Revision 5

Sieges are the climax of an Anvil Empires war. A siege is a coordinated assault on a fortified enemy settlement, usually a town with a Fortress Keep at its core, and almost always requires hours or days of preparation before the first wall is breached. Sieges combine combat, building, logistics, and supply chain planning, and the outcome can swing the entire war.

Siege Camps

Attackers do not march straight onto an enemy wall. Instead, they build a siege camp within reach of the target: a temporary fortified work area with tents, palisade walls, repair benches, and stockpiles. The siege camp serves as a forward operating base where siege engines are built, supplies are staged, and respawning troops can rearm without traveling back to a friendly town.

Siege Equipment

The MS 68 build pushed sieges earlier into a war. The Mantlet and the Makeshift Battering Ram can both be built from basic resources, every siege weapon can now be assembled inside Fortress areas, and Tier 1 Fortress Keeps lost half their health, which together make early aggression against a young frontline fortress a realistic plan rather than a mid-war luxury.

Defending a Siege

Defenders inside a fortified town have several tools to break attackers before the wall comes down. Burning Oil placed on fort walls deals damage over time to attacking troops and directly damages siege engines, making it one of the most efficient counters to a battering-ram push. Scorpion Arrows, longbows from elevated positions, and rocks dropped from murder holes attrit attackers further. Scorpions now sit on a raised platform so they can fire over parapets more effectively, and missile fire from bows no longer damages light structures such as Scorpions and Mantlets. A multi-level keep gives defenders depth: even after a wall falls, the inner keep is its own fight.

Why Logistics Decide Sieges

Building a single Battering Ram in a siege camp costs significant lumber, ingots, and labor. Replacing one that has been burned or destroyed requires either preserved materials in the camp or a fresh caravan from a friendly town. A faction that cannot keep its siege camp resupplied will lose the siege not because its troops were outfought but because they ran out of rams and ladders. See the Logistics and Supply Lines article for caravan and supply-camp mechanics.

Damage Type Cheat Sheet

• Cleaving damage from Combat Axes is one of the few player-weapon damage types that hurts siege engines.

• Burning damage from Burning Oil also damages siege engines directly, in addition to its damage-over-time on troops.

• Crushing damage from Maces is for breaking heavily armoured infantry, not for breaking walls.

• Most other player weapons cannot damage siege engines, so a frontline counter-siege team must include axes or oil to neutralise enemy rams.

Assaulting a Redesigned Town

The MS 67 build changed what a town assault looks like. Towns are built around a central keep with modular walls that can be destroyed and repaired while the fight is still going, so opening a breach no longer settles the matter: defenders can rebuild it under fire, and the attacker has to hold the gap as well as make it. Each town also has three fully functional gates rather than one, which spreads an assault across several approaches and rewards attacking forces that can commit to more than a single push.

Two smaller changes matter on the defending side. Rubble left by reinforced walls and gates can be mined, and public storage stays open for thirty minutes once a Call to Arms is raised, extended from twenty minutes in the MS 68 build, giving defenders longer to arm from the shared armoury before the stockpile locks again.

Related Pages

• Combat

• Weapons

• Logistics and Supply Lines

• Settlements