Stack of Doom composition for BTS?

How should I structure my SOD for BTS?

1. Which units are more effective for city raiding (Swords/Mace/Grens+Rifles/Infantry/Tanks or Cats/Trebs/Cannons/Artillery)? If it's the foot soldier path, which I used in Warlords, assume that the gunpowder units have CR3 promos left over from their earlier Melee careers and that a sacrificial siege engine or two is thrown at tough cities first to take the edge off the defenders. Should I use siege weapons as my primary city raiders instead?

2. I think I read somewhere that bombardment has changed. I like to have 4 siege engines with accuracy accompany my SOD to tear down the walls and cultural defenses quickly, will it take more or fewer now?

3. Has combat in the field changed at all? I mean, do you do anything differently with your SOD defenders?

i think all the mechanics are the same except the bombardment part . It took forever now and you better just suicide cats trebs to weaken defender . and seige no longer can kill a defender when atack , if it won it just retreat

There is a big drawback of siege in BtS besides the non killing : the mounted unit's flank attack. If your foe has tech parity it can make your day pretty bad if you rely in 80% siege SOD, like in the good ol'Warlords days.You need more anti-mounted units to cope with that...

Other issue is the airships..... Their mechanics it is at least, not as well thought as it could be, making them OP in some situations. Even on land, where they aren't as OP , they can be a big PITA because they can tone down the best units. good ol'march promo helps a lot in here.

Yeah, I'm concerned about airships because I usually camp outside the city walls for a few turns to bombard the defenses and rest up damage from the counterattack that hit me on the march over. But with airships I'll be getting hit every turn, unlike with catas which I can destroy. Do I understand correctly that now you can only have four air squadrons in a city without an airport? Is there a cap if you do have an airport?

Cap at 8 with an airport.

As for tearing down defenses, siege engines now function as they should be: when a unit says that it will remove 10% of defenses, it does not remove 10% of the actual defenses (so 2% if there is 20% defenses), but lessen the percentage by 10% (so 20% goes down to 10%, not 18 as before). This makes both that less siege are needed for low defenses, and more for bigger defenses. Try tearing down a castle with only a few cats =)

JujuLautre said:

Cap at 8 with an airport.

As for tearing down defenses, siege engines now function as they should be: when a unit says that it will remove 10% of defenses, it does not remove 10% of the actual defenses (so 2% if there is 20% defenses), but lessen the percentage by 10% (so 20% goes down to 10%, not 18 as before). This makes both that less siege are needed for low defenses, and more for bigger defenses. Try tearing down a castle with only a few cats =)

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That's certainly a lot more fair.

That aircraft cap is probably fair too, but it's sure gonna put a crimp in my style!

Definitely load up on the suicide Cats/Cannons. I prefer to attack with cats and cannons loaded up with collateral damage upgrades, rather then bombard with them. It seems to work out for the best that way.

Siege in BTS can't kill, which made one major change for me... Cleanup units become all the more important to keep your stack going. Any SOD needs a ton of siege - that's a constant. But, using a ton of siege VS competitive/tough defenders, you'll find that 90% of the defenders will be almost dead, and 10% will still be fairly tough. All you need heavily specialized city smashers for is that 10% of tough nuts to crack, and for the other 90% of the defenders, medic, drill, defence, or field-strike units will do.

So whereas in Warlords I'd have stacks which were half CR macemen, now I'll have stacks which are more like 20% CR macemen, and a lot more general purpose units (drill longbows, pikemen, crossbows, medic elephants, etc). The drill units, in particular, are more useful since they tend not to take damage from low hitpoint units, which you'll be fighting a lot of.

So, moral of the story? More variety, less specialization, and don't discount drill - that's my take on the BTS SOD.

I have usually about 50% siege, and a bit of everything else thrown in.