just got the game and was struggling with exactly these kinds of sieges.
If you just got the game you really shouldn't be playing on this difficulty. Melee units have basically no use on that difficulty level and so it really changes how you would do the battle. He also got pretty lucky here with placement of the monsters all being pretty close to the wall. It would be common for the computers to leave a large force in the central square and he never would have been able to get to them. Basically very hard/legendary difficulty are broken and are really just a kind goofy alternate game mode that should really just be called "ranged only."
I used single bolts for a large time because the numbers were similar total, but because there's no spread I assumed there would be more damage missed then if it was spread out
You’re point on the minute things done changes how the AI reacts is spot on. Often I find trying emulate how you bait the archers, i wind up getting to close with a flying unit and the entire army decides to charge in.
I remember tying to cheese a siege in Shogun: Total War when I first played it. It failed miserably. I kept all of my army outside the walls, out of the enemy's range, and infiltrated the castle with a bunch of shinobi/ninja squads that could climb the walls. They didn't last long when they stepped into the capture zone lmao
As lizardmen I like to bring 3-4 stegodon units and a couple carnosaurs, dread saurian, feral stegodon. I use the stegodon ranged to punch holes in walls. Then I run some salamander packs up to barrage archers covering my monsters charging in the walls. Now that the enemy isn't plugging the walls my infantry goes in. Then some horned ones rush through to charge their archers deeper in the city
Thank you legend...I have always wondered if the single or the multi-shot was better on those bolt throwers but never wanted to test it because lazy, but I listen to you play at work and pick up what you say more than see it. Good stuff man.
Single is meant to snipe large targets down while multi is meant for groups. One isn't better than the other, they are just used for different situations.
@@shadowscall7758 I was kinda talking about for towers although I did not say that so my bad. I meant which was better for taking out towers in big city sieges.
Why didn't i think of this!? Thank you dude! Iv'e been intimidated by sieges and usually auto resolve lol, the results are usually mixed. Almost always have to bring in a couple global recruits though to continue pushing on the enemy. This helps a lot.
flock of doom is a reasonable slow DoT, a bit like the grey magic miasma, putting them both in the same area can work wonders. i only found this out when the AI gave me an amber wizard early in an empire campaign.
Flock of Doom is not bad against blobs, it's actually rather WoM efficient when you catch 3+ infantry units inside the radius. It's an option if you don't have armour piercing vortices/winds, like here.
another thing is that if you have movement you can attack multiply times in your turn you just need to break then re seige and you can attack again. I do it in empire if all I have is a motor to kill towers. This only works if you get a draw as a outcome. If you get a win you can just chose to settle or not.
@6:16 The moment Legend realises the towers don't reach all the way to the back of the map and he only ever had to distract one tower and Morathi need never have taken any damage (technically if the initial army had been really packed together nothing ever needed to come within range of a tower).
I was like, how is this a disaster? But then I realize not everyone has seen your early WH1 dwarf campaigns. My god was that some fuckin' cheese. Quarrelers are still my favorite unit.
Okay so this makes me wonder. Is it actually possible to win such large battles/sieges on legendary difficulty without cheesing?? Because if you have to cheese no matter how good you are, that makes the difficulty challenge bad
on legendary? hell no. your melee soldiers are basically a tier below, and the enemy melee are one tier up. like, a tomb guard in legendary difficult is the equivalent of a skeleton warrior because of the buffs the AI receives. If you dont cheese against the AI, you are basically doomed most of the time. and even if you could, probably the losses you would get simply would fuck you up as the AI would just summon a full stack and attack you with it.
tbh what legend did there is barely cheese, I guess shooting from over the wall is but he could have taken the walls with ladders and dark shards support after taking out the towers and then shoot the dinos from the wall. It wouldn't be cheese anymore be he would have lost alot of dreadspears in the process. Also what I like to do is making a bunch of siege towers (6 is ideal) to take the wall cleanly (ladders will exhaust your units once they reach the top making them very vulnerable)
Was always not sure about Dark Shards vs Shades , like shades are a higher tier unit but with less models and cost more. But I am gonna try replacing shards with shades and see how it goes (probably was just too lazy to build the shades building)
Their damage output is similar, but they have much longer range that can be buffed into the stratosphere with red line buffs. Second best archer unit in the game after waywatchers.
shades have vanguard position which is really helpful if you need artillery taken out early and high speed means they can dip out faster than my father.
The way I cheese during sieges, I don’t just hug my army next to the wall. I just find a little patch of forest, and I hide them all in one little blob. Of course, sometimes you don’t have place to hide. And elves see your hidden units. But 9 out of 10 times, it’s a legit strategy. The enemy can’t target your units for shit
Okay, but what do you do when the enemy has decent archer units on the walls, the map doesn't have a blind spot in the towers' fields of fire for you to put your army in, and you don't have a ton of artillery?
