Assault | Battle Total War: Attila Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
It is easier to defend a city than attack it. Defender have shooting towers, fortifications, barricades and the ability to gather defenses in important parts of the settlement, without worrying about being surrounded. In many situations all he needs to do is place archers on the walls, cover them with infantry and wait for enemy to come. The trouble for attacker is that he needs to get through fortifications - sometimes barricades, sometimes gates, in worst case both - survive shooting from towers and walls, and at the end take control points or kill all defenders. His task require more time and is in many aspects harder.
Before the assault
In case of defenders preparations for assault are simple. If you have fortifications, you man them with archers and block the road with infantry. You keep cavalry around in case of assault in other place and wait. If enemy have siege weapons, you might decide to disperse your forces to limit losses. If you don't know from which direction enemy will attack, you gather your forces in the center of the city and wait. When enemy shows, you immediately move your forces to the threatened gate. If you have no fortifications, you concentrate your army in the narrowest street, securing your back. The main square of the city can be a good place for defense as well.
If you're attacking, then you must choose direction of the assault, which means the necessity to pick a gate or gates through which you enter the city. If a city have been damaged, part of it is destroyed or have no fortifications at all, then picking direction will be easy. If not, you must decide. In practice every gate is good, but ones closest to control points are the best. Try to plan a route for your army to march and choose a gate through which it will get to the important spots most quickly. You can ignore control points when picking a gate, but conquering them will quicker the fall of the city. Because of that, they are a good starting point when choosing assault direction.
Second important factor are reinforcements. You have two options - attack from the side from which they will come, or the opposite one. First one means concentrating your forces and makes it easier to get through, the second will force your enemy to split his forces. Additionally, only a limited number of soldiers can burn a gate or walking on the walls via ladders at the same time. Having too much forces under walls is unnecessary and will only increase your casualties. If enemy have small army, both options are good. If he has large forces, then attack from both sides will force him to split them and will make it easier to conquer a city.
Fighting in city
In difference to many other places, city gives you very limited place to fight. Some its fragments might be higher than other, but the main limitation are buildings. A road, even the most wide one, can fit only few formations. Soldiers have great trouble with walking through their own formations, so a solid line of heavy infantry is able to block a passage for long time. It's even worse in case of roads that lead to hills, usually narrower than other ones. If only a single narrow route leads to the quarter of the leader, a defender is able to protect it until the time ends or reinforcements arrive.
Although every settlement have few roads that lead to one place, like the main square, they can be blocked with barriers or enemy formations. The necessity to search other roads is a aggravation by itself, as it forces you to divide your forces and thus weakening the groups that are trying to get through. Additionally, a well fortified city has few towers that will shoot at your formations during street battles.
Thus the main trouble when fighting in city is concentration of enemy formations. If they block some section, you will have trouble with getting through. Because of that, formations of shooters and siege weaponry will be very useful. Catapults and archers will force your enemy to leave his positions, what you can use thanks to right positioning of your infantry. Additionally, each city has more than one entrance. Although conquering each gate might be very expensive in manpower, it eliminate the trouble of blocked roads, forcing enemy to move.
But you must take in consideration, that enemy always have where to retreat. In many cases those are places where it is much easier for him to defend himself. Because of that assault can never be stopped. If you're attacking, you must relentlessly move forward. Enemy leaved by himself will regroup and take better positions, like in narrow passages that lead to unconquered parts of the settlement. Although he can be moved away from there with catapults, you might not always have time for that.
Control points
Control points marks important places in the city, after controlling which attacker receives great morale bonus. Those places are various squares, government buildings and temples. Some of them are more important than others, it can be recognized by their marking - a star surrounded by a laurel wreath. To conquer them, you must stand in specified place and wait. A single spot can be taken, lost and retaken many times during one battle.
During assault cavalry should take control points due to its speed. It can ride to a point, take it and move to another one. It will be similarly good for protecting endangered points. Defender can place infantry there, but infantry is slow. In case of large settlements he isn't able to protect all points at once and splitting it, so that there is some unit at every spot, is not profitable. Not when an assault occurs at the gates and walls and the defense can use each unit available. One cavalry formation is able to get to every point so quickly that it can replace few infantry formations.
Towers
Amount of those buildings depend on city fortification level, but you will always find near entrances to city. They are durable, shoot with fire missiles and will attack all enemy forces that are in their impressive reach. They are one of reasons why every army should have at least one catapult formation. Thanks to siege machines towers can be quickly destroyed and thus stop harming your soldiers. Another way is putting them on fire with infantry or archers, but both those formations might become easy target. Especially infantry, that will need to move directly to the tower to throw torches at it.
