How many units per province do you use for carpet sieging?

[RichardOlcese]

I use two. I deeply dislike when I use only one, the monthly tick produces some attrition, and suddenly my 999 soldiers can't finish the siege. What's your tactic? Only one unit, two, or some other trick you'd like to share with the public?

 

[Maxxie42]

If the province you're trying to siege is adjacent to a province you control (either one of your own provinces or an enemy province occupied by you), you can safely siege it with only one unit ; otherwise you will indeed need two. That's due to reinforcement rate cancelling out attrition in the first case, but not in the second.

 

[mysticdueler]

I also like to use two units for the occasional surprise enemy troop completion. You finish the battle much faster and (usually) don’t have to wait for any ticks for reinforcement.

 

[tobias.mb]

I usually only siege down forts and wargoals. I leave carpet sieging to my vassals.

 

[Beagá]

I think another interesting question is if people keep a cavalry Stack for looting. War exhaustion is cool but devastation can be even better.

 

[Sidolowka]

Only one unit, two, or some other trick you'd like to share with the public?

80. Because the AI will always find a way to walk over your forts and crush your carpet sieging troops from behind. Always.

Everyone Gangsta till the Ottomans materialise a fucking 400k stack in Chimgi Tura

 

[Titanius Puffin]

A slightly different technique, if there might be a small enemy army near, is split your army and keep splitting it down as far at is safe.
This would be pressing the 's' key, rather than pressing the 'd' key twice (assuming hotkeys are the same in most languages).

Beginning with one 32 regiment army,
It can split into 16 regiments (besieging 2 provinces at once)
They can split into 8 regiment armies (besieging 4 provinces at once)
They can split into 4 regiment (besieging 8 provinces at once)
....and keep going as long as you think it is safe...

Advantages:

• You can increase the amount of besieging armies very quickly.
• Attrition is unlikely to bring your armies under 1000 soldiers (so long as you're not down to one regiment armies).
• If a small stack of enemy troops appears, your occupying forces are more resilient.
• Merging two occupying armies is more likely to result in a reasonable battle-force.
• Smaller likelihood of running out of infantry in the main battle-force (and getting insufficient support)

Disadvantages:

• Lots of micromanagement.
• Attrition for occupying forces can be higher.
• Doesn't work as neatly if you don't scale your armies by a factor of two: 16, 32, 64 (though 12, 24, and 48 regiments also can work).
• Doesn't leave you with a single battle-force to combat very large armies.
• The smallest and more divided forces (2, and 4 regiments) may have poor compositions for battles.

 

[iClipse]

A slightly different technique, if there might be a small enemy army near, is split your army and keep splitting it down as far at is safe.
This would be pressing the 's' key, rather than pressing the 'd' key twice (assuming hotkeys are the same in most languages).

Beginning with one 32 regiment army,
It can split into 16 regiments (besieging 2 provinces at once)
They can split into 8 regiment armies (besieging 4 provinces at once)
They can split into 4 regiment (besieging 8 provinces at once)
....and keep going as long as you think it is safe...

Advantages:

• You can increase the amount of besieging armies very quickly.
• Attrition is unlikely to bring your armies under 1000 soldiers (so long as you're not down to one regiment armies).
• If a small stack of enemy troops appears, your occupying forces are more resilient.
• Merging two occupying armies is more likely to result in a reasonable battle-force.
• Smaller likelihood of running out of infantry in the main battle-force (and getting insufficient support)

Disadvantages:

• Lots of micromanagement.
• Attrition for occupying forces can be higher.
• Doesn't work as neatly if you don't scale your armies by a factor of two: 16, 32, 64 (though 12, 24, and 48 regiments also can work).
• Doesn't leave you with a single battle-force to combat very large armies.
• The smallest and more divided forces (2, and 4 regiments) may have poor compositions for battles.

This is how I do it. While it might be more time consuming, it's less attention consuming and not prone to attrition ticks. You can split your forces easily when it's in terrain you own or control. The detach siege stuff only works when actually sieging something. So you have to pay attention to your army the month it's sieging that province, otherwise you lose the ability to do so. If you're fighting multiple fronts, this is especially time consuming to keep your focus on everything that's going on. I can't recall the amount of times where I wanted to detach siege but couldn't because the army already finished sieging that province and my attention was elsewhere (for example I was chasing enemy stacks with another army).

And I refuse to enable notifications for every time an army reaches a destination. There are already too many notifications as is (usually).

So just 'split split split split' is quite easy. Also, if you keep your stacks in big enough numbers, they're not prone to enemy armies swooping in and stackwiping everything. That's why I often split a 24 stack for example only in 4x6 and siege that way. Sure it takes a bit more attrition. But that's what quantity ideas are for.

 

[MK1980]

i'm usually too lazy to do actual carpet sieges later in the game so i just do "split in half" a few times rather than splitting off 1-2 sized regiments individually.

 

[Meglok]

Depends on the situation. If there are enemy stacks floating around I usually split stacks down to be safe.

If there are few to no enemy left, 1 adjacent to controlled provinces, 2 elsewhere. And always 2 in winter and bad terrain. I hate having to scrounge for another 1k because my sieging troops now have 950 left.

As far as cavalry pillage stacks, if I can afford it and have the cav yes. Useful as a horde to grab more gold from land you don't plan to capture and raze soon. Let's say you as Oirat are humiliating Russia for gold, prestige, and power. Run a cav stack or two on top of their good provinces to devastate them, then scorch earth on the way out. Reminds the Russians of the good ole days of Batu and Subutai.

 

[Methuen of Melnibone]

80. Because the AI will always find a way to walk over your forts and crush your carpet sieging troops from behind. Always.

Everyone Gangsta till the Ottomans materialise a fucking 400k stack in Chimgi Tura

Absolutely learned this the hard way too teleporting stacks mean that I leave my stack within a one-province orbit of each other, for easy consolidation.

Otherwise - it was fun carpet sieging France, having gotten the forts out of the way early, I thought 'this would be easy'. Cue 50k in French ubersoldaten appearing over the Alps the second I move off to thwack down Holland. How those Frenchmen stood 6 years in the mounts is beyond me. They should have all frozen to death. My little 1k bunnies were put into the pot quicker than you could say 'HARPER !'

 

[holyvigil]

2

 

[Guibou]

I have my main stack(s) doing the forts and fighting, once an area is safe i bring 10 infantry on a province.

Spam DDDDDDDDDDD

then click one province V V
then click one province V V
... 5 times to get 2 unit per province

regroup, move on to the next area.

It's a bit more micro, but you avoid attrition and loss to fighting 1 unit popping up and keeping the 10 stack close together means you don't have to think about the annoying 5k armies of an allies of the ennemy that took the long way all around the meditarean to be on the back the front.