Top 5 Total War Sieges 

Well there's definitely not gonna be any Warhammer here

"THE MEN AH FATIGUED MAH LORD!"

Attila's siege of Constantinople is hands-down the best defensive map I've ever played.

You actually made me gain some interest in Thrones of Britannia. That siege map looked really sweet.

I didn't even know you could take back the ladders in Medieval 2 sieges

Always felt like the walls on Rome TW were just a little too high, something more akin to a medieval fantasy world like middle earth than something from the classical era. They could build pyramids, aqueducts, and hugs statues, but a city with walls that size; bigger than Constantinople; would be considered a great wonder in itself! The walls from Rome 2 and Attila were just a little more believable (given that very few examples remain as most stoneworks were torn down to build other things like castles and churches). In medieval 2, cities were okay (unless they triggered my OCD like Venice or not having a river like the Thames in London...) And we're mostly believable (despite not having a fortified residence for the local nobility like Westminster). My biggest issue, was with castles... Anything castle-level and below was compact, small enough to be defended on all corners, and maps often had unique terrain advantages like the keep being located on a hill narrowing the points of entry. But when you get to fortress and citadel, those terrain maps disappear and castles turn into fortified cities on flat terrain, making it impossible to defend all of the walls at the same time, while also NOT overextending your garrison. Rome 2 and Attila may have their flaws, but the battle maps were pretty much spot on, at least for sieges. Cities would be built around cliffs, dense forests, mountains, and coastlines; meaning you really have to choose a direction of attack and stick with it to break through, while also maintaining heavy losses (giving an incentive to siege it down instead, or at least initially). Warhammer... Is my least favourite for siege maps. They boil down to one wall with a couple gates and a few towers. They all look exactly the same depending on the culture, so you really have no idea if there's some kind of arena, naval port, market, barracks etc to tell you where you are. Maybe you're in a trade hub, or a military settlement in the corner of a vast, sprawling empire. You have no sense of visual diversity on your maps, ranging from a mining district to a pantheon, or a bath house to a colosseum. It's just a wall with streets, that's literally it.

Sapping was the most common way to breach stone walls, it's a shame CA didn't try to improve that and just removed it entirely.

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Remember: medival 2 sieges got first place despite not encluding the huge amout of unique modded siege maps.

Empire total war siege drills for AI. Rule 1: When your on the walls and taking canon fire, stand still and wait. Rule 2: If it happens that you leave the walls, go back and forth until you die.

Oh, the warm memories of piling all the pikemen into a breach or the gates. Those were the days.

I think you forget to mention that there’re more maps for siege in kingdom expansion for medieval 2, the Teutonic and American campaign both have unique settlement mappings for different cultures!

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well too bad that with my 500 hours in shogun 2 i didnt know that you have unlimited morale in the most inner layer

medieval 2 defensive sieges in a nutshell: sally out and scream at the besiegers "stay right where you are, my cannon towers are firing"

One time on Medieval 2, I was defending my victory point and I got the "enemy defeated" pop up and I decided to continue the battle to inflict some extra causalities on the enemy. Once I left my castle, one of the enemy units stopped routing and quickly swooped in and captured my victory point. 10/10

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They should have kept sapping for later total war games

Oh, it's gotta be Empire.

Total War Rome: I’m a old ass game I should be easy to run Framerate: I’m about to end this whole mans career

It's so sad that instead of going backwards or even innovating they simply fall behind on sieges. Medieval 2 has way better sieges including AI compared to warhammer, I don't understand this at all, literally no effort was put into that section of the game. How can you do worse on an aspect in your new game compared to one of their games they made 15 years ago...

Agreed Exactly why Medieval 2 is my fav

you can also reuse the battering ram in medieval 2, it doesn't magically disappear :D you can sally forth and battle for the control of the ram. Heck, you can even steal it I think and pull it inside and close the gate on the attacker :D

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I remember getting sieged by Portugal in Medieval 2,i forgot which Fortress/Citadel it was but it had this long ass stretch of wall, and i had a massive stack of Pavise Crossbowmen. I set up a bunch of cannons on the tops of slopes along with arqs, some feudal knights to slow down the enemy, and basically turned the whole place into a gauntlet. By the time the Knights and Infantry were able to reach the gates they were already worn down and broken from all the Crossbowmen firing on them lol.

