Strange things happening at a siege

[Austen]

In my present SP game, I am trying to wipe out C'Tis and am having two strange things happening.

First is that their 1400 unit stack keeps disappearing and reappearing. I have their capital of C'Tis completely surrounded with occupied territories. Twice now, I have gone to attack C'Tis with it's 1400 units, and then the turn I attack, I am sieging the fort, but their was no battle and they have no units left in the fort as far as I can tell. Then a couple turns later, the stack will suddenly reappear again. Dunno what is up. Are they hiding in the fort and I can't tell they are there?

Second, an dmore problematically. I have 300+ Units their sieging. Lots of big units too. 60+ Vine Ogres, heavy infantry, crushers, etc. and I cannot harm the walls. I have even equipped 5 leaders with Gatecrushers. Still nothing. my 300 guys + Gatecrushers are completely powerless against this fort. Never had this prob. before.

What am I missing?

TIA

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Austen:
Are they hiding in the fort and I can't tell they are there?

That's exactly it. When you are sieging a fort, you can't tell what's inside.

I have even equipped 5 leaders with Gatecrushers.

If there are 1400 units in the fort, and a good portion of them aren't mindless (ghouls for example), then you will have a large amount of trouble breaking down the walls.

[Gateway103]

However, most likely the 1400 units aren't supply-freem so you can starve them out, even if they are repairing the wall faster than you can break it. Once their number dwindles due to starvation, sieging may start to take effect.

There is also an Earth spell capable of reducing castle defense. Not exactly going to help you though, since magic phase occurs first, so the wall would be damaged or destroyed, but then he'll repair some back if not fully, so by the start of next time it still has partial defense.

At the very least, you can hole up his troops inside the fort, while you send a second army to conquer the surroundings, and then preach him out of existence.

-Gateway103

[Austen]

What about ritual spells that nuke a territory and kill units? Will that work on troops in a fort?

[tinkthank]

That is often listed in the spell description. Many units are specifically not affected when inside a fort (e.g.: Send Horror), others are (I fire one, forget the name at the moment). So I am afraid the answer is: Depends. But most don't I think.

[JaydedOne]

Another suggestion is to pillage, pillage, and pillage some more and maybe ritual in some Black Death or other mass-death of your elemental choice while you're at it. I'm still a rookie, so I'm not sure if the supplies in a keep are a fixed number which aren't affected by the population, but if they in fact are, then that's a great way to continue smoking him out. Even if fort supply -isn't- dependent on such, you can at least get it to the point where there's very little he can build anew in that province given the loss in resources and potentially start cutting into his upkeep money.

[Slogan]

If this is the Last C'tis stronghold then build temples around and flood the area with preaching priests. That will reduce C'tis dominion to zero thereby killing the pretender and the nation.

[Wyatt Hebert]

I have noticed that Spies, at least, _do_ let you know what's in a Castle you are sieging. Also, I'm not sure if someone explicitly stated this, so I will:

In my experience, very rarely do computers defend their provinces with Castles. Your attack will kill their PD, but not any regular army in the province. Any units in the province will be inside the castle which you are sieging.

For your case, just do the numbers, and you'll see why you can't hurt the walls.

1400 units vs your ~800 or so castle damage. Not nearly enough. otoh, they won't be able to feed 1400 units nearly long enough. If you can handle that army sallying out to meet you, you can just wait them out. Or, as people have said, surround the place with temples, move in a bunch of priests, and preach them out!

Wyatt

[FaceLess]

I have experienced this twice now with the C'tis castle being the Last thing on the map not owned by me. The dominion tricks sounds a good idea but starvation takes a long long time if indeed has any effect. The C'tis fortress had been sieged nearly the whole game, first by Jotenheim AI and later by me (around a 100 turns I think). The earth spell did do damage every turn but that was apperently repaired before the troops kicked in. I used the Ulm siege commanders and troops to open it up but still needed a lot of troops and time. Subsequent storming was also unsuccesfull for a couple of times (and resulted in a completely restord fort with 1400 troops)before I finally broke them.