Why are you wasting ammo on 2 towers? 1 I can understand for this particular battle (but most often you don't have to destroy any of them); just place your units outside their firing arc... You can see the firing arc while hovering over the enemy.... .... then just use spells and items and ranged..... Siege battles are the most underwhelming and stupid and easiest battles you can possibly get. Also they'll put all their cav and monsters in the back. If you have a single flyer entity with Ring of Ruby or something, it can shift the balance even more. Or flyers dropping bombs. Even archers on the wall are useless for the enemy because they will only fire in front and _slightly_ arced to the sides, unless they're fire-on-the-move units. Not only that but you can also place Terror units (or similar) below them on the wall and they can't hit you but they will still lower their leadership and other effects. Just one decent spellcaster and an army not completely chaff can take out an army 4-5 times the size (or more) as long as it's a siege......... .... keyword being *DON'T WASTE AMMO ON TOWERS* of course Edit: Oh my god 3 towers, really? Seriously man. OK It's your channel, everybody will hate me for speaking up against the Lord Almighty but come on man this is just stupid. All those multishots you could had USED ON THE HUGE BLOB IN THE COURTYARD! Don't title it "how not to suck" when everything you do is wrong 😑 I *KNOW* you are good at WH and that makes this just more frustrating: This is not a "zomg nabb u sux lulz" comment but a "come on buddy wtf" comment... what are you doing. Also if they're not up on the wall but you want them to, just send a bad unit towards the wall, even put up ladders and cancel it. In most battles (if you do it *PROPERLY* ) the enemy will _flee_ before you even _start_ climbing the walls............. And the only mitigating factor is the ammo (so again, do NOT WASTE IT ON TOWERS)..... Arghhh pardon my semi-OCD autistic-ish brain pouring out here....
Very similar to a seige that’s kicking my arse right now. Lizards defending with similar composition, I’m attacking with Noctilus and a lot of Necrofex, supporting army full of gunnery mobs, promethians, 2 carronades, queen bess and 2 mortars plus a gunnery wight. How do you do the siege without the archers’ ability to snipe stuff over walls?
I dont bother with sieges. I have Isabella and her 6 Vampire heroes waste everyone on the walls while 13 Varghulf do the instant can opener on the gates. A pinch of wind of death and the city falls before the skeleton support army even made it to the walls.
i dont want to be picky, but troja itself was not sieged for 10 years, it was a war over a longer time. the siege itself was about 2-3 years itself of the city and they were not completly surounded thanks to the landscape.
I'm not sure what the player did differently to you or what I've done differently in the past but I have played sieges where the move their large units to the capture box. Not had one I couldn't win yet but it does make it significantly harder when you're unable to pick off their large units
They reposition their army based on how you've positioned yours. If you're not getting a good layout, just move your army back and forth and see if you can trick them.
Granted I haven't been playing for that long but I had no idea you could juke and jive long range artillery like that. I thought it basically snap-shot the positional states when firing and everything else was just for show. It feels like my doomwheels take damage from archers regardless of how I move them.
amusingly enough I find the tower targeting MORE accurate when you move than when you don't. I just put my heroes in front of the tower to be targeted and they never get hit more than once or twice.
Dude what the hell flock of doom would have been great against their massed troops just sitting there. You can cast it on units as well so even if they move it follows them and damages stuff they run past. Also this reminds me of Rome 2 , sitting and waiting for my Cretan archers sweep everything off the walls.
Should your bolt throwers have been set on armor piercing for taking down towers or no difference? 🏹. obviously you had your hands full but i might have to run a test sometime. 🧐🤔. !! Lol.. Note to self, watch whole video first.. 🤣. Thanks for the psychic answer @8:15 !! 😇
Honestly this battle was just a bit shit just cause honestly I kind of wish the Al would just be like, "This boi is attacking me with archers, let's attack back" cause honestly that's kinda what a human player would do. They wouldn't just have an archery battle since the Lizardmen are a bit shit in terms of archery, but I love my Lizardmen just cause Aztec imagery with just the whole schtick of being the actual protectors of order despite being reclusive because the Lizardmen did way more damage to the Demons of Chaos in the invasion.
I think one easy solution would be to let the AI sally out if you decide to attack on the first turn. It would make sense from a realistic perspective (they see you coming and choose to face you on the battlefield instead of cowering behind their walls), while also preventing you from using artillery/ranged/magic spam to easily defeat superior armies on the walls.
@@ninetailedfox579121 Good idea funny thing is it would increase disaster battles more, think it would be fair that your ambush success chance be in play so you can do the normal siege if you succeed on ambush.
For realism, I think that would be cool higher tier cities (4&5) have higher walls such as better towers. Not by much, but enough to be a real obstacle to archers. And graphically that would be cool as well, top tiers walls would look more like real fortresses instead of looking exactly the same as low tier walls now... Gg btw 👍
That could add some cool changes to the game, like if some taller monsters could actually fight units on walls, and as is blasting charges just don't reach the walls, if the lowest teir walls got short enough to have them get thrown on them that would be amazing for either defending or attacking
Hah, that was a nice and really enjoyable one for the end of the day to just sit back and watch some beautiful cheesing to happen. Surely the cheese god himself is pleased!
