Does starving the settlement work?

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So I got tired of losing soldiers to costly charges and I also got tired of losing troops to artillery shootouts even with the whole pause put artillery in reserve, put artillery in other slot unpause wait for the shots, rinse and repeat. Spent 30 minutes yesterday carefully taking out a castles artillery only to be distracted when my wife in real life said something to me and forgetting to move the artillery and having one of my soldiers die when the castles artillery got a hit in, and abandoning the campaign in frustration. (I almost raged at her since it wasn't even important just some stupid **** she saw on facebook. But I managed to stay quiet, smile and only rage on the inside and reply: wow, some people... I have no idea what she actually said but if your spouse starts about some facebook thing you can't go wrong with answering: wow, some people...)

Anyway in my new campaign where my army is specifically designed to not lose any of the troops I don't want to lose.With my Vlandian sharpshooters being the infantry slot and being set up in a single line to fire as if it was 18th century musket warfare, and forest bandits and captured and recruited Fians in the archer role behind them on whatever elevated terrain I can find, and my sacrificial cavalry ready to be sent out and make the enemy soldiers turn their backs to our volleys. I realized that I'm eventually going to have to start besieging castles and towns and I decided to go for the non lethal options: starve them out.

Now I have been laying siege to Sargoth and it's food supplies have been 0 for a few days now but the garrison is not losing soldiers. In the mean time I'm constantly attacked (it's not much of a problem because of the way my army is structured and the terrain tends to be useful.) So now my question is: Will that garrison start losing troops or not? Or is my only option left to enable the cheats so I can resolve sieges the ctrl alt f4 way? Because I don't want to spend hours doing the artillery snipe game with constantly moving my artillery piece (allthough it could help level engineer I guess) and having to save regularly so I can reload whenever a soldier dies when I'm distracted by something. And I am most certainly not charging my troops in. Charging is only an option when I play an archer character and I keep all my troops safely back whilst I snipe the defenders until I run out of arrows, retreat and attack again with 2 new full quivers
 
So I got tired of losing soldiers to costly charges and I also got tired of losing troops to artillery shootouts even with the whole pause put artillery in reserve, put artillery in other slot unpause wait for the shots, rinse and repeat. Spent 30 minutes yesterday carefully taking out a castles artillery only to be distracted when my wife in real life said something to me and forgetting to move the artillery and having one of my soldiers die when the castles artillery got a hit in, and abandoning the campaign in frustration. (I almost raged at her since it wasn't even important just some stupid **** she saw on facebook. But I managed to stay quiet, smile and only rage on the inside and reply: wow, some people... I have no idea what she actually said but if your spouse starts about some facebook thing you can't go wrong with answering: wow, some people...)

Anyway in my new campaign where my army is specifically designed to not lose any of the troops I don't want to lose.With my Vlandian sharpshooters being the infantry slot and being set up in a single line to fire as if it was 18th century musket warfare, and forest bandits and captured and recruited Fians in the archer role behind them on whatever elevated terrain I can find, and my sacrificial cavalry ready to be sent out and make the enemy soldiers turn their backs to our volleys. I realized that I'm eventually going to have to start besieging castles and towns and I decided to go for the non lethal options: starve them out.

Now I have been laying siege to Sargoth and it's food supplies have been 0 for a few days now but the garrison is not losing soldiers. In the mean time I'm constantly attacked (it's not much of a problem because of the way my army is structured and the terrain tends to be useful.) So now my question is: Will that garrison start losing troops or not? Or is my only option left to enable the cheats so I can resolve sieges the ctrl alt f4 way? Because I don't want to spend hours doing the artillery snipe game with constantly moving my artillery piece (allthough it could help level engineer I guess) and having to save regularly so I can reload whenever a soldier dies when I'm distracted by something. And I am most certainly not charging my troops in. Charging is only an option when I play an archer character and I keep all my troops safely back whilst I snipe the defenders until I run out of arrows, retreat and attack again with 2 new full quivers
Are there troops not getting wounded like what happens when your party runs out of food i dont think its instant since you know you can survive a while without food however im not fully sure (not been able to test it since most catsles in my playthrough have like 30 days worth of food comapred to my like 6 (less if in an army)

However i wouldnt be suprised if like Morale information it dosnt currently work (morale works but the information about it ingame is wrong i think)
 
Your army will run out of food before the defenders do considering the fact most NPC Lords don't bother bringing more than like 5 pieces of food each
 
It takes a long time, I did it once I think it was in 1.56. It took a while before they started losing troops and it was only a few per day.
I've found that just building a ram and having lots of archers is the best way to go.
 
Now I have been laying siege to Sargoth and it's food supplies have been 0 for a few days now but the garrison is not losing soldiers. In the mean time I'm constantly attacked (it's not much of a problem because of the way my army is structured and the terrain tends to be useful.) So now my question is: Will that garrison start losing troops or not?
They need to be at -20 food to begin losing troops (-1 per day at that level), so certain low prosperity settlements are impossible to starve because the garrison+prosperity doesn't eat 20 food per day regardless.
 
it's food supplies have been 0 for a few days
the info on the top of the siege screen is wrong. you need to hover on the town itself to see thier food.
they do lose troops but it takes a long time so relieving force will arrive while you're waiting.
putting trebuchets into reserve then fielding them all at once is much faster than starving the defenders.
 