"They don't pull ladders off their ass" Thanks legend, now I can't NOT picture that!

Lets just agree that Medieval II was the best game ever made in the TW franchise

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Med 2 has always had my heart

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@legendofTotalWar I love the fact that you placed Thrones of Britannia at second place cause just like you I felt like it was bribing back the better sieges from older games ! I completely agree on that one. For me the reasons: * The fact that units don't sprout ladders out of their asses which means that if the enemy didn't build up enough siege equipment you might shut down its attack orforce him to go in narrow choke points like the gates that have boiling oil and thus win with inferior forces but better strategy. * The A.I is often doing a semi decent job in the game especially compared to some of the other Total War games. * You can burn down the settlement and effect the troops on the battlefield. * I believe ToB has the best archer line of sight on the walls , unfortunately most the Total War games the archers are often the least effective when place on the walls because of firing angles and so on ... Warhammer I/II is probably the worst offender in this field. a few other notes : * I think ToB system of burning the settlement shouldn't only give negatives for the defenders but also positives - that means - if the enemy burns the settlement the defenders should gain more attack as they are seeing their homes being destroyed and they will fight more fierce however they will also lose moral and hope the more the enemy burns. * I actually like the fact that you can break the defenders of the city and there is a point where the soldiers will give up and it was actually missing for me when I went back to games like Medieval 2, however in combination with the previous point I made I think the initial defenders moral and retreating and coming back should be very high and only decreasing the more of the settlement is lost. * Burning the settlement should take some time and fatigue from the soldiers. Burning the settlement should damage the settlement for whom ever owns it the next turn. * Just like the ability to pick up ladders and move them so does the ability to burn them or push them of the walls as defender should be available. * Ever since Medieval 2 I was hoping that some settlements would have another layer with gates ... didn't happened yet :( * Rome II had the traps and barricades in Attila/ToB only the barricades I am kinda sad as this was nice to have and would have been nicer if you could have deployed them outside of the walls as well, one of the things I really loved in Stronghold was the ability to spray the fields with oil before the attack and set the enemies a blaze as they come to attack ... getting traps against cavalry and so on ... * Rome II had artillery placement on the walls, I actually though it was a really nice addition to the game. * ever since Rome I, I feel like the towers just became more and more useless ... they are either very low on dps or they are very inaccurate and cause more friendly fire that damage to enemies. This caused also because the towers can't shot enemies that are on the walls and the amount of damaged caused to enemies before they reach the blind spot is minimal at best (in ToB if you capture a tower it collapses and when you pass the gates you automatically brings down even from the lower side the towers). It's time for a change :) * But the worst offender for all Total War games is the A.I that even decade after it is still horrible and even gets worse :(

I couldn't agree more on medieval 2. The sieges were brutal on offensive, even if you knew what you were doing. Those towers could decimate a unit with a siege tower before it even hit the wall. The only issue I have with Shogun 2 is how many casualties you get from men "sliding down the walls". Even on an undefended section I lost 20 of a 120 men unit because they can't climb a 15 foot sloped wall.

After losing interest in total war for about a year I've just come back to watching videos on it. I'm really enjoying your Top 5 and Reviews because you don't just hate on things or go with popular opinion. Your choice of putting ToB on this list just shows that you can just share objective facts without colouring it with bias, good shit mate

I could have sworn I've seen Rome 1's defensive AI move and react to where my siege engines are.

Always thought medieval 2 siege was broken. I still remember when I was in high school I took the holy land on a crusade, then I started to loose the game because of a continental war so had to leave a small garrison in Jerusalem. They held out for decades against a constant siege. Super veteran spearmen holding out the the broken wall to the citadel routed armies ever6 turn. Cool, but broken.

Im glad rome 1 made the list. Top job man, I miss sappers in the 'modern' games. For warhammer which has bloody terrible sieges I find the Grand Campaign Map Mod to be a real must have for the game, it adds huge variety of siege maps and doesn't mess with the vanilla units or campaign mechanics at all.