Not the best cheese. Could have after breaking 1-2 towers broken the wall on the side of the map. Enemy would send units to close the gap and you could pound them with crossbows until either ammo runs out or they all die, which in this case given how many crossbows he had would have been the latter. Wouldn't even need to move much or take any damage. Could also hug their own wall in parallel with a few units at a time to get better angles around their shields and kill off everything that could ever get on walls.
great video. i'd love to see some other videos on siege guides for other factions! this strategy works well for a faction with magic and/or arcing missiles, but how would you approach this same fight with dwarves or vampire counts?
Dwarves have their crossbows which can shoot over walls. Also grudge throwers to some extent. Dwarves might actually be better at this than dark elves. Their artillery would certainly clear the towers faster. Vampire Counts though would have no hope at all on this difficulty. Actually being a melee only faction, I don't imagine even it's really viable to play undead at all at that difficulty. Just another way the higher difficulties in this game are broken and not worthwhile.
I can't believe you let that skink unit on top of the gatehouse deal that much damage. To kill units on walls walk up to just before the wall and turn almost 90 degrees and shoot a unit at least one tower spacing away. This way the shots will arc onto the wall from the side and none will be stopped by the parapets.
One wonders why the AI does not rush out of the settlement if it has a much better army(armies) than the attacking one. If those two armies just rushed out to meet the dark elves they would just anhiliate them.
that is a great army to easily win sieges against any garrisons, 10 million darkshards, some artillery and magic, siege battles in this game are so easy, it's actually broken.
sometimes I really hate how archers are in this game. Let's take Kroak, with his passive boost giving him +12% missile resistance that he had, he goes up to 87% missile resistance. He got destroyed by 3 crossbow volleys, end of the story : missile rule the game >
Well, historically sieges lasted for ten years because no one stormed a castle or a fortress, it was just designed to be not take by force ^^ But if the attackers wanted to storm the castle, they would succeed or failed in a matter of a afternoon XD
well actually, this strategy is somewhat cheezy. Except avoiding multiple towers, destroy them concentrated and avoid them by sticking the troops together, this tactic seems a bit odd. I recommend to use mortar like artillery, to kill towers and infantry at walls, and finally climb the walls with infantry. This strategy would somewhat resemble more a war strategy than simple goofing around with the AI. Also: use Towers, and battering ram, since they might ease your game. Starving people out takes a lot of time, but some lords actually have bonus for that. luring enemies out (with a secound army) and placing a good ambush with your main army can make your life hell a lot easier. Simple dont attack with only two armies a full stack behind a level 5 main settlement with tier 5 defence.... Be a bit more clever how you can conquer those cities. Its just absurd to think this works. I think thats why I think this strategy is cheese.
"Close Victory"
All of hexoatls units extremely high tier, 4-5 ancient stegadons, Mazdamundi himself, Kroak, and a feral carnasaur, all dead with practically 0 kills
Deployed 3153 troops, leaves with 3034, gained most of them back because replenishment
Enemy army loses half their forces during the siege, loses all of them because they lost the siege
mfw nearly 10:1 k/d ratio versus higher tier army
yeah okay game.
You didn't count numerous bolts shot by DShards and BThrowers! Are their "lives" wothless, you senseless brute? Well, game thinks the other way!
Time matters too, that's why all those slow and methodical cheese strats get close and not decisive.
I got a phyric victory when I lost 1549 out of 2700 something against 5402 vampires. I literally had 1100 kills on my companions of quenelles. HOW ISNT THAT A HEROIC VICTORY. Bruh I only got like 3 chiv points from that. I feel like i only get this shit in tw2 tho.
@@yamiji3380 That's not correct. I regularly take upwards of 15-20 minutes cheesing sieges and I get decisive plenty enough.
I think the problem is the game does ot count the ennemy army as entirely destroyed ^^
Imagine an army general dancing around in the middle of a battlefield to dodge projectiles while the rest of its army just stand in the back watching lol
Additionally, if you use up all of your ammo, and still aren't strong enough for an all-out attack, you can wait for the timer to end. It will give you a draw. You will still be besieging the settlement, so the enemy won't get replenishment, and next turn, you can just attack for the next time, usually winning without any casualties, since you don't have to shoot towers for the second time, saving ammo on your artillery (especially good on Skaven) and getting full ammo/magic.
Meta Siege: Genius ! Current campaign is on unlimited time unfortunately :(
Martin Carion you can change that mid campaign in the settings
@@RustlessPotato It can be changed mid campaign if you really want to in the campaign options. I like to have the classical 60 minutes, but 40 minutes would usually be the best time, when you can, use up all your ammo and magic, and then don't stand around for 10 minutes in triple speed. Depends on how many ranged units you have.
Nice! but I think the dude was just shooting at chameleon lol.
Dude WHAT
Amazing
>breaks the enemy's will without ever entering the city
>close victory
Wut?
Its like the logic of the autoresolve bar XD
I won the star of avelorn quest battle with minimal loss, only 1 unit even took damage and it was minimal, barely used any ammo (alarielle with 6 resistant hand maidens can kill the frost wyrm in melee without ever getting hit). Close victory...
old as fuck comment but for some reason CA decided to add ammo to the formula which calculates heroic/clear/close/pyrrhic victories.
