Sieges are horrible.

[THE CAKE MAKER]

The 'sieges' are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ retarded, go back to the way of sieges in Ascension and stop making having to deal with a senseless timer and allows us to auto-resolve them and starve out the castles.

[Silva]

I like them in the context of Shinsei battle system, which I also find better than Souzou's.

That said, Taishi's battle system is my favorite. A shame we never got it's PUK.

[ELDERMANN]

The siege system was not my friend, when we first met. But now I like it, even on both sides.

If an enemy approaches, it is challenging to search for best officers (high LEA and "important equipment: Arrow/Boulder/Watch Towers" or "Secret Camps") and look, wihich way they may take.

If I am the aggressor, I like to plan my route(s), change troops and feel excited when an equipment is destroyed and gives time for next attack.

Of course, tastes are different, but I like it!

[Silva]

Originally posted by ELDERMANN:

The siege system was not my friend, when we first met. But now I like it, even on both sides.

If an enemy approaches, it is challenging to search for best officers (high LEA and "important equipment: Arrow/Boulder/Watch Towers" or "Secret Camps") and look, wihich way they may take.

If I am the aggressor, I like to plan my route(s), change troops and feel excited when an equipment is destroyed and gives time for next attack.

Of course, tastes are different, but I like it!

You bring something I see in Shinsei's design philosophy as a whole: it's simplistic and even "arcadey" in some areas, but it always presents *meaningul choices* to the player.

That's why I'm preferring it overall over both Souzou and Taishi. Souzou has meaningful choices on the overmap but it's battles are mindless "rubbing blobs of soldiers at each other" affair, while Taishi battles are great but it's overmap are full of false choices like it's farming and commerce systems. Shinsei on the other hand strikes a good ratio of meaningful, interesting choices through all it's layers, IMO.

[paladin_66]

I destroyed a 70,000 man army with 700 defenders that I just parked inside the keep and didn't do anything. They all just died trying to attack the castle.

[paladin_66]

I am not even clear what difference food makes in a siege, since I attacked a castle that had 27000 defenders inside, and 0 food...and they still were able to fight and hold out and I had to siege like normal, which seems idiotic.

[Silva]

Originally posted by paladin_66:

I destroyed a 70,000 man army with 700 defenders that I just parked inside the keep and didn't do anything. They all just died trying to attack the castle.

Rare but not impossible depending on troop composition & officer traits. With good enough defending officers and equipment, sieges in Awakening can be tough nuts to crack. It's recommended to take sieges very seriously, specially due to the Authority effect they trigger. As an attacker, I recommend doing at least the following:

1 - bring 3x the defenders troop numbers at bare minimum (ideally 5x).
2 - use covert ops to soften the target (Destroy, Tunneling, Assasinate, etc).
3 - hit the target castle from multiple directions/roads on the overmap. The more directions covered, the higher the malus on the target castle's stats.

About starving castles, it's not really a thing here. Well, at least not by default. It's represented by the "Blockading" phase of a siege (the other being "Storming") but it inflicts so little damage on garrisons that's mostly used as preparation for assaults proper / while waiting for troops to gather. The exception being policies and traits that buff Blockading damage, like "Temple Donation" (which I suspect represents getting help of Ikko ikki on blockades). I did a playthrough as Honganji once and maximized said policy to level 3 and my blockades became devastating. I'm sure certain officer traits/stats also help here but can't remember exactly which ones (almost sure INT and Castle Raid count). Look for those factors if you want to "starve" sieged castles. The good thing about taking castles by blockades is that they don't destroy castle town facilities (Irrigation Canals, Trade Towns, etc) like Storming/Siege Battles do.

Hope that helps!

[MuTaTeDtReE]

To add, if you want a much more easier time blockading castles, just make Kuroda Kanbei your Conservator. That is, if you manage to grab him, but if you do, he's a godsend for blockading. He reduces your Storming effectiveness, but blockade becomes so smooth you can quite literally castle hop within a single span of your supply lifeline. Personally I just blockade almost all the time unless I'm on a time crunch so losing storming effectiveness is an acceptable sacrifice.

[Silva]

Haha that's cool. Kanbei Kuroda historically won a siege by diverting two rives and flooding the target castle, forcing the troops to surrender.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Takamatsu

Maybe the trait is inspired by this feat?