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I experience none of the issues you listed because I do proper recon with agents beforehand to check if their are any supporting armies in the area, if there are I either use an agent to hold them in place or weigh whether with this specific province I might not want to lay siege.
One of the central tenets of tactics and strategy is adapt to changing circumstances.
Try laying siege on an enemy with one province only.
Unless I have a very large advantage in numbers, or I'm pressed bad somewhere else and need to just take the place fast to make a vassal or such, I'll usually lay siege because I don't like to lose a bunch of guys unnecessarily.
If you lay siege, the fort either surrenders eventually, or they have to sally out, and the sally battle is a lot easier, for me anyway, to smash them versus assaulting the walls. Enemy archer fire is devastating from walls compared to in the field, which I hate to deal with :D
Also, you don't have to worry about destroying the fort, meaning it is immediately ready to be defended by you, you can recruit troops from it immediately, you have the public order bonus immediately, and it replenishes your forces at full capacity, instead of taking a turn to repair.
Of course, I guess you could just climb the walls instead of smashing gates, towers and walls (or setting everything on fire, my usual tactic in an assault lol) to accomplish the same end, but then you have more casualties in the assault as a result, especially if the garrison is not pathetically weak.
I also like the freedom of mobility and lessened chance of ravaging the province. If you assault, you take the place quickly, but if other strong enemy forces are incoming to the area, you then have less options, or dubious options.
You must either fight from the fort, which makes you into the besieged, or you have to leave to keep your mobility, which means if the enemy is too strong and you need to fall back, they take the fort back anyway.
If you then assault and take it the next turn yet again, the town wealth has went seriously down, because it's had three assaults within a couple turns.
If you have to chase the incoming enemy off, you probably won't have enough movement to return back to the place, so you end up with a large hit to town wealth next turn because it spent a turn "in the red."
In contrast, if you besiege the place, and an enemy that is too strong comes into the area, you can simply leave and reposition. You don't get the town, but the town just stays as it was and doesn't have all of this wealth destruction from changing hands so much in assaults.
You can of course still elect to fight a battle while near the town, but if things go pear shaped, you can simply retreat and live another day, whereas if you fight from within the recently stormed town, it's all or nothing: if you lose, then you're trapped and massacred.
Laying siege is also a great way to draw enemy forces to you so you can destroy them on your own terms. If you just assault immediately every time, enemy stacks coming to relieve will be some distance away, meaning you have to go and hunt then down all the time, which increases the risk of overstretching your forces, getting ambushed, etc. Sieging is a great way to make enemies who were intending to ambush near the fort come out of hiding too.
I also like to have vassals and allies help out as much as possible. If you get another clan to take part in a war with you, it will usually take some time for them to get to the battle areas. In my experience, allies, vassals and co-belligerents will be drawn to your siege and park themselves nearby, so if the enemy makes a sally, you have support. Even if I do assault, I prefer to do it with a stack or two from allies in support, and often the only way you'll ensure they have time to arrive is to lay siege for a couple seasons so they can get to you.
If you assault and take the place, allies will generally not converge towards you, and go off looking for further targets, so you find yourself more spread out from them. This is especially the case with co-belligerents, because they are in indirect competition with you: if they see you take the town right away, they will just turn around and leave completely, or go and take another of the enemy's provinces that you could have had for yourself. But if you lay siege, they'll generally be drawn to the easy win that your combined forces represent.
A co-belligerent might not be exactly trustworthy either, so there are times where I am glad they are at war with a mutual enemy, but I don't trust them enough to give military access to my lands. So a problem can develop if you take the enemy province right away, because it might leave your co-belligerent with no land route to your enemy, forcing you to give access. But if you just lay siege, the province is still enemy, and the co-belligerent can waltz through without any issues.
Finally, I like to take advantage of free construction and infrastructure upgrades. You may invade a province and notice that the enemy clan is in the middle of improving lumber yards, ports, stone works, roads, farms, etc. As soon as you take the main town, these improvements stop and become your responsibility.
But if you need to siege for four seasons, as an example, improvements that need one or two seasons to finish will be done by the time the sally fails or the enemy capitulates, so you net improved roads or something without having to have spent any money on that.
The main problem, as you pointed out, is that while you're laying siege, your forces can't be somewhere else at the same time. But the way I look at it, if you are being pulled in so many directions that you can't afford to invest the time needed to properly siege the place, it means something went very wrong, or the conditions for going on the offensive were not properly prepped to begin with.
So for me, a lot of the strategy is ensuring that this type of predicament isn't a possibility.
The other, more minor, problem with sieges is of course that you will lose men to attrition if the siege stretches into the winter. So I try to weigh the numbers.
Generally you can expect to lose anywhere from 5 to 9% of your men through attrition in sieging conditions, so if the garrison is ridiculously weak, you'll probably suffer much less just assaulting it. But if it's a good or strong garrison, I like to wait, because they even in a big sally battle, results will be about 5 to 15% casualties for me (or as low as 1-3% if I have supporting allies and co-belligerents), which together with attrition means typically about 5-18%, whereas an assault could easily have made for double that.