I've had victories where I didn't lose a man outnumbered 2:1 on the autoresolve bar as dwarves and got "close victory" because I was almost out of ammo
@@duckheadbob Yea, close victory is fine... but pyrrhic victory?
it's called sarcasm...ptff...people these days...
“You shot 5 arrows to win so phyrric victory” gotta love the AI lol
"those arrows were your precious comrades that you have lost in vain" derpy Total War AI.
I recently fought with 1100 dwarves against 2500 Norskans in a chokepoint. I lost 4, they lost 1500. It was a "close victory" because my artillery and Ironbreaker ammo was running slightly low...
Auto Resolve be like
*DECISIVE VICTORY*
1000 Ally Casualty - 100 Enemy Casualty
How to not suck at seige:
1: Hope your not fighting skaven so Warp Lighting can't one shot an entire card off the walls every 40 seconds.
2: Profit
Or you look at one part of your army and suddenly 5 units in the back get nuked by a rocket.
@Tom V. overcast + forcing the enemy into blobs (units leaving the siege towers for example)
Tom V. Step 1. Click on the spell
Step 2. Click on it again to overcast it
Step 3. Select any non single entity enemy and watch them get obliterated.
Or watch a full elite unit get insta killed by a warp bomb.
Skaven OP, pls nerf
Myriel, Sorceress of Beast magic: "What is my Purpose, General?"
LoTW: "You're a Mana Battery."
Myriel: ".... Oh my god."
20:25 "the trick to a good siege is patience"
100% and if i could add, make sure you use all your ammo and magic before throwing melee troops in, prio big beasts and top tier troops and enemy artillery if you have the means to.
Yeah as a new player myself, this was my big takeaway from this. Use your artillery to take out the towers, then use ranged to take out anything on the walls if you can, and THEN send in your melee units. Don't even try breaching the gate or send in siege towers until you've done all that, is what I'm getting.
Then I remember all my missile units fire in straight lines and I have no magic (Dwarfs) so I have to forget all that and rush the breach anyhow.
That's literally what he did, no need to add it.
Oh man, that battle was so close with how you wiped out all of their important stuff with barely any losses, you almost didn't win. Got to love how the game dictates stuff like that.
The game counts used ammunition as a loss, and he used up a significant amount of ammo. It's a stupid but that's why he got a close victory.
Cheesing sieges is oddly satisfying. I can't believe I never did this until seeing your channel a few months ago. Keep up the good work, cheese lord!
@@das_ollon Well recently in a Markus campaign, dark elves just kept going onto the walls (backside) while my arrows wiped them out. I kinda wish they had the intelligence to sally out in force.
Agreed, playing sieges the way the game encourages you to do (aka right click and assault walls) just doesn’t cut it. In a way doing sieges this way is more relaxing and less stressful
@@das_ollon It's considered cheese because the enemies don't sally out even though they have the advantage.
@@das_ollon It's cheese because it's taking advantage of how the AI works. Any normal halfway intelligent person would either pull their forces back or sally out if they saw their opponent using just ranged/casting troops. The AI not only leaves its troops on the walls even under artillery fire, but it also replaces lost forward troops with its reserves.
@@das_ollon Nahh its total massive cheese just no one cares because the sieges suck anyway.
28:35 Haha XD
Player: Legend please help I can't win this siege
Legend: watch me win it without taking lasting damage
Also Legend: Watch me win this battle without even breaching the gate.
I remember back in the good old days of rome 1. Use towers on the wall, capture gate house, throw all cavarly into the city, gg.
i love that game
to be fair, i've used a similar tactic a few times as scaven in WH2, i position my main army on the opposite side of reinforcing army (skavenslaves). use careful shots using my main, and then rush with reinforcements to the walls to overwhelm ranged enemy units, then rush walls with main, didn't even bother with destroying towers, just used artillery to soften up melee wall defenders, worked like a charm so far every time
This is a perfect example of why towers with full map coverage were a terrible design decision.
@Avatar Ang At the same time how else would they manage the scale of Warhammer's magic megacities?
@@DIEGhostfish have you ever played, Rome 2 or Attila and played a Rome/Roma Siege, That map is HUGE, I think they could have managed a Warhammer mega city.
@Avatar Ang havent u heard about mods wtf
Yeah... this whole thing looked like ultra cheese to me...
...but then again - it's a choice between this or losing half your army zerging.
@@arthasmenethil7208 Can't tell if you're trolling or not. Since when does a mod making a bad aspect of the game good mean that the original aspect it fixed was also good?
Legendoftotalwar fixes the siege of Stalingrad
Ah sieges, an utter waste of 10-30 minutes of lifetime against a completely useless AI.
Kills everything with virtually no losses...*computer* woof, that was a close one
cheese smorgasbord! :-)
But this is how seige was fought in real life except the ai is not smart enough to use artillery and archers or take cover close to the wall
I have played hundreds of hours and just now know of overcasting haha.
