Seige Defence Battles Q

[barocca]

oki - how often does anyone defend a seige on the campaign map without using a relieving army???

if the answer is we dont play defensive castle battles then make the artillery a dismount unit.


and yes, occaisionally i get caught out, but i rarely ACTUALLY defend,
i am usually so outnumbered that i just autoresolve
(it is depressing to lose...)

[Puzz3D]

The AI has attacked my castles twice in 300 turns in version beta 8. The AI won both times. It broke down two walls each time. It did not attack the gate. In the first battle, the AI had it's army on high ground and didn't take many casualties from the castle towers and walls. In the second battle, the AI army was on flat ground within range of the castle towers and suffered many casualties.

[barocca]

so your answer is only rarely?

[Puzz3D]

so your answer is only rarely?

I wouldn't say rarely. I don't remember how many times the AI sieged in those 300 turns, and I sallied during some of those sieges. My impession was that the AI was likely to assault the castle if it had a large army and the garrision was small. In one case, I think the AI assaulted on the turn before the castle was going to surrender possibly because the garrison was weakened by the abstracted losses it suffers each turn. The AI may be multiplying the strength of the garrision by a factor that depends upon the size of the castle in making its decision to assault.

[barocca]

my point is i dont bother playing a seige defence where i dont have a hope in hades of winning,
i simply dont have the hour or so extra time to play.

the extra casualties i inflict appear to be minimal most times and unfair on others,

i feel like i am taking advantage of the ai's stupidity when it comes to tower and wall defences

i have seen the ai "hugging" the walls taking large numbers of casualties for no good purpose or reason.

SO, if the unit that we make is usefull in field battles,
(and we can make it so the ai is unlikely to build it)
it only morphs into artillery (hand cannon) when dismounted,
and the ai does not dismount,
and the ai does not handle castle assaults properly anyway,

then what is the problem with creating such a unit?

(and what should we create? - mounted ashi-xbows prhaps? very low rate of fire, very lousy accuracy
- which is what the hand cannon will have, very low rate of fire and very lousy accuracy)
B.

[Puzz3D]

The AI's play was focused in the two castle assaults that I defended. It attacked the wall at two places. The units attacking the wall didn't take many casualties, and eventually broke through. However in the second assault, the AI left it's army inside the range of the castle towers and walls, and it took a lot of casualties waiting for the walls to be broken down. The castles may have to be adjusted with non-shooting walls and fewer towers. The objective is to make a castle assault be more costly than waiting for the castle to surrender.

Dismounted units that turn into some kind of artillery would be ok. I think they could be balanced in such a way to be useful in castle assault, but not in field battles. Since the AI never dismounts, it won't be trying to use the dismounted unit in field battles. The non-dismounted form of the unit can be balanced to be useful in field battles.