Rome Total War Tactics: City Defense
Dan Stephenson
there. Here is my composition on city defense. Thoughts? RTW is
totally amazing, I sure wish they'd make a new version of it.
1) the biggest danger when your city is attacked are the seige towers,
as they put out a lot of fire on your troops on the walls. If you
defend you walls, keep them off the walls until the tower gets very
close, then try to get them in position. You will be able to, if you
time it right. And your troops will not be reduced by half from the
tower fire.
2) This does mean you cannot reduce the enemy forces by arrow fire of
your own, if you're keeping your troops off the wall. Therefore, if
there is a sizeable force attacking, and I have modest defense forces,
I skip defending the walls. Let the the enemy have them. I repeat the
bridge-defense mechanism, and defend a narrow street leading into the
city square. Typically, the enemy only goes for one entrance, or if
multiple, a great majority go for one entrance only. So align your
best defense infantry with your archers behind firing fire-arrows.
I've used this tactic many times with success. When I win on Very Hard
difficulty settings, the key is to keep winning new cities with your
armies, not keeping your best troops in cities to defend them through
raw numbers. Raw numbers confer no advantage.
3) If your city gates are busted open from a prior attack, or similar
with a section of wall, use the bridge-defense tactic there. About 50%
of the time, the enemy streams toward that one open spot. This is
particularly crucial in the wooden walls where you cannot place archers
on the tops of the walls. By the way, the "lead enemy general in front
of towers" works with the weak wooden wall towers, just not as well.
You have to be very interactive and run around in a kind of circle.
The enemy (or your troops for that matter) never ever cut a corner in a
chase. They obey a line-of-sight pursuit guidance and therefore always
result in a tail-chase.
4) You can often send out a cavalry unit to tease the enemy to chase it
to the walls, where you escape through the gates. But not before the
towers and the huge numbers of archers you've emplaced on the walls do
their damage.
5) Many times, if you sortie to attack a besieger, they run away. The
way enemy formations move, is often in their battle formation or
similar. This means, if you can guess which way they will run, you can
place your long-range archers all on that one side of your walls, and
they'll take
out a lot of enemy before your infantry even leave the gates.
6) When those beseiging armies run, send your general / cav units out
first, to chase down stragglers. Especially the artillery units.
Also, archers often run slower than enemy spearman, and cav typically
beats archers. Even if the enemy spearmen and archers are running at
the same pace, they'll be separated and you can attack the archers
anyway, or at least shock-attack and then run away before the spearmen
arrive.
7) When the battering ram lumbers in, time a cavalry attack to occur
just as it gets in range of the tower fire. This attack causes the ram
to stop. Then race your cav back to safety. The extra time is usually
enough to cause it to catch fire. This "attack to stop" also works for
towers and ladder-carriers, although attacking towers usually aren't
destroyed, but, ladder-carriers are very vulnerable and you can get
many kills in. Especially if this disturbs the enemy unit when within
range if your archers on the walls. Note: you may have to send out
the cav from the side gates, to avoid getting mobbed by the enemy.
Usually, there is still time to run around.
8) If a unit gets in your city, feint-attack it with cavalry to draw
it into a chase. Have the enemy unit chase your cav all along the
inside of the walls, where inward firing towers will take out the enemy
unit.
9) Often when attacking with a sortie from the city, and particular
true for huge numbers of Hordes, keep your back to your city walls,
particularly with one or two of your towers nearby. Mini-sortie with
loose formation archers to take out their horse archers. When they
attack, go to close formation and withdraw behind your infantry line.
Then fire more arrows, and this time the towers join in the fire. And
if at any point the enemy truly engages, you will at least have your towers on
your side.
10) One of the best ways to defend a city under seige, is to attack a
city of the beseiging army. That will draw off their army in order to
attack your beseiging forces. This does not always require a BIG army
on your part, either. This is key to victory when I played as the
Frankes on Very Hard / Very Hard, where you are surrounded by nations
and you are always getting under seige.
11) Upgrading to even the smallest stone wall is crucial, so you can
have archers on the walls. You can have a ton of archers in a wooden
walled city, and they really won't do any good. Put them on a small
stone wall, and they can be devestating to an attacking enemy.
12) Typically onagers are useless inside your city, as you cannot take them
outside the walls. However, there is a potentially large benefit in defense
of city walls when attacked by towers. This is particularly true of
the large city walls where the enemy towers are extremely powerful. The
tactic is, when deploying your troops, place the onagers far back in the city,
on side-streets. The idea is to provide them a line of fire.. to the attacking
towers! This is the only way I know of it destroy the big powerful attacking
towers. The tactic does not always work because you do not know in
advance where the attack towers are positioned, or where they will go
when you start the battle, or the window of time when the line of fire is
available may be small. But try for it, and if they have just tower in
particular, or if you have multiple onagers, it may be possible to rob the
enemy of their best chance at taking your city walls.
--
Dan Stephenson
http://web.mac.com/stepheda
Travel pages for Europe and the U.S.A. (and New Zealand too)
Sheldon England
> RTW is totally amazing, I sure wish they'd make a new version of it.
They are releasing Shogun 2 - Total War later this year and most are
sure that Rome will be the next re-make. IMO Rome, Shogun, and Medieval
2 are the best of the TW games.
- Sheldon
Dan Stephenson
What is the gameplay in Shogun like? I mean, is it RTW transplanted to Japan?
rob
"Dan Stephenson" wrote ...
