Defending
Your Castle
Posted at the WarOnline.Net forums
(Without any spell verification! :))
Posted by savetuba:
Your armies have fallen, your
panicing and the enemy has a huge army near your castle. what
do you do? This chapter will help you defend what is rightfully
your's and break any seige on your castle.
If it is early in the game and
the enemy already has units at your door the best way to keep
them out is to use archers behind your walls with large amounts
of cheap troops holding the gate openings.
Lets say the enemy is atacking
the north side. following the example above will hold them
back till the enemy has higher ranged troops. once you have
the main force backing off move some archers into the towers
to get the extra +3 to range to keep them even further away.
While all this is happening build
a large force of scouts/ swords at the south gate. once your
force at the south gate is about 1/2 the size of the enemys
move them out to flank the enemy and cut his/her supply lines.
When the supply lines are cut/disrupted
rush all of your troops from the north gate at the remaining
enemy. Thus ending your seige and giving you a foothold back
into the game.
Posted by Stealth:
Here is a situation I was once
in. I beat 1 guy but he quits before castel takeover. I take
all his resources and go on to the next guy. Its a clear victory
for me until I leave in the middle of a battle for 3 days
straight. I put them on defensive mod but when I get back
my army is mostly gone.
I go straight to building a defensive
castel. I used towers all over the place and made a wall of
palisides around the castel to act as a wall before getting
to my castel ( I suggest adding draw bridges). I deploy marksmen
like crazy (stacks of 40 and 50) and place them in the towers.
I also setup outpost so I could see what was coming.
Well the guy I had almost beaten
was scared to come all the way to my castel but another guy
who was really close wanted to fight me but was afraid to
engage so I pick off his front line pretty easy with my marksmen.
( I have very few melee troops at this time) He starts coming
down and I keep shooting and shooting every turn with every
marksman in range and luckly he retreats. I start deploying
macemen and spearmen groups which proved to help later on.
The guy pulls back for a long
while so I start reinforcing the left side of my castel and
sure enough here he comes on my flank well he stuck with it
the rest of the game and broke through the palisides a few
times but I kept them from going far with my melee troops
while I hit them with my marksmen.
In a defending situation shoot
a group of men to low #'s and then hit another 1 of his big
groups. The big groups are the ones that are going to do the
damage. If you turn his troops in to small #'s then its going
to discourage him and he will want to pull back + it will
be easy to kill them.
I think you can use some of the
things I provided even if your not in the exact situation.
I didn't give to much advice (I want to keep some things to
myself) but I'm sure somebody can use it.
Posted by CTDXXX:
Scenario 2: Endgame
So you're down to the last few. And it turns out the game
leader still has most of his troops left, although to be honest
for the number of players he's knocked out he should have
be subdued at least a little.
So, anyway. Your castle is next
on the list (surprise surprise!) and you know from spy reports
and visual sightings that he clearly outnumbers you. Time
to escape to the castle!
The key to most sieges is of
course time. In this case, you need to keep the main force
at bay for as long as possible, something which you can't
do if he just throws the whole lot straight at your door.
Putting a wall or two over the entrance helps a bit, after
all - if you're surrounded, why would you want back out again?
:P Just remember to get your troops inside first!
(Choosing a wall over a drawbridge means it can't be taken
over later. Again - buying time.)
The next thing you can do is
tie down his main force and harrass them on several fronts.
You don't need to be able to wipe them out, just be a big
enough pain to get him to chase you! If your opponent IS willing
to take on the castle with a reduced force, more fool him
- but more likely you'll just buy some time while your opponent
works out what you're doing :-)
The market helps here a lot.
You need ranged troops - lots of them - so you will likely
need all the market techs, and hopefully you already have
3 barracks and the recruitment techs. The market techs let
you sell off all the other resources you don't need, so you
can focus on your chosen ranged troop (marksmen or ballistae,
chosen for range)
If you're in a skirmish game,
you're a very lucky guy because you can build a massive ballista
stack and put it in a tower, punishing ANYTHING that challenges
you. But otherwise, you need as many of these guys putting
in towers as possible. Remember you are getting range and
combat bonuses, so it helps level the playing field a bit.
