newbie question: how to siege castle

[Gandalf Parker]

It is a problem to seige a high-strength castle in a low-food province. Bring fewer people who are stronger or have special seige skills (some nations have those and the sappers mercenarys).

There are also magic items that can help. Some that provide food (cauldron, wine bag, summer sword?) and some that will help you bring down the walls (a horn, a halberd)

[Ironhawk]

Yeah you seriously need to change your strategy, gar. If you are seiging a fort for more than like 4-5 turns you are doing something wrong. You still havent listed how many enemy units you are facing off against so, it probably is something comparable to you (which will take a loooong time) or more than you (which will *literally never* work).

As suggested above you need to bolster your army with a couple of things:

1) Fewer, Stronger units (think giants)
2) Supply Items and/or units that do not eat
3) Seige Items

You can recruit some of the units in question but likely you will have to summon them and of course you will need to forge the items. No nation was listed so here are a couple of paths that are handy when seiging - if you nation has them, give them a shot:

Nature: Vine Ogres (high str, NNE), Wineskins
Earth: Seige Golems!, Gate Cleavers!
Air: anything that flies, Horn of Blasting (or whichever the air siege item is)
Death: tons of undead



Alternative Strategy:
If you are truly desperate you can just throw ALL your men at the castle and just accept that they will starve. So let them! Barring the weakness affliction they will still seige at full strength until they die. Once you break the walls, just leave enough men to counter the defenders while you move out the rest of the starving and move in your fresh troops for the Fort Storm attempt.

[Graeme Dice]

Ironhawk said:
You still havent listed how many enemy units you are facing off against so, it probably is something comparable to you (which will take a loooong time) or more than you (which will *literally never* work).

It will eventually work, but only once his troops die from the diseased caused by starvation.

[MaxWilson]

What fort are you besieging? If it's a Crystal Citadel or something (1200 defense) you can either leave a large but cheap-quality sieging force outside of it while your real units keep conquering other provinces, or forge items like the Gate Cleaver (requires Earth-3) and the aforementioned Wineskin (Nature-1) and Cauldron of Plenty (Nature-3) to provide siege bonuses and/or allow more besiegers.

Call of the Winds provides a cheap addition to your sieging forces. Some people like it better than Wall Shakers; I think it's easy for all the hawks to die, but on the other hand zero-upkeep flying commanders can be really nice as gem couriers and troop shuttlers.

-Max

[Gandalf Parker]

Also if you keep a holding force there while taking out the neighboring provinces, consider some uses you can make of the place.

Tax 200% and Bloodhunting for example. Both will give you something and will drive up unrest so that even if he does kick you out then he will be unable to recruit units for awhile.

Preaching with loads of priests. That can be a big help. Especially if you think his god is in there. Even if you dont dominion-kill him it can help to have him MUCH lower in hit points when you do finally invade