And then, you have to figure that when you can just waltz into the place, or it capitulates, you have left it intact so you get full replenishment right away instead of having to wait a turn, which means that, for all intents and purposes, the casualties were lower for the preceding battle then they even appear to be.
No doubt about that.
Like if the fort just has some retainers and yari ash, I'll just march bow ash up to the walls, pelt them to death, and get the place for no men lost and no damage. Auto-resolve can also lend siege victories for zero men lost if the odds are overwhelming, although you do damage the place.
But that's why I said a couple times in my post that I will tend to lay siege if the garrison isn't ridiculously weak. If you can essentially just waltz into the place, why not, right?
I'm talking about situations where the enemy has a garrison that can actually inflict some credible damage if you assault.
And even if they are weak, you still can take advantage of the other potentials (like the free upgrades and improvements to the province or drawing enemy forces and allies/co-belligerents to your position) by laying siege rather than assaulting immediately.
So my point was that when you said, "why [the option to lay siege] was even put in the game, IDK," there are actually numerous, very good reasons for why you may consider laying siege.
I didn't say damage critically, I said those that can give "credible" damage.
And yeah, like I said, usually you can take castles, no problem, because of weak garrisons. I already have made that clear twice.
Hell, you don't even need to assault or siege if you bribe the place with metsuke, which I do a lot.
But the entire gist of your op presumes that 1) you're in a besieging situation, and 2) you have other enemies incoming aside from just what you're sieging:
"There's never ever time to lay siege in my experience, you're basicly giving away time yuo dont have for the enemy to take your land, reduce your income, and make your troops dessert, rally for a counter attack with a larger force, send more armies, and overwhlem you. Why it was even put in the game, IDK. Every time I've tried it, it basicly cost me the game."
So I'm addressing what your question was.
The op and the things you're saying now are about the same thing, but going in opposite directions.
First you said you don't see the point of besieging because it allows the enemy's forces to go and destroy your clan, now you're saying you don't see the point of besieging an enemy's strong force because that's dangerous.
So do you want the enemy running around, or in their forts?
**Edit 2: And it's not as if the two situations can't be happening organically anyway. Even assuming that the enemy is in the field, if you beat them back or they calculate the odds aren't in their favor, they'll often retire to a castle.
I have had many situations where I invade with say a combined 4,000 men and the enemy has two stacks of like 1,200 and 2,500, and I use ninja and such to keep one stack from fighting and the other stack retreats into the closest castle when the attack comes. Even though I have left over say 3,400 men, and my force is still strong, it's not strong enough to just take the castle with a combined 2,800 or so enemy in it (retreating guys + garrison), not in a way that will result in low casualties anyway. But it is strong enough to fight a defensive battle in case they sally, so I'll besiege and wait for reinforcements to show up.
The alternative is to let them replenish and start mustering more men from the castle, while I either sit there and watch, or march back home to replenish and build up, which loses the initiative and essentially wasted all that maneuvering and battle. /end edit**
Besides, the idea that the enemy is getting stronger or raising other armies in the interim is related to yet another benefit of besieging: it stops the enemy from mustering at that fort.
I'll often send a puny force, like light cavalry, to go and besiege a fort, because it shuts down troop mustering. If the enemy makes a sally, you just ride away. It's really safe when all the enemy has is the spawned garrison units, because they can't obviously follow you around the countryside, so you just go back and besiege again, keeping the income and mustering of that province tied up. By the time a relief army arrives or they muster more units, you bring your own main forces in, or allies/co-belligerents have arrived to help.
I've taken full blown castles this way, with a single light cav, because I let the vassal, ally or co-belligerent do the fighting while my cav just observes and mops up. But that only worked because I besieged.
Something I forgot to mention in the first reply too: don't forget about general's traits, like "castle stormer." [Edit: or "siege expert," I think is the actual name, one's an achievement and one's a skill, and I get the names mixed] When you combine your general's siegecraft skill development with research, and any siege-warfare-related retainers, you can make even higher tier forts capitulate in 2 or 3 seasons, and basic ones in just 1 season. That makes besieging much more viable.
Everyone I talk to seems to be overflowing with money. If i had 2-5000 koku I could have a steam roling army that could take a lot more than one city, and defend it afterwards, and increase public order. Throwing away that much money for a one time gain of an ungarrisoned, low publicorder city doesnt make much sense to me unless I have more money than can be made use of on armies.
I dont mean to talk down to you or anything, though it seems interesting that other people seem to have so much more money to spend,and time to siege. I feel like everyone I talk tois playing on easy, or somehow doesnt have everyone declaring war on them. (Or always plays as the rich shimazu clan). I mean no offense when I see something that doesnt make sense based on my experiences. I appreciate you sharing them. It's quite thought stimulating.