If you include the expansions and the mods, M2TW probably has the most city diversity of any Total War to date.

One thing I loved doing in FoTS was fighting an offensive siege with some top tier, upgraded artillery and battleships. I would bombard the settlement into oblivion and then have my line infantry waltz on in and pick off any of the survivors.

I just realized that he says “in addition to that” quite a lot hahaha

bugger me sideways with a vegemite can, legend has spoken about thrones of britannia... IN A POSITIVE WAY!11 That's worthy of a celebration!

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Oh look, legend made a top 5 video. I wonder which Medieval 2 will take the top spot.

There's so much unlimited potential if they make a medieval three

The sieges of Rome: Total War are a lifesaver when play BI, when I was the Vandals I had conquered Italy and faced the Roxolani Horde, if it weren't for the Epic Stone Walls of Ravenna and Medolanium I would have been dead cus the ballista towers and boiling oil did the work for me while I was building up my army

I wish CA would watch video's such as this and combine the good aspects of their previous games in a new, great title, for example: Shogun 2's attacking AI, M2TW's defending AI, RTW's features and Thrones' variety in maps...

What I would love in Medieval 3 would be the chance to design your own fortifications and cities.

Also Medieval 2 has on of the best battle soundtracks which just adds to the greatness of the sieges

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You should've also mentioned the complexity of RTW settlements. If you fight a siege you'll be able to notice that all the buildings you've built on the campaing map appear on the battle map as well. That alone makes the rtw sieges better than shogun's sieges where you basically have just one building surrounded by two layers of walls... For real,who would want to capture that?

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Shogun 2 should definitely be way higher on this list (even if Medieval is and will ever remain the very first in terms of siege). As you mentioned, the AI will try to spread and attack on every section of the fortress, which is great, but what is really enjoyable is that Shogun 2 castles are designed in a way that you have different layers that can defend each others and be abandoned on purpose in order to get to a higher level. That is I think, with Medieval 2, the most dynamic siege defence system, because it forces you to have a very good understanding of the situation, deciding when to abandon a layer, position other troops to cover the retreat, have a good balance between melee and missile troops in every layers etc etc... which results to keep troops in reserve to actually decide during the battle where to allocate them without wasting too much time, I mean that's really good. Usually siege battles as a defender are pretty boring (I'm not even talking of TWWH2 which is the worst when it comes to siege battles) but Shogun 2, especially fall of the samurai, and medieval 2 made these battles amazingly enjoyable. That's also why the battles in these two were lasting more than 30 minutes sometimes, and that's fucking great.

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I knew it was going to be M2TW at top spot. Those castles were such a nightmare to assault when I was just starting with the game... Good times.

We need someone to start giving Creative Assembly competition for these types of real-time battle RTS games. I used to love CA but their games are so bland after playing paradox games.

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I love medival 2 so much! Great picks as always

Medieval 2: "KILL EVERY LAST ATTACKER AND DO NOT LET THEM ESCAPE!!!" Rome and Attila: "Hey those enemies are trying to escape, open the gates so they can go free"

MTW2 is the only game where I've legit needed two stacks to take a region from the AI. For really big battles I sometimes will bring 3 stacks just in case.

Medieval is always fun yo watch when it comes to siege. I miss that the newer games are not so enthusiastic in that, while in M2 the fighting always ended in a mayhem on city central square 😅.

Thrones of Britannia?! Wow, you have like total lack of bias. I love it.

Whenever I attack a city or citadel in medieval 2, I take a massive amount of casualties, that’s if the army I’m facing up against is completely full of infantry and archers. Sometimes you have to rely on your AI teammate to help you win the battle, every siege battle just becomes a meat grinder, even with elite units, they’ll either break or take 70% casualties

If only TW W1/2 had enjoyable sieges....

Rome 2 had a lot of stuff to play with in sieges, with some fancy siege equipment like the big troop shields. Also the burning balls and barricades and stuff.

