>> The Siege of Syrcuse

[✝ Meatbolt® ✝ מַלְכֵּי־צֶדֶק]

I've relaunch a game as Carthago, and well besieging Syracuse has been a huge pain in the ass. Manage to take it after 15/20 turns, lost more than half of my army, supply pushed me to assault the walls over, and over, and over, loosing great leader, and lots of troops, failing until they were 5 troops inside. Even blockade Syracuse have been a huge pain. Anyhow i've been playing many factions now, and Syracuse is the only time i had trouble besieging and assaulting.

Did you guys had a technic to took it more easily ?

[loki1006]

You should be able to avoid supply problems as Carthage. Assuming this is early game, take out the two adjoining regions first. Watch out as the AI sometimes will try to take Malta and you'll need that so send a couple of units there to boost the defence and/or put some of your fleet in the adjoining naval region.

once you form the Sicily region, that should give you a good supply base.

You need 2 fleets but they can rest in sea regions where you can resupply - this is why you need to keep Malta. You will take hits from the fortifications so this needs a bit of micro-management to rotate.

Move your main army in to start the siege - if they fight outside the walls this is good. You can then juggle things, send weakened units back etc. Create an army for the task, you want lots of MI (for Carthage mercenaries are the way to go) to get to the +6 siege bonus.

Then its a matter of time, once you see the garrison realy weaken, move back your more powerful units and prepare for an assault.

I tend to find it takes about 6-8 turns and I don't lose much in the process. At the end of the siege, garrison the city for a while (you don't want it revolting away again0, disband your mercenaries etc.

[pnoff]

My trick is to put it to siege quickly (Turn 3 after start of the game). Skip Northern province, you can take it later. Then Syracuse won't have a lot of food stored. Don't forget to put (almost) everybody in middle province and Malta on food to supply army and navy.

Another trick is that blockade status is checked in the end of the turn (if I understand correctly), so you can rotate damaged ships to keep it up. Just be mindful of their navy, AI will probably suicide it making your job easier.

[HB]

Transfer your n Africa forces to a friendly port, march overland to the middle neutral region and dont have asaault picked picked. You want to be besieging here next turn and to be joined by you Lt inf your just building. Build lt inf in sicily and join army next turn. Spilit fleet into two and control the crossing of N africa to sicily so Lt troops can be sent over to N africa, pushed on to spain, in following turns.

Syracuse if it goes to the middle region, will get there quicker, more than likley have fought and won against the region and you get to mop up their remaining forces, if not you can wait here in siege for it to attack you and you will win, or it will sit in either of its controlled regions, while you again build lt inf waiting to defeat it in the middle region. It it does not, again dont assualt and go pick a fight with one of his regions.

What your after is battles in scily to gain experience, and defeat their forces in the field so any siege if you want can become an assault against lowered troop numbers, the actual sieges can take as long as they like best not to assault i think,, you dont want that extra decadence in any event, what you do want is to control the battlespace ( be attacked where you want to be attacked by syracuse or attack them where they are) and defeat their field forces, in any number of battles in sicily, to gain exp for your units.

[✝ Meatbolt® ✝ מַלְכֵּי־צֶדֶק]

Hey guys, thanks for your reply, i didn't go for the two others SIC provinces because of the decadence penaility i'll get from it, and early CAR game put the country in the low tier :/
Yeah i've rotate blockade to avoid naval loss, that one is pretty easy to put as the starting fleet is pretty good.
Does the siege specalist bonus apply only if you have units that got all this trait ? I did have some units with that trait but dunno if that helped.
EDIT: apparently every units add +1 to siege value is that correct ?

Thanx for the tips guys, not my first try on Carthage, but now that i ve played a bit more i've a better understanding ofthe game mechanices ;)

[pnoff]

Decadence will stabilize later. Take that land, it's good, and indie enclaves can get nasty. + you are forming province anyway. ++ you need food to feed sieging army.

Don't count on siege roll here, it will be very hard to raise to compete with Syracuse buildings. Starve them out.

[loki1006]

Originally posted by ✝ Meatbolt® ✝ מַלְכֵּי־צֶדֶק:

...
Does the siege specalist bonus apply only if you have units that got all this trait ? I did have some units with that trait but dunno if that helped.
EDIT: apparently every units add +1 to siege value is that correct ?

...

ignoring Rome for the moment, basically medium inf (& this includes mercenaries and regional units) all add +1 to the value (besieger or besieged), skirmishers add +1 if they are besieged.

So you need to out do the defender by +6.

Generals then add their attack/defend score +2 (so this is where 0-0 leaders are good).

There are a few other quirks but check out 10.9 in the manual for a fuller explanation