When someone rushs into their enemy's fortified settlement, I always hear the garrison sing:
,,Win the battle, lose the war,
Choice of evils lie before for your feet
Retreat! retreat! reteat!"
(Let's see how many still know this song ^^)
What's the title?
@@janpiorko3809 Towers of the Teeth from an old lotr cartoon
"You are standing in the eye of the storm!
Move an inch, and you'll be dead!"
"You are standing underneath
The towers of the teeth
And the eye Blazes Red!"
853k, how to not lose a siege, actually spend money on your armies.
Has 56k income, still runs around with all basic armies...
@@momentarylapse1362 Well, it takes a long time to run your armies all the way back to your recruitment area.
@@chriswhinery925 except he's a dark elf, he can recruit from the black ark
The real power of dark magic is power of darkness imo. Its literally the equivalent of 4 arcane conduits at once which lets you spam spells quickly. The only other good spell is soul stealer in certain situations (particularly if its a black dragon lord). But by having an extreme WOM recharge mage as a supreme sorceress lord, you can make room for a secondary caster such as fire or shadows for vortex damage vs infantry.
Chillwind is a foot speed debuff spell if you're building range centric Armies the -24 to speed on anything it touches for non overcast is good enough to put infantry to crawl speed. The overcast -48 to speed debuff is enough to put cavalry to crawl speed. It's single best field support spell for Armies already proficient for sieges.
My Malekith Stacks has darkshards and reaper bolt throwers without any line holders because it's unnecessary if you can slow 3-4 of the Ais units they will lag behind if you slow other units as well you can pretty much have half the enemy army falling behind.
This doesn't get overwhelmed either by enemy having full 2 stacks with simple corner camping.
All that it takes for chillwind to shine is to recognize which units are fast to fast for range units to shoot down.
datuputi777 chillwind deals a lot of damage too. It does take 2-3 casts before you start getting kills but i’m quite confident it can deal over 2.5k damage if you align it perfectly
Overcast Doombolt can almost one shot Doomwheel, which might be hard to pin down in field battle due to the animation.
Tun J doombolt isn’t worth it when the same nation as fiery bolts aka the single entity killer.
@@adam_somada4266
It's not a damage dealer spell more so on intended unit scale and higher(which is max).
Troy: we need to build a trojan horse to enter the enemy city.
Legends: enter the enemy city? No we don't do that here
Just putting Morathi and the Hag into control groups would've surely helped your micro immensely for the early tower dodging.
It’s even worse than that. He surely would’ve finished the whole battle with no damage if he had only used the Scarecrow Banner.
@@JB-xl2jc wait, the scarecrow banner effects the whole map?
Seras Lilith It applies a -100 leadership debuff to all enemy units map wide. Also, I am lying.
@@JB-xl2jc Everybody knows that lizards are deathly afraid of scarecrows. It's just common sense.
This. This is the video that saved my 150 turn Ikit Claw campaign. I was simply inexperienced that I thought all sieges should be fought on walls..y'know the traditional way.
Needless to say countless Stormvermin and Plague Monks have died before taking the walls and the gate so that weapons teams would move in, and I would have only 3 Plagueclaws. To take care of their mortar or trebuchet or what-have-you. Not to mention 2 turns of siege tower building.
But now? I just send in a plague monk beforehand to damage walls, open up breaches. And then send in the army which is now almost fully ranged. Catapults take out their ranged units, then weapons teams move in to shoot through the breaches. Even the toughest settlements taken with zero losses.
So thanks,Legend. As always, love your content.
The best siege scenario I found was Ikit Claw with endless drums (ammo regen on ratlin gunners). You got the ideal artillery to create pockets in their walls, and then the gunners don't need to be efficient to whittle the army down.
All about the angles: LoTW the Hanzo of WHTW.
Scatter! Simple Geometry!
dead game lul
Never change your outro
After watching so many sieges on the livestream, I knew exactly how this one was going down
The victory types are so broken. I've gotten pyrrhic victories with 0 losses.
It's based on relative HP damage taken so if you have like he did several heroes and big single entities which took damage it's relatively a 'close' victory. Same can happen in other experiences too.
Its dumb. Apparently it's the difference in Balance of Power, which is affected by ammunition. So the more ammo you use, the lower your victory type trends
Really liked how in this video you explained more than usual why you're doing what you're doing. Really helps a noob like me who just got the game and was struggling with exactly these kinds of sieges.
If you just got the game you really shouldn't be playing on this difficulty. Melee units have basically no use on that difficulty level and so it really changes how you would do the battle. He also got pretty lucky here with placement of the monsters all being pretty close to the wall. It would be common for the computers to leave a large force in the central square and he never would have been able to get to them. Basically very hard/legendary difficulty are broken and are really just a kind goofy alternate game mode that should really just be called "ranged only."
Do bolt throwers do more damage on towers with the multi-shot over the single shot?
Edit: Never mind - 8:18
I only learnt this yesterday but the difference is huge. Literally hundreds of hours playing HE and I never noticed tho😂
I used single bolts for a large time because the numbers were similar total, but because there's no spread I assumed there would be more damage missed then if it was spread out
Talking about patience
@@calebbarnhouse496 Yeah, if I had to guess, that is the reason.
