This is the "food chain" as I call it. It works pretty well, attacking or defending.

When attacked with X coutner with Y

Units
Archers = Crossbow
Crossbow = Crossbow/Knight combo
Spearmen = Crossbow
Macemen = Pikes/Crossbow combo
Swordsmen = Crossbow
Pikemen = Crossbow/Macemen combo
Knights = Crossbows/Pikemen combo

Siege eq
Treb = Balista/Knight/Macemen *any*
Cat = Mangonel/Knights/Macemen *any*
Ram = Macemen/Knights
Tower = Spearmen/Macemen

And also,in seiging,to get longer distance for ballistas,etc,build ur towers on hills,it works for me...

The only advantage of having archers as well, is a +10 range. However, I did a complete massacare last night:
We both build a 600 troop army, I attched, I lost 188 units, complete annialtion of the other players troops. It was really bad. I went in with 40 cats, toasted the walls, and marched in with 100 xbows, to clean up. All the missle troops were toasted, I reinforced the xbows with 150 pikes,
*the pikes just slightly infront of the xbows, but intermeshed* and moved in towards where the rest of the troops are, pikemen on defensive, xbow agressive. Toasted the armory at this point with some knights, and picked off anything coming my way. Moved in with the massive amount of pikes and took the lord. EVERYTHING went perfect.

Would it then be fair to say that crossbowmen are a necessary part of any defense if you want it to be at all successful?

I still use archer to defend alot. I still have a large mass of xbows, but about 100 bows IN ADDTION to that. Its just a little bit of extra damage.

Just thought I'd throw this up

I've made it so that there are 3 sections: The food, the weapons, and then the keep. Works prety good. BTW: this was made in a real MP game, of 40 mins PT.

This example was taken before the keep walls, which is a gatehouse, and then the whole keep is walled in on the front entrance

ok, something thats HUGELY underused, but is SUPERB in combat, especially when the enemy is hiding in their keep, with lots of xbowmen
Never underestimate the effectiveness of portable shields. They help out a lot with covering your troops, they can take one hell of a lot of crossbow bolts, and can give you the time you need to take out the wall defenders.
Just gotta watch out for mangonels
Also, if you can weaken the defences in an area, don't hesitate to put some siege towers at the enemy walls... getting a free height advantage (especially from towers) is invaluable. Just make sure you also send up some melee troops to cover your ranged units as they fire upon the enemy. Also good for taking out a heavily defended keep.

Monty,think about that tactic,lol,it could come in handy for u,lol

shields eh..... yea well when i use them they usually get killed real fast, so i gave up on them, ringwraith dont worry about me, i know what im ganna do to *try* to beat u

Im a crazy seiger myself, I charge a castle with about 300 or so macemen then send in about 200 or so more after that if they didnt work, its a suicde mission sometimes but it scares the hell out of people.

Thats a very interesting tactic. Me likes..... Do you have an adeptation of that for stronger walls? Not that its a ladder thing, just a fav setting of mine.

With all of HAMandCHEESE's good luck with storming unprotected keeps, I thought I'd give a lil demo on how to protect your keep. Thanks also to our "keep master" H&C for doing a screenie too

This is just a simple little Blockade which can be used to prevent a hard keep rush. Partiularly useful in games with strongwalls.
I recommend NOT using oil on these, but a few hardy xbows or archers.

Macemen could trash that, although strong walls would require me using about 10 catapults =) PLan A fails then Plan B kicks in.

I've had much luck in being able to storm un-defended keep in my ladder games. I think that a strong keep is key to winning a match. I usually try to do this with just a simple combo of swordmen and crossbowmen. Although not very original, very effective.

SCREENSHOT:

[This message has been edited by Wraith (edited 06-13-2002 @ 04:32 PM).]

Indeed Pineapple. But put H&C's troops in my keep and you've got more issues. The idea is that 3 macemen cant take out a lord through an open door.

++++++++++++++++++Counter Tactic+++++++++++++++++++++
When faced with a full keep of swordsmen and xbows, build up a bunch of trebs and have them attack the keep. They will thin the lines so that its easier to kill the lord. You probably wont be able to kill the lord with stone. He's a tough fellow, and it takes about 200 hits to kill him with them. Also, siege towers can prove quite deadly to the unoccupied "Fort Keep". The walls lead right into the keep!!! You might wanna think about putting some crenelation stop points in there
Happy sieges.

[This message has been edited by Wraith (edited 06-13-2002 @ 04:36 PM).]

Wraith are you still training newbies? btw the screenshots don't show up; just an x.

[This message has been edited by Jp Setlak (edited 08-07-2002 @ 11:29 PM).]

When faced with large towers full of xbows i find the best tatic is to use mobile arrow lanchers (whatever u call um) They can take quite a punch and if used in numbers of 15-20 can cripple miussle units, its best to deploy them quite far away, as if u try and move them in close they're be torn 2 bits before they can get off a shot.
They are also great for defence in bottleneck situations, when the enemy has a preety narrow path to attack you, wjether by map design or ur walls the arrow lanchers can fire very well. They will pierce anything

Everytime I try to hit anything with a ballista that's elivated (I.E. the keep, a wall or towers) the bolts hit the side and bounce off. They never work for me.