There was a long discussion a while back. I wrote this
"As I remember from reading "Fire and Stone" by Christopher Duffy, on early modern siege warfare, the principles are that the attacker has the advantage, because he can resupply in everything (food, ammo), and because he can concentrate greater amts of firepower. So let's game this.
I assume that the outer ring has some form of stockade on top of the earthwork. I choose not to attack the gates, because they're death traps. The outer ring is held ? I choose a position from which I can concentrate fire (my own slingers, supplied abundantly from carts of slingstones and arrows), but out of the range of the second ring. I should be able to suppress the defenders on the outer ring: either kill them and drive them off, or make them hide behind the stockade. That allows me to move assault infantry (shielded) moving quickly through the beaten zone of slingstones from the inner ring until they get into the "shadow" or the dead zone of the first earthworks.
That bit is easy. The next bit is not. I want to do the following: 1. remove the stockade so that I can 2. move up slingers to suppress defenders on the inner ring, which will allow me to 3. bring up assault troops which will 4. kill the defenders trapped btw inner and outer ring and 5. storm the inner ring. BUT the outer ring has the following effects: 1. it keeps my own slingers a bit too far to suppress the defenders on the inner ring and 2. it allows the defenders in the inner ring to fire at my men as they take down the stockade and mass and 4. it is too narrow and cramped to allow me to concentrate slingers to fire close up at the inner ring, or move up troops. In other words, the outer ring segments and isolates the attacker and prevents him from using any superiority in numbers and ressources. In addition, the inner ring allows the defenders to fire at my assault troops while they chase and try to kill or shoot down the defenders on the outer ring or in the ditch-- maximum tactical discomfort: I will fail to eliminate the outer ring defenders and lose men.
Therefore, I must find a solution to bring up more firepower. The traditional means of large armies has been to construct a mound, earthen platform, timber platform, anything, that allows me to mass a large number of missile chuckers, close enough and dense enough, to overwhelm the defenders in the exchange of missiles. This could be a heaped-up mound against the outer ring, or an assault tower, or a scaffolding + wooden platform. This will allow me to do to the inner ring what I could do easily against the outer ring, mass fire and suppress defenders and move up assault troops with ladders, etc.
If I don't have time, manpower, money for this kind of siege works (and they can take months: how do I keep my men fed and free from disease ?)-- I can try other things (scaling the *strongest* point of the defences by surprise, diversionary attacks, infiltration by small groups of elite troops who seize the gate, fire to burn down the outer stockade and overwhelming the inner ring defenders by long distance sling fire while assault troops seize the outer ring under the curtain of suppressive fire) but they take lots of people who know what they're doing."
From this thread
http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1363016879/0