That is a pretty big "IF" When planning a war you should have some idea about how you are going to defend your own lands vs enemy SOD's. "Well, I hope they attack here" is not exactly a plan.
How to deal with siege? Flanking or counter-siege?
- Thread starter Zeiter
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That is a pretty big "IF" When planning a war you should have some idea about how you are going to defend your own lands vs enemy SOD's. "Well, I hope they attack here" is not exactly a plan.
Artichoker
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With the Moving Caterpillar Defense, there's a benefit in using more stacks. The original plan requires a minimum of 3 stacks, but in practice it's better to use more stacks, in order to better limit the movement of the enemy.
For example, if you have 5 stacks you should be in position to corner the enemy stack in this manner:
XOX
XXX
If a defensive tile is not available, the default solution is to build a fort on that tile and assign at least one Longbowman the City Garrison promotion.
If you're still not confident about the defensive value of a plain Fort, the other solution is to move the line on which the Caterpillar's trajectory will be, to a more defensive area.
The problem with forts is that it destroys the terrain improvement already there. Now with the 5 stack plan you have 10Longbows which could be holed up in the threatened city. That is a LOT of LB's. If I have that many LB's defending a city it would take a pretty big S.O.D. to make me worry. An S.O.D. that size is just going to roll right over a little 2 LB stack without a hiccup and proceed to the city anyway. But now even if you rush your LB's back to the city, they aren't going to have time to get the 25% fortification bonus.
Skallagrimson
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I think we're losing sight of the context of the situation: an AI that brings a force way heavy on the side of siege. 10 LBs would be in *more* danger sitting in a city waiting for collateral damage than they would be across rivers, on hilltops, and in the woods playing "none shall pass" in smaller stacks, less vulnerable to collateral damage.
If the stack is that heavily weighted towards siege units, then attacking with siege to weaken the anti-mounted counter units then repeated flanking attacks to destroy the siege. If you do not have sufficient mounted units for the task, the skipping the suicide cats may be the best path. Use whatever offensive troops you have to attack the stack. Killing and wounding as many nonsiege units as possible. The idea being that no matter how many siege units the enemy brings they will still need nonsiege to actually kill the city defenders. Your own defensive siege units can be drill promoted and attack from within the city walls. By this time enemy siege will become the stack defenders for the enemy. The drill promotions will help your own cats survive. Barrage is such a weak promotion, you are better off surviving the first attack and then doing more collateral the next turn. That amounts to a 100% increase in collateral damage.
I have found that the enemy will either retreat or pause to heal the wounded troops. this gives you time to move/whip more mounted to wipe out the siege units.
Skallagrimson
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True that. I suppose what we're boiling down to is if all you have at a given time is a handful of longbows, IMO.
Artichoker
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Keep in mind, however, that the Moving Caterpillar Defense can be used to defend multiple cities, not only one, since their power is projected over a line, rather than on a single point.
Because of this, the hole-up strategy would often require garrisoning multiple cities, and still offer no protection for the land near the cities. Even if you use the rapid movement of roads to shuffle units between your cities, you're still left with the situation of forfeiting the fortification bonus you claimed to have gained when using the hole-up strategy.
Skallagrimson
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One point of reference I'm going by is a scenario game I played a few weeks ago as Spain in an American colonies game (North and South America map, starts at 1600 with all the major colonial leaders and natives like Monty, etc.) I had South America all mopped up and had black-dirted Monty, postponed the take-down of the Mayans (pretty much the way Spain did it in history), and was recovering the economy, trying to squeeze out of the Strike Zone with all the expansive land mass. During that time the Navajo (Genghis Khan) built up a stack comprised of about six crossbows, six pikes, 10 to 20 keshliks, and easily 30 to 40 cats. It was just cats for daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays, and I knew if I just hunkered in my border city waiting with the skeleton crew of 2 musketeers and a conquistador, they would be toast on a stick.
Fortunately I had Steel and had just finished Iron Works in a high-prod, high-food Tenochtitlan, and so was then able to crank out 1 grenadier per turn. Goditso (Genghis) was aiming for the one tile approaching my city that would not attack from across the river, a plains tile to the south (which meant he had to march his stack around some impassable mountains and along 7 or 8 plains and desert hills to get there). So I cranked out grens with Guerilla II, layering the defense on each tile in his path. Each gren was suicided, but they went down Thermopylae style, taking crippling numbers of Navajo with them. By the time the Navajo were at that first Mexican border city, they had about 10 cats, 2 crossbows, and about 4 keshliks, all severely wounded. Then I switched to conquistadors in the IW city and mopped up. The musketeers never had to fight as the Navajo still had to sit and bombard and try to heal a bit.
