How To WIN Offensive Sieges - A Quick Battlefield Tactics Guide - Total War: Shogun 2 

That is possible too, but I find that to be too much in-game time consuming. It's definitely faster in real time though!

I am so bad at offensive siege. I always combine 2 armies and auto resolve.

That's boring and should really only be done when the defending garrison is equivalent to your own army. Offensive sieges aren't that difficult if you know what you're doing, especially if you have artillery or bow warrior monks.

@@GeraltofRivia22 Main problem is pathing, and you can save a lot of men by forcing the enemy to sally out (Which means they are the Attackers and will walk into your lines and thus easier to destroy).

@@demomanchaos never had much problem with pathfinding, except manning walls, but that's only a problem for defensive sieges. If you know what you're doing, you really won't lose that many men during an offensive siege, especially if you have bow warrior monks or artillery. Winter attrition + casualties from a field battle definitely add up. Plus, even if you do take more casualties, your army will still be back to full strength sooner because you didn't waste turns waiting. This doesn't apply if you are roughly evenly matched, then it's definitely better to wait for them to sally out.

Yes, that is true! I think I forgot to mention it sadly.

Stats dont matter when you have the OP yari wall

Huh...thats good to know, since I figured it was the same status debuff as it was in Rome: Total war, where it buffed the defending units in their last stand, to the point it could give you the edge when it kicked in....ill stop trying to avoid the status effect...

Thank you! Actually, my tactics don't take a whole lot of micromanagement, but it does take a lot of time. Especially if you want to switch out the bait with your archers. But yeah, you probably don't want to have battle timers on with these strategies :P

But that's such an extreme cheese method.... and I love it!

@@TheVikingGeneral i also use this to take Mino with only 1 General unit on Turn 1 when i play Oda, i make the retainer unit chase me to the far side of the map, then run and capture the castle flag XD

@@ALEX20hoc Ah, the good ol' medieval 2 strats :P

I certainly hope so!

I didn't use bow monk warriors because they indeed make offensive sieges very easy, and I wanted to focus on situations where you didn't have them. Although I should've mentioned it in the video, since I also mentioned fire rockets. :P

Same

@@JayJayM57 @No Name Against small forces I also avoid damaging the castle, because it prevents me from recruiting there the next turn and to save a bit of money. But just burning down the gates and a few towers generally doesn't cost too much money. Autoresolving apparently manages to damage the castle a lot more anyway.

I just did this twice in the same turn, against well defended Oda forts. I me the walls, towers and gates intact, because once Oda's murderstacks are just a cross the bridge and I need all the defensive help I can get to hold them off. For once my yari samurai were MVPs, quickly scaling walls and capturing towers/gates, letting the bulk of my army swarm in uncontested.

Glad to hear it! :)

Glad it was helpful!

I specifically left out the fixed artillery. While it can do some damage, in my experience the artillery is very inaccurate, and it slows you down on the campaign map.

@@TheVikingGeneral the accuracy and slow down on the campaign map is true.sadly for the campaign map there's nothing i can really thibk of except put an agent to increase the army movement range Here what i do for the accuracy case, recruit them from a province where they have master bowmaker(+20 accuracy) and build a hunting lodge (+5) to get exceptional accuracy. Oh and if you also build an Archery Dojo that province, you can get additional +2 accuracy for any unit that have range weapon o that one province. I know there's only about 4 province that have artisan. So here's an easy solution for that : Mods. There's a mod where you can build province specialty on your buliding slot.

@@rizalalbar I guess experience will also help artillery units a bit more ;)

@@TheVikingGeneral well it's true. I couldn't agree more dude ;)

Glad to hear it!

Happy it helped :)

Thank you :)

Army composition is on the to-do list ;) but it might be a while before I reach it

Oh, the strategy is pretty much the same, but you just climb the wall instead of destroying the gates and you focus a bit more on capturing towers.The biggest difference will be the amount of casualties you take.

@@TheVikingGeneral Thanks chief! mLooking forwared to the next one ;)

Bring yari samurai, Wako raiders or ninjas to quickly scale the walls and secure a foothold.

From what I heard, it's mainly just using artillery and sharpshooters.

Do it.

They are on my to do list, but they are pretty far down the list I'm afraid. :(

It’ll break the siege, but I don’t think you automatically lose any men.

Defending is indeed much easier, but it can still be tricky if the enemy army has a lot of missile troops.