You’re point on the minute things done changes how the AI reacts is spot on. Often I find trying emulate how you bait the archers, i wind up getting to close with a flying unit and the entire army decides to charge in.
I remember tying to cheese a siege in Shogun: Total War when I first played it. It failed miserably. I kept all of my army outside the walls, out of the enemy's range, and infiltrated the castle with a bunch of shinobi/ninja squads that could climb the walls.
They didn't last long when they stepped into the capture zone lmao
As lizardmen I like to bring 3-4 stegodon units and a couple carnosaurs, dread saurian, feral stegodon. I use the stegodon ranged to punch holes in walls. Then I run some salamander packs up to barrage archers covering my monsters charging in the walls. Now that the enemy isn't plugging the walls my infantry goes in. Then some horned ones rush through to charge their archers deeper in the city
I still love how when addressing the enemy it is 2 armies plus our favorite mummified toad who is an army himself
“Let’em total war here today” “we are besieging hicks waddel “ captions
Thank you legend...I have always wondered if the single or the multi-shot was better on those bolt throwers but never wanted to test it because lazy, but I listen to you play at work and pick up what you say more than see it. Good stuff man.
Single is meant to snipe large targets down while multi is meant for groups. One isn't better than the other, they are just used for different situations.
@@shadowscall7758 I was kinda talking about for towers although I did not say that so my bad. I meant which was better for taking out towers in big city sieges.
Why didn't i think of this!? Thank you dude! Iv'e been intimidated by sieges and usually auto resolve lol, the results are usually mixed. Almost always have to bring in a couple global recruits though to continue pushing on the enemy.
This helps a lot.
flock of doom is a reasonable slow DoT, a bit like the grey magic miasma, putting them both in the same area can work wonders.
i only found this out when the AI gave me an amber wizard early in an empire campaign.
Man thanks for this video. After seeing it and training a little bit, I enjoy the siege battles again
I've been using the big bolts on towers for so long!
elm I personally find it quite silly that it doesn’t do more damage.
Flock of Doom is not bad against blobs, it's actually rather WoM efficient when you catch 3+ infantry units inside the radius. It's an option if you don't have armour piercing vortices/winds, like here.
another thing is that if you have movement you can attack multiply times in your turn you just need to break then re seige and you can attack again. I do it in empire if all I have is a motor to kill towers. This only works if you get a draw as a outcome. If you get a win you can just chose to settle or not.
Sounds pretty cheesy
@6:16 The moment Legend realises the towers don't reach all the way to the back of the map and he only ever had to distract one tower and Morathi need never have taken any damage (technically if the initial army had been really packed together nothing ever needed to come within range of a tower).
I am pretty sure siege map size varies. I think on most maps towers can shoot right to the back.
I learnt more watching this than playing dozens of sieges by myself.
I was like, how is this a disaster?
But then I realize not everyone has seen your early WH1 dwarf campaigns. My god was that some fuckin' cheese.
Quarrelers are still my favorite unit.
Okay so this makes me wonder.
Is it actually possible to win such large battles/sieges on legendary difficulty without cheesing??
Because if you have to cheese no matter how good you are, that makes the difficulty challenge bad
on legendary? hell no. your melee soldiers are basically a tier below, and the enemy melee are one tier up. like, a tomb guard in legendary difficult is the equivalent of a skeleton warrior because of the buffs the AI receives.
If you dont cheese against the AI, you are basically doomed most of the time. and even if you could, probably the losses you would get simply would fuck you up as the AI would just summon a full stack and attack you with it.
Legendary in Total War is far less a test of skill and more of a test of how hard you can cheese and abuse the AI.
tbh what legend did there is barely cheese, I guess shooting from over the wall is but he could have taken the walls with ladders and dark shards support after taking out the towers and then shoot the dinos from the wall. It wouldn't be cheese anymore be he would have lost alot of dreadspears in the process. Also what I like to do is making a bunch of siege towers (6 is ideal) to take the wall cleanly (ladders will exhaust your units once they reach the top making them very vulnerable)
the name of the settlement garrision veelste koud is litteraly dutch for (way too cold)
Good to know about the multishot versus towers.
Was always not sure about Dark Shards vs Shades , like shades are a higher tier unit but with less models and cost more. But I am gonna try replacing shards with shades and see how it goes (probably was just too lazy to build the shades building)
Their damage output is similar, but they have much longer range that can be buffed into the stratosphere with red line buffs. Second best archer unit in the game after waywatchers.
Shades also have the advantage of being good in melee, so you don't need as many troops holding the line
shades have vanguard position which is really helpful if you need artillery taken out early and high speed means they can dip out faster than my father.
