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!

[vfb]

What nation are you, and what nation are you sieging? What units are you sieging with? And you're sure everyone you have on the castle is sieging, right?

To prevent your armies from starving, you could bring in some units (eg nature mages) or items that give supply, or some units (eg undead) that don't use supply. Also you get supply from nearby forts, so pop up a fort of your own close by.

[Shovah32]

The more(particularly high strength and seige bonus) units you put in the faster the wall will be destroyed. Your problem could be something like your 150 men on the outside and their 149 men on the inside, causing the destruction of the castle to be a very slow process.

[Sombre]

Or they could have halberdiers, fliers etc in the castle.

Rather than just throwing men at it, I'd go for some specialised strategy such as a magical item etc. Or you could withdraw and let the enemy come out, then resiege a few turns later.