Guidline to taking on a heavy archer town

When attacking strong players, a common defense is massive archers. Combined with some
support, fortifications, archer towers and big wall, they can seem impossible to put a dent
into. It may even be impossible to dent with ten waves of 100000 archers. No matter
what, taking them is very costly, but here is how you may do it:

1) Remove traps, logs and trebs:

Get a bunsh of expendable heroes with as low attack skill as possible. Attack size
100 warriors per attack, this is the most efficient number. Send them over
and over again to set off traps etc, until there is no more of those. Traps add starting
range to the battle, so you're removing an advantage of the defender. The heroes will
be teleported back, so they don't have to walk back. They will also suffer morale loss,
so give them some of your excess freedom medals. They may be captured, but we will
assume the target of offline, so you will fill his feasting hall quickly, he probably has
only one slot open max. You will gain some honour to begin with, then lose honour.
Enemy cavalry/cataphracts will be slowly killed in this way also. If so, you will
gain honour. Next phase if when cav, traps, logs and trebs are gone.


2) Remove abatis:

Get maybe 10k cavalry. Send the same expendable heroes with 100 cavalry per attack.
Grind the abatis away. Abatis also add to starting range of battle, so you're removing
an enemy advantage. This will cost you honour.

3) Send anti-archer attacks. The first attacks will be total loss, so if you have spare
penicilin, that is great. 60k swordsmen and 30k archers seem to work well. Another unit
that works well is battering ram. The goal is to get the anti-archer/tower units to
reach the enemy, the archers will be hit first, this is why they are brought, as shield
(unlike in most cases where other units are the shield for the archers). You will need
lots of swordsmen, at least 180000. Heal them, attack again. Your honour will plummet
now. But remember, honour wins no wars. If you kill say 1000 archer towers and two
support units in the first attack, this is good, not bad. 60k rams and 30k archers
is probably a strong attack in this phase. But rams are costly indeed. NOTE: In
this phase, you should use layer of other units. This means 1 catapult, 1 ballista,
1 scout, 1 cavalrly etc. One of each other unit type. This will slow it down, but
the enemy will waste several rounds of combat shooting at the 'layers'. Example:
1 worker, 1 warrior, 1 scout, 1 pikeman, 60000 swordsman, 29990 archers, 1 cavalry,
1 cataphract, 1 ballista, 1 ram, 1 catapult. In this phase, send strong attack heroes.

If the enemy stays offline, and you have enough swordsmen and/or rams, you will
break him, and win. Sending ranged attacks will not succeed. Remember to bring
lots of gold to heal the enemy units when you march into his city. There will be
lots of wounded archers there...

This method of attack is NOT cheap, it is NOT cost effective, it is BAD for honour,
but there isn't many other options when you need that heavily defended city captured.