View Full Version : Too many siege battles?
Aaron A Aardvark
01-04-2007, 20:23
Does anyone else find themselves constantly fighting siege battles? A 5:1 ration at least with open terrain. Attcking or defending, they're all pretty much the same, whereas all field battles are different.
Anyway, I roam around looking for a fight although I know it's harder that way.
Kraggenmor
01-04-2007, 20:51
I do not disagree. I seem to spend the bulk of my time trying to lay a seige or defend one and rarely have battles afield.
rory_20_uk
01-04-2007, 20:59
The next province is what? 2 goes move away. So, unless you decide to fight the army for some reason, going and taking the province is the most sensible thing to do. Personally I'm looking forward to a mod that increases the size of the map so that fights might occur out of cities... And fix the traits, rebalance the units, fix the bugs... Basically the usual :no:
~:smoking:
I also fight almost entirely siege battles, it seems.
There isn't typically much point in fighting other than in cities. AI field armies can often just be ignored with minimal consequences. On offense, I'll sometimes march right past a full stack army to take a city with 4 or 5 units in it. Sometimes I find myself 3-4 cities deep into the AI's empire while it figures out what to do with its stack it had milling around the border.
I think this is a problem only in that the AI is not really very good at sieges, and not very good at concentrating its force where it needs to.
Overall, though, I think the AI has improved on both offensive and defensive sieges from RTW.
It's the equivalent of island hopping for the US force during latter stages of WW2. Just smash their settlements and then their field armies turn rebel. On a speedy blitz with spies and all cav armies, you can often wipe out a faction in a few turns. If you don't mind the trade impact, you can just let the rebels sit for a while before taking em out.
Yep, ignore those field stacks long enough and you can turn them rebel before ever figthing them.
If you have really moved the border back quickly, they seem to go into a form of cognitive dissonance. They're like "What are we doing three provinces behind enemy lines when our script tells us not to go past the border". They just seem to glumly walk about for a while before deciding to head back homeward.
My last campaign I caught the French AI's last family members in Paris and his whole empire went rebel -- though I suspect he outnumbered me in the area by 4 or 5 stacks to one. Not the AI's proudest moment. Though, to be fair, he seemed to have 6 or 7 inquisitors working him over
RussianWinter
01-05-2007, 00:08
Yes, far FAR too many siege battles. This is an aspect of the game where it isn't "broken" in a non-functioning sense but broken in a very poor gameplay decision sense.
I hate how an army can just waltz up, lay siege to a castle, and suddenly imprison the troops inside forcing a sally or trade cut. An army should at least catch word of the approaching forces and have the option for a field battle.
Derfasciti
01-05-2007, 00:12
Indeed they do seem to be mostly seige battles. It sucks but meh.
Yes, far FAR too many siege battles. This is an aspect of the game where it isn't "broken" in a non-functioning sense but broken in a very poor gameplay decision sense.
I hate how an army can just waltz up, lay siege to a castle, and suddenly imprison the troops inside forcing a sally or trade cut. An army should at least catch word of the approaching forces and have the option for a field battle.
A defender should want to fight from behind the walls.
I certainly do when on defense.
The problem, I think, is that the game does not give me any incentive to try and catch the defenders in the open, which I should strongly prefer to fighting them while they're behind their walls -- but don't. Because the AI is not particularly good behind walls, and/or tends to underman its garrisons.
I think if it were two halfway decent human players playing each other, outright siege assaults would be costly and significantly more rare. The human would ensure a challenging garrison (which the AI can fail to do even when it has troops in the area) and take full advantage of the many bonuses the siege defender has available.
Zenicetus
01-05-2007, 00:54
I remember this being a common complaint with RTW also. The AI isn't very reactive when you cross a border, even with an army that's obviously ready to siege their settlements.
I wonder if part of the problem is that the AI just doesn't know you're there? I usually end up building far more watchtowers on my borders than the AI does, and their spies don't hang around as lookouts. They tend to go straight into cities to cause unrest. So maybe you're just in the enemy's blind spot for much of the time, and that's why you don't get many defensive moves that would lead to more field battles?
I'm assuming, of course, that the strategic AI is also constrained by fog of war like the player. If not, and it sees everything all the time, then it just comes down to passive or dim-witted AI.
