I need some advise on how to deal with sieges.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Sometimes i encounter cities where i need to spend 10 turns to siege it down.

This leads to the problem of the ai sending a wave of death stacks every 2 to 4 turns from other nearby cities.

Anyone got tips on how to deal with this.
Or a mod that just remove the stupid siege system all togather?

EDIT:
It is 10 turns after reducing it as much as possible with siege projects.

[originaljuke]

Every culture has 2 siege projects off the bat that reduce siege time and require no research. Tomes allow researching more options to reduce sieges. The empire imperium granted bonuses allows getting up to five siege projects. I have reduced sieges of over 10 turns down to 4 turns with all siege projects unlocked and researched. You select the siege projects you want to use when starting a siege. there a little window on the lower left of you screen once you start a siege that has little empty circles with the + symbol inside them. You click on those circles to add a siege project once you start a siege.

There is a gold wonder siege project that has 15 points devoted to reducing siege time, but it's not a guarantee.

Hope that helps.

Others may have ideas of mods to help, but the base games provides many options.

[Kanjejou]

it depend taking siege action that give siege breacking point when starting the siege help also siege breaker units like iron golem or siege magic with mage and support...

The goal is to get as much siege breaking as possible or if not possible just being enough guys to sustain the siege.

fast regen and the shadow imperium bonus of regen in ennemy land can help a lot too

also as said above get the imperium boost that allow extra siege projects help a lot...

[Midas]

I just kill the death stacks first.

[~ Fabulous ~]

I usually soften them with my rally of the liege units and all my vassal army that looting their province, I don't siege with just my main stack, don't really care if I go on the negative income as it is only for few turns till I capture the city, as long as I can pay it will be fine, I usually go like this, rally as much as you can, call vassal to go raiding, build outpost near their boarder then build teleporter then siege.

[TirAsleen]

Build 3 Doomstacks that the A.I. can never beat with any amount of armies.

Research the 2 additional Siege Project slots and the best siege projects to tear down walls.

Profit.

Not as exciting as playing Dreadnoughts in AoW3 and manually tear down walls in siege combat - but i guess that was too "exhausting" for some audiences so its wait and bleed time.

The Mod.

Never tried it, but Mr. Sandman likes it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3129259159

[jeem9000]

You can also craft siege breaker items and get +18 siege damage just from that alone.

[MrButtermancer]

This is a GREAT question. There's all kinds of stuff you can do.

I play Brutal. The computer economic advantage is not insubstantial. You have to have a game plan to take the first city in a major conflict, because you don't suffer a meaningless amount of attrition needing to spend a half dozen turns in enemy territory while you get slammed by waves of stacked stacks. Every marginal advantage is meaningful. The advice I'm going to give will be most relevant in these circumstances.

So, first, you consider which sieges are worth actually having. Because it's a major undertaking to take a city, sometimes it's better just to topple a faction and try to pick up the pieces with whispering stones. If sieges are a problem -- one problem might literally be you're trying to do too many sieges. If you can simultaneously kill a faction leader and their throne city, you only really need to do one siege per enemy. It doesn't always work out that way, but think about if a city is worth laying siege to before you go for it. High population and access to Ancient Wonders are probably two good signs you want a city.

Before you begin a siege, it can be worth it to try to engage the enemy in the field. You're pretty much going to fight every military unit the enemy faction has in the next six turns, so if you can do that in a position to your advantage, you should. Attack the weakest stack in a cluster to fight at a power advantage. Use strategic spells on the largest strongest stacks to soften them up.

Destroy any spelljammers, or other province improvements which impact your tactical advantage. Golem Mines. Summoning Wells. This can be a good way to draw an enemy into a fight too. Destroying province improvements is how you can turn going on the offence into a losing war of attrition for the defender. The chaos affinity upgrade which allows you to do it in one turn is absolutely amazing for this strategy. EVEN IF YOU ARE PURE GOOD, it is worth the evil points to destroy spelljammers if you don't have an utterly overwhelming advantage on the strategic map -- in which case you don't need this advice anyways.

Next, when engaging the siege, you want to increase your besieging score as high as possible. You're literally trying to deplete the city's siege point bar by enough points -- that's what determines how many turns it takes. When you're choosing siege projects, your calculus should include which projects improve your chances of overcoming the defenders with things like knocking out major defensive structures (if they have a really annoying defense, you can overcome it here), but also needs to include which projects contribute the most siege points.

YOU CAN ALSO FORGE AN ITEM IN THE ITEM FORGE WHICH GRANTS SIEGE POINTS TO EVERY UNIT OF AN ARMY. EQUIPPING THESE TO YOUR HERO GENERALS WILL MASSIVELY DECREASE THE TIME IT TAKES YOU TO SIEGE A GIVEN CITY. IT'S SUBSTANTIAL, AND IT STACKS. You should also be mindful of which units in your faction roster contribute siege points.

