Sieging down castles and towns takes too long.

[Apocal]

Phone posting, so no pics until later.

But does anyone else feel like it takes way too long to starve out garrisons now?

It was better before the settlement and bound settlement issues rebalance, back when most towns could reasonably hit 6500+ prosperity and a few monsters would go higher than 10,000. The bigger they were, the harder they fell and all that.

But now the best case towns are about 6500 prosperity while most hover around 2500-4500. That means they eat a lot less food and their garrisons starve extremely slowly. Combined with militia being somewhat immune, it kinda eliminates sieging down settlements, which was legitimately one of my favorite improvements to Bannerlord.

How does everyone else feel?

 

[Apocal]

Alright, here are the pics, text to follow:


The operational context: (wrong)Sargot is pretty much the Vlandian's forward base against my faction (Khuzaits), with high prosperity, plentiful grain and five-recruiting slots. Whenever their parties want to raid, they start with the villages closest to Sargot. Whenever they want to besiege something, the army forms near Sargot. Whenever said army runs low on food or manpower, it goes to Sargot to get more.

So Sargot has got to go.

First things first, I gathered a mean mother****er of an army, well over 300 horse archers and 400 imperial legionaries, with another 500-600 other troops (some called in later, when the Vlandian army returned) to pad out the numbers. After that I found and followed an major (900 man) army heading towards Sargot, and waitedd for them to do their grocery shopping and leave. Next, I dismissed a party from my army which predictably went to begin raiding Sargot's villages. At the same time, I hadn't actually invested the town, to avoid drawing in defending parties/armies too early, but I blockaded the entrance with my army. Finally, once the Vlandian army had shown it wasn't going to attck and one village was burned while the other burning, I went ahead and invested the settlement.

• WrongSargot (just a hair under 6000 prosperity) was invested on Summer 15 with 541 total defenders (91 garrison) and over 600 units of food stockpiled.
• By Summer 18, food was down to ~400 and somehow 30 militia had disappeared for no apparent reason (they were not starving (yet)).
• Food stocks finally run down by Summer 21, 441 defenders remaining and they are losing 31 men per day.
• On Autumn 1, 402 defenders, 30 total men lost per day.
• Finally, Autumn 2 rolls around, down to 363 defenders (59 garrison) and starving at a rate of 27 per day.

I had to cut it short and launch the assault then, because something like 3000 Vlandians had showed up and had started to approach my siege camp regarding a number of complaints that I was blocking traffic in and out of the city.

This was a best case scenario in most respects:

• High prosperity
• Two village town and both villages raided
• Army bought out food
• My own army was uniquely powerful -- no serious risk from Vlandian relief parties for eight days

The defenders were starving at a satisfactory pace and in the end, I did do serious damage to their numbers (down to 363 from 541) but take away almost any element and I couldn't pull off it off. And again, most towns in 1.5.1 never reach 6000 prosperity. While they are also guarded by more than ~90 garrison, that doesn't directly translate to increased starvation to match prosperity consumption.

tl;dr sieging out a settlement under very favorable conditions is alright. But anything less than that and it won't work well, or even necessarily at all, in the case of low prosperity settlements with granaries or three or more vilages or a closer relief army.

 

[redmark]

On the face of it, that seems pretty reasonable. Any quicker would feel exploitative. Medieval sieges could take months or even years. 'Best case' is also reasonable - I think many besieging armies ended up in a worse state than their targets, and often ended up retreating and starving.

 

[jak1up]

Personally seems that the sieges are quit fair, in historical context sieges were quit long...

 

[paladinx333]

The siege equipment mini-game feels like something you play on your phone. I would love to see the siege equipment used on an actual map with me standing there shouting orders. I suppose a fella can dream.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

tl;dr sieging out a settlement under very favorable conditions is alright. But anything less than that and it won't work well, or even necessarily at all, in the case of low prosperity settlements with granaries or three or more vilages or a closer relief army.

Id be interested in seeing how long it took for one of the lower prosperity towns, I normally just break the walls down and attack, never really wait for them to starve so I have no idea.

Is it safe to assume most of the vlandians around you are recruit armies because how in the world did they not attack you for days? Shouldn't the milita have sallied out with all the reinforcements they had? I assume its the troop tier difference protecting you?

 

[Apocal]

Is it safe to assume most of the vlandians around you are recruit armies because how in the world did they not attack you for days? Shouldn't the milita have sallied out with all the reinforcements they had? I assume its the troop tier difference protecting you?

They re-balanced the weighting on a sally out; now the defenders will not do it with anything but hilariously over-the-top odds in their favor. If you have a decent party, it will be a rare occurrence. With a player-led army, I have not yet seen it done in 1.5.x.

