Below are different strategies against The Wolf.
Defense
The Wolf's attacks need a good number of units to deflect, mainly because of the heavily armored troops he uses. Crossbowmen and fire ballistae are invaluable, as well as ballistae and mangonels which should not be neglected. A moat is very effective in slowing down the advancing units, but his pikemen will try and dig it up so make sure you have crossbowmen on walls and towers to kill them. Some catapults deployed around the castle also help, since they can batter any swordsmen or pikemen into death with one hit, although targets will have to be manually assigned by the player. Setting pitch ditches on fire, or using fire throwers is a good last resort if swordsmen and pikemen are slowly demolishing your walls.
It is best not to reach this stage, and to do this, it is useful to deplete some of the Wolf's Swordmen and pikemen when they are waiting to attack, which they do for a long time before advancing. Sending a good sized group of horse archers out to fire at them from a distance is most effective for this, and keeping their distance from the melee troops will be easy as swordsmen and pikemen are so slow. Additionally these horse archers can destroy the Wolf's siege equipment. Make sure you do this after the crossbowmen have advanced and been killed and there are only pikemen and swordsmen left, as crossbow bolts can kill even moving horse archers.
Offense
Dispatching The Wolf's castles can be really troublesome if given enough time to be constructed. The heavy defense, the massive structures and deployed siege engines outside the castle resemble a hedgehog, which won't allow any intruders in. Fortunately, there are some ways:
- Prevention: Although The Wolf spends most of his starting money on defenders, he is very likely to have no resources to construct towers and gatehouses. Assassins and horse archers in decent numbers may be a good solution. Assassins are good against advancing pikemen, while horse archers pick off Arab bowmen and crossbowmen stuck on the ground. The horsemen may also draw fire while your melee troops kill the king.
- Attrition: This is the most common way to siege The Wolf. Your best chance to attack after he has moved out his attack force. Use a good number of horse archers, melee troops and catapults to achieve this. Use the horse archers to terrorize workers and patrolling troops, killing the masses of Arabian bowmen he sends to counter your move. In the meantime, smash the towers and essential buildings with your catapults and make sure you have enough stone to feed them (5 quarries are a must). When you have created a breach, move in some troops so pikemen and swordsmen will be drawn off from the keep. Kill them and launch a massive wave of melee troops to win.
- Alternatively, if you can afford it, build up a force of at least 50 fire ballistae and after he has moved out his attack force, move them within range of his walls, taking out all the units on top of them tower by tower. Move them within range to take out the units on the keep afterwards. Feed in assassins behind to kill the lord.
Setting fire to the buildings outside his walls with large Slave armies of about 100 with about 20 horse archers for distraction prior to any of these attacks is also recommended to ruin his economy, but make sure the fire has gone out before you launch the main attack.
You can also do it by recruiting at least 50 macemen, swordsmen and pikemen as much as you can, (recommended) 25-30 crossbowmen, siege tower and few catapults or trebuchets. Use catapults/trebuchets to collapse square towers, leave one untouched, put a siege tower close to undamaged square tower, get those macemen up, kill the troops on tower, get your crossbowmen up and try to kill the rest of ranged units on walls units with remaining macemen while crossbowmen are shooting troops on keep. Swordsmen and pikemen are finishing units, move them up on walls via siege tower open the gatehouse and give him hell. You might as well send a detachment of cheaper units (spearmen, slaves) so Wolf wastes his pitch ditches.