If the AI is constrained by FOW, then it would be interesting to see if there's a way to switch that off and give it a God's Eye View of the battlefield, to find out if it would be more aggressive in reacting to invasions.
Ultimately though, since the game is based on territorial expansion, the only way to reduce the number of sieges is to reduce the number of castles and cities in the game. That would require drastically ramping up the economic and military production of the remaining settlements to compensate, otherwise you'd have smaller armies too. And it would mean fewer individual provinces (assuming a one-settlement-per-province design like the current game). I don't think it would work; it reduces the strategic options when you have fewer provinces to work with, on both offense and defense.
Durallan
01-05-2007, 02:03
I seriously doubt the AI is restricted by fow, cause that would be hard to script let alone to get the ai to recognise.
Also, if you don't spot the enemies forces marching on your cities and you don't organise enough force to combat them in time, thats hardly a game bug or the computer AI's fault.
I fight plenty of open field battles, probably just as many if not more open field battles than how many sieges I've done.
Zenicetus
01-05-2007, 02:22
I seriously doubt the AI is restricted by fow, cause that would be hard to script let alone to get the ai to recognise.
Not necessarily. The AI factions in GalCiv2 are restricted by FOW on the map, so at least one other developer has done it. I just can't tell if it works that way in M2TW, due to the erratic behavior of the AI even when they do have units or settlements where you're in clear visual range.
Forward Observer
01-05-2007, 02:59
It's funny, but in the first medievalTW, people constantly complained that there were not enough sieges or at least not any real reason to conduct them. The A.I hardly ever attacked if they had you besieged and because so many of enemy strongholds would fall in less than 2 or 3 turns, there just seemed to be no reason to take the time to stage an assault.
Now, with almost every stronghold being able to hold out for 7 or 8 turns one is pretty much faced with assaulting if they want to really progress in the game.
As I was writing this it just occurred to me that since 8 turns equals 16 years in the default setting, being able to hold out that long is a bit unrealistic unless maybe your stronghold is Constantinople.
From a historical standpoint the big famous field battles of the middle ages probably seem to dominate the written history, but due to the feudal system and the proliferation of castles and strongholds built by nobles to protect their domains, sieges were far more common in the period than field battles, so in this light Medieval 2 may just be more historically accurate.
Personally, I like to conduct sieges since this gives me more chances to play effectively with the various siege engines in the game.
I hope you know of course that if besieged you can turn the battle into a pure field battle by simply attacking the besieger with a second outside force. I doesn't matter if it is only one unit. Your castle forces will now come on to the open field as your supporting army and/or reserves.
Likewise if you have the enemy besieged and the A.I. moves forces into your besieger's immediate combat area, you may turn to attack the relief force. You will get a field battle, but the castle forces will become their reserve army. This has only happened to me once or twice, but what I got was a pure field battle, and after I won I was suddenly in command of the former enemy stronghold.
Cheers
I agree with Forward Observer that it is certainly historical to have a high ratio of siege battles.
I thought sieges were too common in RTW (even more in RTR): it was a major bugbear (and led to my using the MetroNaval mod in our RTR PBM to get rid of most settlement walls).
However, I have not minded it in M2TW. I think it is partly because I have tended to avoid actually assaulting a settlement - I prefer to starve it out, as these costs me no lives or at least ends up with a turkey shooting defense against a sally. Ironically, that passivity of mine may increase the challenge of the game, as it gives the AI more time to build up elsewhere and the Pope more time to stop me ever "rushing". I seem to be expanding much more slowly that many other vets here, and also encountering more challenge.
In my English campaigns, I would put the ratio of field battles to sieges at around 4:1, with the siege assaults I do prosecute usually being rather trivial RTW type affairs against a few defenders. I've probably suffered more as the victim of AI siege assaults than I've victimised the AI with them.
The other reason I don't mind the sieges is that, as Forward Observer says, M2TW siege battles are rather fun - unlike those rather gruesome RTW affairs against wooden stockades. After watching the AI rather nicely demolish my settlement defenses with artillery, I am now starting to learn from it and bring my own. I'm still a novice, though - I'm just bringing up my trebuchets to see the flying cows and haven't even started on gunpowder artillery yet.