Some of those Vlandians are recruit-heavy, yes. Others are not, but like I said my army is an exceptionally mean army. My party and the rest of my clan's parties (the first four in the army) are basically full of T3 or higher HAs and T5 infantry. The other parties also bring a lot of T5 infantry (mostly legionaries) to the table. The downside is that I forgot to stockpile food, so my siege would have been time limited even without the armies -- about five more days and I would have had to launch the assault regardless of the presence of Vlandian armies because I'd be so low on food afterwards and the town would have absolutely nothing on the market.

The other downside being that it burns through influence rather quickly, but that isn't as much a concern for me. I understand most other players have issues getting and maintaining enough influence to keep armies in the field.

 

[CrazyElf]

I don't think it takes too long at all.

Historically sieges could take months and in some cases years. Attackers often had to significantly outnumber the defenders and actually attacking was often done only as a last resort because the defenders would be able to inflict heavy casualties on the attacker.

Taking a major fortification was historically something that would be a huge undertaking and not at all done lightly.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I'm not sure the -food = garrison go away in siege is even working in 1.5.2
I made a report because after messing around in a siege it seemed clear that they weren't loosing any troops ever no matter how long a I build siege stuff and wait, despite all info stating they had 0 food on hand and a massive -food consumption.
Don't know if anything will come of it though (reported on balance because not sure if bug)but I gave a .sav

But yeah it was too slow before too. IMO once their food is ran out they should start getting KOs just like a starving field party does.

 

[HugoTheFrenchMan]

Honestly i think they take an ok amount of tome and it shouldnt be changed mabye when the perk tree for engineering gets done it will be easier but i think its good mabye a change to the starvation mechanic is definetly needed

 

[Apocal]

I don't think it takes too long at all.

Historically sieges could take months and in some cases years. Attackers often had to significantly outnumber the defenders and actually attacking was often done only as a last resort because the defenders would be able to inflict heavy casualties on the attacker.

Taking a major fortification was historically something that would be a huge undertaking and not at all done lightly.

In my test, it would have taken over 45 days to starve out the defenders entirely, the better part of an in-game year (84 days) and it was pretty close to a best case scenario. Worst case is that you can only starve at a supremely glacial pace (think 1 defender every other day) or even not at all.

 

[HugoTheFrenchMan]

In my test, it would have taken over 45 days to starve out the defenders entirely, the better part of an in-game year (84 days) and it was pretty close to a best case scenario. Worst case is that you can only starve at a supremely glacial pace (think 1 defender every other day) or even not at all.

I think the starvation mechanic isnt fully implemented is it

 

[Apocal]

I think the starvation mechanic isnt fully implemented is it

It is, the numbers just need some tweaking, maybe. Deficit over time should make the numbers of people starving go higher and higher to counteract the effect of lowering prosperity and garrison numbers.

 

[HugoTheFrenchMan]

It is, the numbers just need some tweaking, maybe. Deficit over time should make the numbers of people starving go higher and higher to counteract the effect of lowering prosperity and garrison numbers.

Yeah i think so too it seemed a bit random to me so i thought it was just desertion but if that is starvation it definetly should work that way but also i think also a day or 2 after the food hits zero should not be starvation since during irl sieges if a garrison starved they would get more food to defend

 

[Apocal]

Yeah i think so too it seemed a bit random to me so i thought it was just desertion but if that is starvation it definetly should work that way but also i think also a day or 2 after the food hits zero should not be starvation since during irl sieges if a garrison starved they would get more food to defend

What do you mean?

 

[HugoTheFrenchMan]

What do you mean?

Ah in general during a siege if the enmy army wasn't too overwhelming and the garrison thought that they could hold off an enemy attack they knew was coming soon or an assault and the towns food supplies were low or almost fully depleted the garrison would get priority more then the common peasantry in hopes that after the failed attack the enemy would retreat i thought this could work but thinking about it twice probably not

 

[paladinx333]

IMO once their food is ran out they should start getting KOs just like a starving field party does.

I could have sworn is used to work that way. Once the food was gone the garrison would seemingly melt away. I won many sieges with brief assault against starving garrisons. It's sucks if it no longer works this way.

 

[dutch81]

Not exactly on topic but I think it is silly that a castle with 5 defenders requires a invading army must setup a siege camp ... in Warband they would simply surrender and that seems more plausible.

 

[Anushtegin]

is there even a surrender mechanic ATM? i was about to say that a besieged place with no food and no hope of relief would simply surrender at one point.

 

[Apocal]

is there even a surrender mechanic ATM?

No.

Not exactly on topic but I think it is silly that a castle with 5 defenders requires a invading army must setup a siege camp ... in Warband they would simply surrender and that seems more plausible.

I never convinced the defenders to surrender in native Warband and maybe a handful of times in a mod that explicitly made it much easier to get them to surrender.