I was meaning defending against phalanxes, rather than with. You’re right, phalanxes are excellent defensive units since (assuming you don’t let a calavry unit get in their rear) not only are they good troops but they take ages to die. Plenty of time to decimate the attackers with your ranged weapon of choice.
Ah, I see. Yes, attacking a city with phalanx units truely sucks. They are bad at taking walls, they get all tied up in the streets, and they move so slow that the towers just decimate them as they move up or move through a city.
Myself, I basically just lay siege and let it ride when I have phalanx. Either the city surrenders or on the last turn they come out to fight…where I can use my phalanx to advantage. Takes longer, but you lose a LOT less men.
-XT
Many, many, MANY battles have I won doing this. I’ve won some amazingly decisive victories with a handful of phalanx, some light cavalry and a few skirmishers.
This is the way to win if it’s early in your Greek/Mascedonian campaign. It ends up being a waiting game until you get some archers to use flame arrows to harass and demoralize their army. Hell, just flaming arrows and a good cavalry strike does it.
I’ve relented on downloading this mod. I’m not entirely sure why, either. Do I really need to get this? Is it THAT big of an upgrade?
My preferred technique for taking walled cities is to take the walls with heavy swordsmen like principes, run units around the perimeter so that all the wall towers shoot at troops inside, then march in and kill the remaining troops. But phalanxes can be extremely effective as well, if you use a different set of tactics.
First, don’t go with siege towers or ladders. What you want is sapping points. Collapse the walls in a few places then run your phalanx up to the wall, get into formation, and march in. Slowly. Don’t use the attack command, just march. The walls will protect your flanks for the most part, and there are few enemies that can hold up to the pointy end of a good phalanx unit. Once you have a foothold in the city, advance slowly towards the centre. Whenever an enemy unit approaches you, stop, get into a nice formation with a single unit filling up the entire street, and let them run into your pikes. They’ll eventually route, retreat to the city centre. It’s a tad slow, but extremely effective.
Alternatively, if you have access to even a couple good swordsman units, take the walls with siege towers and move your phalanxes in through the gates while the gate towers keep the enemy from forming up just inside the gates. The brilliant thing about phalanxes in cities is that, while unwieldy, they can have perfectly protected flanks.
I assume you mean the TR mod (in whatever form…hopefully the Gold version not the pirate version I originally linked too). If so I’ll give you my honest opinion…the mod is like a whole new game, its that different. The game play is heavily altered, the units, the starting locations…just about everything except the diplomacy is significantly different. And its different in a good way. I’m having a HELL of a lot of fun with this mod. But then, I’m a huge fan of the game…YMMV.
Yes, I’ve used this myself from time to time. I’m too cheap though so I don’t generally use it as I then have to pay to fix the walls. 
Also you still end up taking more losses (IMHO) than swordsmen using siege towers and ladders…as you will take damage from the various city towers while you get your slow ass phalanx units to the breach. Myself, I can usually wait the extra couple of turns until the city surrenders or they come out to play.
Now, when I play the Romans (or one of the other races with a kick ass sword unit…like Macedon/Selucid) I assault the walls with towers and ladders. The defenders can usually be spread way out by moving units around the city out of range of the defenses…then picking a realitively unguarded spot to assault. I love taking a wall, then running up and capturing the towers around it…then letting the defenders try and attack me into the hail of arrows coming from their own towers.
-XT
Why would they take any more damage than legionaries pushing siege towers? You take them out of phalanx formation, run them to the wall, then reform the phalanx.
Because if the wall is defended they don’t fight very well on the wall…certainly not as well as swordmen or legion troops. Also, its kind of cumbersome (well, to me) to take them out of phalanx, run them somewhere, then try and reform them. I’ve had phalanx regiments chewed up badly doing this so generally I don’t do it.
As I said, YMMV. My own tactics just don’t lend themselves to using phalanx for direct city assaults…at least not for well defended cities. I like using them a lot, but for set piece battles with a lot of space to move around in. By the same toke, I am not as effective in those kinds of battles with my Roman troops…which is why I take a lot more casualties when I try set piece battles with them (especially now that I have no archers).
