The Stack o' Doom: Effective Composition and Use of Offensive Military Stacks

This with the siege ambush in 1 turn happends when the AI outnumbers you greatly in the area. Maybe above 5-1 and you are in big trouble if this happen to your main stack. I have such experience when i pillage with 2-3 units in the stack. And yes the stack die after all but it makes a lot of troubles to the ai if it is well positioned. Itis very fun to pillage a week enemy and after 10-20 turns the ai deside to take you down. AI is still very stupid after all.

cabert said:

not after 2.08

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I guess now that siege doesn't defend last anymore, you're right. I can't think of why Firaxis implemented this change. Another one in the list of stupid changes, I guess.

aelf said:

I guess now that siege doesn't defend last anymore, you're right. I can't think of why Firaxis implemented this change. Another one in the list of stupid changes, I guess.

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I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but if you say that siege defending always last is a stupid thing, I'm 100% OK.
I still don't understand why siege are immune to colateral damages, anyway.

cabert said:

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but if you say that siege defending always last is a stupid thing, I'm 100% OK.
I still don't understand why siege are immune to colateral damages, anyway.

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No. I meant siege should always defend last. Why? Because why should they be defending much, in the first place? They're siege units. And now that they don't defend last, you can't kill off their protectors in the stack as effectively to expose them. Siege alone is vulnerable and probably unable to take cities. Worse, siege units are immune to collateral damage, so you get the situation that is described here, countering enemy artillery with your own artillery in your stack of doom. This can effectively nullify the effect collateral damage is supposed to have on big stacks.

aelf said:

No. I meant siege should always defend last. Why? Because why should they be defending much, in the first place?

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They should defend if they are the best defenders. They should not defend if they are not the best defenders. This is the whole idea of the combat system.

DaviddesJ said:

They should defend if they are the best defenders. They should not defend if they are not the best defenders. This is the whole idea of the combat system.

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But, combined with the immunity to collateral damage, it would make a stack of artillery, regular troops and a Medic III unit too difficult to bust.

aelf said:

But, combined with the immunity to collateral damage, it would make a stack of artillery, regular troops and a Medic III unit too difficult to bust.

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You mean it "does" make the stack too difficult to attack? Because, that's how the game does work. And I don't see any problem.

I tried the set of four barrage & accuracy cats. They worked well.

Do trebs really tear down city defenses faster than cannons?

a4phantom said:

Do trebs really tear down city defenses faster than cannons?

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Technically, yes. Unpromoted Cannons remove 20% of a city's defenses on each turn, while unpromoted Trebuchets remove 25% per turn. An Accuracy promotion increases that, for either unit, by 10%.

(My own theory regarding the historical reasoning behind this: Trebs were often used to lob things like dead, diseased animals into a city to make the populace sick and reduce their resistance. Cannons--not so much. So I guess that accounts for the additional 5%.)

Here's the thing, however. Are you really going to give a surviving Trebuchet an Accuracy promotion? Those things get +100% strength when attacking a city directly and they mete out collateral damage. Accuracy siege units are treasured jewels you preserve for each city attack. The temptation with a Treb to throw it at a city defender is just to great, in my opinion.

I usually have my 4-5 Accuracy Catapults by the time Trebuchets are available and keep using them. If I'm flush with cash I may promote them to Cannons. If there are 4 of them, they'll strip 120% of a city's defenses on one turn, which will take care of most cities for ya.

Yeah, that's about the shape of it for me, but since I almost never get Artillery Trebs are the best city bombardiers available for me, so I try to get a few with Accuracy. A city with a barracks and just one Great Instructor can create a fresh unit with Accuracy.

And in my view cannons should do far more to weaken a city's defenses than trebs, the use of cannons (which occurs bizarrely late in the game) made almost every existing fortification obsolete.

a4phantom said:

Yeah, that's about the shape of it for me, but since I almost never get Artillery Trebs are the best city bombardiers available for me, so I try to get a few with Accuracy. A city with a barracks and just one Great Instructor can create a fresh unit with Accuracy.

And in my view cannons should do far more to weaken a city's defenses than trebs, the use of cannons (which occurs bizarrely late in the game) made almost every existing fortification obsolete.

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Not necessarily. It could be darn difficult for cannon to open a breach in some fortifications' walls, and murder for the forlorn hope assaulting said breach.

Sisiutil said:

Not necessarily. It could be darn difficult for cannon to open a breach in some fortifications' walls, and murder for the forlorn hope assaulting said breach.

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Some very well constructed fortifications were built to withstand cannons, but I believe I was right to say that nearly all preexisting fortifications were vulnerable. As the prime example I'll cite Constantinople, whose walls had resisted many sieges (although the Vikings and the Fourth Crusade got in) until the Turks came at them with cannons. The fact of cannons overwhelming most defenses contributed to the rise of nations, since only kings could afford castles built to resist cannons and all the lords and barons' keeps were obsoleted.

I would guess that by 1453 cannons were not exactly new. The fall of Constantinople was more due to the fact that the Byzantines were heavily outnumbered than to the superiority of Ottoman siege warfare, which is popularised by Age of Empires.

