Conquests happen every now and then in Total War: Three Kingdoms and power is always shifting from one region to the next. In order to show the dominance and strength of your army, you will have to besiege the opposition and hold your ground throughout the duration of the exchange. Here is how you go about a successful Siege in Total War: Three Kingdoms.
Total War: Three Kingdoms Siege
Most of the time you will be tempted to take the opposition head-on in hopes of conquering a foreign land quickly.
However, it will not always be a walk in the park, especially against stronger commanderies, so you will need to resort to besieging the enemy’s capital.
A siege is also a good military strategy to weaken the enemy forces by cutting off their ammunition and supplies, and negatively impact their Morale.
Siege is also a good option for armies without artillery since you cannot hope to conquer defeat commanderies by attacking them directly without the proper equipment.
To start a siege, first, select an enemy settlement to open up the siege panel menu. Here you can observe all the meticulous details regarding the opposition’s numbers and strength relative to yours.
These include the number of any garrisons or armies within the settlement you’re aiming to conquer, as well as the turns it will take for either side to claim victory.
Overall, the color-coded bars below each of the two army’s flags summarize this potential effort. Green is a good sign, while red signals a likely failing attempt.
This siege panel is not only for the purpose of information, as you can bring up this mini-menu to craft siege equipment between turns, constantly changing the tide of the conquest.
This is vital to the siege attempts as your team’s capacity will determine how many Battering Rams can be assigned to the army units to smash gates and create openings and how many units can be deployed for the Sapping purpose to destroy the enemy settlement’s walls.
Once you are ready to go, either choose the “Start” button for initiating the siege while having control yourself or go with the “Delegate” option to let the computer controlled AI finish off smaller and easier conquests.
The four main results or outcomes of the siege are as follows:
- Siege is successful as it naturally comes to an end when the enemy supplies run out.
- Siege is successful as the enemy team surrenders prematurely.
- Siege is unsuccessful as the enemy team survives the siege with perseverance.
- Siege is unsuccessful as your side, the attacking team, withdraws from the siege attempt due to any reason.
The main goal of your siege revolves around capturing specific points or location of the enemy’s settlement to achieve victory in battle and therefore in the siege.
These are defined “victory points” for ending battles favorably, “gatehouses” inside the settlement to gain entry and “arrow towers” to bring down enemy attackers for an easier attempt at besieging the encampment.
As the siege goes on the army of the defending side will suffer damages with concern to the supplies and the infrastructure of the encampment.
Destroyed buildings and establishments will be required to be repaired once the siege is complete. The shortage of supplies will cause the units to suffer from morale debuff and attrition.
Collapsed walls will leave more openings for the attack so the team on the offense is benefited.
Due to the continuous damage to the resources of the enemy team, an escalation debuff or negative effects will apply on the defending side making it harder for them to survive the siege.
This will prompt them to “sally out” and face the attacking units head-to-head in battle. Then it would be a battle of strengths and numbers.
There are some cases where the attacker might also want to break a siege. This is to cut down on the military equipment usage or worse, when the defending side may call on help from their allies.
Thus, to avoid facing a much powerful enemy, you may want to call off the siege altogether. Continue to observe the changes in the siege panel to know when the enemy settlement and fallen and you can claim victory over this new foreign land.