Ars Moriendi
01-05-2007, 09:19
AI field armies can often just be ignored with minimal consequences. On offense, I'll sometimes march right past a full stack army to take a city with 4 or 5 units in it. Sometimes I find myself 3-4 cities deep into the AI's empire while it figures out what to do with its stack it had milling around the border.
Armies area of control (the red zone you can't cross) should be increased. This way they will be really guarding the borders and controlling teritory, as you'll have a harder time bypassing them to hit the cities. Right now they can only halt your advance when placed at chokepoints, and are only able to do that because of the map being made of unrealistically many impassable areas.
If this can be done it will decrease the number of sieges in favour of field battles, and if well-balanced we'll have enough of both to please everyone.
Additional ideas :
- area of control should be proportional to unused movement points (eg. if a stack moves 50% of its max distance, then its aoc drops by half)
- no rebel spawn in area of control
- automatic capture after defeat if movement points not enough to get out of winner's aoc
Anyone knows if this can be modded in ?
Aaron A Aardvark
01-05-2007, 09:59
At the moment you only loose cash when you're besieged but if your population started starving to death and your cavalry were eating their horses there'd be an incentive to come out and fight, or send an army to lift the siege. This wouldn't be too unrealistic and would rsult in more field battles.
I just think sieges are boring - last night I captured seven cities in one turn - all virtual walk overs as my spies had opened the gates.
You should also check and see if you are using mods like Ultimate AI where all land movement is doubled. Invading stacks on double movement can hop from one city to the next without ever being caught in the field.
I hope you know of course that if besieged you can turn the battle into a pure field battle by simply attacking the besieger with a second outside force. I doesn't matter if it is only one unit. Your castle forces will now come on to the open field as your supporting army and/or reserves.
Likewise if you have the enemy besieged and the A.I. moves forces into your besieger's immediate combat area, you may turn to attack the relief force. You will get a field battle, but the castle forces will become their reserve army.
Obviously, if one wanted to, one could fight mostly field battles.
The point here is, I think, that the game does not reward it. The game rewards going straight for the cities. Particularly because the AI has a tendency to underdefend cities, and under react to an offensive force heading into its soft underbelly.
seneschal.the
01-05-2007, 16:28
I rarely fight battles in the field in M2TW. The reasons are many, but most of the map has areas where cities are always within 1-2 turn. Why bother with troops in the field when you can just take the city? It's not like the AI can do anything about it, since the siege AI is a complete joke. With some artillery in the army there isn't even any need to spend a turn building rams and ladders, just blitzkrieg ahead.
Why fight enemy armies in the field? If they are in your territory, they cut some income and causes devastation. This is of course trivial concerns; while they make you earn a few 100 GP less each turn you take their cities and castles.
Dismal said it best, the game does not reward field battles. There is no point to fight in the field when every siege is almost an insta-win for the human, regardless of defending or attacking. Why waste troops killing the enemy in the field when you can attack his, almost always, very weakly defended cities?
clairvaux
01-05-2007, 17:38
It didn't used to be this way in MTW.
PureFodder
01-05-2007, 19:26
It's unfortunate that most of the battle AI improvements were for battles in open terrain not seiges as this is where it would probably make the most difference. When you sally forth the AI tries to sit out of archery range, but a unit of archers sat on the little bit of raised wall above the gateway will almost always be in range (if they have long range fire at least). Although the computer does seem to be approximately a million times better at destroying siege equiptment with flaming arrows than I am. Even without archers I seem to loose 2-3 rams/towers in an attack.
As the Moors and now as Hungary I prefer to fight the computer in the open field where missile cavalry is at its most useful. Ambushes and Bridge fights are also fairly easy to draw the computer into and are great fun too.
Kraggenmor
01-05-2007, 19:53
Although the computer does seem to be approximately a million times better at destroying siege equiptment with flaming arrows than I am. Even without archers I seem to loose 2-3 rams/towers in an attack.
Before last night I'd never successfully destroyed a ram, but I found something last night that was a dsicovery - for me at least - while defending a seige:
The enemy had two units of dismounted Fuedal Knights, one group had ladders, the others a ram.
