Siege Battles -

Siege Battles if done right are the most easiest battles in Warhammer 2

To siege a walled settelment bring range units. You can have different combination of army compositions:

Archers only (only on certain siege maps)
Archers with Siege
Gunners with Siege
Hero only army
Strong infantery army
Heroes with with certain types of magic
Artillery only

1. Archers only

Archers work best on maps where towers do not cover the whole frontline.

Archers can fire over almost all types of walls.

Most importantly you have to outrange or quickly overwhelme enemy archers to get superiority with ranged units. Your first targets should be either enemy archers/gunners or the most valuable enemy units. You need to pay attention to flying units and artillery. The AI sometimes sends artillery forward to firing range and flying over the wall into your archers. The behaviour of artillery or flying units are unpredictable. Even when your units are engaged with enemy units, which most of the time is the trigger for flying units, they tend to stay back untill the end of the siege.

2. Archers with Siege

Archers are for the most part your best choice to besiege enemy strongholds. they can kill enemy units without loosing any themselfe. The same strategy applies as in “1. Archers only”.

You dont have to destroy all towers, just the one which might be shooting at you.

Sieges allow you to tear down enemy Tower and walls. If you bring units which cannot climb this is mostly your only way to get your troops into the enemy settelment. It allows you to attack walled settelments in the same turn. Additionally when placing single entities like your lord in front of your army you can minimise your losses to tower fire until your Siege has torn down the towers.

3. Gunners with Siege

Archers can shoot also throught the main door or open walls.

Gunners with siege are one of the most difficult but most rewarding types of army composition. Since most gunner-types are armor piercing you can deal a great amount of damage. In order to be able to use gunners in a siege battle you have to create a breache or destroy the gate in order to be able to fire the gunners. You can use a gunner only army but you will be limited to only be able to fire throught destroyed gates or breaches in the wall. This will not always work, since enemies might be out of range or in a bad angle. Additionally when placing single entities like your lord in front of your army you can minimise your losses to tower fire until your Siege has torn down the towers.

Gunners correclty positionted between the wall segments.

Be aware when placing gunners into breaches. The ai can be triggered to attack your units standing in the breach or gate. Gunners might not fire enemy units out of the breache. In this case force the gunners to shoot by right clicking on enemies. Placing a single entity unit in front of the gunners may give you a greater field of fire by drawing in enemy units.

Placing lord or a hero in front of the range units will lure the enemy meele units to clumb up on each other.

4. Heroes only army

This is mostly already considered a doomstack since heroes are one of the strongest units in the game. They can level up and get realy good combat stats.

Heroes are best placed on top of the gate.

If your heroes are too large and cannot use ladders, enter throught the gate.
If you have climbed the walls with ladders and you are on top of the wall. always head for the top of the gate. In most cases the AI tends to send its weakest units, a.k. archers to this section of the wall. kill them first since they can later be dangerous for your single entities. Try to stay as long as possible on the wall since you will most of the time face less units.

Units like lords tend not to climb onto the wall. Units like heroes do this most of the time. Target the enemy heroes first, specialy mages, since they are most of the time squishy and your second largest thread.

5. Strong infantery army

Here the same rules applies as in “4. Heroes only army”, Climb the wall and kill first all units on the wall.

6. Heroes with with certain types of magic

In this case use your magic before climbing the walls. If you are under tower fire you can always get to the corner of the map to avoid arrow or gunfire.

Note: Casting against the wall any moving magic like burning head will bounce back from the wall. This can be used to damage units twice with the same spell.

Not all magic types are suitable for siege battles but most of them are in some sort. Fireballs are the extreme whereby you might be able to snipe a heore off the wall, but for all other purpose (except for flying mages) it will be useless.

7. Artillery only

Forgot to recruite an army or still want to use up that ammunition? Here you go:

artillery can be forced to fire with alt-attack

Use your artillery to fire throught the gate or a hole in the wall. Press alt and right click on the ground to force the artillery to shoot. Best used in combination with single entities to lure in infantery and kill them off with artillery groundfire.

Notable mentionings

jibaiting. You can lure out units by attacking them and steadely retreating out of the fortress:

That skaven just got ambushed in a siege battle

Trapping units. If you destroy a cornerpiece of a wall, units will not be able to leave it and will be stuck there for the whole duration of the siege battle: