Give me siege tips

[Bozarius]

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?

[Ironhawk]

First of all, whats up with the triple post, man? Maybe you need to lay off the caffeine

But that said, I'm no battle expert but I know that the trick to seiges is just getting your foot in the door, literally. In most cases your seiging force is more powerful, but they cannot bring that power to bear because the gate is too narrow and the defenders block it.

Some tricks that I use (particularly vs the AI - I only have limited exp vs humans so far) is to put a fast, powerful unit at the front of my army. Like some heavy cav or something which can run in and breach the narrow gate portion and hold until the bulk of the infantry can pour through.

Additionally flyers work very well in delaying the defenders from being able to plug up the gate until your inf can arrive. Trampling units would probably be exceptionally useful as they could just wade through the defending stack of troops. And if you dont have any of that, just put your heaviest hitters right up front so they can carve a way through before you are torn to bits.

I'm also assuming that you are using your priests and wizards to good effect to begin with?

[FarAway Pretender]

Sorry for the college-dissertation-length response, but there are a couple things to worry about. I grappled with the same problem for quite a while.

It depends on the map. But for me, the key to winning Dom2 (especially playing against the AI) is to learn the lesson Hitler never did: Fight your war on one front at a time. Think of it as a "Sword & Shield" strategy, if you'd like.

The "Sword" strategy is something we all understand--an army strong enough to invade opponents and beat them. An army with lots of strong troops, or lots of flyers, is better at sieging than an army without. Typically, after 2-5 turns, you can breach the castle gate. For me, the "Shield" tactics took longer to master.

Find a good "buffer province" that forms a nice bottleneck from other provinces, and station a good-sized army there with some powerful leaders. Doesn't need to be strong enough to seige an enemy castle, just burly enough to drive off enemy attacks. Establish a positive dominion in that province--your troops' morale improves and the other guys' drops--and building a temple there is a good way to establish a "bridgehead" for your own Dominion.

Then, add the crucial ingredient: Defense. If you buff up the Defense, it amounts to free militia that come back every time they get killed so long as you don't lose a province. You can get 15 Defense for 120 gold, 20 defense and a likely additional Priest/leader for 210 gold. Those extra footsoldiers don't dish out that much damage to quality opponents (the Pikeneers are best at keeping low-morale opponents at bay), but they're a good cheap way to soak up attacks and they leave your other units intact much further into the battle.

Some castles have better defense values, and/or better supply stockpiles, than others. You can find out by right-clicking on the fortification in that province from the main map.

I'm often not able to hold an enemy "home province" the first time I take it. In those cases, a little pillaging is a good way to drive up my own gold, while saddling him with a bunch of Unrest that will hamstring his troop protection for turns to come.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by FarAway Pretender:
Find a good "buffer province" that forms a nice bottleneck from other provinces, and station a good-sized army there with some powerful leaders.

Provinces that prevent many other provinces from becoming neighbors of an enemy province form good natural bottlenecks. These points tend to serve as natural borders and you should generally work to take and hold these points. Sometimes this occurs before of natural "barriers" drawn on the map....other times it occurs because the province is bloated and mushroomic, and shields a number of physically smaller provinces. However, this is an ideal situation that is generally not that easy to achieve: Most maps are fairly open, and won't have a single-point bottleneck available for you.

As such, any forces you station for such a defense must be highly mobile, or else their coverage area is limited to a single province. SCs tend to fill this gap very nicely: They usually can be, or innately are, flying, and can thus respond to any attack within a 3-province radius: Even strat-move 3 groundpounders cannot move 3 provinces into hostile territory: They have to stop at the end of friendly territory.

The fact that you can utterly destroy an enemy army with absolutely no losses to YOU is certainly a plus, too, since you can butcher your enemies until they think of something better to use, by which time you'll probably have achieved even better weapons...or, in the AI's case, he never learns and will throw endless amounts of troops to their ineffectual deaths. Admittedly, some humans aren't much better....

Then, add the crucial ingredient: Defense. If you buff up the Defense, it amounts to free militia that come back every time they get killed so long as you don't lose a province. You can get 15 Defense for 120 gold, 20 defense and a likely additional Priest/leader for 210 gold.

I'll be blunt: PD is ****. 20 defense gets you a few scrabbly militia. It costs $210, and will utterly fail to stop any kind of actual attack. A watchtower costs $300. No matter *HOW* big the enemy army is, your temple will never be instantly burned down and an army of any size can be prevented from inflicting significant damage for at LEAST one turn. This is more than ANY amount of PD can give you.

Against the AI, which the original poster is playing against, a castle provides another benefit: The AI will never bypass a castle and rampage around forcing you to play a whack-a-mole: An AI will always sit there in front of a castle indefinitely until he can storm it. This means that he is guaranteed to be sitting there still when you retaliate. PD will not do this.

[ June 13, 2004, 19:18: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[HotNifeThruButr]

I've always tried to use two ways to storm an enemy castle.

If I have slow troops and/or troops with bad attack, such as Men-at-arms or Pikemen (I refuse to call them Pikeneers), I would put all my forces as far from the castle as possible and put them on hold and attack so that the enemy will come out of the castle to get me. Once they all flee or die, I can go through the choke point without much difficulty. Keep in mind that you'll suffer more volleys from the tower this way, since fighting begins later.

If I have fast troops, like Knights of the Chalice or Royal Guard, I put them all up front and try to get past the chokepoint before the enemy can get to it.

Aside from that, I always put my archers as close to the melee as possible to fire more accurately and I also put my commanders as far back as possible, unless I need them to cast, since you really don't want a stray arrow/bolt/poison bullet/ballista bolt to instantly cause your guys to route.