What is the reason to not include sap points?

[a_ver_est]

Finally this Saturday I am gonna get the game (it's the magic kings day in spain). Meanwhile I am reading the manual which I have downloaded.

I have noticed that sap points aren't included in the game, anyone knows the reason ?

I think that sap points where used in medieval eras, and the engine has had it coded in RTW. Also I don't think that they were overpowered, they had some advantages and some disadvantages .

Anyone has had any feedback from CA ?

TIA.

[Aaron A Aardvark]

Sapping was way too easy in RTW.

I think it was used in Medieval times, but couldn't work on a battle time scale - it must have taken days if not weeks to complete a tunnel under the walls.

[Zenicetus]

I haven't read any comments from CA about this, so we can only guess. It might be that the dev team just didn't have time to implement and test that feature, before the release deadline. Or maybe they just wanted to ramp up the overall difficulty for the attacker. They've done other things to make sieges harder, like changing the dynamics for missile-firing wall towers (you have to clear ALL defenders from anywhere near the tower to shut 'em down), the towers cause more damage to attackers on the walls now, and it seems to me that defenders are more easily setting fire to rams and siege towers, compared to RTW. So maybe they didn't want to give the player an "easy" way to bypass going in the hard way (aside from spies opening gates, which still works).

[Jinnigan]

Sapping was way too easy in RTW.

I think it was used in Medieval times, but couldn't work on a battle time scale - it must have taken days if not weeks to complete a tunnel under the walls.
...that's what build points and sieges are for, right?

[DukeKent]

I have yet to see a spy actually open a gate for me. I have played with the patch, and without. Even when I get the message that a spy has opened the gates. The gates are not open. On at least one occasion I checked every gate into the city (4 I believe). None of the gates were open, and I had to use a balista to break the gate down. So obviously the spy did not actually open the gate :dizzy2:

[Aaron A Aardvark]

I have yet to see a spy actually open a gate for me. I have played with the patch, and without. Even when I get the message that a spy has opened the gates. The gates are not open. On at least one occasion I checked every gate into the city (4 I believe). None of the gates were open, and I had to use a balista to break the gate down. So obviously the spy did not actually open the gate :dizzy2:
You have to go up to the gate and knock for it too open.

[Ethelred Unread]

I hope that sapping and a moat upgrade for castles will come out in a expansion/patch

[katank]

Sapping should be darn easy to add since it's already in the Rome engine. I honestly think that sieges become a lot easier due to the gates becoming very viable. Whereas in RTW best way was to fight on walls with siege towers to avoid boiling oil of doom, now it's walk up, ram the gate, and then zerg your way in.

Sieges seem biased against humans. With equivalent defenses, they set fire to my equipment far more than I do to them. If I assault using a single ram against even wooden walls, it's practically guaranteed to be burned. Meanwhile, I need at least ballista towers to be able to be fairly certain that their ram dies.

[PaulTa]

I haven't read any comments from CA about this, so we can only guess. It might be that the dev team just didn't have time to implement and test that feature, before the release deadline. Or maybe they just wanted to ramp up the overall difficulty for the attacker. They've done other things to make sieges harder, like changing the dynamics for missile-firing wall towers (you have to clear ALL defenders from anywhere near the tower to shut 'em down), the towers cause more damage to attackers on the walls now, and it seems to me that defenders are more easily setting fire to rams and siege towers, compared to RTW. So maybe they didn't want to give the player an "easy" way to bypass going in the hard way (aside from spies opening gates, which still works).


No way is it easy to set fire to rams. I've had battles where about five or six full units of archers were firing at the ram at the same time (russia against poland, can't deal with the cavalry swarm!), and I've burned out all but ten or twelve of the guys actually pushing the ram, but no burned ram.

[Patricius]

The chances of enemy siege engines burning seems completely random. Sometimes multiple engines are burnt, sometimes even the ram will not burn, and that with half an army worth of archers firing on it. Sieges are a lot easier if the gate is not forced. This chance element of whether the siege engines can be torched is often, for me, the biggest factor in winning or losing a siege.