The way I cheese during sieges, I don’t just hug my army next to the wall. I just find a little patch of forest, and I hide them all in one little blob. Of course, sometimes you don’t have place to hide. And elves see your hidden units. But 9 out of 10 times, it’s a legit strategy. The enemy can’t target your units for shit
Wish i had FPS like this in big battles
1. Install a mod that limits tower range
2. Pummel them with artillery, forcing them to sally out the gates.
How to not suck at a siege: "Super easy" *CLICKS THOUSANDS OF TIMES ON MICROMANAGING TWO TINY UNITS*
Pleasure never stops
Okay, but what do you do when the enemy has decent archer units on the walls, the map doesn't have a blind spot in the towers' fields of fire for you to put your army in, and you don't have a ton of artillery?
LegendofTotalEducation
how to win siege:
1. get two stacks of savage orcs
2. immeaditely charge all the walls
3. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD SKULL FOR THE SKULLTHROD
The ottoman empire spent over 20 years besieging a Venetian city in the C17th.
Why are you wasting ammo on 2 towers?
1 I can understand for this particular battle (but most often you don't have to destroy any of them); just place your units outside their firing arc...
You can see the firing arc while hovering over the enemy....
.... then just use spells and items and ranged.....
Siege battles are the most underwhelming and stupid and easiest battles you can possibly get.
Also they'll put all their cav and monsters in the back. If you have a single flyer entity with Ring of Ruby or something, it can shift the balance even more. Or flyers dropping bombs.
Even archers on the wall are useless for the enemy because they will only fire in front and _slightly_ arced to the sides, unless they're fire-on-the-move units.
Not only that but you can also place Terror units (or similar) below them on the wall and they can't hit you but they will still lower their leadership and other effects.
Just one decent spellcaster and an army not completely chaff can take out an army 4-5 times the size (or more) as long as it's a siege.........
.... keyword being *DON'T WASTE AMMO ON TOWERS* of course
Edit: Oh my god 3 towers, really? Seriously man. OK It's your channel, everybody will hate me for speaking up against the Lord Almighty but come on man this is just stupid. All those multishots you could had USED ON THE HUGE BLOB IN THE COURTYARD! Don't title it "how not to suck" when everything you do is wrong 😑
I *KNOW* you are good at WH and that makes this just more frustrating: This is not a "zomg nabb u sux lulz" comment but a "come on buddy wtf" comment... what are you doing.
Also if they're not up on the wall but you want them to, just send a bad unit towards the wall, even put up ladders and cancel it.
In most battles (if you do it *PROPERLY* ) the enemy will _flee_ before you even _start_ climbing the walls.............
And the only mitigating factor is the ammo (so again, do NOT WASTE IT ON TOWERS).....
Arghhh pardon my semi-OCD autistic-ish brain pouring out here....
Now i want to see you using a Lizardmen army to siege the dark elfs!
Very similar to a seige that’s kicking my arse right now. Lizards defending with similar composition, I’m attacking with Noctilus and a lot of Necrofex, supporting army full of gunnery mobs, promethians, 2 carronades, queen bess and 2 mortars plus a gunnery wight. How do you do the siege without the archers’ ability to snipe stuff over walls?
I dont bother with sieges. I have Isabella and her 6 Vampire heroes waste everyone on the walls while 13 Varghulf do the instant can opener on the gates. A pinch of wind of death and the city falls before the skeleton support army even made it to the walls.
i dont want to be picky, but troja itself was not sieged for 10 years, it was a war over a longer time. the siege itself was about 2-3 years itself of the city and they were not completly surounded thanks to the landscape.
So it seems that the real key to sieges is having ranged units that can fire in an arc and wizards
Thanks a lot Legend, I've become so much better at sieges/assaults thanks to your vids !!
The name of the other lizardman army was veelte'koud - veel te koud in dutch means way too cold
Target units at MAX distance to increase the arc. Good shit, half an hour well spent.
I'm not sure what the player did differently to you or what I've done differently in the past but I have played sieges where the move their large units to the capture box. Not had one I couldn't win yet but it does make it significantly harder when you're unable to pick off their large units
They reposition their army based on how you've positioned yours. If you're not getting a good layout, just move your army back and forth and see if you can trick them.
Granted I haven't been playing for that long but I had no idea you could juke and jive long range artillery like that. I thought it basically snap-shot the positional states when firing and everything else was just for show. It feels like my doomwheels take damage from archers regardless of how I move them.
amusingly enough I find the tower targeting MORE accurate when you move than when you don't. I just put my heroes in front of the tower to be targeted and they never get hit more than once or twice.
hey, legend. Could you do videos to show what is the army choice for different races and how to use them?
Dude what the hell flock of doom would have been great against their massed troops just sitting there. You can cast it on units as well so even if they move it follows them and damages stuff they run past. Also this reminds me of Rome 2 , sitting and waiting for my Cretan archers sweep everything off the walls.
This is the exact video I've been looking for.
Should your bolt throwers have been set on armor piercing for taking down towers or no difference? 🏹. obviously you had your hands full but i might have to run a test sometime. 🧐🤔. !! Lol.. Note to self, watch whole video first.. 🤣. Thanks for the psychic answer @8:15 !! 😇
Was happy seen' this alongside my vampire counts friends
It would be interesting to flip this and have the Lizard men attacking.
