What a great fight! I finally achieved a win at Very Hard on my fourth attempt and was very satisfied with my troops performance. I really enjoyed this challenge, being a short game helped the replayability factor and it was no hardship to play through several times to gain that elusive Victory.
The castle is a bit odd, with stairs on the outside and a nice open route in for any invaders, so the first task was to make repairs and turn it into something defendable. I salvaged all the stone I could from the broken wall section to the north-east, this gave enough to patch the holes, make a few improvements and leave a surplus on the stockpile for future use. I made and recruited a fairly even mix of archers and crossbowmen and extra spearmen, I didn't bother with any heavier troops. I taxed the peasants at about -4 and countered this with ale consumption. I opted for a small economy, so I deleted two hovels to reduce the population and save foodstocks, this also allowed my Inn to give +4 popularity.
In a previous game the first attack came from the north-west so I blocked off the ford crossing with some stone wall, forcing the invaders to take a longer route to my castle. However in my winning game both attacks came came from the south-east corner.
The first invasion was comfortably dealt with, I rushed a force of approx 20 archers to meet the invaders and manged to eliminate the engineers before they could reach their siege tents - as you can imagine, this helped my cause a great deal. I'd already positioned spearmen on the walls so any laddermen that didn't get shot were quickly pushed away. With some selective targeting from my missile troops the remainder of the first invasion weren't a huge threat but I did lose the outer gatehouse and it took time to pick them off, the second invasion turned up very soon after the first was wiped out.
When the second invasion did appear at the south-east signpost, I'd guess around a 100 pikeman and a dozen horses decided to make the long journey to the north-west signpost instead. (Too many troops appearing at the signpost with not enough room around it caused this).
Anyway, this was the second invasion's fatal mistake - I took the opportunity to move all my missile troops to the northern walls and shoot at will, severely weakening the pikeman. In the meantime I sent another force of archers to confront the standing invaders at the signpost and using 'attack here' tactics I caused as much damage as possible before the battle horn sounded.
At the horn I ran my archers back to the walls and repositioned all my other missile troops to face the invasion, ignoring the north-west pikeman for the time being. This invasion was tough, my existing pikeman defended the inner gatehouse for a while but both they and the gate fell before too long and the invaders then made their way to the keep. I'd put up a small wall section blocking easy access and forcing the invaders to walk round the back of the keep, buying me valuable shooting time, inevitably though they reached the keep and it was to left to my 30-odd spearmen atop the keep to beat back the near-dead pikemen.
A win was now within touching distance, the enemy pikes that had walked to the other signpost were now making their way back and suffered even more arrows and bolts before they made it to my keep. The majority were so badly wounded they didn't pose any real threat and a well earned victory was finally mine after a huge struggle. It's not the best map, as Arthus freely admits, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable and challenging play - especially at Very Hard level. It's not often a player has to work that hard for a victory but what a satisfying victory it was. Thanks Arthus ... I seem to have mislaid my scores for this one, if I find them I'll put them up ...