An idea

[Balamir]

This is an idea that seemed very logical to me and I wanted to share it with you. The thing is, when a province of yours is invaded and the end turn button is pressed, you arrive at the menu where it says who wants to control the battle and this and that. After that you are transported to the field. You fight the war and when the war is done and you come back to the coffee-stained campaign map and oh look its already 1 year later I would find it more logical that when your province is invaded, you are give the chance to create some units, organise your army by means like logistics and this and that, maybe demand some supplies from friendly provinces in case of siege in,say, 15 minutes maybe? That would make the preparations more realistic instead of the fighting of 2 armies taking 1 whole year. This idea can be improved, as in giving the attacker army the choiice of choosing which MoNTH the attack is launched. IF launched early, the army would be tired of march, if launched late maybe the army would suffer from hard winter conditions or defenders would have more time preparing for the war. I believe after all those great stuff they put into RTW, this shouldnt be too much of an issue?

cheers.

[DthB4Dishonor]

I disagree m8,

The current way assumes that it is a surprise attack. Your not suppose to know that the enemy are attacking you till it is to late to get reinforcements to you. If you want to be warned ahead of time when enemy will attack put spies in bodering enemy provinces and you can get 1-4 year advance notice of an attack being planned on your provinces.

Currently if you are attacked in a province which has a Castle and you chose to remain in Castle the AI automaticly stock piles as much food as the size of the Castle can hold. So if you just have a fort there is no way that it can hold enough food to last for more than a year or 2. However a Fortress can in theory hold enough to last several years (with proper water source).

However I would like the option of Rations during a seige. Let me explain.

I'm in my Normandy Castle with 500 soldiers and get attacked by an army of 1200. I have an army 2 provinces away with 5k troops and know I can relieve seige in 2 years time. So I'm given the option of

Rations

scraps: (very high casualties but castle can stand for considerably longer amount of time.
meager: (higer casualties per year but more years to fall)
average: (an adequate amount of food with average amount of time to fall)
generous: (a generous amount of food. Casualties are lowered but supplies will last a much shorter amount of time.
fiest: (large amounts of food with very low casualties but considerably shorter amount of time before castle falls)

Also depending on Ration size this can affect morale. So a fiest can be like +4 morale. Scraps can be -4 morale.

Well in the above give example I give my 500 troops fiest size rations. Within 2 years I send my 5k troop army into the province and lift the seige.

[Balamir]

The ration thing would be great, and I'd like to add that if your fort was under siege on turn number 1, and you faced the enemy and defeated the besiegers on turn number 3, it should take a while for that province to regenerate the supplies consumed during the siege. When it comes to my idea, I agree that it needs to be a surprise but how surprising can an enemy banner marching towards your keep be? There will surely be someone that sees them, I'd say. Also the preparations Im talking about arent major stuff, its just the best you can do until the attack, which wont be much anyway. Still, this idea is open to debate and it would help if we got more ideas, then we'd be getting somewhere. Thanks for the reply mate.

[Balamir]

and also, I DONT WANT MEN BREAKING GATES WITH THEIR SWORDS OR SPEARS THAT IS WHY BATTERING RAMS EXIST http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[DthB4Dishonor]

Well I think any minor stuff can just be automaticly done by the AI. Minor stuff like bringing in all available grain, cattle and sheep that can fit in castle or city walls. Since everyone would do this anyway why waste our time asking if we want it done.

Also usually armies would have advance warning of coming army. It wasnt total surprise. But a 1-4 day advance notice of coming army didnt give ancients enough time to properly prepare. It would allow them to muster there army, make sure silos were full and that messengers were sent to let allies know you were being attacked.

However it wouldnt be enough advance notice to build new fortifications or for messengers to get to allies or other provinces of same country. For that province or ally to muster and to get there.

I do really like your thoughts on swords breaking porticullis (gate house). Since were talking about the Romans I think an great unit would be Engineers . Upon seiging a city, fortress or oppidum you can put your engineers to do projects. Different projects would require different amounts of labor time. So the more engineers you assign to a project the quicker it can be done.

An engineer unit can build catapults, scorpions, seige towers and perhaps even camp fortifications just incase someone tries to relieve the seige.

If my history serves me correct Roman Legions had a large amount of engineers assigned to them. Also this was the strenght of Rome, building and engineering. Remember Mosada or Alesia? I mean the Romans just built and built and out engineered there opponents.

RTKPaul

[DthB4Dishonor]

I also just want to point out that what I'm talking about is different than building siege weapons on a regular building que. I'm talking about building seige engines during the actual siege.

[Balamir]

Yeh, I get the idea. You mean like in stronghold if you ever played it? I think that would bring us to another point though. If engineers are allowed, the siege factories wont build a specific type of unit in the training queue, they will simply train engineers and you can order them to create the siege engine during the battle. That would be much more useful since if you have a ballistae on a siege, you could immediately change it to a trebuchet or catapult, as well as a siege tower.