newbie question: how to siege castle
 

playing practice game and it seems the walls of the castle never fail. What am I doing wrong, how do you storm a castle?

thanks!

Re: newbie question: how to siege castle
 

Put shortly, you need more troops. Someone else will come along and lay out all the numbers for you, but each unit in your seiging army counts against a fort types defense minus any defending or garrisoned units in said fort. or something like that. More troops, faster walls tear down. Especially with seiging units.

Re: newbie question: how to siege castle
 

It takes a long time. Examine one of your own fortifications (click on the "Fort" icon off to the right in a province where you have a fort, like your capital) and you'll see it has a defense value of between 200 and 1200, depending on what type of fortification it is. Roughly speaking, every attacking unit reduces that defense by 1 per turn and every unit in the castle repairs 1 per turn, so if you want to take down even a wimpy fort quickly you'll need a large army.

You have the option of forging a couple of items that can make sieging quicker (Construction-4 gives the Horn of Valor, Construction-6 gives the Gate Cleaver, which are worth +25 and +50 per turn respectively), and some nations (Arcoscephale, Agartha) have units that receive a bonus to sieging, but pretty much you need to have a big, cheap army and be patient.

-Max

Re: newbie question: how to siege castle
 

BandarLover beat me to it, so I'll add that the actual formula isn't precisely 1 per unit, it's Strength squared / 100, plus 1 if the unit flies. For defending mindless units repair only 10% of that amount, but as attackers they get the full value.

-Max

Re: newbie question: how to siege castle
 

See, I knew someone with actual knowledge would weigh in. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

Fliers also get bonuses, and there are units and commanders with siege bonuses (marked by an icon that looks like a catapult, IIRC). Sappers and engineers are examples of the latter. Some items also give siege bonuses to the commander carrying them, like Gate Cleavers and Wall Shakers.

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

I have been seigeing for a year now and the wall is still up. Its a force of 150 which I have to reinforce every season due to starvation. Is there any other way to take down the wall, this is really stupid!

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

What nation are you, and what nation are you sieging? What units are you sieging with? And you're sure everyone you have on the castle is sieging, right?

To prevent your armies from starving, you could bring in some units (eg nature mages) or items that give supply, or some units (eg undead) that don't use supply. Also you get supply from nearby forts, so pop up a fort of your own close by.

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

The more(particularly high strength and seige bonus) units you put in the faster the wall will be destroyed. Your problem could be something like your 150 men on the outside and their 149 men on the inside, causing the destruction of the castle to be a very slow process.

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

Or they could have halberdiers, fliers etc in the castle.

Rather than just throwing men at it, I'd go for some specialised strategy such as a magical item etc. Or you could withdraw and let the enemy come out, then resiege a few turns later.

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

It is a problem to seige a high-strength castle in a low-food province. Bring fewer people who are stronger or have special seige skills (some nations have those and the sappers mercenarys).

There are also magic items that can help. Some that provide food (cauldron, wine bag, summer sword?) and some that will help you bring down the walls (a horn, a halberd)

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

Yeah you seriously need to change your strategy, gar. If you are seiging a fort for more than like 4-5 turns you are doing something wrong. You still havent listed how many enemy units you are facing off against so, it probably is something comparable to you (which will take a loooong time) or more than you (which will *literally never* work).

As suggested above you need to bolster your army with a couple of things:

1) Fewer, Stronger units (think giants)
2) Supply Items and/or units that do not eat
3) Seige Items

You can recruit some of the units in question but likely you will have to summon them and of course you will need to forge the items. No nation was listed so here are a couple of paths that are handy when seiging - if you nation has them, give them a shot:

Nature: Vine Ogres (high str, NNE), Wineskins
Earth: Seige Golems!, Gate Cleavers!
Air: anything that flies, Horn of Blasting (or whichever the air siege item is)
Death: tons of undead



Alternative Strategy:
If you are truly desperate you can just throw ALL your men at the castle and just accept that they will starve. So let them! Barring the weakness affliction they will still seige at full strength until they die. Once you break the walls, just leave enough men to counter the defenders while you move out the rest of the starving and move in your fresh troops for the Fort Storm attempt.

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

It will eventually work, but only once his troops die from the diseased caused by starvation.

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

What fort are you besieging? If it's a Crystal Citadel or something (1200 defense) you can either leave a large but cheap-quality sieging force outside of it while your real units keep conquering other provinces, or forge items like the Gate Cleaver (requires Earth-3) and the aforementioned Wineskin (Nature-1) and Cauldron of Plenty (Nature-3) to provide siege bonuses and/or allow more besiegers.

Call of the Winds provides a cheap addition to your sieging forces. Some people like it better than Wall Shakers; I think it's easy for all the hawks to die, but on the other hand zero-upkeep flying commanders can be really nice as gem couriers and troop shuttlers.

-Max

Re: Sappers, fliers, engineers, Siege Golems...
 

Also if you keep a holding force there while taking out the neighboring provinces, consider some uses you can make of the place.

Tax 200% and Bloodhunting for example. Both will give you something and will drive up unrest so that even if he does kick you out then he will be unable to recruit units for awhile.

Preaching with loads of priests. That can be a big help. Especially if you think his god is in there. Even if you dont dominion-kill him it can help to have him MUCH lower in hit points when you do finally invade