I much prefer the "surrender or be destroyed" option, rather than a siege.
Failure to surrender? Ok - eat a high level Control Winds that instantly escalates wind speeds to tornado force. Put it into a Greater Glyph of Warding and have some unaware shmuck trigger it in the center of town. That should do quite a number on a settlement and it's defenders...
However, low magic type setting - fireball is still pretty good - toss some into the poorer sections where housing and roofing are likely nicely combustible. Treasure Stitching massive blocks of stone (and then releasing the treasure via command word while conveniently flying above any fortification that needs wrecking) works well too.
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The wand is better against soft targets, like an invading army. The catapult is better for when you're the invading army.
Honestly, I have a hard time imagining massed combat warfare being at all realistic in the pathfinder setting because of these existence of things like wands of fireball. Why send all your level 1 NPC warriors to be slaughter by a few flying (potion of fly) people running around with wands of fireball. Seems like it would make more sense to only ever invade with battle hardened (level 5+) soldiers and to hold cities with weak troops once significant threats were removed.
I mean otherwise entire armies could be decimated by a few first level wizards with access to wands and potions supplied by their government.
Non-proliferation would be trying to keep high level casters from showing up in the campaign world by the "mundanes". Once every country and city state has a couple high level casters, it's pretty much along the lines of having a modern world with every nation having a nuclear arsenal. It can also mean that those high-level casters already present simply kill off anyone else that tries to "join the club" as a means of limiting the potential for high level spell proliferation.
So, Deterrence is most likely the means by which countries try and prevent mass destruction via spell. Because if you can wipe out your enemies cities and he can do the same to yours, well - no one wins. Wizards especially do require the trappings of civilization - books (which means paper/vellum/etc being produced), libraries, etc. Wiping out the civilization that you depend on for your craft is...sub-optimal.
Perhaps casters adopt a "neutral" stance - they just don't get involved in warfare other than at a VERY low level (1st/2nd level spells - battlefield cures, minor area effect stuff like burning hands, etc) or perhaps not at all. The military fate of nations is in the hands of the fighter-types. Breaking such a pact/code (be it written or unwritten) leads to your eventual destruction at the hands of your fellow spellcasters. Part of THAT code also means that countries, etc do NOT mess with the spellcasters even when a city changes hands. For example, city gets invaded, but those temples and wizard towers? Ya, those are hands off - the military stays the hell away from those. After all, neutrality cuts both ways - they don't get involved in wars as long as they aren't impacted by those wars.
Problem is when you get some "we want the world to burn" types triggering a situation that escalates warfare into a "wizard war". Deterrence isn't going to be perfect. It can break down under all sorts of circumstances. My campaign world history has, as it's pivotal moment in history 600 years ago, a Wizard War that blasted most of the intelligent races back into the stone ages. The world has since recovered and spellcasters are wiser and more circumspect with their spells. Well, some of them are. You see, deterrence is starting to break down again...those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it sort of thing...heheheh.
One wand of fireball CL 5 is worth Lots of soldiers look in UC at the prices for soldiers.
And with a avarage damage of 17,5 on a failed save(DC 14) it is not gonna be that dangerous. The wand wielded can only almost take out the 10 huge catapults(or 18 ligth), that it cost the same as, out.
At the same time it have all the disadvantages and advantages of a super weapon.
in my PF univers massed armies are used to occupy land and dominate common men. But heroes with class levels and magic stuff are used to will battles.
Not everyone will have super heroes to spare.
Magical superiority would indeed be a huge advantage in warfare, not dissimilar to air superiority in our own world. By itself it wouldn't be sufficient to conquer, but it probably would be sufficient to stop most offensives.
That said, unless one side is clearly superior in magical items and people it probably won't be a huge direct factor in warfare. While your wizard might be able to take out a few hundred grunts, using him that way would be risky, as it is impossible to do so without exposing him and that gives the other side a big chance to take him out.
I would imagine that most wizards who were engaged in fighting with armies would spend most of their resources protecting themselves from attack, secondly preparing to take out or counter an enemy wizard should he appear, and lastly using magic to increase communication and intelligence gathering rather than directly killing people. Fireballing enemy troops would only be used if you had pretty much already won, or you were truly desperate, or possible as a trap, with your fire-balling mage being the bait for an enemy anti-mage unit.
If it's fireballs, then just hope there aren't to many spellcasters to buff the shock troops up, or summon demons, devils or daemons. Also, a wand user would be more vulnerable to arrows and spells and all that. Finally, a siege unit can cover a bit more area. As opposed to flying all over the place desperately defending, you can just put a catapult on a swivel and voila!
But a guy with a wand would be able to survive longer on rations and stuff in a siege. But he wouldent be a meaning full part of guard Duty or things like that.
How many catapults can you buy if you spend the same as the cost of a a fireball wand?
With Crew between 10 and 18 i think
Another benefit of a catapult: it can't be bribed to destroy your army instead.