with my old decades old daggerfall tactic of killing everyone dead
(well just moving backward while swinging weapon until enemy is hit, wait until enemy catch up and resume until he's dead or i let him catch too much and he kills me, all with a hundred of save/reload
, it's more tedious with the "advanced combat" AI enabled in the option as sometime the AI move back and wait before resuming attack) i managed to defeat the 2nd wave of orcs defenders.
Those hard battles gave me some nice armor (well much better than i had, as i didn't created a custom class and battlemages have serious amount of forbidden material/armor type sadly, that nice elven plastron
) and even got a magical mace, no idea what is its magical power tough (probably need to bring it for identify) out of looking cool with lightning .
Oh and money+loot to sell in town
After another save i went back to the castle but this time it looks like they were out of orcs troopers and those nasty spiders
Well, it wasn't really better as it's a high level orcs with some sergeant orcs as bodyguards, i'm in no way ready for that as after a hundred of strikes it became obvious my current weapon and my low level would never allow me to actually hurt their boss that can one shot me without problem (the sergeants probably i could deal with as i killed one in the 2nd defenders wave)
Good i kept a save before approaching the castle for the last time, will have to level up a bit more before coming back
EDIT
oh boy that was evil from the mod maker
As i ran to town in order to heal (the travel did it fortunately) and sell my loot , i purchased a better weapon (in term of damage as the magic mace while probably good had by default less damage than the long sword i bought, and my character skills are better with long blade anyways).
Then i was walking a bit around the small town i was in, identifying the buildings around when
And it was the orc warlord with several orc sergeants and a couple of basic orcs
Noticed immediately that no guard was interested to help, and neither the orcs interested in a carnage on the civilians sadly (i hope there will be a mod for that at some point as it's rather immersion breaking)
But instead of running away (fortunately my character running skill allow me to run faster than the enemy so after a distance i could just fast travel somewhere else, i decided to test the old tactic as it was a town, so with the wilderness around there's no blocking like in a dungeon and i had a more damaging weapon (even if not magical).
And after the usual lots of save/reload, it actually worked every orcs were dead.
Unless i missed one somewhere stuck in the village (though i never found him) there was no message acknowledging the orc army destruction, unless that modded quest is bugged, no idea.
Lot of fun to rediscover Daggerfall with those mods