These two situations? Yes, they can happen quite often together,if not always. One army may run into a castle, and I'm sure the rest of the clans have tens of armies too, which often do stuff,sometimes that includes attacking someone other than the player.Though by the later the game, the more diplomacy by # is so low they generally all aim for the player.
I want them to die. I wipe them out. If I cant kill them, I attack something I can take.This seems preferable to becomming overwhelmed by enemies by losing time and land. Sieging itself doesnt actually give you anything untill it's complete, at which point, it clearly gives you something. : )
And what about the other 64?
Thats quite clever and very resource effecient really.
Those definitely shorten siege, I suppose if it makes them surrender it may even be more time effecient than replenishing and storming. It would be interesting to try, thoughI always chose combat skills.
I didn't take any offense. You never said anything offensive, and I'm not arrogant or weak enough to even remotely think that what you were talking about constituted "talking down" to me.
That's the problem with forums: tone, inflection and emphasis are really hard to communicate with text.
So I appreciate your clarification, but not to worry.
As far as I was aware, we were just hammering the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies out: if anything, I hope some new player might have a look through and think about both of what we said, synthesize it, and have easier victories as a result. Much of what I post in these forums isn't necessarily just solely for addressing every word in the op (especially if they have the hours like you got), but for newbies who might read the thread.
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Anyway, yeah there's no doubt that it takes some money to go the bribe route for forts, or even to spend seasons besieging ("time is money").
I've been playing on Legendary exclusively for years, and with clans other than the Kyushu money makers, but I don't find it to be much of an issue.
If I can tap the isolated clans that need trade partners, they'll usually agree to pay some fairly fat sums for a trade agreement, especially if I have warhorses to trade. I've found that you can get into the high, single thousands, or low doubles. I might get like 19,000 koku for a trade deal; and many forts can be bribed over for around 2,500 to 4,000 each.
Clans that are not isolated trade wise can become so by engineering the situation, by making a contiguous province deliberately fall to rebels or become your vassal (cutting a land route they need for trade), as an example.
I also put most of my metsuke (if not all of them, at least early game) in my most productive provinces. Even the most basic metsuke will cut the corruption/bureaucratic cost down, and a good metsuke will boost tax yield to nearly double the stated rate.
So I go through my provinces periodically, find the top wealthiest 3 to 5, and then put them in those provinces. That alone yields me hundreds of extra koku a turn. Once I start getting the wealthy provinces, I'm making an extra couple thousand or so just from metsuke.
I also keep tax rates low, and food surplus high, so the towns grow better. By mid game I try to have my towns at double their initial wealth.
And then it comes partially back to besieging, because like I said, one of the benefits is that you can let the enemy clans build up their provinces, whilst still hampering their mustering and movement. So instead of just blitzing them in assaults, I try to take provinces that have already been improved, or are in the process of being improved.
That saves me thousands of koku in construction costs once I do actually own the province. The money is not up front obviously, but it pays in the end. Say, saving 1,200 for road upgrades and 1,900 for farm development in a province: 3,100. Down the road, that means in real terms it's like maintaining 8 ashigaru for free for over three turns, or maintaining 2 samurai units for nearly nine turns. Another way of looking at it is to say I could be spending the same money I would've spent over 4 turns, but can support 16 ashigaru instead of 8, or 4 samurai units for 9 turns instead of 2 units, and that translates into opportunity cost benefits.
Finally, I'll often negotiate a peace with a clan instead of just destroying them outright, even if they're pathetically weak. The way I look at it, unless you absolutely need that province because of where it lays, right then and there, the main reason you're taking it is for its tax and resource wealth. So a good war indemnity is like getting tax wealth in advance, and a trade agreement can get you resources.
If a province will bring in, say 375 koku a turn, that's great; but if I get them to pay me like 11,000 koku for a peace agreement, that's the equivalent of 29 turns of tax, all up front, and without having to deal with bs that can happen to the province over the course of what would be 29 turns, like floods, outbreaks of disease, earthquakes, paying for donations to temples, etc.
Even accounting for not having your own food surplus effect, and/or the AI clan maybe running the province's town wealth growth into the ground, you're looking at the equivalent of around 20 turns in a lump sum.
And lump sums allow you to bribe enemy troops, so then even more koku is saved if I bribe a stack, use it for an offensive, and then disband it. Mustering it all myself would cost more in recruitment outlay, and more long term wise in upkeep because I'd be maintaining those guys even when they weren't fighting, or in transit, instead of just using them for a critical battle and then being done with them.
So I've found it all adds up little by little. Towards the end of the game it's the equivalent of saving tens of thousands of koku.
1st - The enemy being besieged would be the only enemy i'm fighting for the next 3 turns at the very least by using my agents to recon.
2nd - Number of missile units they have.
3rd - If a specific province is vied by both me and another clan.
*I get the province if i lay siege first which causes the other clan to fall under reinforcement instead.
** This will also depend on their turn structure of which AI clan goes first.