Rome Total War German Chronicles 61 and 62 The siege of Apollonia

The siege of Appolonia is interesting on many aspects. From a Campaign point of view, it wasn't so much useful to lay siege to it at this point. The main reason why I attacked it was because I had the miss conception that victory was closer then it was. So I sieged many heavily protected cities to gain a faster victory.

On the tactical stand point I think this siege is really a great example of a progressive and methodical way to conquer a city that contains a lot of troops. The tactic I used is really what we could call a defensive offence. I advance by defending against counter attacks. The other other really interesting aspect was my way of deploying the units one after the other in what we could compare to the Roman tactic of changing the frontal row of the cohort so that the front line troops were always fresh.

So that tactic had many advantages. It kept the morale of my troops high, their stamina lasted longer, and the enemy could not break my advancing wall of spears. When my unit reached the street where most of the Romans were, I then could deploy the rest of my army to go fight for the town center, knowing my back was well protected.



As you can see in the second part I kept advancing in the streets to keep the enemy busy while my main battle force moved to the center of the city. The center of the city wasn't so hard to take, but still could have been risky since many Romans were legionaries. The decisive moment was my flanking maneuver with my axeman that decimated the enemies from behind.