newbie question: how to siege castle

[gar]

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!

[BandarLover]

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.

[MaxWilson]

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

[MaxWilson]

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

[BandarLover]

See, I knew someone with actual knowledge would weigh in.

[Taqwus]

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.

[gar]

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!