Greetings, emperors!

In my last two posts I introduced the new two-axis combat system and how armour has become much more important. Today I want to talk about one of the changes I find most exciting, what happens when you lay siege to an enemy city.

As I mentioned in my first post in this series, armies already have an organisation value in Imperium Sine Fine. When it drains to zero, the army routes. Settlements, however, have never had this. A garrison fights at maximum effectiveness regardless of how long the siege has lasted, and the only way to capture a city is to kill every last defender. There is no arc to a siege, no mounting pressure, no moment where the defenders’ will finally breaks.

That changes completely in the new system.

Settlements now have their own organisation value, and they can be broken just like a field army can. A city can fall not because every soldier is dead, but because the garrison’s morale has been ground down over many days of relentless assault. The defenders break. The gates open. And many of them may still be alive when it happens.

Garrison organisation drains more slowly than a field army, which is intentional. Cities are hard targets and should feel like it. But city walls now have a direct impact on how slowly that drain happens. An unwalled settlement has minimal protection against the psychological pressure of a siege. A city with level 5 walls drains its organisation at only 20% of the rate a field army would. Investing in fortifications now has a tangible, meaningful payoff that goes far beyond simply adding combat stats to the garrison.

Siege engines play a special role here. Against a settlement, their Shock Value is doubled for the purpose of garrison morale calculations. Better still, siege engines are calculated separately from the rest of the attacking army rather than being averaged in with your infantry and cavalry. This matters because siege engines are typically fielded in small numbers, and averaging them across a thousand soldiers would dilute their impact to almost nothing. Instead, even a modest siege train applies its own independent psychological pressure on the garrison, on top of everything else.

The result is that bringing siege engines to a siege is now a genuine strategic statement. You are not primarily trying to kill defenders, you are trying to break their will. The sound of catapults crashing into walls, towers collapsing, gates splintering: these are what demoralise a garrison before anyone has even climbed a ladder.

High walls still resist even a heavy siege train, so a well-fortified city with a disciplined garrison remains a formidable target. But the days of every siege being an identical war of attrition are over. Some cities will be broken by shock and terror long before the last defender falls. Others, behind thick walls with resolute troops, will hold out far longer than their numbers suggest they should.

Your combat strategies also interact with the new system. Choosing Siege Warfare as your strategy steadies your garrison’s nerves, reducing their organisation drain and helping them settle in for a long defence. Cavalry Charge amplifies shock further in open battle. Feigned Retreat is the riskiest strategy of all, capable of shattering an enemy if the counter-charge lands, but leaving your own troops psychologically brittle if it doesn’t.

The figures I’ve mentioned above may be adjusted during playtesting, but they should give you a good feel for how the new system is designed to work.

There is still more to come in this series! The combat overhaul has more to it than what I’ve covered here, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Stay tuned!

Cheers!