Whats the point of siege engines?

[Shellshock]

Having 2 towers, battering ram, 3 catapults. Their defenses kill hundreds of men on the way to the wall. 99% of the time, siege towers get blown up and you end up in a jam at the front gates fighting the enemy inf.

If you buy a catapult and use ladders, you lose like 20 men (top tier) and take it easy after you starved the garrison.

So, whats the point?

[Azunai]

Siege ram is a waste of production time and gets lots of troops killed needlessly. towers are much worse than the ladders they replace. There's no point ever building them.

The best strategies are to either assault directly once the siege camp is done.

Or you build catapults, defeat their siege weapons on the world map and then assault. If you have catapults on the siege map and your opponents doesn't, you can order your troops to wait while you kill hundreds of defenders with the catapults before you actually start the assault the survivors

[Action Man]

Siege assaults suck overall in my opinion. I think the siege weapons are factored in with auto calculation, but in battle, they are generally a hindrance if the defenders have any siege equipment of their own. I use a mod to try to make them a little more interesting.

Siege defenses can be fun when they're challenging.

[kharille]

I tend to get trebuchets, hide them when they're built, and deploy them together. Eventually after destroying enemy mangonels you can breach their walls twice. Greaat for my high tier Sturgian infantry to rush in and destroy their militia.

Haven't found the siege towers to be of much use. I think I'll just focus on trebuchet...

[Dropdead]

Assaulting a castle or town while they have siege engines up is suicide.
The AI does it all the time and ... looses lots of troops in this process and that's if they even succeed.

If you're the one in charge of the siege, the first thing you want to do is make sure the enemy has no ranged siege engines available to them before you launch your assault. That way your siege engines will make it through unmolested.

You could also break the walls thus negating the need for siege engines altogether but that leaves the settlement exposed for a while, so if you plan on having to defend it in the near future... I'd avoid that option.

[failsafe]

Originally posted by Shellshock:

Having 2 towers, battering ram, 3 catapults. Their defenses kill hundreds of men on the way to the wall. 99% of the time, siege towers get blown up and you end up in a jam at the front gates fighting the enemy inf.

If you buy a catapult and use ladders, you lose like 20 men (top tier) and take it easy after you starved the garrison.

So, whats the point?

Build the towers and the battering ram then keep building trebuchet untill you have destroyed all the defending siege engines it can take awhile but eventually you will get to a point were they have no defending siege engines then attack.

it's worth maxing out your engineering skill or at least try and get ti to 250 for the 25% attack speed skill helps a lot.

[GIJoe597]

Originally posted by Shellshock:

Having 2 towers, battering ram, 3 catapults. Their defenses kill hundreds of men on the way to the wall. 99% of the time, siege towers get blown up and you end up in a jam at the front gates fighting the enemy inf.

If you buy a catapult and use ladders, you lose like 20 men (top tier) and take it easy after you starved the garrison.

So, whats the point?

If you are dying to defensive siege equipment you are doing it wrong. Kill off the enemy siege engines before you attack.

I could comment much on why towers are useful but I am in a rush. I will simply type the way the ai works, wanting to breach three points at once, towers are very useful for allowing your troops to mass until that point.

Ultimately we all play the game the way we choose to. Here is how I choose to handle sieges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Fx0kexbaE&list=PLCsuIVA3xcpulBKPWpEtygq2rfRJDPEwf&index=3

[TruXurT]

Originally posted by Shellshock:

Having 2 towers, battering ram, 3 catapults. Their defenses kill hundreds of men on the way to the wall. 99% of the time, siege towers get blown up and you end up in a jam at the front gates fighting the enemy inf.

If you buy a catapult and use ladders, you lose like 20 men (top tier) and take it easy after you starved the garrison.

So, whats the point?

There is an easy way and a hard way. What you described is a hard way.

Easy way is to start building siege engines with trebuchets, use hiding method until you have all 4 of them and then begin artillery duel with the defenders. In the meantime you can keep building siege towers/battering ram to level up your engineering skill.

While you are at it, you may want to starve the garrison as well, to increase your chances. Sometimes a town has only few days of food, so it may be worth it, especially if it is a large garrison.

Keep pounding the walls until they break and there is no more defensive siege engines (they keep being rebuilt, so wait until they are all gone before commencing assault).

Make sure to hide battering ram as at this point you don't need it, don't worry about siege towers, they are not going to be used if the walls are breached. Actually you may want to hide your trebuchets at this point as well, to avoid accidental friendly fire and free up the crews.

Yes, it will all take time, but that's ok. Sieges are supposed to take some time.

For easy sieges just go quick and use ladders for assault. Ideally assault before any defender siege engines are built, but that may not always be possible (depends on your engineer skills and also on defending castle/town buildings and governor)

[kristianjakob]

Originally posted by Dropdead:

Assaulting a castle or town while they have siege engines up is suicide.

Nahh, It is not that bad.

In practise the losses you take from storming a town is fare outweight by the time is saves laying siege.

[Keijo]

If the garrison has like 400mil and under 400 not so high level troops I don't build anything in the camp. What I do I just press f2+f3 to make a loose formation and then I order my troops to charge and hold fire(so they move faster)

Then I stop them close enough to the walls so that the defender siege engines are too close to fire and hammer the defenders with archers and when I run out of ammo I just charge the ladders, sometimes I break the gate if the ladders get too many casualties.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by kristianjakob:

Originally posted by Dropdead:

Assaulting a castle or town while they have siege engines up is suicide.

Nahh, It is not that bad.

In practise the losses you take from storming a town is fare outweight by the time is saves laying siege.

Most siges I use as traps, so time not really that important for me. Why keep chase down enemy parties when you can just have them come to you -)

[kristianjakob]

Originally posted by Ruffio:

Originally posted by kristianjakob:

Nahh, It is not that bad.

In practise the losses you take from storming a town is fare outweight by the time is saves laying siege.

Most siges I use as traps, so time not really that important for me. Why keep chase down enemy parties when you can just have them come to you -)

We just play the game differently.

Genereally I want to fight as few battles as possible lategame. In a "perfect" war I would fight one battle and knock out their main force and then quickly take all there holdings before they can effectively muster a new force that could start seriously countersieging.

[TardWrangler]

Siege assaults are supposed to be hell for the attackers. Its a bunch of men in a castle fighting a bunch of men who are not in a castle.

Either assault quickly before the settlement builds catapults, or build trebuchets to take out the catapults but risk being cleaned up by a reinforcing army.

Results are a million times worse for the attacker in sim than in actual battle

[hottnova75]

When you build your siege engines, put them in storage, until you have all 4 made. Deploy them all at once... Someone said this already. When enemy engines are down, ladder attack can win if numbers of enemy are low, or low tier soldiers defending. BUT YOU HAVE TO GET KILLS. Your army performs much better if you headshot a bunch of enemies on the walls. It can be difficult to get the hang of shooting accurately and not dying. The more enemies you shoot off the walls with your general, the faster your army will whip some asses up those ladders. The morale gained from a participating general can sway battles you should have lost even...