Across flat land the defense wouldn't have been as easy, but in an all-horse counteroffense I think I would have suicided more units (at least at first).
Fortunately I had Steel and had just finished Iron Works in a high-prod, high-food Tenochtitlan, and so was then able to crank out 1 grenadier per turn. Goditso (Genghis) was aiming for the one tile approaching my city that would not attack from across the river, a plains tile to the south (which meant he had to march his stack around some impassable mountains and along 7 or 8 plains and desert hills to get there). So I cranked out grens with Guerilla II, layering the defense on each tile in his path. Each gren was suicided, but they went down Thermopylae style, taking crippling numbers of Navajo with them. By the time the Navajo were at that first Mexican border city, they had about 10 cats, 2 crossbows, and about 4 keshliks, all severely wounded. Then I switched to conquistadors in the IW city and mopped up. The musketeers never had to fight as the Navajo still had to sit and bombard and try to heal a bit.
Across flat land the defense wouldn't have been as easy, but in an all-horse counteroffense I think I would have suicided more units (at least at first).
Good idea. The only thing that could spoil this plan would be if the enemy happened to bring along a few horse archers as well, or even worse, war elephants. Even in that case, though, that would just require a few more axes to sacrifice on the mounted in order to get to attacking the opposing axes. After a few more sacrifice on those, then you could finally start attacking swords or catapults. Hmmm...or maybe just suiciding a lesser number of catapults would be in order in this tricky situation.
As for the caterpillar defense, the only time I will use that is in a wooded area when defending against lone barbarians in the early game when I don't want them to pillage my improvements, and when I don't have good offensive units yet to counter them by attacking them (let's say I only still have archers, and I see spearmen on the horizon. Get 3 archers along my wooded frontier, and voila!) Other than that, though, I am skeptical of using this.
As for flanking...I didn't realize that mounted units only have to not die in order to do flanking damage (they can retreat). In that case, if you are using mounted units to counter siege, they would be best served with the flanking I + II promotions.
azzaman333
meh
Send a couple of barrage seige weapons at the stack, to give the Flank attack units a good chance of survival then send in the horse archers/curassiers/cavalry.
Artichoker
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The problem with this strat is that your catapults have a good chance of doing no collateral damage at all due to the immunity to collateral damage of catapults.
azzaman333
meh
I thought that collateral effectively ignores the seige weapons, and just hurts everything else. And all I need is to harm the spears/pikes/phants enough to survive more attacks than not.
Artichoker
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No, it's a 2-step process:
1) The target units for collateral damage are determined.
2) The collateral damage is dealt to the units determined in step 1).
For example, you might be facing a stack of 14 Catapults and 6 Pikemen. Assuming you attack with a Catapult first, the set of units might be chosen as 1 Pikeman and 4 Catapults. In this case, the 4 Catapults take no damage and the 1 Pikeman takes a normal amount of collateral damage.
Incidentally, if the total number of units in a stack is 2, for example, it is less than the number of units that normally take collateral damage (5 for Catapults, IIRC). However, in this case only 1 unit takes collateral damage (the unit that was directly attacked suffers no collateral damage).
Artichoker
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That's fine with me...you're entitled to your own opinion.
I'd like to point out, however, that a Caterpillar Defense of 6 Longbowmen would make mincemeat out of the 16-unit stack you presented in the OP.
I am not convinced by the "catepillar defence" at all. I do occupy a strong defensive position such as a hill next to the city to deny that to the enemy SoD. Usually I rely on counter attacking the SoD when it draws up next to my city. A city can be the ideal place to fight a multiple round combat giving better healing and the walls take some time to knock down.
Quite frankly if the AI has a lot of seige and not much else I know I'm safe. Seige can't kill on their own! All I have to do is spam defensive counter attackers and kill the real troops, and then finish off the seige.
Longbows are ideal for the counter attackers (if you have no metals) and deal harshly with any other troops in the age on a cost effective basis only HAs, WE and macemen are tough, but even then a sacrifical longbow will usually soften them up enough for a second to win - that is a one for one trade and the longbow is cheaper. All other early troops such as spear, axes, swords, pike, chariots and cats and trebs are better than a 50% chance for an attacking longbow in the open. A stack of 10 longbows (with combat promotions) is a fearsome attacking machine.