[Zenicetus]

No way is it easy to set fire to rams. I've had battles where about five or six full units of archers were firing at the ram at the same time (russia against poland, can't deal with the cavalry swarm!), and I've burned out all but ten or twelve of the guys actually pushing the ram, but no burned ram.

Yeah, I should have made it clear I was talking about the player as attacker. And I agree with Katank that rams seem to burn a lot easier when they're controlled by the player, vs. the player trying to burn an attacker's ram. There might be some bias written into the the code to make it harder for the player in both cases, to compensate for a somewhat weak AI.

[Bijo]

What even further diminishes the chance of setting afire siege equipment, is when your archers aim all the way upwards and not directly. That's when I think "What the F-!"

[Musashi]

I have yet to see a spy actually open a gate for me. I have played with the patch, and without. Even when I get the message that a spy has opened the gates. The gates are not open. On at least one occasion I checked every gate into the city (4 I believe). None of the gates were open, and I had to use a balista to break the gate down. So obviously the spy did not actually open the gate :dizzy2:
LOL, dude.. they don't just stay open... If your spy has opened the gate for you, that just means that if you walk your troops up there, it will open for you as if you were the defenders.

Basically think of it as your spy being in control of the gatehouse.

[Daevyll]

I think it is because sapping (as it was in RTW) had no counter, even sallying out cavalry would have no use.
If you payed the buildpoints for it, then the wall would go down and there was nothing the enemy could do about it, 100% safe, 100% succesrate.

To make sapping a fun gamemechanic, there would have to be some form of counter to it, such as countermining.

I'm glad it isnt in in its RTW-incarnation tbh.

Now what I DO miss is the boiling oil from the gatehouses, right now it is far too easy to just smash a gate and just pour all your cav through it.

[a_ver_est]

IIRC the sap point can be burned in RTW also you can't deploy it, most of times it was placed to sap a wall section which you aren't interested. So it wasn't th ultimate siege weapon, but I agree that it was the hardest to counter.

Anyway it should be better improve the sap mechanics either than remove it.

As someone wrote if sap point was removed to increase the seige difficulty, removing the burning oil may done easier.

Finally from the forum feedback it seems as the siege battles have been too improved so despite these point I am sure that I am gonna enjoy it.

Just one day left to have the game on my hands, yahaaa!!!

Regards,

PS. Excuse my lame inglish.

[Rollon]

I think it is because sapping (as it was in RTW) had no counter, even sallying out cavalry would have no use.Using ladders has no counter either. I wish halberdiers could push them off the wall, killing everybody on it and (possibly) destroying the ladder. Right now it's too easy: run to the wall (you could not run with ladders in RTW, IIRC) — climb — send more units to climb while the first is clearing the way for them.
By the way, is there any point in building Towers? Do they work or are they broken?

[A. Smith]

they work... and you will get way less casualty then with ladders, especially if your ennemy has archers.

[Rollon]

It's broken quote tag again, sorry. The first sentence was a quote from the Daevyll's post.

[Rollon]

No, I mean Ballista and Cannon Towers. I heard they are broken somehow, especially for castles.

[katank]

Ladders are still reasonably viable. They can't collapse like towers with your unit inside. I've done that to the AI before. It reached the walls and the enemy troops started climbing only for the tower to burn down and collapse with a unit trapped inside. Only 1 man made it to the walls and was promptly cut down. :smash:

Sapping is indeed extremely effective and low risk in RTW. Adding counter mining etc. wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe give the defenders some build points for counter mining tunnels, stakes behind gate, that kinda thing.

[Darkarbiter]

I think it is because sapping (as it was in RTW) had no counter, even sallying out cavalry would have no use.Using ladders has no counter either. I wish halberdiers could push them off the wall, killing everybody on it and (possibly) destroying the ladder. Right now it's too easy: run to the wall (you could not run with ladders in RTW, IIRC) — climb — send more units to climb while the first is clearing the way for them.
By the way, is there any point in building Towers? Do they work or are they broken?
Heh I miss stronghold.
Counter mining etc would be boring. It'd just be who can outbuild each other.

