Conquest Trail: #9 Criccieth Castle

By Lord_Chris

This mission starts with us defending Criccieth Castle in Wales. Upon examination, you will notice how your Castle is situated upon a hill which places it in a strong defensive position. However, you do have a weaker wall down the bottom end of your Castle, which is made out of Wood. This is not much use in the siege.

Start by moving all the way over to the furthest tower on the north east of your Castle. Move all of your troops from that tower, and the nearby Courthouse and Main Gatehouse, onto the tower containing the fire ballista. Next on the eastern inner wall around your Keep, move these Archers over to the eastern round tower near your Keep. Finally, look around outside of your Castle, and you will find a load of Archers just stationed on the ground all over the place.

Sadly as there is no point of access to your Stone castle walls, you can't really do anything with these units. But, you can group them together. Move all of the stationery Archers on the ground to the top of the hill near your Knight. Move the Pikemen behind your wooden wall up to the top of the hill, and the same with your Spearmen. Also bring the final group of Spearmen outside your castle walls over to your Knight as well- this is where you're going to try and cut down the enemy using the hill as a choke point. Move the Archers from your wooden wall to the top of the hill also- these will otherwise get wiped out extremely quickly.

The benefits of doing all this should already be starting to pay off- your Archers on the hill should be starting to fire at any approaching enemies now. Make sure you clear a path for the rolling logs so that none of your troops are in the way, and stay exactly as you are for now. Catapults will quickly disperse of your wooden wall, and Archers and other troops will flock in. Your Archers will begin to fire at them, but keep as you are for now. If necessary, send your Spearmen in to take care of any units who arrive up the hill.



After a few seconds when you can no longer hold the onslaught, release your wall mounted rolling logs on the right on the screen above. This will wipe some of the enemy units out altogether and knock many of them back down the hill. With any luck this should dispel large parts of the attacking army, however you will still have to deal with the after effects. Laddermen will quickly now arrive, so move all the remaining melee units back to your Keep, and retreat all your Archers outside of the Castle on top of your Keep. Any Archers near the walls should knock down the ladders automatically- once this has been done, move all Archers from the back of your Castle into your front Tower.

While this is happening, your melee troops on the ground should do a good job of delaying the enemy attack and cutting down enemy units while your Archers can target them properly. You should have destroyed most of the attacking army now, but in the event that troops manage to get up on your walls (which is likely) then you should keep retreating your Archers away from them, and keep fire constantly raining down upon them. Eventually, if you keep backing away, your troops will get the better of the enemy.



Wait for one final batallion of Spearmen to attack, and your Archers will easily defeat them. Victory! Now onto the final mission, of Edinburgh Castle!

You can click here to download a saved game of this mission from our downloads section.