The saving grace of a combat
like this is if there's someone left - this is the time to
ally with them. Bear in mind that between you there will be
6 active barracks to your opponent's 3, so if the game lasts
- you'll eventually win it.
The other thing to remember is
that unlike in so many other games, you're not playing for
territory. It is HIS job to rat YOU out, not the other way
around. We play for points, and if he wants his - he has to
earn them :-)
The joy is in the damage you do to him, not how many mines
he chased you from.
If you're lucky, your opponent
will try to charge and fail. If you've got towers actually
inside the castle instead of on the front along with the walls,
he can't actually reach your troops any more except for either
by ranged troops or by a melee charge taking out the front.
He'll need siege weapons or it will take a LONG time to get
you this way! :-)
If you're unlucky, like me, your
opponent will catch on to what you're doing, and set up his
own towers. SERIOUSLY bad news. If you can, shoot the comms.
If not, then make sure your towers are all he can hit. Draw
it out, he can only shoot from a couple of points in this
case :D
Not to be forgetten is, as Stealth
says, the outpost :-)
Build and upgrade. Without them, your range bonus is effectively
useless because you'll not be able to see AND reach them until
the range bonus is ineffective anyway.
Posted by sugarleo:
One further addition to castle
defense concerning the tower armies. As mentioned earlier,
your tower armies are vital to defending the castle under
a seige situation. To protect your armies from melee troops,
a few well placed walls will prevent melee attacks on two
of them and only leave one position that the other two can
be attacked.
Build one wall in front of the
southwest and northeast towers, two walls in defense of the
northwest and southeast towers. Your southeast and northwest
towers are immune then to melee attacks and your southwest
and northeast towers can only be attacked from one position.
Your enemy can't takeover and
remove as you have troops too close and it would take 16 attacks
on 4000 strength walls to destroy and 24 on 5000 strength
walls. If you have any forces at all, you should be able to
prevent that from happening. 8)
Posted by savetuba:
So we now know that the best
castle design is that which has a curtain wall with towers
and outposts inside the curtain wall grounds. A stone main
wall with drawbridges and many towers. and all importan buildings
inside the walls of the castle.
Protecting all sides is simpler
than it looks. first you have the 5-8 towers with ballistas
in them covering past the outer wall and even further still.
NOTE towers 5-8 are inside the main castle. at the outer gates
you have marks in the towers preventing any catapults from
coming near.
Note that the original design has 5 spaces from the W and
E inner side to the outer wall and the N and S inner sides
are 6 tiles to the outer wall. Now inside the main castle
at the gates you also have marks or arbs or archers. marks
could hold past the outer wall, arbs could hole the inner
court yard, archers could fire 1-2 past the outer wall.
You'll have 1-2 barracks that can be producing ranged troops
while the other 1-2 are producing calv/melee.
Actually I predict that the castle
would be completed
in 40+ turns using 36,500 gold+ and about 5000 in other resources.
it would take a grand total of over 50,000 gold to build the
entire castle and to have 200 Comms running here and there
builing things.
Now if you get and average of
2000 gold per turn the construction would take only 25 turns.
What are most of you doing by that time? taking your 2nd castle?
making falcs? bashing the poor noob?
And even if you become under attack you may pause at the different
stages of construction.
-
Phase 1: Build your tech buildings,
barracks and market. take near by resources.(we all do
that)
-
Phase 2: Upgrade your main castle walls
and incorperate your 5th tower.(heres where it changes)
-
Phase 3: Begin building your outer
wall in the corners to protect the outposts
-
Phase 4: Build your 6th tower inside
main castle, start with your outposts.
- Phase 5: Complete you outposts, continue with
outer wall.
By this time the castle is 1/2
finished and you have a small army gaurding your only weak
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