Mission 20 – Much wailing and gnashing of teeth

Base map

Start date: March 1320

Objectives

All difficulty choices

  • Eliminate all Enemy Units

Build up your forces and the castle itself and defend your current position until Sir Longarm arrives with reinforcements. You will be defending yourself against the Wolf’s entire army in the biggest siege you have ever faced. Use knights to conduct sorties out of the castle.

Resources

Supplies

  • 76 wood
  • 32 stone
  • 48 iron
  • 67 pitch
  • 88 flour
  • 2500 gold

Weapons

  • 21 bows
  • 1 mace
  • 28 crossbows
  • 57 swords
  • 12 leather armours
  • 57 armours

Troops

  • 27 archers
  • 4 crossbowmen
  • 3 pikemen
  • 21 engineers
  • 1 mangonel
  • 1 ballista

All trade options are available in this mission.

Notes

A short mission this, which lasts about six years. In these six years you’ll face four attacks from the Wolf’s troops hitting you in ever increasing numbers. The attackers will include tunnelers, trebuchets, shields and rams, accompanied by crossbowmen, archers, macemen, pikemen, swordsmen and knights. The attacks, as you can gather, come pretty fast upon each other so you haven’t got much time to prepare or repair.

After a few false starts to ‘check out the terrain’ I started by upping the rations and adding some bakeries, a hops farm, brewery and an inn. Once they were up I increased my taxes to where I was getting about 8 gold per turn.
Next I added two more houses, two woodcutters inside the castle, a set of stables and started recruiting knights and missile troops. Once I had knights I sent them out to wait in the open fields for the Wolf’s engineers to appear. To obstruct the first invasion I added a few random bits of wooden wall about halfway between the invasion point and the castle.

The attackers come screaming in and, with a little jaundiced use of the knights, I manage to destroy most of the siege equipment before it can do much damage. The bits of wall distract the tunnelers. My knights flee to safety, losing 25% of their number while the rest of the castle sustains and repels the brunt of the attack.

I increase the wall thickness, buying stone, as my quarry is destroyed, engineers and more missile troops, while placing a few mangonels and ballistas on the larger towers. Pitch is added to some of the more vulnerable parts and the next two attacks whittle away more of my troops and gold reserves. However, after the smoke clears, the castle still stands.

The final attack sends in the biggest amount of troops yet. My knights are slain, but not before the penultimate engine is destroyed. Only a ram approaches the castle but it is soon destroyed by fire from my own engines. Pikemen attack my walls and burn to death under boiling pitch as do several waves of swordsmen. I sell part of my arms and armour to allow myself more swordsmen all gathered round the Lord in case of a breach. Several swordsmen break through the weakened walls and the Wolf’s knights stream in through the gap. As I send in my swordsmen, I also release my wardogs and soon the knights lie dying, while the last enemy swordsmen is burned to a crisp on the other side of the castle.
The end results show me it wasn’t as hard as I thought.

Finished map

Total losses: 32%
My Score: 11,800

Download this finished map

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