Mount and Blade 2: Logistics train

[Federick421]

The problem in besieging settlements is that the players army quickly eat through food before the defenders run out of supplies of their own, forcing the players to storm the settlements, when in real life most sieges the attackers often try to wait out the defenders. I think there should be an implement where the attacker sends messages to the nearest friendly settlements to prepare logistic caravans full of food to the attacking army so that the attackers won’t run out of food so readily. However these logistic trains are vulnerable to attack from armies friendly to the defenders, resulting the attackers to detract soldiers from their army to defending these logistic caravans. As a result weaker factions can have a chance to successfully defend their settlements from stronger factions by attacking these logistic trains

[jib1]

i agree with this point completly, although in addition to the food caravans perhaps the attacker could send out foraging parties or scavengers. perhaps the player could select a group of men under the command of one of the companions to go and loot a nearby village in order to provide food for an ongoing seige.

i really think there is too much incentive to just attack a castle or town as quick as possible when in reality it was often as not more of a waiting game, based around supply, moral and health.

[Federick421]

You are right in in real life Sieges were mostly waiting game and for assaults on towns and castles would only succeed if the attacker had powerful siege weapons such as trebuchets and early cannons. Even then when up against the best fortifications, the defenders would often hold out for months even years. Most castles fell when the attacker found undefended secret entrances either by luck or bribing one of the defenders.

[Rallix]

I suggest that castles/towns don't have a supply of food that's always 100 days worth, making starving a castle a unused tactic.
I suggest that any castle's or town's food supply be based off of prosperity. Lower prosperity towns are much easier to starve out than rich ones.

For example: A castle or town with a prosperity of 0-20 will have 2 weeks worth of food. One with 21-40 prosperity will have 4 weeks supply, etc.

[Wraith_Magus]

I suggest that castles/towns don't have a supply of food that's always 100 days worth, making starving a castle a unused tactic.
I suggest that any castle's or town's food supply be based off of prosperity. Lower prosperity towns are much easier to starve out than rich ones.

For example: A castle or town with a prosperity of 0-20 will have 2 weeks worth of food. One with 21-40 prosperity will have 4 weeks supply, etc.

If we are talking about how long a castle can last in a siege, I would point out that while, yes, some real-life sieges lasted well over a year, the timescale in this game is radically different from real life.  Most whole wars don't last 100 days.  A 100-day siege would be called off by a peace treaty before it ever actually got anywhere.

For that matter, sieges didn't involve people sitting on a supply of 100 days' worth of fresh fruit and vegetables they had stockpiled years in advance.  The longer the siege goes on, the more the city's water and food supplies are taxed, the more the defenders have to rely upon things they would never even consider eating or drinking before the siege took place. Historical accounts of sieges in the lands around modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon during the Crusades involved defenders of castles getting so desperate that they drank the blood of their dead or tried to drink urine because their water supplies were completely exhausted. 

Defenders of a castle that desperately short of water should not simply open up their gates, and fight it out when their food meter hits 0, they should be on death's doorstep with most of them not even capable of lifting their weapons, and the few remaining having greatly lowered health and endurance.

[Federick421]

I think for castles and towns there should be internal gardens and well settlement upgrades. These reduce the amount of food the defenders use up and with clean drinking water reduces the morale decay of the defenders. How long sieges and how they end also depend what time of year the attacker attacks. The most successful sieges occurred just prior to the harvesting seasons, as the defenders are unlikely have stocked up enough food to last long in a siege, and the attackers would have easily accessible food. If the attacker times poorly and arrives just after the harvest seasons then the attacker is forced to send out logistic trains to provide food for the attacking army, while the defender is well stocked and can easily hold out.

[Wraith_Magus]

I think for castles and towns there should be internal gardens and well settlement upgrades. These reduce the amount of food the defenders use up and with clean drinking water reduces the morale decay of the defenders. How long sieges and how they end also depend what time of year the attacker attacks. The most successful sieges occurred just prior to the harvesting seasons, as the defenders are unlikely have stocked up enough food to last long in a siege, and the attackers would have easily accessible food. If the attacker times poorly and arrives just after the harvest seasons then the attacker is forced to send out logistic trains to provide food for the attacking army, while the defender is well stocked and can easily hold out.

The problem with the notion that you could simply dig a single well and solve all your water supply problems forever or that you could just have a farm inside the castle walls ignores some serious problems with the realities of medieval life.

First, they did dig wells, of course, but a well is A) exhaustable, and B) only capable of handling so many people.  Further, many cities were simply not sitting on a large aquifer, or at least one large enough to sustain the city, and underground tunnels dug to reach water supplies were also weaknesses in the defense of the city. 

Second, there's a big, obvious reason you don't wall in the farms when you make a walled city - towering stone walls cost a lot of money.  Most often, much of the city wasn't even walled in at all, and refugees would come streaming into the city when a siege came, making the city even more packed and crowded with people than it would normally sustain. 

Further, Medieval cities simply lacked anything like urban planning or even fire codes, and people simply built their houses however they wanted, wherever they wanted.  Any sort of garden you did build would simply be built over in most cases, and although people did have small pasturelands for livestock in cities, they would also, again, be nowhere near sufficient for the number of people that would be living in a walled section of a walled city during a siege. 

[Federick421]

Well I am just trying