Everyone is different though. I have a friend who only makes cavalry armies with a few ground troops for garrison or city assault. He loves having full stack cavalry armies and micromanaging them so that he is isolating individual regiments and chopping them up by hitting them simultaneously from different directions and making them break. Myself, I can’t do it…I just don’t think that way (nor do I want to spend the time it takes him per battle setting things up, moving this way and that, to try and cut a regiment from the herd so he can then manuver about to get it in just the right position to attack it successfully and without a lot of casualties).
-XT
Quite right, phalanxes suck utterly on top of walls, and they’re very vulnerable when not in phalanx formation. But, what we’re talking about here is (1) bringing down a chunk of wall with a sap point, (2) taking the phalanx out of formation and running them up close to the gap in the wall, (3) reforming just outside the wall, then marching in. City defenders almost never sortie, so it’s just not very dangerous. I used this tactic with great success many times in a Seleucid campaign in vanilla RTW.
I guess I just have an anti-phalanx mindset for city assault. I can see how what you are saying might work (and probably does work for you). I’ve been burned a few times, as I said, when running phalanx units out of the phalanx formation and then trying to reform them (and not being able too before cavalry or something else comes crashing into them). But you are right…the defenders almost never sorte out.
Maybe I’ll give it a try next time I’m playing one of the myriad phalanx nations. I’m actually planning on another Macedonian campaign soon…just want to finish off this Roman campaign then reinstall the game and put on the 6.0 Gold version of the mod.
-XT
Yessss. Whole new, better game. I was lukewarm on RTW vanilla, but now I lurvs RTR. MTW2 can take all the time it wants.
My siege technique is pretty much the gauls n’ walls technique. Roll up two or three siege towers (heavy swords or hastati, which fight like heavy swords) and let them slaughter the defenders and take the gate (bad scene: spartans on the walls, I didn’t realize it until the wrong side started dying). Then I send skirmishers up the same towers to empty their ammo on the hapless defenders below, followed by running the city perimeter to capture the rest of the towers. Then in through the gate to finish it off. Towers give some cover from tower fire, so I prefer them to ladders. Though after the siege where I blew up my own towers, I always make one ladder, just in case.
I’ll sometimes make a mine and use it when there’s alot of defenders milling around the gate, and I want to push my artillery up close and mow them down like weeds. But because I can’t change its location I find them irritating.
Hey, I have a question. Does a conquering force derive benefit from enemy buildings? I notice a happiness decrease when I knock down the heathen temples of my enemies after a conquest, which is something I got in the habit of doing in vanilla, since I can only upgrade temples of my own people. So I just always do it, and start converting the locals to the proper worship of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
But when I conquered Greece, they had some pretty nice temples that I didn’t want to knock down. In RTR, can I get full use of them? Will my generals get access to heathen followers? Anyone seen it happen?
This is pretty much exactly my own technique for taking a city…when I don’t just starve them into submission. Once you have the walls, even if the enemy has a larger force in the city, its pretty much over. You can always tempt them into chasing a light fast unit around…and as they pass by the walls they take constant casualties until they are weak enough to finish off.
I think it depends on what you do to the inhabitants when you take a city. Myself, I always put the population to the sword. Not only does it give you the maximum amount of cash from the city but it seems to prevent problems later on with cities rising up and tossing you out (or constantly rebelling and damaging buildings and troops stationed there). If you leave the native population intact though you probably should leave them their own temples to worship in. Since I always wack the population (being the blood thirsty tyrant I am :)) I always destroy the native temple and put in my own.
One cool thing about the mod seems to be that in many cases you get the use of native units if the former occupants built barracks and such in the town. I don’t know why the Romans STILL don’t get archers, but they get native slingers and other native troops. Thats something you didn’t get in the old version of the game and definitely makes it more interesting.
Not sure what you mean by ‘heathen followers’…are you talking about the personal staff of the general or just the troop mix? If the staff, I haven’t noticed anything unusual going in there for any of my field generals…but then my general rule is kill em all, the gods will surely know their own. Then pull the temples down for a little extra short term cash. One question I always had was if the Romans would be ok with Greek temples or if there is the same decrease in happyness as you get with other peoples temples when you bring in Roman citizens.
-XT
Downloading mod now (3 hours? Baroo?). I shall post my findings soon. I’ve got three days off, which which I can play until I piss myself.