If the enemy is approching with a big SoD consisting of mostly seige then don't build your own cats or even HAs (if he has pikes) but spam longbows and when you have a big enough stack kill or severely wound all his stack defenders (you should outnumber them) and then the city specialist attackers (CR axe and swords) and then start chopping into the cats and trebs.
Quite frankly if the AI has a lot of seige and not much else I know I'm safe. Seige can't kill on their own! All I have to do is spam defensive counter attackers and kill the real troops, and then finish off the seige.
Longbows are ideal for the counter attackers (if you have no metals) and deal harshly with any other troops in the age on a cost effective basis only HAs, WE and macemen are tough, but even then a sacrifical longbow will usually soften them up enough for a second to win - that is a one for one trade and the longbow is cheaper. All other early troops such as spear, axes, swords, pike, chariots and cats and trebs are better than a 50% chance for an attacking longbow in the open. A stack of 10 longbows (with combat promotions) is a fearsome attacking machine.
If the enemy is approching with a big SoD consisting of mostly seige then don't build your own cats or even HAs (if he has pikes) but spam longbows and when you have a big enough stack kill or severely wound all his stack defenders (you should outnumber them) and then the city specialist attackers (CR axe and swords) and then start chopping into the cats and trebs.
Artichoker
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Surprisingly, I agree with you mostly here, despite your disbelief of the power of the Caterpillar Defense.
The truth of the matter is, the Longbow units used in the Caterpillar Defense can take on a dual role as both defender and attacker. Nowhere have I suggested to use the Caterpillar Defense as the only measure to counter enemy SODs. On the contrary, it is best used in combination with a counterattacking strategy involving another SOD of your own, designed for this purpose.
The advantage of the Caterpillar, however, is that the intial battle required for the enemy SOD to pass through the Caterpillar will, on average, take away a good number of units from the enemy SOD. The effectiveness of the strategy improves with the distance to your city, because this means you will get more chances to induce an attack by the enemy SOD against your fortified position.
After you have exhausted your opportunties to fight defensively, the Longbow units from the Caterpillar can regroup and either join the counterattacking SOD or the city garrison.
I did not know this. I checked it in WB. It is true. I would now advocate just attacking with FlankingI/II and hope the unit withdraws.
Artichoker
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See, I came to this debate prepared...I was able to turn the last two counterarguments in my favor!
Skallagrimson
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Yeah, if he's mostly siege, the counter is mostly horses, simply enough, presuming you don't have a lot of strong terrain to defend from, as for some reason I've seen AI stacks try to attack forrested hill positions with trebuchets, and absent the city raid bonuses they just needlessly suicide themselves, even against weakly old spearmen. And since they'll send siege first if I stack 2 or more, this does give some credence to a "caterpillar-like" defense in some circumstances. Especially if you consider the AI tendency to pillage every step of the way, you want them to pay for each pillage as well, if the terrain makes it possible.
I don't full-on caterpillar though--I just claim the defensible terrain, and if they skirt around on low flat land, then I make them pay for that with counterattacks.
I don't full-on caterpillar though--I just claim the defensible terrain, and if they skirt around on low flat land, then I make them pay for that with counterattacks.
Artichoker
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Actually, my experience is similar to yours...in a real game, I've only used the individual pieces of the Caterpillar in actual battle.
However, mathematical logic shows that by linking the pieces together, they become stronger. Defensive bonuses are much more useful if they actually get used in battle. Consider the following:
1) A 3-length Caterpillar is sufficient to block forward movement of the enemy SOD, assuming correct movement of the Caterpillar.
2) A 4-length Caterpillar is sufficient to block both forward and lateral movement of the enemy SOD, assuming correct movement of the Caterpillar.
3) The low-defense tiles such as Plains can be improved by building Forts. This adds the following bonuses: the +25% bonus of the Fort, the inherent +25% city defense of the Longbowman, and the +20%/+45% city defense of CG1/CG2. This comes out to be +50% for a base Longbowman, +70% for one with CG1, and +95% for one with CG2. If you happen to be playing a Protective leader, chances are you can also have CG3, improving the bonus to +125%. And this is all from a Fort on a flatland tile.
You don't even need to be in your own cultural borders. Suppose that the enemy stack must move through "no-man's land". In this case, you can use the Caterpillar defense in both "no-man's land" and your own land, increasing its effectiveness.