[MohawkDaddy]

I'll second on the boiling oil. Lately I've been running archers out of the gate and in range of any siege engines to try to reduce the crew or burn the engine. The catapults must provide great cover because the crews are almost impossible to kill with archers. Last night I did have a catapult change position to get away from the archers I sent out. They hid behind a siege tower and them promptly demolished it.

[Zenicetus]

Sapping is indeed extremely effective and low risk in RTW. Adding counter mining etc. wouldn't be a bad idea. Maybe give the defenders some build points for counter mining tunnels, stakes behind gate, that kinda thing.

I'm not sure counter-mining would add anything to the game. If it was available, then you'd automatically use it ever time to block the sappers. Net result is a draw, as if sapping wasn't in the game at all. The only thing it would do is tie up one of your units (and one on the enemy side).

There is also the problem of visually representing what happens with counter-mining. Do you just see the ground vibrate a little, when a tunnel collapses? Do you get invisible battles underground, and all you can see is a reduction in troops on the unit card? It's a tricky thing to represent with the current game engine.

[katank]

Maybe it will be more of a guessing game. Depending on the build point you have, you can cover a certain section of the wall. If they happen to choose to sap there, your tunnel collapses their sap tunnel and they lose a portion of their unit. Otherwise, they may be able to hit a section not guarded by your countertunnels and their sap makes it.

This makes sapping a viable though risky strategy against small forces but a bad idea against a well garrisoned city.

[Ethelred Unread]

Even easier way to counteract saps is with a moat.

I remember an old, old (well mid 1990's) game set in medieval times where the POV was top down and the castles had moats. You had to send in peasants or other cheap units to fill the moats in so you could sap/use ladders. I'd like to see this back again and would be easier for the game mechanic I'm guessing (rather than Underground:TW).

[Rollon]

I believe that game was Lords of the Realm I. I enjoyed it too.

[dopp]

Good old Lords of the Realm, where you could totally cripple the enemy economy with three armies of 2 peasants each and a little micro. Loved sending my 2 peasants to depopulate an entire province.

[NeutralZone940]

Loved LOTR2 - the sequel that came out a year or two ago (LOTR3?) was apparently a complete disaster though. :(

One thing that game had which rocked was full-on multiplayer, including the campaign map.

I'm still irritated by the tower behaviour - so you capture the tower, but it's 'ownership' (when you mouse over it and get the tooltip) doesn't say you own it? What's up with that?

I loved to sprint around Roman towns converting towers... :)

On the upside, the towers don't *seem* to shoot at your guys once you're inside their perimeter - do they?

[Zenicetus]

You "own" a tower when the flag disappears from the top, but it's not ownership in the sense of RTW where it will fire at the enemy. You're just turning it off so it doesn't shoot at your men.

And the dynamic for this is different too. You have to clear all the enemy units near the tower, not just on the walls but also at the base of the walls and nearby streets. You can't just run troops through the tower to turn it off, if there are still enemy units anywhere nearby. Anyway, check for a flag on the tower. If there's a flag there, it's still shooting at you.

[NeutralZone940]

That's good to know, thanks - I figured there must be *some* sign but wasn't looking for one. :) :balloon2:

[neilm85uk]

I'll second on the boiling oil. Lately I've been running archers out of the gate and in range of any siege engines to try to reduce the crew or burn the engine. The catapults must provide great cover because the crews are almost impossible to kill with archers. Last night I did have a catapult change position to get away from the archers I sent out. They hid behind a siege tower and them promptly demolished it.

I go out with light cavalry or Jinetes using alternative attack. The AI is very slow to respond and you can wipe out hte entire crew very quickly.

[pevergreen]

Found some interesting stuff in the data folder.


Deleted the irrelevant stuff.


faction england

can_sap no
can_have_princess yes
has_family_tree yes

Huurrmmm.