I had 19 archers, 48 peas. crossbows, 38 or so Almughvars (sp?), 40 odd spearmen and 16 Jinettes.
During the deployment I was setting troops on the walls and turning off 'fire at will'.
I wanted to select who was firing when myself and wanted to use the archers on the ram group.
Start the battle let them shove the thing closer I sellect the crossbow group and have them fire on the ram, then the archer group....which gets the red bow icon as if the ram group is out of range. Odd. :inquisitive:
Pause. put my pointer on the group, green bow. :inquisitive: :inquisitive:
Then I start subtly moving the pointer and notice that I get a green bow when I place the pointer over the troops but a red bow over the ram!
The target information box that pops up on hovering over a unit looked the same to me whether the bow was green or red but, there was a specific spot where the pointer would be a green bow and one where it would be a red bow on what seems to be the same target.
Ok...set the archers to flaming arrows, and wait.
I unpaused the game and kept my red pointer moving with the ram til the bow turned green. As soon as it did, I right clicked to start firing.
Moments later their one and only ram was flaming heap!
I didn't fall under siege again last night and wasn't disposed to create a custom game for testing it but, it seems based on that experience that there may be separate targeting solutions for the ram as opposed to the troops pushing it.
It didn't used to be this way in MTW.
As was discussed much when RTW came out, the risk-style MTW map was surely significantly easier on the campaign map AI. There was no "going around" to strike a softer more valuable target. There was just massing on the border, and pounding through.
I don't think the AI is quite up to the porous borders, even yet.
But I think it was worse in RTW. The AI's ability to conduct sieges has improved dramatically, at least with artillery.
I don't remember the "under-garrisoning" problem being so bad in RTW, however. This would be a very important campaign map AI fix, I think.
RussianWinter
01-05-2007, 22:54
As was discussed much when RTW came out, the risk-style MTW map was surely significantly easier on the campaign map AI. There was no "going around" to strike a softer more valuable target. There was just massing on the border, and pounding through.
I don't think the AI is quite up to the porous borders, even yet.
Absolutely my same thoughts. I'm still waiting the days when CA realizes the current-style map was some damn fool idea and goes back to the MTW map, but somehow I doubt thats going to be soon.
I personally love the new map. There's so much more options and maneuver. They just need to produce a better AI. Something that the AI should try when they find their armies stranded behind my lines is to take one of my cities there.
One problem that they often face is that despite the fact that they have a full stack 1 turn's march from an ill defended city of mine, they try to make it back to relieve their city which is 2 or 3 turns' march away. I assault as soon as I can. Thus, they turn rebel. Meanwhile, if they take my city that's near them, they would merely trade cities and avoid faction elimination. The problem is that such complex evaluation algorithms are unlikely to be implemented soon.
I've also found the fact that I can't target their ram directly and have to try to shoot their dudes. So there's a point at which you can target the ram? That's darn good to know.
Cpa><Hitman
01-06-2007, 06:04
you know surprisingly, i love siege battles, especially when i'm defending.. i wasn't always one for open terrian.. so i have no problems with it :D
Silvio Dante
01-06-2007, 20:16
If you play as a Muslim faction, there's a lot more field battles.
The problem is defintely the number of settlements in Catholic areas. France and Spain are particularly over-crowded. It's like playing those RTR mods where they packed in as many cities as they could, reducing the game to a boring siege fest.
Field battles can be fun. If you don't feel like exploiting the AI, crush their field armies first before sieging their cities. Playing in the steppes, eastern europe, or North Africa etc. will also result in far more spaces in which to conduct field battles.
Perhaps the answer to this is you should have the option to meet the army outside the gates of the city/castle; and if you retreat/rout you then go to a siege. A bit like how it was in MTW1. This way you could also be more tactical like softening up the troops before entering the castle. Though would CA ever implement this, never cus it might actually make the game more interesting.
The current map is superior, this is a strategy game after all and before this it significantly lacked in strategic level maneuvering. Now we can cut off support, hide armies, funnel into prepared positions...
Also, speaking on the castle issue, there is a divide and conquer trick you can pull there. Usually if they have a settlement with garrison and an army beside it, you can cut off the castle from supporting the outside force. Just send a single junk unit to siege the city, then move in your main force to attack their army outside the city. The AI did it to me every time with the Mongols. This gives you a unique opportunity... I can have a little more than half the forces the AI has in and next to a castle, but doing this I can march in and separately trash both forces with autocalc.
