Robot Siege

[HansLemurson]

I had a start that looked pretty straightforward until I noticed some Neutrals walking directly towards my city, and cutting my supply lines. Annoyed by this, I attacked them in order to "drive off the local wildlife", only to get massacred by half a dozen Sentinel Robots!

They proceeded to surround my city on 3 sides (the other 3 were on the shore of an inland sea) and completely sever its connection to the outside world. I attempted to break out with the help of a hastily built Light Armor unit but met with failure and death.

With all the roads cut, any military units NOT in the city were cut off from supplies and are slowly dying.

Any advice on how to deal with a Robot Siege?
Has anybody encountered a situation like this before?

[Voker57]

light tanks with howitzers will not be good against these, as howitzers are for soft targets and walkers have a bonus vs tanks. Raise an OHQ with machineguns and make them attack you, then eventually you get enough hits to overwhelm.

[HansLemurson]

Bonus vs Tanks? Ah, that explains the Tank massacre!

In desperation, thinking that what I lacked was enough "Hard Attack" I commissioned an AT Battalion. I also scraped together what manpower and metal I could and made a Siege brigade, thinking that I needed more firepower too.

The robots attacked and took heavy losses, but the siege still remained. My forces can just barely kill a single sentinel when attacking, and since the Robots lost so many Sentinels, they didn't have enough forces to attack the city any more. But they still kept it surrounded.

All of my militia guarding valuable hex perks on my borders are dead now, Minor neighbors are overrunning my land, and then the land is getting recaptured by a Major with whom I have a peace treaty.

Any advice on how to break the siege?

Here's a picture from a little bit earlier when the siege was just tightening, and I'd saved enough Manpower for an OHQ Brigade. The Robots should attack next turn.

Shadow Empire Robot Siege.png (2.76 MiB) Viewed 605 times

[Voker57]

It's hard to recover at this point but scrap all the tanks and get the best ATs you can manage, then if they don't attack, attack yourself when you have full RDN.

[Uemon]

The best way to deal with these things is to make them attack you.

Swarm them with numbers and encircle them.

Every couple of turns of being surrounded they will attack you.

Every time they attack your fully entrenched units, there is a good chance you will kill a few.

But the problem is, you allowed them to bully you all the way back to your town, and now youre in a bad spot.

So basically the only thing you CAN do is attack them with big numbers... Try making lots of infantry or some anti tank guns if you got models of those. The funny thing is, these robots are usually extremely easy to deal with, as long as you dont allow them to do what they just did to you

[HansLemurson]

I hadn't encountered a Robot faction before, and just thought it was some weak neutrals or some annoying wildlife, and so attempted to encircle them.

Imagine my shock when my newly formed Motorized Rifle brigade was completely annihilated, and half of my field army was wiped out. If my city hadn't been along the seashore, then the situation would have been easier, but as it was it just took 3 hexes to put my city to siege.

The robots did attack eventually, and lost half their number in each of two assaults. I had been preparing a counter-attack, and nearly shit myself when they attacked ME, and took more losses (13 units) than I even realized they had! Had I made the first move, it would have been a massacre.

I spent my manpower on a Siege Battalion because I like their integrated artillery (don't know if it was the right move, but they've seemed strong in the past), and was eventually able to break out when the exit road was only guarded by a single Sentinel. Killed it at the cost of 400 Infantry.

I've lost about 4,000 manpower due to this mishap, and the constant Danger has sent my happiness plummeting, and I've had to suppress riots with troops on multiple occasions. I think this just became a "challenge game".

The good news is that though I control little territory now, what I do have is rich land good for farming, with an Auto-factory Hex perk, Metal, Rares, and untapped Ruins all within a days march of my Capitol. But it's cost me a lot of time and potential, and depopulated my city.

I shared the save because I thought it might be a fun challenge for somebody.