While letting their food settle, Shen Tang and her assembled civil and military officials gathered around the still-warm bonfire and roughly settled on the military formations and Word Spirits they would use to attack. Shen Tang suddenly sighed, "Come to think of it, this is our first siege. Everyone, be sure to proceed with caution."
As far as she knew, sieges were the hardest kind of battle.
It often took several times the enemy's numbers to take a city. And when they ran into a hard nut like a turtle shell, it was common for an assault to drag on for months without success.
The first thing an attacking army had to face wasn't the enemy inside the city, but its sturdy walls and the complete defensive system built around them. The moat, the gates, the outer city, the inner city—only by breaking through one layer at a time could they push the front line forward. But was that ever easy?
Not in the slightest.
Why would anyone spend a fortune building a massive city if the enemy could take it so easily?
A city's defenses could hold off four times the number of soldiers stationed inside!
The walls were made either of rammed earth or enormous stone blocks, and their defensive strength was formidable. Lightweight weapons like bows and arrows were of little use, while the defenders could hide behind the walls and counterattack through the firing slits built into them.
Once the fighting began, the defenders would also block up the gate passage with stones to stop the enemy from breaking through with a battering ram, forcing them to use ladders to scale the walls. That let the defenders take advantage of the high ground and pour down boiling "golden juice," flaming rocks, and logs...
Even if the