Anyway, also like that the new map system brings back the bridge battles, something I had missed from Shogun. In MTW, there wasn't any way to force a battle to be across a bridge. And really, bridges are better defensive points than castles.
Harry Lime
01-07-2007, 06:24
Hi, first post and all that...
Does anyone remember Civilization 2? This game reminds me a lot of the end game in it. It was all about jumping from city to city by sending spies into enemy cities, destroy their walls and roll in with cavalry or armor. At the same time the AI didn't give a f* about their reputation and kept sneak attacking you dispite whatever diplomatic agreement you had with them, while you had to be very careful about your own reputation if you wanted to be able to use the diplomatic options at all.
Here we have another reason to why there are so many siege battles in this game. The AI don't care if you have peace with them, are their allies or are at war, they act the same anyway by moving their troops into your territory to lay siege to any city or castle they find looking nifty.
Jumping in late on this topic, a notion that i've always entertained as a possible way to avoid siege battles is drastically increasing the reinforcement radius.
While i'd be the first to admit that i'm not a modder (and thus have no idea how to do so or if it's even possible) I've always felt that it provides the best way around the current lack of field battles (or, more specifically, the way that you can pick the ai armies off one by one).
This would also have the other effect of having the ai's garrison join the fighting, ensuring that, like mtw1, if you won the battle you'd likely win the campaign in that province.
Just my $0.02
I fight a lot of field battles, actually. Are you using any increased movement mods? They can mess up everything.
I personally love the new map. There's so much more options and maneuver. They just need to produce a better AI. Something that the AI should try when they find their armies stranded behind my lines is to take one of my cities there.
One problem that they often face is that despite the fact that they have a full stack 1 turn's march from an ill defended city of mine, they try to make it back to relieve their city which is 2 or 3 turns' march away. I assault as soon as I can. Thus, they turn rebel. Meanwhile, if they take my city that's near them, they would merely trade cities and avoid faction elimination. The problem is that such complex evaluation algorithms are unlikely to be implemented soon.
I agree that new map an better AI would be the best answer.
But is coding the AI to defned its cities all that hard? Honestly, I think it would be a big help if there were an algorithm that kept nearby troops inside the walls anytime there is an army within 2 turns march.
If the guys were in the city when I attack it, they'd extract some level of damage and wouldn't be stranded behind my lines trying to figure out what to do.
I was marching on a city yesterday, and when I'm one turn away the AI emptied it down to 2-3 units. There were probably 2.5 stacks worth of potential defenders in the area standing around while I went right by to take the city. (I took some screenies which I'll try to add later.)
I don't know how hard it would be to revamp the campaign map AI, but I think "underdefending cities" is a serious flaw right now -- possibly the most serious flaw in the game.
I bet if you watched 100 human players, they would all garrison their border cities, and would all try as hard as possible to increase the garrison when an aggressive army was bearing down on their city. The AI seems to have other priorities. Like quiet walks in the countryside.
Dave1984
01-08-2007, 17:49
I think the 3D map is tremendous and a galactic sized improvement on the risk-style map. That was my only real complaint with MTW, the fact that each region had only one battlefield and one castle battle map, that an attack from the north fought on the same ground as an attack from the south when at least with the 3D map, whilst the AI has some trouble with it at the minute, it represents far more accurately the way wars of the time were fought (even if terrain is condensed a little).
I use BigMap and make sure that movement is not doubled so that field battles are far more common than sieges.
Sieges at the moment bore the hell out of me. Each siege battle is the same as the last and because out the pathfinding issues with streets you have to add alot of frustration into the mix. I have to be honest I usually now just wait for the defenders to sally or surrender now, or autoresolve if I have a pressing need for the settlement sharpish.
If I'm the defender, I always try to get a relief force there immediately and attack the besiegers with that so it's still an open field battle.
Kraggenmor
01-08-2007, 20:08
I fight a lot of field battles, actually. Are you using any increased movement mods? They can mess up everything.
Assuming the question was for 'all': I use no mods at all.