Love you or hate you I appreciate your content, one of the best total war youtubers on earth hands down

What I like about Shogun 2 sieges is that the battles are....let me explain. In Medieval 2 and Rome TW, there are a load of buildings in the city. This isn’t bad, it’s realistic, I guess, and gives a different experiences on sieges, but on Shogun 2, there are various flat platforms in which to maneuver. You have to maneuver a lot. It’s pretty interesting, since you can’t just choke everything, and Iike it. I remember taking a fortress or something of the sort from the Hattori, and I had to win before the reinforcements arrived, it was pretty intense, and it would be much more different if it was a Rome or Medieval 2 settlement.

Another great video @legend. Keep up the good work. Greetings from Iran

ToB and Medieval 2 sieges look much more fun than the ones I've played in Rome 2 and Attila tbh.

Still can't believe CA lost the source code for this game when they shut down their subsidiary offices.

I would really like you ti play Medieval Kingdoms 1212ad That mod needs some online comunity

Shogun 2 also has the fight to the death mechanic, units route to the center of the settlement and fight to the death

"See you in the next video, fuckers" You had me laughing out loud and earned another sub:-)

That map on ToB looks amazing but then you realize that it's pointless because the 20 stack army is just to small for that map.... such a shame

I'm partial to the "siege ambush" cheese. Works best when the enemy has a heavily defended settlement. Besiege it with a small army. Park another army next to it in ambush stance. They'll sally out to attack your tiny army, but your big army will join in and crush them.

0:50 Shogun 2 fort towers: "Are we jokes to you?!"

In my opinion with the historical castels mod shogun 2 sieges are one of the Best.

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Shogun 2 has the best sieges period. Even better in multiplayer. Even betterest when enemy picks smallest castle for you to defend so you deploy an all cav army and sweep him off the map

I just learned that you can take the ladders down after like 10 years of playing medieval 2 😦

In Shogun 2 defending units sometimes decide to attack enemy outside of walls.

While I love Medieval 2 (and Total War in general) I've always been a little biased against sieges because it feels like that's all you do after a while. I know a lot of people hate the ones in the Warhammer games, but at least I actually get to fight field battles. Shogun 2 probably has the best balance in the series as far as it goes, though.

I remember that ladder tactic. I called those boys The Windowcleaners.

The best siege is the one we were promised in the siege of carthage video

Toppleing a well defended citadel is to this day one of the greatest moments in a tw game

you are the best. an incredible general you are

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TBh I can find Medieval II sieges to be really bad because of the unlimited morale. Every assault for me just becomes a matter of lining up all my missiles/and or artillery to expend all the ammo before I go throwing away my infantry to kill all of the enemies. And the ai often will just camp in the city square and will only charge if they get hit by missiles. assaults can take half an hour or longer just because I don't want to just rush in my infantry. Not to mention that the pathfinding is usually really bad and the game has really restrictive limits on where you can actually place units (There needs to be like 4 meters of empty space between a unit and any impassable terrain before they let you place them). I greatly prefer waiting out the turns until they either surrender or sally out (at which point i annihilate them by using the gate as a chokepoint and surrounding them from the other three sides).

Total war shogun's fots sieges are broken because of naval bombardment. If you have a couple ships nearby you can just dump heavy artillery fire on top of any enemy troops anywhere.

I was 110% expecting you start playing while continuing the video during that med II siege once the first layer of spearmen broke lol

It is not the only total war where you can capture enemy towers

Medieval 2 AI can be surprisingly good sometimes when they can spam OP units for sieges and yes I'm talking about Milanese crossbows.

Loved to set the pales(the sticks if the longbows?) Up on the entrance of Jerusalem when the Mongols attack They were just spamming all their cavalry in this one brechpoint Ahh the feeling

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I dunno... On one hand, the siege defense AI in Medieval 2 is really flexible and a challenge to fight against. On the other hand, unit control is so screwed up that I'd rather play on large than on huge unit scale just to make my troops even have a decent degree of coherence and responsiveness. On walls, even that doesn't help. And then there's bugs that make gates open magically or denying to close and towers not starting or not stopping to fire. All of that's a real pity. On top of that, the AI sometimes makes ridiculous sally-outs even in defensive sieges and doesn't stand at all to the player's sallys.

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