>>> RTW is totally amazing, I sure wish they'd make a new version of it.
>>
>> They are releasing Shogun 2 - Total War later this year and most are sure
>> that Rome will be the next re-make. IMO Rome, Shogun, and Medieval 2 are
>> the best of the TW games.
> What is the gameplay in Shogun like? I mean, is it RTW transplanted to
> Japan?
Demo is available at Steam, probably other places as well.
I'm in Christchurch so will download it as soon as my broadband is back up
Insane Ranter
Sheldon England
>
> What is the gameplay in Shogun like? I mean, is it RTW transplanted to
> Japan?
Actually, they have dumbed down the tactics/battles in each new game.
Shogun has the best 'models' of them all. The graphics are obviously not
as nice but only in Shogun do troops tire out when climbing hills so
height is an important advantage. Rain/snow and wind affect arrow
accuracy and effectiveness, and fog obscures. Bridge provinces (rivers
that can only be crossed at primary bridges) are a major pain to capture
but a delight to defend.
As far as the campaign, it is similar to Rome but there is no senate to
get in your way. The emperor may favour other clans but there is nothing
stopping you from attacking at will. The Portugese and Dutch traders
eventually bring in muskets and arquebusiers ... and Christianity if you
so choose. The ninja are like assassins but moreso the geisha are spies
and your best hired killers. Each of the clans have strengths and
weaknesses.
There are no siege weapons at all in Shogun but you can still lay siege
to castles in the campaign map. There are no missions -- just war and
politics. Kensai are fun to watch in action -- these are sword masters
who can as individuals take out small groups of enemies.
The biggest failing of Shogun, IMO, is the beach invasion oversight.
Once you know where an enemy port is, you can send armies from your
ports to beach invade. The enemy AI never takes advantage of this in
return so I play without ever using this loophole. Apparently Shogun 2
will include naval warfare.
FWIW.
- Sheldon
Dan Stephenson
> Dan Stephenson wrote:
>>
>> What is the gameplay in Shogun like? I mean, is it RTW transplanted to
>> Japan?
>
> Actually, they have dumbed down the tactics/battles in each new game.
Well this is bad news. I hope the developers know better when they
make the sequel to Rome Total War.
I would also like to see onagers and ballistas on city walls, or, at
least be able to direct towers to what I want them to shoot at.
Ross Ridge
>Actually, they have dumbed down the tactics/battles in each new game.
>Shogun has the best 'models' of them all. The graphics are obviously not
>as nice but only in Shogun do troops tire out when climbing hills so
>height is an important advantage. Rain/snow and wind affect arrow
>accuracy and effectiveness, and fog obscures. Bridge provinces (rivers
>that can only be crossed at primary bridges) are a major pain to capture
>but a delight to defend.
I remeber all these things (except wind) affecting battles in Rome:
Total War. I've never played Shogun or any other of the games in the
series, so I don't know if they had as big a factor in Rome, but I've
definately used these things to my advantage.
Ross Ridge
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //
Spalls Hurgenson
<stephed...@mac.com> wrote:
>On 2011-03-02 16:57:57 -0600, Sheldon England said:
>
One feature I've always wanted is to have the computer resolve the
battles, but let me WATCH it do so.
I enjoy the strategic game but I'm tactically inept when it comes to
the actual battles. Fortunately, the games let you autoresolve the
conflicts, but they did it behind the scenes; you just got a summary
screen telling you the outcome. Since the whole point of the Total War
games was battles with the insane number of units, I missed out on a
lot of the experience.
Watching the battles would be a lot more fun than a dry outcome
summary. It might inspire me to fight a few of the battles myself,
too.
John Doe
> Dan Stephenson <stephed...@mac.com> wrote:
>> Sheldon England said:
>>
> One feature I've always wanted is to have the computer resolve
> the battles, but let me WATCH it do so.
I had the same (IMO good) idea about chess, but most were too
anti-chess computer at the time.
That sounds like a good option for real-time strategy (RTS),
when playing either skirmish or multiplayer.
--
Dan Stephenson
> On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 19:13:06 -0600, Dan Stephenson
> <stephed...@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2011-03-02 16:57:57 -0600, Sheldon England said:
>>
> One feature I've always wanted is to have the computer resolve the
> battles, but let me WATCH it do so.
>
> I enjoy the strategic game but I'm tactically inept when it comes to
> the actual battles. Fortunately, the games let you autoresolve the
> conflicts, but they did it behind the scenes; you just got a summary
> screen telling you the outcome. Since the whole point of the Total War
> games was battles with the insane number of units, I missed out on a
> lot of the experience.
That is a good point. After all, the computer DOES do the AI. Even AI
for 're-enforcement armies'.
Did you read my city defense article? Hopefully that gave you some
ideas. I'll write a big battlefield article at some point, but not
tonight. The basics, though, are: put archers behind infantry and try
to use cavalry to wheel around the enemy and attack while they're
engaged with your infantry.
>
> Watching the battles would be a lot more fun than a dry outcome
> summary. It might inspire me to fight a few of the battles myself,
> too.
even if you do nothing in the battles, you can watch the AI attack you.
Usually the starting army formation is OK.
Sheldon England
>
> One feature I've always wanted is to have the computer resolve the
> battles, but let me WATCH it do so.
Actually that would be a very good 'tutorial' of sorts for learning
techniques.
> Watching the battles would be a lot more fun than a dry outcome
> summary. It might inspire me to fight a few of the battles myself,
> too.
Agreed.
- Sheldon