And, in an update of sorts, I finished my Spanish campaign and started a new one as the Scots. In that campaign I'm seeing more field battles. Not a "lot" more but, more.
Barkhorn1x
01-08-2007, 21:23
IMO, the 3D map is fine, it is the Strat AI that is hopelessly hosed. Difficult to program? Sure. So what? That is what CA should have been focusing on instead of those useless (and crappy) bloom effects and (awesome) unit shadowing. Enough excuses already! Why is it too much to ask that the Strat/Diplo. code:
- "Orient" a faction to ally w/ factions a./b./c. and assault factions d./e./f.
- Change these orientations based on the condition of other factions - OVER TIME - not just arbitrarily.
- Keep armies out of allied territory unless they are actually going to attack - or you have granted them ROW and they are going somewhere.
- Garrisoning cities reasonably.*
- Attacking you w/ a reasonable force.*
The game is still much fun - and even better w/ the Heraldry and DarthMods in place - but it could have been a classic. Finally, I seriously doubt that the next patch will fix any of the issues I listed. :no:
Barkhorn.
----------------
* In my current H/H campaign as the Danes I am besieging Breslau (HRE) w/ a 15 unit force. The garrison of the castle is about 3 units (the typical [pathetic]spear militia/archer mix). Two turns ago a 2 unit HRE "relief" force marched up but is sitting there doing nothing while larger stacks of HRE forces flit back and forth on the map. I know that, as this is the last turn the castle can hold out, the defenders will sally forth - only to be destroyed - and the "relief" force will attack - only to be destroyed. Now, the pageantry of the whole thing keeps me interested but how cool would it be if the AI had 10 units in the city and moved up another 10 more to snuff me? I don't think I would be so confident caught "between two fires".:sweatdrop:
Kraggenmor
01-08-2007, 21:47
- Keep armies out of allied territory unless they are actually going to attack -
Well, this one seems to be taken care of. For my part, I have yet to see an army in my territory that didn't attack.
Well, this one seems to be taken care of. For my part, I have yet to see an army in my territory that didn't attack.
Are you playing the patch? It seems to have spurred the AI's desire to invade without attacking.
It's not uncommon to have 4 or 5 enemy or neutral armies milling about my empire at any given time since I installed it.
I think I have had 3 different armies hovering about Ajaccio at one point.
The neutral ones are the ones that really drive you crazy. The enemy ones you get around to wiping out eventually.
Really? I haven't installed the patch yet, but I have loads of neutral HRE armies milling around the north of my regions as milan. There was an almost full stack one hanging around 2 squares north of the city of Milan for years.
baron_Leo
01-09-2007, 04:34
And to the question, why I want to fight land battles: because they are lot's of fun:-) I like them more then sieges. Much more actually. More room to maneuver. And I get the creeps from siege-battles fighting in streets, where there would be plenty of room for going around, but no, you cannot go around. And unit placement...ahh
Von Nanega
01-09-2007, 14:32
It seems to sepend on what kind of territory you are in. (Big or small) And also what your Army relative strength is vs the AI army relative strength. If I want a field battle, I attack, wait for the AI to retreat, then attack again. This way I get lots of battles in the field. If you want a challengeing seige, attack with out the super city taking army. Up on the walls with ladders and towers will certaintly change the dynamic.
RussianWinter
01-09-2007, 17:17
I think the 3D map is tremendous and a galactic sized improvement on the risk-style map. That was my only real complaint with MTW, the fact that each region had only one battlefield and one castle battle map, that an attack from the north fought on the same ground as an attack from the south
If memory servers, your complaint is based on a false assumption - each side of the border had a different battlemap, some were specifically hilly, rivers, flat, etc.
Hi,
I too autoresolve most of the battles. Too many siege battles. If the castles/citadels were diferents it could be fun, but they are very similar.
If you want you could fight some battles, because the enemys always has units moving around the map, but why fight against then if the city is unprotected?
I think the problem is the small zone of control (red square aorund the units). If they are larger (200 units control a lot less territories then 2000) it would be diferent. If the enemy or you want to invae you have to passa the army. And it could give a new push to forts. A huge army fortified, controling your borders, as it was in history. If you want o pass, fight then or discover a alternative route.
Fabiano
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