Notes from Jadwiga 4- Siege of Vilnius
My initial strategy was to go after the Teuton Raiders towns and production buildings before going after the units in front of the gate. You can do this since the countdown to when the Teutons attack does not start until the Raiders in front of the gate are eliminated. There is a lone Teuton Raider tower toward the west which can be taken out without interference – then on this front you are opposed by two archers and two crusader knights. From there you can take out the two archery ranges and the town center. As for the villagers I converted a few and sent them to construct a town center in the west and started booming! Turning to the east, I was eventually able to eliminate all of the remaining production buildings – two barracks - including the monastery that holds a relic. Because at this point in the game there is no timer you can continue to boom into the imperial age get all necessary upgrades (including bombard towers) before taking on the remaining Teuton Raiders in front of the gate. Even there I took my time and ended up converting four Teutonic knights and several knights before eliminating all of the remaining Raiders. By that time, I had a good economy going with 50 villagers. From there it was a matter of doing a house wall in front of the northern gates and start constructing bombard towers in strategic locations. Also, I garrisoned the castle with 20 arbs. It gives the castle lots of fire power (18 extra arrows). I found that building the towers close to the wall was a great way of taking out the bombard cannons and mangonels since the towers out range them. The Teuton attack utterly failed and without taking out my castle. To make things more interesting during the night I decided to build forward bombard towers especially some in range of the Teuton’s’ castles and towers. By the end of the game all three castles and all of the towers and the west gate were gone. This helped during the last big push by the Teutons, since my relief force was able to take the Teutons in the rear and eliminate those attacking the Vilnius.
I did this same strategy but I converted nearly the whole Teutonic force at the Western gate, by trying to lure them out one by one with Jagiello & Jadwiga. I then converted a villager to make a monastery & a monk to collect the Raiders’ relic and research Redemption - that way you can also convert the 2 Trebuchets at the Western gate!
now that’s what I call thinking out of the box! that’s great. I was hoping that after you destroyed the Tuetons’ castles and towers they would resign - but no such luck!
Thanks for the tips - I tried this out and it made this scenario a lot more fun (for me, I’m sure some people wouldn’t like it). One thing I discovered is that if you destroy the gate to the area where the grey Teutonic army is, they will sometimes come out that way to attack rather than attacking the gates of Vilnius.
I don’t really like the design of this scenario if you play it as intended, to be honest. You have to defend against a siege, but oh, we’ve removed most of the defensive options from your tech tree! It feels cheap and frustrating. So it was fun to have a less frustrating alternative.
Glad you found this useful. Yikes it would be pretty bad if the whole Teutonic army attacked out of their gates and into your rear, such that you’d have to fight them in the open where their numbers would be more effective. By the time I breached their gates they had already committed to their last grand assault. So perhaps timing is the key if you want to take out the gates