How Many Stacks Can Enter A Siege Battle?

[eatonpye]

I lined up two stacks on the edge of a city's red zone, and attacked with a third, but only one of the reinforcement stacks showed up for the battle. Needless to say, it was the one without the artillery. Diz-aster.

Did I do something wrong or is two stacks all you can bring to a battle?

[Enelith]

I think it's 40 units max ?

[eatonpye]

Ah. That explains it. That makes it pretty hard to get an edge on a tier five city with a big stack in it.

If I just bring Bolt Throwers and destroy all the towers and a gate or two, and then withdraw, will that stuff still be broken next turn?

If I have three stacks outside the city, can I swap out the first attacker for another without lifting the siege?

Also, if you attack a wall with artillery, what kind of hole do you get? Can cavalry get through it? Is it faster for infantry than scaling a wall?

[Col. Cornbread]

You usually stack meat shields near and attack with your Main army (which should have a good amount of arty if you can get it)

As for attacking the wall with arty
you create a gap in the wall that your troops(and cavalry) can waltz through.

[Estellus]

Not sure if damage saves over.

The holes are relatively large and you can open multiple.

Cavalry CAN pass through those holes.

The maximum units in one battle AT ONE TIME is 40 per side, but you can bring up to 4 stacks into a battle, they'll just filter in reinforcements as you lose/retreat units.

You cannot swap besieging armies mid-siege, but you CAN swap units between a besieging army and one nearby.

When you have more than 2 stacks, what happens is ALL present stacks reinforce in from the top down. Artillery is always at the bottom of a stack. In a situation like this, what you want to do is put all your artillery in your besieging stack, and fill the rest of that stack with infantry. Infantry always moves to the top of a stack behind Lords and Heroes, so you'll get a big wave of Lords, Heroes, and Infantry to back up your artillery as you pound down all the towers and walls. If your artillery runs out of ammunition, use the manual withdrawal button to retreat them and open up a slot for more useful units.

[Enelith]

You could actually use agents to destroy walls, it's much faster / efficient ?

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by eatonpye:

Ah. That explains it. That makes it pretty hard to get an edge on a tier five city with a big stack in it.

If I just bring Bolt Throwers and destroy all the towers and a gate or two, and then withdraw, will that stuff still be broken next turn?

If I have three stacks outside the city, can I swap out the first attacker for another without lifting the siege?

Also, if you attack a wall with artillery, what kind of hole do you get? Can cavalry get through it? Is it faster for infantry than scaling a wall?

Depends on the artillery. Generally you can make a gap for every unit, but bolts are crap at damaging walls and towers. If you really want to bring down wall and towers nothing beat a hellbaster/organ gun with rank 9 and full tech redline buff.
As Skaven, Empire, and Dwarf you can bring down a whole city inclusive its garrison only using artllery which is covered behind lords/heroes ore steamtanks/Hellpits for absorbing to towershots.

And damaged wall are slowly repaired. You can use some heroes to damage the walls, if they are good you get more than enough gaps to enter.

[zefyris]

damage saves over but is slowly repaired per turn when it's not under siege, starting with holes in the wall (this usually disappear in only one turn).
destroyed towers should still be destroyed if resieging the next turn.

[eatonpye]

Great information, all of you. Hopefully I can make this work- I'm playing Tyrion, so I can't use 'real' artillery, just bolt throwers. Five of them takes down a tower pretty quickly, not too bad on a gate, but haven't tried to make a hole in a wall yet. I like the idea of using agents- this means heroes, right? Unfortunately I only have a couple right now. If I use them to attack the walls, doesn't that leave them out of the stack when the battle starts?

[Elitewrecker PT]

You have to attack the walls, then siege the city, and put them in the stack again the next turn.

[Enelith]

Originally posted by eatonpye:

I like the idea of using agents- this means heroes, right? Unfortunately I only have a couple right now. If I use them to attack the walls, doesn't that leave them out of the stack when the battle starts?

Yes for all.

[Michael Daemon]

Originally posted by Estellus:

Not sure if damage saves over.

The holes are relatively large and you can open multiple.

Cavalry CAN pass through those holes.

The maximum units in one battle AT ONE TIME is 40 per side, but you can bring up to 4 stacks into a battle, they'll just filter in reinforcements as you lose/retreat units.

You cannot swap besieging armies mid-siege, but you CAN swap units between a besieging army and one nearby.

When you have more than 2 stacks, what happens is ALL present stacks reinforce in from the top down. Artillery is always at the bottom of a stack. In a situation like this, what you want to do is put all your artillery in your besieging stack, and fill the rest of that stack with infantry. Infantry always moves to the top of a stack behind Lords and Heroes, so you'll get a big wave of Lords, Heroes, and Infantry to back up your artillery as you pound down all the towers and walls. If your artillery runs out of ammunition, use the manual withdrawal button to retreat them and open up a slot for more useful units.

This. My personal setup for big city sieges is to front load 8-10 artillery, 6-8 of my longest ranged units on my strongest defensive lord with supporting heroes and just knock down all the walls/snipe down defending ranged units then withdraw those units and push up for a final melee.

[ArchAnge1LT]

40 units max at the same time, however, if you did bring more, the rest will come in 1 by 1, once one of those 40 dies.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Or retreats. When you're the attacker you can retreat specific units you think won't be useful so you get the ones you want.

[eatonpye]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Or retreats. When you're the attacker you can retreat specific units you think won't be useful so you get the ones you want.

This is the critical thing I did not know!! Thanks.

[eatonpye]

Originally posted by Michael Daemon:

Originally posted by Estellus:

Not sure if damage saves over.

The holes are relatively large and you can open multiple.

Cavalry CAN pass through those holes.

The maximum units in one battle AT ONE TIME is 40 per side, but you can bring up to 4 stacks into a battle, they'll just filter in reinforcements as you lose/retreat units.

You cannot swap besieging armies mid-siege, but you CAN swap units between a besieging army and one nearby.

When you have more than 2 stacks, what happens is ALL present stacks reinforce in from the top down. Artillery is always at the bottom of a stack. In a situation like this, what you want to do is put all your artillery in your besieging stack, and fill the rest of that stack with infantry. Infantry always moves to the top of a stack behind Lords and Heroes, so you'll get a big wave of Lords, Heroes, and Infantry to back up your artillery as you pound down all the towers and walls. If your artillery runs out of ammunition, use the manual withdrawal button to retreat them and open up a slot for more useful units.

This. My personal setup for big city sieges is to front load 8-10 artillery, 6-8 of my longest ranged units on my strongest defensive lord with supporting heroes and just knock down all the walls/snipe down defending ranged units then withdraw those units and push up for a final melee.

This is more or less what I was trying to do, but I didn't get the mechanics right. I used 5 Eagle Claws to kill the towers and knock down the gate on one side, and had four siege towers. I was counting on the reinforcements to bring arty to blow the other gate and rush it with cavalry, figuring (correctly) that the AI would be stacked on the gate I first attacked and would have a hard time rushing to defend the other gate from cav AND the blown gate on the other side. Only, I got all cav and infantry, and no arty.

Now I'll be able to sort the individual armies better. Still not clear on the order in which they'll reinforce, though. How do I define 'top down' to make sure the right army is the next one on the map? Is it the order they move next to the city?