Sieges: Are some units better than others?

[jfp3]

For instance, if I lay a siege with a bunch of Moose in my army as opposed to Heavy Inf. Is there a difference between Heavy Cav and Militia for that matter? Thanks!

[Finalgenesis]

Animal tag is supposed to confer a penalty per one of the designer, but in reality they make no difference and no penalty or modifier of any kind is applied to the animal tag. someone did some testing sometime back and confirmed this I believe. I think it's the "lies my rulebook told me" thread if you want to read up.

Higher strength units make better siegers, flying also confer a large bonus to sieging, so call of the wind can often make a decent spell for adding siege. The same calculation is true for defenders of the siege, except mindless units get a huge penalty of 1/10 of their original value used. Units with siege or defender bonus add their bonus to the calculation.

You can refer to page 81 in the manual for the formulas in detail, but I think you already know all that and just asking about animal tag... oops.

[jfp3]

Yeah I read the section in the book but didn't see anything telling me that for instance my Heavy Cav actually know how to get off their mounts and scale a ladder (making them pretty good for Sieges right?). Instead I keep having these images of Bullwinkle head-butting a stone wall to little effect. I do however love these moose charges on the battlefield heheh.

Right now I have a siege going for some 4 turns that has a large number of "animals" in the force and I'm thinking it's taking way too long...so I'll be trickling in some local infantry pretty quick to see if it helps.

[Gregstrom]

...call of the wind can often make a decent spell for adding siege...

I'm afraid this is untrue. Hawks have a special penalty to siege strength (but not siege defence).

[Festin]

Animal tag is supposed to confer a penalty per one of the designer, but in reality they make no difference and no penalty or modifier of any kind is applied to the animal tag. someone did some testing sometime back and confirmed this I believe. I think it's the "lies my rulebook told me" thread if you want to read up.

Wow, never heard about it. Is this really confirmed? And what about mindless units, do they have the penalty?

[Finalgenesis]

Interesting, so hawks have a specific penalty on them for purpose of sieging only? Did not know that.

The rule book and forum post I read supports that mindless unit suffers 90% penalty to it's siege defense value, but it sieges normally. Eg. Lobo guard does great sieging, but blows on defending sieges. I think it was said that this mechanic is to stop massive undead (LA Ermor) from holding unbreakable castles.

As for the animal tag, it is also gleamed off of post from more knowledgable old hands, you can get to the "lies my rule book told me" thread through the strategy listing post stickied on the forum. From what I understand, summon animal horde would be pretty handy for defending siege or doing the sieging themselves.

[Lingchih]

...call of the wind can often make a decent spell for adding siege...

I'm afraid this is untrue. Hawks have a special penalty to siege strength (but not siege defence).

but, not Harpies. (niche use, just for Pan) but oh well.

[llamabeast]

Isn't it because the hawks are animals?

[Gregstrom]

Apparently not - IIRC this was from lch some time back.

[Stavis_L]

This is the thread/post from lch that shows the actual mechanics:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?p=685786&highlight=post685786

[Festin]

Thank you. This is actually interesting:
# For every non-mindless defending unit: (str^2 / 10) + (10 if flying) + 10*(guard skill)
# For every mindless defending unit: 1 + 10*(guard skill)

So, a generic human soldier has str 10. 10^2/10 + 10 = 20.
For a mindless unit like longdead 1+10=11.

Does it mean that undead chaff are not 10 times worse then normal units, but only 2 times, so 20 longdead = 10 human infantry in castle defence?

[Gregstrom]

Huh? A human has 10^2/10 = 10 in defence
A str 10 soulless gets 1 in defence.

Guard skill is a specific castle defence bonus applied to certain units (the castle icon). Most units don't get it.

[Stavis_L]

Thank you. This is actually interesting:
# For every non-mindless defending unit: (str^2 / 10) + (10 if flying) + 10*(guard skill)
# For every mindless defending unit: 1 + 10*(guard skill)

So, a generic human soldier has str 10. 10^2/10 + 10 = 20.
For a mindless unit like longdead 1+10=11.

Does it mean that undead chaff are not 10 times worse then normal units, but only 2 times, so 20 longdead = 10 human infantry in castle defence?

The "guard skill" in the formula is the special castle defense bonus (most units don't have it, so the value for them is zero.) So, effectively your run of the mill longdead/soulless would have a defense strength of 1 (not 11). Your average str 10 infantry would have ((10 * 10) / 10) + (10 * 0) = 10 (again, no bonus.) So yes, on average mindless undead are 10 times less effective than live units in defending sieges.

On the balancing side, you're a lot more likely to have 100's or 1000's of undead chaff sitting around.

**>> Of course, ninjas like Gregstrom don't concern themselves with petty castle defense...

[llamabeast]

I think these values are a factor of 10 too large aren't they? By which I mean it would take 150 human troops to tear down a defence-150 castle in a turn, not 15 troops.

[llamabeast]

Oh I see yes, that's what lch says in the paragraph following the quoted equations.