@@TheVikingGeneral From what i experienced, enemy archers always seem to target yari wall formations so i leave one of them to bait archers when most of the enemy melee force is dead then i sally out or leash the archers to force them to climb i win most fights with this strat even with only just a lvl 1 garrison

Good when you don’t have any nearby armies or agents to worry about, but if you’re dealing with a near-peer with about as much war economy as you it may not be viable all the time. A second army could swoop in to relieve them, forcing you to face a two armies instead of just one. Or heavens forbid that one ninja you failed to spot ganks your daimyo

There are a few things I didn't mention, for example using bow warrior monks to outrange, but I didn't mention the kisho ninja's because I feel that deserves it's own video. I'm still planning to make the video's about the units I haven't covered yet, so it will eventually be covered. Hopefully xD

Haha, thanks! Onna busshis are pretty susceptible to missile fire though ;)

Play on easy or normal battle difficulty

I completely understand that. I find it very rewarding to manually take castles that autoresolve wouldn't, but I understand that having a battle take an hour of their time isn't for everyone.

@@TheVikingGeneral oh yeah. I don’t have time for that. It does make legendary a bit more tricky though as you gotta plan and bait the A.I to take a field battle. Or you have to stomp a castle garrison with 2-3 stacks. But the sieges are arguably broken in shogun 2. Frankly the lack of any and all siege equipment, like rams, ladders. Assaulting them is an absolute pain, and defending them is very very easy. The attacker gets an immediate moral penalty. The defender like you said gets reload bonuses. And some other defensive bonuses, like overwhelming the enemy who just climbed up. And all troops but ninja take casualties climbing. Defending is too easy. I’ve had 8 units, 6 of them the garrison defend suruga castle from 2 full stack choaskobe landing parties at the same time. 2. We only had like 50 guys left at the end playing on maximum unit size. But we held. It was awesome. But it didn’t feel real. Meanwhile you attack an enemy, without using the tactics like baiting archers and slow advances, and your army gets decimated before they even make a dent. Shogun 2 has amazing field battles, albeit too much of the same maps. That lane hill with 5 approach paths. The best campaign map ever done. But the sieges are lacklustre. Albeit are usually the best way to beat the A.I

@@elyastoohey6621 I think it does make a bit of sense, since historically, castles were basically unsaleable and mainly functioned for delaying armies. And I understand the extremely close defense battles, I have one where I only had 12 troops left, with 11 of them being bow ashigaru (and a lone yari ashigaru) I personally like to take my time and take the defense apart piece by piece. Although I think that Atilla has the best sieges.

@@TheVikingGeneral yeah. I had one. Where legit, they had a yari sam unit and their general and I had two half strength now ashi’s left. I used the covering tactic. One covers the over. Then blocked with the smaller unit. So my larger one could keep firing. They annhialated my small unit but they ended up routing when facing my larger bow ashi numbers. One of those amazing wins. Had their general or yari sam unit made contact they would have slowly won as their morale increased due to winning the melee. They were so close to completing their charge. Yeah. Those castles were very hard to take. Usually starved out. Or just overwhelming numbers like Hideyoshi could bring. What I mean I find weird is that you can assault them in the first place. Your boys just climb up the wall like it’s nothing. The layouts are fun to fight on. But they’re so impractical for a Japanese castle. Some of those castles were amazingly designed. Wall after wall. And you’d have troops in alcoves in both firing black powder and bow weapons at them. Stick in these corridors of death. Vs those big fields with a parapet the game gives us. Ive heard some mods make the castles better though

@@elyastoohey6621 I generally don't play with mods, but I might do some mod reviews in the future.

Yeah, archers are GREAT in offensive sieges. :)

That defnitely helps, but you might be better of manouvering around still, since the walls do block quite a bit of arrows.

I have a full siege video (which is 50 minutes long, with ~35-40 minutes of actual sieging) which may help. But fighting offensive sieges can be very tricky and a battle can turn very quickly from rolling over the enemy into a disaster.

@@TheVikingGeneral thanks mate, ill looking into it xD

@@AbdurrahmanZedSaeed Good luck, hope it helps! :)

It's next on the list, after the defensive siege video

@@TheVikingGeneral Awesome, keep it up!

Yup, field battles are definitely quicker. And I didn't include the bow monk in the strategy because it trivializes the siege. Although I should've mentioned it alongside the fire rockets.

I thought I replied to this comment before, but apparently youtube thinks I haven't :P

Pretty much yeah :P

I mean, you definitely can. It's just not optimal in most cases :P

@@TheVikingGeneral because I don't like assaulting where it's costly and dangerous. But I like your tactic anyway. Thanks man.

@@ltmatthewakj2466 Glad you like it! You're welcome. :)

Yeah, I should've also mentioned it alongside the firerockets. I definitely had a few seconds to spare :P

@@TheVikingGeneral Yep, both defnitely works for sieges. Fire rockets work better in the siege but is less useful in field battles and has a harder unlock requirement, while bow monks are just a staple late game ranged unit.