Defending a City from Siege
From Arcanum Illyria
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Finding yourself under siege can make a player feel pretty helpless. But in Illyriad there are many things that can be done to thwart a siege attempt, especially for players with friends or additional cities.
Contents |
Identifying Sieges
Before any response can be enacted, a player must be aware that a siege is incoming. It is crucial to identify siege attacks as early as possible to maximize the time available—the defending player will need to plan a course of action and supporting cities may need time to send reinforcements to either the city itself or an adjacent square. Any time an incoming attack is seen, players are shown the source and destination coordinates, from which distance can be determined using the Pythagorean Theorem. The time remaining and percent already traveled are also shown, from which total travel time can be determined, and from those two pieces we have speed in tiles per second. Once that is determined check the speeds of the siege units available to the attacker's race, and compare that against the calculated army speed. An army with siege can move no more than 50% faster than its slowest unit (assuming full bonus to commander speed). Some non-siege units are slow enough to fall within this speed range, so identification is not perfect. Some players may send attacks without siege faked as siege attacks in hopes of luring troops into defending adjacent squares. The defending player will have to guess using whatever intel is available whether this is the case. The remaining sections of this article will assume that of one or more incoming attacks, at least one has a high probability of actually being siege.
Basic Preparations
Diplomatic Support
A city defending against siege should first make sure it has the best, fully-charged assassin-killing rune in place. If a lesser, otherwise-targeted, or general rune is in place, remove it right away to minimize the time left defenseless while runes are in cooldown. The seeking runes are: Mark of Seeking→Seeking Rune→Seeking Glyph→Ward of Intentions. Erect the best one available as soon as possible, and target assassins. This is especially important if many players will be assisting the defense—they won't be assisting at all if you cannot keep their commanders alive to lead their armies in Sally Forth attacks.
Second, ensure that a few messenger units will be available to recall the defending city's own troops, and also that several basic scouts will be on-hand. The scouts will be needed to rob the attacking party of valuable troop intel, as well as to gain such intel on adjacent occupations that appear and may be diversionary. Beyond that, produce whatever units will be most likely to counter whatever your enemy intends to launch at you—but do not use up saddles and horses that might better be spent producing cavalry. The best choice will typically be basic thieves.
Military Composition
Army management and tactics are a little outside the scope of this article, but all armies should be divided into offensive armies (infantry and cavalry) and defensive troops (spearmen and archers). Defensive armies will be concerned with blocking parties headed to an adjacent square or to the city itself, while offensive armies should actually be reserved for either direct attacks or Sally Forth attacks, which are still treated by the game as offensive maneuvers. Players should not fall into the trap of thinking that because they are defending a city under siege, Sally Forth attacks are defensive operations. The idea of Sally Forth is that units will exit the city through sally ports and charge a besieging force like a raiding party, then retreat back through the sally ports. It is therefore quite appropriate that this be considered an attack for combat resolution purposes.
Commanders should also be upgraded accordingly if unused experience is available. Points should be spent on Uncanny Sense to protect all of them from assassins. Offensive commanders should maximize personal attack against defensive units, health, and regeneration for maximum repeated damage in the raid-like Sally Forth attacks. Defensive commanders should maximize defense against all unit types.
It is also worth noting that players should ship any advanced resource stockpiles elsewhere before blockades arrive, as these resources are likely to be lost anyway if not relocated. But before doing so, fill up the military production queue with whatever units best match the strategy which will receive primary focus.
Preventing a Siege from Taking Hold
Gathering Information
Once a probable siege has been identified, the defending player will have to choose an overall strategy for defense. Crucial to this stage is having as much intel as possible, by whatever means. It is not possible to determine within the game what adjacent tile will host the siege, but person-to-person communications (such as leaks from turncoats or spy accounts) may provide this information. In the absence of certainty, a number of probability-based judgement calls can be made. Adjacent cities and other tiles that cannot be occupied also cannot be the siege army's true destination. Plains locations can be, but would be a terrible choice for the attacker, as his losses against cavalry attacks would be devastating, even discounting the defensive penalty awarded by sovereignty claims. The most desirable target locations are high hills, and especially mountain tiles—see terrain for further information.