So I got tired of losing soldiers to costly charges and I also got tired of losing troops to artillery shootouts even with the whole pause put artillery in reserve, put artillery in other slot unpause wait for the shots, rinse and repeat. Spent 30 minutes yesterday carefully taking out a castles artillery only to be distracted when my wife in real life said something to me and forgetting to move the artillery and having one of my soldiers die when the castles artillery got a hit in, and abandoning the campaign in frustration. (I almost raged at her since it wasn't even important just some stupid **** she saw on facebook. But I managed to stay quiet, smile and only rage on the inside and reply: wow, some people... I have no idea what she actually said but if your spouse starts about some facebook thing you can't go wrong with answering: wow, some people...)

Anyway in my new campaign where my army is specifically designed to not lose any of the troops I don't want to lose.With my Vlandian sharpshooters being the infantry slot and being set up in a single line to fire as if it was 18th century musket warfare, and forest bandits and captured and recruited Fians in the archer role behind them on whatever elevated terrain I can find, and my sacrificial cavalry ready to be sent out and make the enemy soldiers turn their backs to our volleys. I realized that I'm eventually going to have to start besieging castles and towns and I decided to go for the non lethal options: starve them out.

Now I have been laying siege to Sargoth and it's food supplies have been 0 for a few days now but the garrison is not losing soldiers. In the mean time I'm constantly attacked (it's not much of a problem because of the way my army is structured and the terrain tends to be useful.) So now my question is: Will that garrison start losing troops or not? Or is my only option left to enable the cheats so I can resolve sieges the ctrl alt f4 way? Because I don't want to spend hours doing the artillery snipe game with constantly moving my artillery piece (allthough it could help level engineer I guess) and having to save regularly so I can reload whenever a soldier dies when I'm distracted by something. And I am most certainly not charging my troops in. Charging is only an option when I play an archer character and I keep all my troops safely back whilst I snipe the defenders until I run out of arrows, retreat and attack again with 2 new full quivers
your best option is burn the villiage first, looting the village will reduce the food production for city, when city food storage is in 0 for a while, you will see the troops in city start reducing, slowly,

then you siege the city, after 3-5 days later, the troops are reducing to very low then you can attack with minimum loss
 
With my Vlandian sharpshooters
Just attack siege normally and f1-f7 to retreat your party, this makes the infantry come out to get you, kill them all with horse archery, re-treat and repeat if you need to, then just go in and have your troops hold position in front of the ladder areas and your xbows will eat them alive. I do it all the time with just t2-3 vlandian Xbows. Or you can even just keep retreating your troops and snipe out the entire town personally. I hate loosing troops too.

For you OP question, you can shrink the enemy garrison by starvation but it takes a long time and (it's been awhile) I remember there being a lot of ****ery when I tried with them not going away when I though they should or somehow replenishing at the same time, I don't remember but it was lame. Also it gets to a point where it gets even slower as 1 food =20 garrisons troops, it kinda evens out eventually and you still have to deal with a siege. I do recall doing it once in a early version but I think they changed how food and desertion works since then.
 
except making every one go up the ladders without getting stuck or separating them into useful groups in the siege, can't do that stuff....
Lol. I just pretend that my troops are cowardly and are stalling at the bottom of the ladder trying to muster up courage to climb.
 
I had assumed starvation wasn't yet working. But maybe the math is slightly out so it's taking too long.

If one in game year is a quarter of an IRL year length, and IRL people will start dying depending on their health after about 8 to 10 days - with almost all dead after 20-25 days. Then in game, people should start dying/becoming wounded from starvation after about 2 days in-game with no food, climbing steeply so that almost everyone is dead/wounded after about 5-6 in-game days.

You could even account for the effects of wealth inequality within the settlement by having units die based on their level - recruits are first to go. Banner Knights can afford to buy up all the remaining boiled rats and belt leather soup and survive a little longer.

Of course, starvation as a weapon of war should probably have similar reputational consequences as pillaging - seeing as the poor townsfolk are going to be rather miffed by having to die as collateral damage.
 
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the info on the top of the siege screen is wrong. you need to hover on the town itself to see thier food.
they do lose troops but it takes a long time so relieving force will arrive while you're waiting.
putting trebuchets into reserve then fielding them all at once is much faster than starving the defenders.
Yeah but their artillery will get a shot or 2 in and kill a few of your men, and since you don't have any control over anything it's not going to be the men you deemed cannon fodder but one of your precious troops and thus messing up your perfectly balanced troop numbers. There's actually a way to this without losing any men but it's tedious and you'll be spending about 2 hours juggling your trebuchets around before destroying all artillery and the walls but at least you don't risk losing your troops. Basically you only build in 3 of the 4 artillery slots and you keep a close look at the defender's artillery when they turn towards a trebuchet, pause, send the trebuchet to reserve, click on the open spot where you didn't build anything, place the trebuchet there, the artillery will shoot at the empty spot and your trebuchet will be unharmed and nobody will be dead. Leaving the trebuchet in place after putting it in reserve, that first defender artillery volley will do damage to your trebuchet and kill some troops.

your best option is burn the villiage first, looting the village will reduce the food production for city, when city food storage is in 0 for a while, you will see the troops in city start reducing, slowly,

then you siege the city, after 3-5 days later, the troops are reducing to very low then you can attack with minimum loss

I don't raid villages with this character it doesn't fit his personality, also I always have at least 1 companion who's not happy about raiding a village
 
I will examine current situation. It seems this take too much time currently. Maybe we can do some tweaks so it take a bit less time. Will examine and return you in 1-2 days.
I had a thread about it a few months back.

tl;dr: Best case scenario you're looking at 45 days in-game to starve out a town under perfect circumstances.

For fixes, it would probably be OK to go back to something closer to release numbers of -8 for starvation to begin, followed by another man lost per day for every -8 added to the first. IIRC, you said you would rollback the -20 to -8 once you got some stuff fixed? Did that just fall off or am I misremembering (I can't find the post where you said it)?
 
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