Honestly this battle was just a bit shit just cause honestly I kind of wish the Al would just be like, "This boi is attacking me with archers, let's attack back" cause honestly that's kinda what a human player would do. They wouldn't just have an archery battle since the Lizardmen are a bit shit in terms of archery, but I love my Lizardmen just cause Aztec imagery with just the whole schtick of being the actual protectors of order despite being reclusive because the Lizardmen did way more damage to the Demons of Chaos in the invasion.
True , a rework is needed because after a while is become boring to do the same thing over and over again
Aenaerion the defender never lost, but lizards did. Gotta suck to be second to knife ears.
I think one easy solution would be to let the AI sally out if you decide to attack on the first turn. It would make sense from a realistic perspective (they see you coming and choose to face you on the battlefield instead of cowering behind their walls), while also preventing you from using artillery/ranged/magic spam to easily defeat superior armies on the walls.
@@ninetailedfox579121 Good idea funny thing is it would increase disaster battles more, think it would be fair that your ambush success chance be in play so you can do the normal siege if you succeed on ambush.
i love this game, but the turn times drive me insane.
No pit of shade, am disapointed.
For realism, I think that would be cool higher tier cities (4&5) have higher walls such as better towers.
Not by much, but enough to be a real obstacle to archers.
And graphically that would be cool as well, top tiers walls would look more like real fortresses instead of looking exactly the same as low tier walls now...
Gg btw 👍
That could add some cool changes to the game, like if some taller monsters could actually fight units on walls, and as is blasting charges just don't reach the walls, if the lowest teir walls got short enough to have them get thrown on them that would be amazing for either defending or attacking
Epic Stone Walls
Thank you for the master class on siege warfare.
Hah, that was a nice and really enjoyable one for the end of the day to just sit back and watch some beautiful cheesing to happen. Surely the cheese god himself is pleased!
Not the best cheese. Could have after breaking 1-2 towers broken the wall on the side of the map. Enemy would send units to close the gap and you could pound them with crossbows until either ammo runs out or they all die, which in this case given how many crossbows he had would have been the latter. Wouldn't even need to move much or take any damage. Could also hug their own wall in parallel with a few units at a time to get better angles around their shields and kill off everything that could ever get on walls.
Man it's like a Shogun 2 siege battle.
your wall is the 12th man
great video. i'd love to see some other videos on siege guides for other factions! this strategy works well for a faction with magic and/or arcing missiles, but how would you approach this same fight with dwarves or vampire counts?
Dwarves have their crossbows which can shoot over walls. Also grudge throwers to some extent. Dwarves might actually be better at this than dark elves. Their artillery would certainly clear the towers faster. Vampire Counts though would have no hope at all on this difficulty. Actually being a melee only faction, I don't imagine even it's really viable to play undead at all at that difficulty. Just another way the higher difficulties in this game are broken and not worthwhile.
I can't believe you let that skink unit on top of the gatehouse deal that much damage.
To kill units on walls walk up to just before the wall and turn almost 90 degrees and shoot a unit at least one tower spacing away. This way the shots will arc onto the wall from the side and none will be stopped by the parapets.
One wonders why the AI does not rush out of the settlement if it has a much better army(armies) than the attacking one. If those two armies just rushed out to meet the dark elves they would just anhiliate them.
land dragon on wall. laugh in dead bodys.
Nice trick. I will try this out tonight.
Thanks for the tips, help me to reduce my casualty on siege. Any tips to counter the enemies if they have artilleries inside their base
that is a great army to easily win sieges against any garrisons, 10 million darkshards, some artillery and magic, siege battles in this game are so easy, it's actually broken.
sometimes I really hate how archers are in this game.
Let's take Kroak, with his passive boost giving him +12% missile resistance that he had, he goes up to 87% missile resistance.
He got destroyed by 3 crossbow volleys, end of the story : missile rule the game >
What happens if you besiege a settlement and don't have a high level flying wizard?
Well, historically sieges lasted for ten years because no one stormed a castle or a fortress, it was just designed to be not take by force ^^
But if the attackers wanted to storm the castle, they would succeed or failed in a matter of a afternoon XD
I think the game put close victory because you used a lot of your arrow ammunition. Read something about that online awhile back.
Tbh Dark Elves are really easy to siege imo.
Sieging with the V Counts though, especially vs high elves or lizardmen... Fiew
well actually, this strategy is somewhat cheezy. Except avoiding multiple towers, destroy them concentrated and avoid them by sticking the troops together, this tactic seems a bit odd. I recommend to use mortar like artillery, to kill towers and infantry at walls, and finally climb the walls with infantry. This strategy would somewhat resemble more a war strategy than simple goofing around with the AI. Also: use Towers, and battering ram, since they might ease your game. Starving people out takes a lot of time, but some lords actually have bonus for that. luring enemies out (with a secound army) and placing a good ambush with your main army can make your life hell a lot easier. Simple dont attack with only two armies a full stack behind a level 5 main settlement with tier 5 defence.... Be a bit more clever how you can conquer those cities. Its just absurd to think this works. I think thats why I think this strategy is cheese.