My sieges take forever

[unmerged(630842)]

This may well be a stupid question or something, but here goes:

I'm Brabant, and I'm currently involved in a war with Utrecht and Holland. I have superior numbers and Utrecht have no forces left, but Holland has a force roughly comparable to mine.

Here's the thing:

My army has been sieging in Utrecht for about two years now, and even though it says they will probably surrender within days, its been saying that for about 5 months. And, yes, I detached siege and all that. I have 3,000 cavalry and about 7,000 infantry.

However, Holland with their 3,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry moved into my province of Brabant, and it surrendered within a month. What's going on?

Am I missing something? Thanks in advance.

 

[unmerged(200028)]

Welcome to the forums, Weeman94!

Sometimes sieges are very long or very short. However, the luck element aside, things that contribute to their being finished swiftly are higher numbers of infantry, as cavalry (please check this), numbers do not count towards speeding the siege up. If you're late enough in the game, artillery contributes to this significantly. Also, take into account the size of the fort that you are besieging, because this makes a big difference as to how long it will take. Leaders can also have a bonus to siege, which helps quite a lot.

I may have misunderstood you, but you said that you "detached the siege and all that" but this immediately causes you to lose all of your progress with it! :O Don't do that. Be very careful not to reorganize or move your army away from the siege, because this will result in you losing it.

And finally, here is the article on the EU3 Wiki concerning sieges. The whole Wiki is an excellent source of information if you have questions. Also, there is a quick questions and quick answers thread on this forum board.

Be warned that this article is not entirely up to date, but it should still be helpful.

http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Siege

 

[arl]

I may have misunderstood you, but you said that you "detached the siege and all that" but this immediately causes you to lose all of your progress with it! :O Don't do that. Be very careful not to reorganize or move your army away from the siege, because this will result in you losing it.

Is this valid when you press the "detach siege" button, too? Doesn't it simply leave enough troops to continue siege (usually at least the same of garrisons) without having you loose current progress?
I think that using that button you doesn't affect your current progress.

 

[ShinZed]

Correct, detaching a siege won't affect your siege progress. It will lose you control of the siege though, if you have allies in the province helping you out.

 

[unmerged(200028)]

Correct, detaching a siege won't affect your siege progress. It will lose you control of the siege though, if you have allies in the province helping you out.

Oh, thank you for amending my ignorance there. Would these same effects also apply to reorganizing your army?

 

[Lynx190]

In order to maintain control of the siege, your army that got there before your allies arrived has to stay in existence and stationary in that province. You can freely reorganize without causing problems, you can split your army as long as the NEW army is the one that moves away. If you want to merge armies make sure you do it by reorganizing all the troops into your first army rather than actually merging, since the latter might cause the wrong army to cease to exist.

Back to OP, they won a siege in 1 month with 3k infantry? Are you sure you didn't have maintenance at minimum and/or weren't bankrupt? Assaulting a low morale fort is the only way I can see that happening. As for your own slow siege, sometimes you get bad luck like that. One game I watched Austria take like 4 years to siege Cremona, the garrison was down to less than 500 men without assaulting by the end. If you have 7k infantry you should be assaulting by that point since I'd assume there's a wall breach, but that requires you to actually have morale.

 

[yequr]

Does Utrecht have any defensiveness modifiers, like the +50% from event or the 200% from march? These can be quite painful...

 

[NoobRage]

Check your sliders. Max Offense makes your fortresses rather easy and quick to take. Thats why defeating Burgundy is so easy.

 

[panionios]

Sometimes, when it gets ridiculously long, I cheat. Once a month you will see green letters (is it green?) rising from the province telling you what has happened. If it says "status quo" reload and hope for a better result (water shortage, food shortage, etc).

I know it's lame, but as I said, only when it gets ridiculously long, so don't bash me for this

 

[NoobRage]

Sometimes, when it gets ridiculously long, I cheat. Once a month you will see green letters (is it green?) rising from the province telling you what has happened. If it says "status quo" reload and hope for a better result (water shortage, food shortage, etc).

I know it's lame, but as I said, only when it gets ridiculously long, so don't bash me for this

The letter are yellow. And i will bash you because of this.

 

[UniversalWolf]

There's also a spy mission to bribe the defenders of a besieged province, but I doubt that came into play here. Still, the AI uses it occasionally, and if you don't have a pop-up set for it, you may have missed it.

 

[unmerged(353072)]

If it is 5.1 you can just assault the fort I mean it would be quicker than two years just be sure all of the enemy countries are preoccupied. I would also check to see how many people are stationed on the fort if it is higher than the amount that is doing the siege it won't work or take a long time.

 

[Lessing]

It's a stupid luck-based mechanic. Play CK2 if you want some sense in your sieges.

 

[MilosM]

Since 5.2 beta my sieges tend to last lot longer.Every now and then I have sieges that last for more than 5 years, record being 2264 days.

 

[diegoami]

So what ? The siege of Candia lasted 21 years, and it happened in Europa Universalis timeframe. It was common at that time to have sieges which lasted years. It was even more common for them not to be successful.