Art of Siege
When you enter a fief owned by another player, you have the option to take it by conquest. This is accomplished by using the siege option on the Travel or Combat menus. When you besiege a fief you will spend 10 days for each period of the siege . You can negotiate or storm (or just let ten days pass without doing anything.) Depending on your skills, it is often safest to storm. The advantages to this are if there is a nobleman in the fief you can possibly capture him. If you wait to take the fief through negotiation, it will often leave your army sitting there into the next season. This will give the enemy time to raise the siege, and perhaps even capture you and disperse your army. Remember attempting to take a keep by storm, and failing, costs your stature, while taking it by negotiation or storm gains you stature. The longer the siege lasts, the better your chances are to succeed as the odds in your favor go up.
A good sieger NPC makes the difference between needing 1,000 men starting at 15% and
250 men starting at 15% negotiations. It costs a princely sum, paying 500 to 2000 for an army, particularly considering 2,000 men may be very rare to come by.
How to take a fief in 3 easy steps:
All who have never used army/siege menus should take any opportunity to practice a little. Understand that this is for your benefit as practice field maneuvers before your lives are on the line. What follows is a step by step description of how to take fiefs by siege (the most common form of warfare in the period.)
Step 1 - Raise Troops
You raise troops by recruiting, or having them transferred to you from another player. Recruiting costs 2,000 ducats per man. After they are recruited, it costs 2,000 ducats per man per season to keep them in the field.
Recruiting costs days (2-5 randomly), for each time you do it in a fief. The number you get is a function of your stats, population and how many other people have been recruiting over the same area. You may get several thousand at London or Paris, few in Wales. After recruiting one place to exhaustion, you move off one or two fiefs away and recruit again if you need more. To recruit you need to speak the local language. Therefore if you speak E2 (English) you can't recruit in Wales (C2, Celtic) even though its part of England. You don't need to own the fief yourself, however. Note that NEITHER of these methods will work if the locals don't speak the same language you do. The only exception to this is that you can recruit in a fief you own if its loyalty is 7 or higher. For English nobles to fight in France, they must either bring troops across the Channel (expensive and chancy,) have "friends" among the French who will supply troops in France or recruit from high loyalty fiefs they own in France. These last two methods are not normally very useful. French who work for the English do so at considerable risk to themselves (and for considerable gain too). The English aren't likely to have a lot of French French fiefs with high loyalty, given all the fighting that will take place.
For most operations, you need only recruit 800-1000 men. The majority of fiefs have low keep values and and army of this size will take them, even though it might take a month or more in some cases. To haul around a larger army, simply to take fiefs more quickly, is counterproductive given the cost of troops.
2) Besiege the fief.
This is done from the Travel or Combat menus once you reach the fief. The most efficient way is not to bull right in, but to Siege/Negotiate 1-3 turns first (lots more if the keep/population/garrison strong). These turns of siege (10 days each) weaken the fief so it falls more easily. Each unsuccessful storm (but not negotiate) costs you stature. Success gains you stature. Successful storm will also get you ducats (one free pillage basically) and lots of prisoners (they should all be released, immediately, unharmed. you'll find them listed in your "Captives" table.) Player captives you capture should, of course, be held for ransom . Family members of players can also be held for ransom. Storm also damages the fief a little and the fortifications (keep level ) alot. It is preferable to take your time and negotiate (remember the fief you damage will soon be your own), but storm is a little quicker. Click here for more details on siege.
3) Get rid of your Army.
Your army costs 2,000 ducats per man PER SEASON, cost deducted at game reset. It only costs 2,000 ducats a man to raise them again tomorrow so only keep an army over game reset for a good reason (being an Englishman in a foreign country is a good reason, there you cannot just recruit again).
You can 1) disband army 2) muster out 3) transfer to another player. Muster out cost 2,000 ducats per man. Disband is free. However you lose your entire army (the other two let you shed any fraction you wish). Transfer to another player is always good. It does reveal your location at the time (only to the receiving player) so only transfer to a friend. When you transfer (a whole new subject) the receiving player gets notified in his personal history. It says how many troops and where, but not how many days you had at transfer. This is critical, however. You can only pick up the troops if your days at pickup are (approximately) equal to those the other player had when transferring. If you transfer, ALWAYS send the recipient an online message stating days you had left at transfer. If he had more, he can move back and forth to burn days down to match you. Also he has to be online at same time or AFTER you, obviously to pick them up. This is really tricky, so you may want to transfer to each other (or a herald if we're around) a little to practice.