Give me siege tips

Bozarius · #1 June 11th, 2004, 08:19 PM

I am a novice player and I am playing vs the computer. When I get the advantage on one guy, another wages war with me. When I get the advantage on them, yet another does. I am playing on marignon on the map with all of the other civs. First Caelum waged war and I had the chokehold on them. And right as I was getting ready to finish them Jotunheim waged war. Then I got the chokehold on them and Ulm is now starting to attack me. Problem is I got tons of forces bottled up trying to siege both Caelum and Jotunheim. Anytime I storm them I get my butt kicked. They never seem to starve even after fifteen turns and are armed to the teeth when I get in there. I have had all surrounding provinces when I rushed them. Is the only way to do this properly to starve out their dominion?

Vynd · #2 June 11th, 2004, 08:35 PM

You have some extras of this post out there that you might want to delete.

Forts have an inherent supply value. So long as the units inside one require less food than the value of the fort, I think they can stay there forever without starving.

If both of these enemies are down to just once province, then maintaining the siege on them while working their dominion down to nothing does sound like a viable strategy. Marignon's Inquisitors are very good at this sort of thing, building temples all over your enemy's former territory will certainly help too.

But it should at least be within the realm of possibility to storm their castles and kill them that way. It kind of depends on what they have inside of the castles though. If they have, say, a Sphinx, or some other Pretender that is very tough to kill inside of its own Dominion, then you're going to have trouble.

If they just have a lot of more or less standard troops, then what you need to do is build up armies that can get at them inside of their walls. You have powerful fire mages as Marignon, try hammering them with spells. But if you go in with lots of melee troops they are going to get bottled up trying to get through the gates and be cut down by the defenders.

Graeme Dice · #3 June 11th, 2004, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Vynd:
Forts have an inherent supply value. So long as the units inside one require less food than the value of the fort, I think they can stay there forever without starving.

The supply value provided by the fort is halved for every turn of the siege.

HJ · #4 June 11th, 2004, 09:15 PM

Fires from afar hits the defenders but not the besiegers. It's easily accesible to you as Marignon, and can work well in your favor. Seeking arrow is another spell like this, and so is Earth attack. Weaken them before storming.

Scott Hebert · #5 June 11th, 2004, 09:39 PM

One thing I've noticed about castle sieges is that defending mages can REALLY swing the course of the battle. I know I tried to storm Tien Chi (S&A) several times as Marignon, and got beaten BLOODILY every time. It was quite.. humbling. An issue, basically, is if the defender has a funneling Fortification, and whether or not the defender has (or can produce) chaff troops to clog that funnel until their arrow towers/mages can rout the attacking army. Very similar to HoMM in that regard.

In Tien Chi's case, they had quite the swarm of Dispossessed Spirits attacking, and were able to make Phantasmal Warriors when the Spirits failed. You'd think that Marignon of all nations should be able to handle Disp. Spirits. I even had 6 Witch-Hunters in the battle. Unfortunately, they were scripted to Communion first. All they did the entire battle (after the Communion) was cast Fanaticism... I probably would have been better off without the Communion, as they probably would've cast Holy Pyre at that point.

That was a very eye-opening experience for me.

Scott

NTJedi · #6 June 11th, 2004, 09:55 PM

When sieging the castle... for a quick attack on the place use the earth spell called "crumble". This spell will most likely let you storm next turn if your army is even moderate in size.

When you attack have all your fast troops in the front. I'm talking your calvary and other units moving 16+ for AP movement... otherwise you'll be stuck fighting in the bottleneck of the place which means big losses.

Finally the best suggestion when attacking AI opponents is bringing a powerful air mage with you to do mass flight on your troops. This spell is huge and can make a big difference in your favor.