Once you've taken a city, you've got to hold it while you execute your plan. If you're losing, always raze. If you're vassalizing, reduce the time as much as possible. There's a perk in the Order tree which helps. You can also migrate, which is faster, for mono race builds. This is actually not a terrible idea in AoW4, because the event system actually gives you enough sources of good points that even if you're playing pure good, you can PROBABLY afford a little light genocide here and there. Ten points deletes a people. Nasty, but it can be very effective.

You can PROBABLY anticipate fighting one or more battles in the process of vassalizing unless the dude you're invading is a complete ♥♥♥♥ and is fighting literally everyone. When that happens, definitely take advantage of it. The computers are not slow to cannibalize one of their own, especially once they start to lose. There are a few things that can help you here.

One, Fast Recuperation is the best racial trait in the entire game. Heal in enemy territory. You can heal MORE in enemy territory with the (penultimate I think) Dark affinity trait. You can also heal in enemy territory by using the chaos trait which decreases pillaging time (as it also gives you health -- this is huge). There's also Heal Army in the Tome of Faith which is extremely good for this. And your armies should have plenty of supports -- use their healing abilities at the very beginning of battles where your units are damaged, to get those healing skills on cooldown right away (you get to use them more often if you use them right away). And don't be in a hurry to engage attackers. You can stand there, healing abilities coming off cooldown, while their attackers close the gap.

Finally, getting out if you've razed a city. Sometimes, the exit is very hot. Exit stage left pursued by bear. Extra funny if you're fighting Tempest.

Anyways, extremely niche Shakespearean references aside, you might benefit from having a teleport army or ruler or both spell already prepared when you finish doing what you're doing. It saved my bacon once when I needed to stop a magic victory and my leader stack was surrounded. The mad laughter as you vanish in a cloud of smoke is worth the entire purchase of the game of Age of Wonders 4.

Good hunting.

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Build 3 Doomstacks that the A.I. can never beat with any amount of armies.

Research the 2 additional Siege Project slots and the best siege projects to tear down walls.

Profit.

Not as exciting as playing Dreadnoughts in AoW3 and manually tear down walls in siege combat - but i guess that was too "exhausting" for some audiences so its wait and bleed time.

The Mod.

Never tried it, but Mr. Sandman likes it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3129259159

Yes, it is a great mod. "Too many sieges" was never a case in previous aow games and this mod fixes the issue in aow4.

[Terrkas]

A little exploit to help:

If you have enough resources you can start and abort a siege to swap projects.

For example, headlong assault with the Bombardement from the old wizardtower would give you +20. Then, if needed, you can abort the siege on the last turn to swap your projects out for something that helps in the battle, like bolt repeaters etc.

Its important to Note a city only regenerates if it isnt sieged at turn end.

[MattStriker]

Playing vassal-heavy can be a big help. Those enemy doomstacks can't make it to your besieging forces if every single one of their provinces has one of your vassals' armies having a little pillaging party in it.

You might not be able to afford the upkeep for all those units you can buy in the Rally of Lieges, but your vassals sure can. Pump them full of T4 units and let them have fun!

[Bob]

Get better siege projects honestly. If it takes 10 turns with 4 decent siege projects going you're really doing something wrong or your target has like 300 fortification health on their city which is far from the norm even in end game, I think that's only possible with some of the Ancient wonders that increase fortification health for each Quarry in the domain, in which case probably capture the Wonder first from them to remove that portion of fortification health.

[Pantagruel]

The AI will frequently leave provinces adjacent to a capital empty (generally because they contain no resources of value) so you can build an outpost two away, expand it to the adjacent province, and keep two of your three stacks staged there, allowing them to heal (requires them to be positioned within reinforcement range, but that's usually possible).

[sandman25dcsss]

Originally posted by Bob:

Get better siege projects honestly. If it takes 10 turns with 4 decent siege projects going you're really doing something wrong or your target has like 300 fortification health on their city which is far from the norm even in end game, I think that's only possible with some of the Ancient wonders that increase fortification health for each Quarry in the domain, in which case probably capture the Wonder first from them to remove that portion of fortification health.

Why 4 siege projects? Going for a single tome which adds extra slot kills replayability. So we have 3 siege projects, each adds 2-3 siege, that's 16-19 siege total. I've seen 155 fortification on turn 45. Please don't tell me I need to craft siege item (it was added in later update, game was balanced without it) or go for very few units with siege breaker which again kills replayability.

[Terrkas]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

Originally posted by Bob:

Get better siege projects honestly. If it takes 10 turns with 4 decent siege projects going you're really doing something wrong or your target has like 300 fortification health on their city which is far from the norm even in end game, I think that's only possible with some of the Ancient wonders that increase fortification health for each Quarry in the domain, in which case probably capture the Wonder first from them to remove that portion of fortification health.

Why 4 siege projects? Going for a single tome which adds extra slot kills replayability. So we have 3 siege projects, each adds 2-3 siege, that's 16-19 siege total. I've seen 155 fortification on turn 45. Please don't tell me I need to craft siege item (it was added in later update, game was balanced without it) or go for very few units with siege breaker which again kills replayability.

Wizardtowers bombardement is +15 alone. Some tomes have one with 4+ or even 8. The siege item is a misc item from release. Its a tome in Form,
adding up to 6 per copy .