Towers aren't able to win the battle on their own, especially if enemy forces are large. But strength and reach of their fire is large enough for them to be a great threat to most formations. One can try to avoid them, but there is so much of them that if settlement buildings will cover you from fire of one tower, you will probably get in range of another one. Because of that, it is best to pick a direction of assault, destroy a tower standing there with siege machines or infantry and enter the city from that side. The presence of towers makes idea of splitting forces and attacking from few sides risky, especially if there are enemy formations nearby. Not only you will have to get through them, you will be constantly harmed by fire from those durable buildings.
Barricades
They are placed by defender before battle starts. They cannot be manned, but one cannot pass through them as well. They can only be destroyed, which requires commitment of formation, or passed around. Most city are large enough to create a single road from the gate to the enemy quarter or key point with the use of barricades. Despite that, they can be used to block some passages. By doing so, you will force your enemy to choose different road or waste time and strength on destroying a barricade.
Barricades are especially useful when being attacked from single side. Assaulting two gates at once open more possibilities to conquer a settlement for the attacker. But when attacking from single side, the choice of further path is usually limited. If you place barricades wisely, you will limit that choice even more. You can't win a battle with them, but they are important part of defense and well used might help you with achieving victory.
Gates
Gates can be found in settlements with fortifications. If a settlement has palisade on which archers might walk, then it has gates as well. If you don't know if a settlement has gates, give siege order. If you can't immediately start an assault and must build siege weapons, it means that settlement has gates.
Gates are one of more important parts of defense system. Thanks to them enemy can't get inside and they limit the number of entrances to few. Enemy can try to make a hole in wall or walk on it, but without siege equipment he is forced to walk through the gate. Usually while being shot at by nearby towers.
Gates make it easier to defend yourself, as usually computer won't split his forces. Instead, he will choose one of gates and start attacking it. In that case, your task is limited to manning the walls with archers, blocking the passage with infantry and wait for enemy to come. You can keep a cavalry formation nearby, in case you were to be attacked from different side.
Situation is worse in case of two and more armies. Enemy reinforcements usually doesn't wander around the map but attack from the side where they came from. It means that if main army comes from the west, and reinforcements from north, then you will be forced to split your forces. Best before battle, as splitting them during combat might be much harder. Another solution is to ignore the gate and move your forces directly to a control point, like leader quarter or main square, but it is better not to use that tactic. Enemy that attacks gates is volatile to fire and a gate is good place to block the road. Resigning from those opportunities delay the battle and allow enemy to attack with full force. Because of that, it is better to defend yourself near gates, even if you can man the walls with only one archers formation.
Gates, similarly to other buildings, can be destroyed by siege machines, archers and infantry cannons. They can be opened by taking them as well. Because of that, you should keep cavalry formation nearby, in case of enemy getting inside and trying to open other gates. It is especially important when attacked from two and more sides. Defense of main gate might have a breakdown, when enemy forces reach the settlement through other entrances.
Ruins
During an assault all ruins present in a settlement will be visible on the map. It is important as ruins aren't occupied, which means that walking near them you're not risking civilian attacks, and formations that exist on their side will be either very damaged or incomplete. In other words, ruins are a perfect direction for an attack, which makes newly habituated settlements very vulnerable to assaults. All it needs is one fragment of walls to be destroyed or some towers useless for defenders chances to drastically drop.
A precise amount of ruins in a settlement is known only to its owner, but you might try to guess how much are there. On the campaign map zoom the camera to a specific settlement and pay attention to the state of its buildings. You will easily recognize ruins or damages buildings. The more of them, the greater your chances for successful assault.
Camps
It is easier to call them a city will towers and palisade but without gates. In place of the latter you will find narrow, easy to defend passages. Except for that, camp isn't special in any way.
Setting on fire
Most buildings are very vulnerable to fire and it is easy damaged with fire arrows or catapult missiles. A building which durability is passed is being set on fire. If fire has started under a lone building, it will quickly change into conflagration. If fire started in a city, it will quickly spread. Fire not only damage building but hurt nearby units as well. It doesn't work on stone buildings which must be destroyed in more traditional way.
Battle in port
You will frequently attack a port. Usually inside you will find land units and garrison ships. Because of that, a port battle will combine characteristics of all previously mentioned ones.
The trouble with such battles is their complexity. You must protect a settlement, but you use ships for that. You can unload its crew or keep firing at enemy from the coast if ship is capable of doing that. If enemy has fleet as well, then you will be forced to divide your attention on ships and land forces. Additionally, you must make decision whether you allow enemy ships to unload their crew or destroy them before that. It depends on situation, but you should apply a simple rule - if you have more units of specific type than enemy, use it. If you have more ships, destroy enemy fleet and then send rest of survivors to the land. If less, immediately move to the land and join the defenders. If you have more land forces, you can risk walking outside the settlement and wait for enemy ships near the coast. Enemy will start to unload his crews and you will immediately start eliminating them.
Situation is more complicated when there are reinforcements in a battle, especially if there are both land and naval ones. In that case you must slow the battle speed and calmly plan the whole battle, as in other case it will quickly get out of control.