Twice.
Well, it only took me a few min to download…so its probably your internet connection. I think I downloaded both the mod and the optional music (which I don’t see the point of as it doesn’t appear to do anything different) in less than 20 min.
I have a quick question for anyone who already has the mod installed and is playing. I’ve noticed something strange in the game I’m currently playing and wonder if anyone else has noticed it…and if its a bug or something else. Anyway, when playing the Romans and during a city defense with stone walls occationally it appears that, for reasons unknown, right at the beginning of the battle all the troops sort of fall down. Every one. And the troops on the walls actually take casualties from this…sometimes as much as 10 killed in a single regiment and for no appearent reason (other than the fact that they fall down and off the wall). Anyone else notice this? It doesn’t happen in every city defense, but its happened maybe 6 or 7 times to me in my current game.
At first I thought it had to do with stacking regiments too close to each other. I remember that if you interpose regiments in the original game they will jump apart in the original game once the battle starts…and if you do this on the wall sometimes a few guys will fall down. But this seems to be EVERY regiment, even those on the ground and quite far apart.
Anyone else seen this? If so, thoughts? Is it just a bug (I’m playing the pirate version so its definitely possible)? Is it a ‘feature’? Its almost like they get hit with a high wind or something…and would be quite comical if I didn’t take casualties to my regiments on the walls (which are usually either my best sword/legion troops or my skirmisher/slingers).
-XT
Hasn’t happened to me, but I don’t think I’ve actually fought a city defense. Not one where I was actually defending rather than running out to counterattack, anyways. I usually lift sieges by attacking the besiegers with a relief army.
Crap. It’s not working for me. I bet there’s still some sort of remnant of the game left over. Stupid computers.
I often let a siege go on in my fronteer until the computer loses patients and attacks the walls. Usually I only garrison my towns with a few prime units, perhaps a cavalry unit, and a bunch of ranged guys or cheap garrison units…so attacking out isn’t an option. Also, it buys me time to move my field army in an offensive role…while they are sieging my fronteer cities I’m moving around behind them and going for their prime cities. It works well for me, as 9 times out of 10 the computer won’t let a siege go to the bitter end but gets impatient and attacks…and attacking a walled city is usually a costly affair for the computer and one that I nearly always win at.
It didn’t work for me until I installed from scratch then patched the the game to (I think) v1.2 THEN did the complete mod patch. If you are using a previous version of the game my advice is to simply copy that version to another subdirector, then uninstall the game via the uninstall program, then reinstall from scratch after you have completely uninstalled, then patch the program…THEN do the mod patch. Its kind of a pain in the ass but its well worth it…IMHO.
Another comment about the Romans. I’ve already won the game at this point in the campaign…it was quite easy. However, I STILL don’t have the later legion units. I’m still at the original units in the game. Has anyone played through as the Romans until after, say, 190 BC and gotten the later (full legion) type units? Do you even get them in this patch? Also, I still don’t have onagers (probably spelled that wrong)…just some pretty basic spear thrower type units. Do I eventally get these, or again are they not in the game (like appearently no archers for the Romans)?
I’ll be kind of bummed if I don’t get full legion units! I’m playing on at this point in the hopes of completely conquering the world by 100 BC…I’ve broken the backs of most of the Greek states (I think the Egyptians are still out there somewhere) and am just about done in North Africa…so all thats left for me is the various barbarian nations and parts of India.
What nations have people tried and what thoughts do you have on them? So far I’ve played and won as the Macedonians (VERY easy) and the Selucids (fairly hard). Both had pretty cool units, and the Macedonians had a really good starting situation (lots of money, lots of easy places to conquere right off, etc).
-XT
Finally got it to work. Installed the other patch.
Pyrrhus is a motherfucker. That is all for now.
So many new troops! I have to relearn them!
I’m still on my first campaign as Rome, though nearing the 50 city mark. Haven’t had the Marian reforms, and the RTR forums are down so I can’t go see when they are supposed to occur. It might be fun sometime to just take Italy and Sicily and then sit tight building up the cities and waiting for proper legionnaries. I do have ballistae and scorpions, but no onagers. Haven’t decided who to play next.