Red Harvest
01-19-2003, 08:38
Sieges in this game are great...but...I hope CA will continue improving them for the Viking expansion pack. The current castles and siege equipment are really quite impressive, but here are the things I find puzzling or would like to see changed:
1. Seige towers, rams, and ladders. Take a page from Lords of the Realm II and have armies build some of these devices in the field. In fact, with respect to existing equipment it might make sense to only allow trebuchets and mangonels to be constructed in the field (immobile and stuck in the province they are built in--although the crews/engineers could be trained and moved about to build new ones.) Probably would make sense to require a hefty sum to build the more complex machines as well.
2. Improve the AI's ability to conduct siege assaults. It places its artillery poorly and will often send units in piece meal and fail to exploit breeches in sieges that it should easily win. It also spends a lot of time knocking down gates when there are already several holes in the wall...DUH. First thing I do when my castle is assaulted is to rush out with some fast units to destroy unprotected seige equipment. The AI takes horrible casualties as a result of poor placement of these key units.
3. Make siege *battle* damage last until repaired by the owner of the castle in subsequent turns...it should cost money and *time* to repair destroyed walls and towers and the castle should remain vulnerable in the interim. Lords of the Realm 2 had this feature. This would make castles vulnerable even after unsuccessful siege assaults--a player could spend one year pulverizing the walls, and the next year sending in a storming party (might allow some level of basic repair of the besieged between years.)
4. Beseiging armies should be ripe for disease and attrition as well as the beseiged, (but to a lesser extent.) The bigger the army, the more likely some attrition would be--could be an interesting random factor. Disease is a factor that should come into play with huge army groups anyway...but I digress.
5. Make castle walls and towers man-able to some extent. Might be some sort of fixed garrison (of archers, etc.) along with the defending army. This would allow a defender to send his crossbows, arbalests and archers onto the walls to wreak havoc.
6. Moats and miners would be interesting... I'm not well versed on sieges but I recall undermining walls was a commmon tactic. There are some interesting strategic/tactical level ways of handling this.
7. Castles should stand up better to assault by units other than siege equipment. Foot soldiers and cav should find it more difficult to breech a wooden wall or gate. It would be more realistic for them to use ladders rather than breech the wall so easily. It would make for an interesting fight on the ramparts.
1. Seige towers, rams, and ladders. Take a page from Lords of the Realm II and have armies build some of these devices in the field. In fact, with respect to existing equipment it might make sense to only allow trebuchets and mangonels to be constructed in the field (immobile and stuck in the province they are built in--although the crews/engineers could be trained and moved about to build new ones.) Probably would make sense to require a hefty sum to build the more complex machines as well.
2. Improve the AI's ability to conduct siege assaults. It places its artillery poorly and will often send units in piece meal and fail to exploit breeches in sieges that it should easily win. It also spends a lot of time knocking down gates when there are already several holes in the wall...DUH. First thing I do when my castle is assaulted is to rush out with some fast units to destroy unprotected seige equipment. The AI takes horrible casualties as a result of poor placement of these key units.
3. Make siege *battle* damage last until repaired by the owner of the castle in subsequent turns...it should cost money and *time* to repair destroyed walls and towers and the castle should remain vulnerable in the interim. Lords of the Realm 2 had this feature. This would make castles vulnerable even after unsuccessful siege assaults--a player could spend one year pulverizing the walls, and the next year sending in a storming party (might allow some level of basic repair of the besieged between years.)
4. Beseiging armies should be ripe for disease and attrition as well as the beseiged, (but to a lesser extent.) The bigger the army, the more likely some attrition would be--could be an interesting random factor. Disease is a factor that should come into play with huge army groups anyway...but I digress.
5. Make castle walls and towers man-able to some extent. Might be some sort of fixed garrison (of archers, etc.) along with the defending army. This would allow a defender to send his crossbows, arbalests and archers onto the walls to wreak havoc.
6. Moats and miners would be interesting... I'm not well versed on sieges but I recall undermining walls was a commmon tactic. There are some interesting strategic/tactical level ways of handling this.
7. Castles should stand up better to assault by units other than siege equipment. Foot soldiers and cav should find it more difficult to breech a wooden wall or gate. It would be more realistic for them to use ladders rather than breech the wall so easily. It would make for an interesting fight on the ramparts.