Is out sieging the AI an effective tactic?

[Slen]

I was playing around with this today...had the virtue as my pretender, the winged race(I can never remember the name heh), she had 8 air, 4 nature and 4 astral.

I had her and a few nature mages I was able to pick up make a very large number of wine bags..... I started off in very poor positioning on the map BUT I was able to quickly get a large number of castles... not sure why the enemy didn't fight me much initially but they didn't.

Is forcing the enemy to waste time sieging your city, while you actually have a positive food production inside effective, or sieging a city for so long the populace starve, or do you think it takes so long that the diseases are not worth it?

[The_Paladin]

The AI tends to amass such a large force that they often starve themselves anyway. As a result I'm not really sure if you would get much gain from these tactics.

If however you knew for some reason that the AI had massed a group of good troops then attempting to starve them might be worth it.

[Chazar]

As always in Dom2, that depends, but long sieging is most of the time not a good idea:

• I think starving out defenders is rarly the purpose of a siege: The AI's units are starving anyway without sieging and any sensible player will either lab-teleport or sneak in wine skins if relief forces are not immediately at hand...
  
• Furthermore, a sieging force is vulnerable for long-distance spells and specially suited counter-forces: You always know what the sieging force is composed of and where to find it. Being predictable is always bad in strategy games...
  
• Gate Cleavers and such even make long sieges unnecessary, which might be eventually the reason why most people choose Watch Towers anyway...

So unless castle supplies and defense points become much higher, sieging is usually not an issue. I actually like the Shepherd Scenario's Crystal Citadel, having 500 points of defense. You really have to think about taking that one, for just a bunch of SCs and Thugs holding Gate Cleavers wont rip it apart in one turn all by themselves, while each additional turn exposes you to the other human players who will gang up immediately...

[Nerfix]

Well, the AI can't build their (most likely) best troops if they are sieged.

[RibbonBlue]

Ive always wondered if this would ever work.
Mass 9999999999 city guard style units that help protect your castle from being destroyed.
create 9999999999 food+ items or nature mages.
Have a huge gem income in that one city to alchemize for gold to pay for upkeep.

Would you be undestroyable?

[Agrajag]

No, you would crash the game.
I don't remember the limit, but I think its 32000 units, after that strange things begin to happen, and at 9999999999 I doubt the game will even work.
Also, if you try and move those units, you'll crash at hosting.
And besides, if you have 9999999999 city guards, someone else probably has 9999999999 of something better to take your city.

[Endoperez]

No. Your enemy could have 100 Mounted Commanders with Gate Cleavers and Wall Shakers, 10 of them would have Ring of Resist Lightning, and one A3 mage with Staff of Storms would enter with them and cast Wrathful Skies - they would also need some slow, high-hp or lightning-resistant cannon fodder to keep the commanders on the field, but it is doable.