When Sultan Mehmet II laid siege to Constantinople in April 1453, he used 68 Hungarian-made cannons, the largest of which was 26 feet long and weighed 20 tons. This fired a 1,200 pound stone cannonball, and required an operating crew of 200 men.[7] Two such bombards had initially been offered to the Byzantines by the Hungarian artillery expert Urban, which were the pinnacle of gunpowder technology at the time; he boasted that they could reduce "even the walls of Babylon".[6] However, the fact that the Empire could not afford it illustrates the financial costs of artillery at the time. These cannon also needed 70 oxen and 10,000 men just to transport them.[6] They were extremely loud, adding to their psychological impact, and Mehmet believed that those who unexpectedly heard it would be struck dumb.[6]

The 55 day bombardment of Constantinople left massive destruction, as recounted by the Greek chronicler Kritovoulos:

"And the stone, borne with enormous force and velocity, hit the wall, which it immediately shook and knocked down and was itself broken into many fragments and scattered, hurling the pieces everywhere and killing those who happened to be nearby."[6]

Byzantine counter artillery allowed them to repel any visible Turkish weapons, and the defenders repulsed any attempts to storm any broken points in the walls and hastily repaired any damage. However, the walls could not be adapted for artillery, and towers were not good gun emplacements. There was even worry that the largest Byzantine cannon could cause more damage to their own walls than the Turkish cannon.[6] Gunpowder had also made the formerly devastating Greek fire obsolete, and with the final fall of what had once been the strongest walls in Europe on May 29, "it was the end of an era in more ways than one".[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon

Still, you must look at how many Byzantine defenders there were and how many Ottoman attackers (and the Ottomans lost about 10 times more men). This sort of situation wouldn't have been that great a problem if there were enough Byzantine troops to use against the Ottomans. Forts remained strategic positions long after that, despite subsequent developments in artillery, provided the defenders could do more than just sit inside and await certain doom.

And the prowess of Ottoman siege warfare was only famously demonstrated in this instance, AFAIK. They failed miserably in Vienna, when they did not have such a clear numerical superiority (though they still outnumbered the Holy League 2 to 1).

Anyway, some facts to counter those in the article you quoted:

Urban's cannon had several drawbacks, however. It could hardly hit anything, not even as large as Constantinople; it took three hours to reload; the cannon balls were in very short supply; and the cannon collapsed under its own recoil after six weeks (this fact however is disputed[1], being only reported in the letter of archbishop Leonardo di Chio[10] and the later and often unreliable Russian chronicle of Nestor Iskinder).

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For weeks Mehmed's massive cannon fired on the walls, but it was unable to sufficiently penetrate them, and due to its imprecision and extremely slow rate of reloading the Byzantines were able to repair most of the damage after each shot.

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The Turks made numerous frontal assaults on the wall, but were repelled with heavy losses. From mid-May to 25 May, the Ottomans sought to break through the walls by constructing underground tunnels in an effort to sap them. Many of the sappers were Serbians sent from Novo Brdo by the Serbian Despot. They were placed under the rule of Zaganos Pasha. However, the Byzantines employed an engineer named Johannes Grant (who was said to be German but was probably Scottish), who had countertunnels dug, allowing Byzantine troops to enter the tunnels and kill the Turkish workers. The Byzantines intercepted the first Serbian tunnel on the night of 16 May. Subsequent tunneling efforts were intercepted on 21, 23, and 25 May. The Christian defenders of Constantinople destroyed the tunnels with Greek fire and vigorous combat. On 23 May, the Byzantines captured and tortured two Turkish officers, who revealed the location of all the Turkish tunnels, which were then destroyed. [12]

Mehmed offered to raise the siege for an astronomical tribute that he knew the city would be unable to pay. When this was declined, Mehmed planned to overpower the walls by sheer force, knowing that the Byzantine defenders would be worn out before he ran out of troops.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_constantinople

Ok, my facts have been countered, cannon were a huge step backwards from trebuchets for demolishing walls and fortifications and wikipedia has failed us as ultimate adjudicator of reality. It can't even commit to a consistent wikiality.

a4phantom said:

cannon were a huge step backwards from trebuchets for demolishing walls and fortifications.

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Initially, yes. Later on, no. It's just that certain things are too hyped up, such as the importance of early cannons in siege warfare.

And, yes, you have to read a lot on Wikipedia before you get a grasp of the truth due to its inconsistency

The fall of Constantinople was very clear about 50 years before it falls because the city were surrounded. The Only existing way for the defenders to supply were from the black sea throw ships. The exact thing that break them down was that the ottomans succeed to move 80 ships by land from sea of marmara to black sea. This enable a full blockade of Constantinople and then the city fall.
The History of the Ottoman invasion in europe is very strange and curiosly. (From what i have read). The byzatinian fortress on the Dardanelles Strait fall down beacause of an earthquake. The Ottomans take advantage of this and they take their first lands in Europe.Thats happend around 1350. After that they made Edrine thier capitol. The first Ottoman atempts to go further in Europe were stop by the Bulgarians. Later a dynastic problem came for the bulgarian crown and one of the inheritors was the ottoman sultan because his mother was a bulgarian princess. As a tradition the pretenders defended their rights by force - The sultan won. Thats how the bulgarian middle age country fall(around 1400 year) and the Ottoman empire risen.