storming castles
 

Hey there -- I have a couple of questions about storming castles.

When playing against the computer (Difficult AI), I seem to have a really hard time storming their castles. I can generally cost-effectively take their territories, eventually cornering them in their castle.

The problem is once they're there, I usually have very bad luck storming their castle -- especially if they've got some crazy archmage leader in there. But even without crazy mage leaders, I often have a hugely disproportionately hard time taking over the castles, even with vastly larger forces.

Are there any tricks? If I keep them holed up in their castle and keep applying seige over multiple turns, does that weaken them at all? Is there any sort of specific ability I should bring in my attacking force to help?

Or should I avoid the problem altogether by simply keeping them in their castle, mopping up remaining forces/territories, and snuffing out their dominion?

(I've been using Marignon recently, so I have inquisitors which should make that much easier...)

Thanks in advance for any answers.

-Hiro_Antagonist

Re: storming castles
 

Basically, the strength of your forces are added up, bonuses for siegecraft (a special ability available to a few units, including the Ulmish Engineers) are factored in, and that is the amount you weaken the enemy's fort. The enemy, however, uses the same process with its strength and castle defense bonus (another special ability available to a few units) to rebuild the defenses.

You need to have not only a large force but one that sufficiently out-strengths the opposition. There are some spells that can help, high-strengh summons also help, and mindless units are to be avoided. (Mindless troops count only 1/10 of their strength towards sieging or defense.)

It can be time-consuming but at least that means your castles won't go down easily either.

Re: storming castles
 

There are many items that speed up destroying castle walls as well. Gate Cleaver and Air Shaker, at least. Once you can storm it, it helps if you can use fliers to distract enemy mages. Also, it can help if you have fast, powerful units just before the gate that just dash forward, and more units just behind them so that they will get help as fast as possible. This way your units have a chance of getting through he gate faster.

Re: storming castles
 

Put a commander with a bane venom charm in your siegers to disease the enemies behind the walls.

Re: storming castles
 

I think the OP was talking about actually taking the castle, not breaking down the walls. This can be a big problem for the tougher castles which only have a narrow entrance gate or barbican - if you have slow, lightly armoured troops (like flagellants) they will get massacred while getting into the castle to fight. Two solutions to this:

1. Get flying troops from somwhere. They get straight in and start pounding the defenders.

2. Put *fast* troops at the front, like cavalry, and charge straight in. Knights of the chalice would be particularly good here. Then follow with your slower troops.

Small squads will get through a bottleneck quicker than large squads (but small squads also rout more easily).

It can still be tough though, taking a big castle which has lots of mages in it. You lose a lot of units simply getting inside.

CC

Re: storming castles
 

Mindless troops siege at full strength; they are 1/10 for defending only.

In addition to the above suggestions, use a flying supercombatant (SC). If it doesn't fly naturally, give it Winged Shoes. Put it in the front and to one side, with orders to hold (or cast buffing spells) for at least two turns. During the turns that the SC holds, the enemy troops will rush forward into the gate, where your other troops will be going. Then the SC will have a good chance of being able to attack enemy commanders quickly.

Re: storming castles
 

Bah, actually storming a castle is not even difficult enough - or is there anyone here who would rather opt for a prolonged siege instead of storming right away?

A prolonged siege might starve the defenders, since a castle's supply bonus is halved for each subsequent sieged turn. However, starving units will only reveive diseases in the end. A disease will kill, but it takes too much time to actually wait for a sieged castle's garrision to diminish significantly due to starving/disease. Or did I miss a mechanism by which starving will cause more damage if the starving unit is already diseased? The decreased moral due to starving is useful, but thanks to wine skins and non-eating troops, a prolonged siege against human opponents is probably always a bad idea.

Another benefit of a prolonged siege is killing by preaching, but this only applies to the last castle of an opponent...

---

BTW, I think that flying units receive +1 to sieging and defending.

Re: storming castles
 

Any unit (besides undead) that is diseased has a chance to pick up additional afflictions. In most instances, I prefer to storm a castle if I can, since otherwise I have an army just staring at stone walls...

Re: storming castles
 

Also applies to heavy use of immortals, especially by ermor or ulm bf. There waiting to get positive dominion also helps, as Marignon it should be possible to achieve positive dominion in 1 turn.

Re: storming castles
 

Using only meele units will give you huge looses unless they fly. Since only a few will be able to fight while the rest just hangs around beeing of no use.

So have some archer and crossbows to deliver some damage to thier units.

Mages with good evocations are also useful but spread them out as your opponents castle will fire at your commanders as well. Use of air shield might be useful.