Counter Attacking
All defensive troops at the defending city should deploy together to one or two of the most probable occupation targets. These troops will serve no use at home yet, and can be quickly recalled and re-deployed if necessary. Incoming attacks will have to clear this occupation before they can take hold of that tile, and since these tiles will be the ones with the best defensive properties, the enemy will take the greater losses by far. The defending player's other cities and allies can also by this means overwhelm the attacking force by stacking defensive armies on the target tile, but this is a gamble: if the enemy drops elsewhere, those defensive units will be unable to assist until they are recalled and redeployed—depending on distances, this could take days. Defensive troops will have little other use during the remainder of the siege, but their absence from unrelated operations could be crucial in the bigger picture.
Defenders will also need to consider incoming direct attacks. The city wall gives defenders a substantial advantage against direct attacks, but not as much as the ability to perform stacked offensive maneuvers. Attacking parties may use direct attacks to clear defending armies before reinforcements arrive, then keep the city subdued with constantly recurring attacks so no great force can be amassed. Parties defending a siege will want to use only defensive units, which leaves their offensive units free for clearing the city, which may be attempted before, during, or after the actual bombardment phase. Before reinforcements arrive, all troops belonging to the city should dodge any such attacks by occupying a nearby non-adjacent tile during the time that such attacks are scheduled to arrive. Once reinforcements are arriving, the city's own defensive troops should stay at home and shoulder their share of the defense. Remember that even after arrival a siege will take twelve hours to deploy, and Sally Forth can only be employed after that time. There is no point in troops arriving inside the city before then.
To prevent the enemy from keeping a city subdued, supporting cities and players should coordinate any slow-arriving (presumably offensive) reinforcements such that they arrive at their destination simultaneously. This applies for all long-distance movements—keeping any disparate armies closer together maximizes their combined effect while minimizing the chance of the other side regaining strength between clashes. In the case of siege defense, however, the value of combining forces must be weighed against the value of a quick response. If the enemy is not well coordinated, it may well be possible to pick off his defenses and maybe even the siege army in piecemeal fashion.
Throughout the entire operation, scouts should be used liberally. If at any time a siege army is weakly defended, launch all local and nearby offensive troops in direct assault. Even if whole armies are lost, this will maximize the number of siege engines hit and greatly reduce the total damage a successful defender will ultimately sustain. If the forces are strong but quickly breakable, consider asking allies to send their offensive troops to directly assault
Prolonging a Siege
Once a siege is landed and cannot be broken quickly, it is time to consider amount of support incoming and the time frame it will take to arrive. If the siege army (or armies) is heavily equipped, 3-4 days is likely all the time a defender will have at a large city. Due to the nature of geometric population growth with upgrades, however, the fact that population must be reduced to 25% is a significant advantage for smaller cities. Furthermore, the arrived siege engines will take twelve hours to deploy before siege begins, and the target population will be based on the population at that time. Until then, defenders can maximize the duration that they can hold out by proactively de-leveling all high-population structures. This will not only reduce the population, but also increase the number of siege hits that will be required to lower population by the same amount. With lower average population per building level, siege engines will reduce population by a lower average amount per hit.
After the siege is underway, prolong destruction further by upgrading high-population buildings again. To minimize cost and make this technique last as long as possible (especially for users without Prestige), wait until the city is nearing readiness for capture before upgrading.
Note: need to mention saving defensive units by removing their commanders (keep defensive units intact for protecting against final assault.
This section is under construction. Points to cover:
- Early identification of siege
- Timing coordinated counter-attacks and when to Sally Forth (with points on critical failure around 10 to 1 outnumbering)
- Camp location prediction and pre-occupation
- City defense priority (assassins, offensive troops for Sally Forth, resources and instabuild to maintain population, saboteurs, thieves, rune choice)
- Army composition (offensive troops for Sally Forth, defensive troops held back against final assault, zero/low-level commanders in each offensive army for quick resurrection)
- Downgrading structures before siege arrives (lower starting pop makes siege take longer, and dearth of high-pop building levels will rob successful volleys of meaningful progress).
