View Full Version : Besieging Armies
When I got my copy of medieval I could not wait to see if game developers had corrected what I saw the most frustrating flaw in Shogun campaign mode.
Unfortunately they had not: in this game besieging armies do not get attrition, only besieged ones do get attrition.
Staying still while laying siege to a place destroyed medieval armies as they soon tended to exhaust local resources and started suffering from privations and later pure starvation. Logistics were too simple to support a large force from distant bases, they had to relay mostly on organized foraging. Furthermore, combatant and non-combatants concentration in provisional camps favored all kind of epidemics. On the other hand, much smaller besieged forces enjoyed far better conditions sheltered in permanent installations and well provisioned -at least until they begun to run out of provisions.
Besides being unrealistic and historical nonsense, it kills the main defensive purpose of fortifications: that of attrition to a superior force without risking open battle with inferior forces. Historically, if the attacker lays siege to your place he will (hopefully) suffer a higuer attrition rate than your besieged forces, possibly destroying or reducing him to manageable size on the long term witout risking battle. If he doesnt commit to a siege you get your province back as soon as he leaves...
Now look at what happens in the game: you shelter in your castle, he besieges you, you cannot sortie because he is so superior, you starve, he does not, you starve, he does not, you starve, he does not, the siege ends without an assault, you lost yor army, castle and province, he lost nothing, just spent a few years campaigning.
Really frustrating. It ruined what should be a great game.
Any comments?
LittleRaven
09-16-2002, 23:58
There have been quite a few threads on this already. I pointed out exactly what you have said, and thankfully the developers are listening. Causing the attacking army to suffer attrition will require AI rebalancing and thus won't make the patch, but might make the add-on. In the meantime, the patch will cause beseiging armies to cost triple their normal support, so at least a siege will be expensive. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif
Quote Originally posted by LittleRaven:
There have been quite a few threads on this already. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif[/QUOTE]
Sorry, I did not know. I am new at this forum.
Anyway, do you think it possible to reach the designers through this forum so as to make them know our comments? It is unbelievable the designers failed to grasp the most important basics of medieval warfare, just as if they had no no military history advisors or no mediaval history advisors at all.
There are another couple of things utterly unreallistical in the game that ruin the strategic campaign game and I would like to share. Would you and other veterans be interested?
This all is a pity, cause the tactical battle mode is excellent. I feel we lost a unique chance to get the ultimate wargame on my favorite period. If only we could convince them to change a few key parts of the strategical game it would be sooo great a game...
Absolutely Nachi, all ideas and opinions are welcome especially if they are constructive and polite.
To follow on from Raven, the developers have also included into the patch a general lengthening of siege times and removed the bug that allowed the besieging army to receive the province's income. Although just how much longer they'll be, they haven't stated, lets just hope it's significantly longer...
Another idea i have thought about is when the besieged army surrenders the units should be treated as prisoners and sold back for a ransom. Thus factions won't lose their valuable Kings, generals and heirs so easily, assuming they pay the ransom that is...
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=MizuDoc=
[This message has been edited by +DOC+ (edited 09-17-2002).]
+DOC+ that is certainly not a bad idea. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
But a thing that is more important than even that, is that a losing army that retreats to the castle should have the acording siegetime. Not the time which the whole army would have lasted.
I got hard proof of this lately (before I did know it but had not seen anything).
I was besieging the Aragonese (about 50 men) then comes the Almohads and tried to kick me out. I win and suddenly the length of the siege goes from 2 years to 8 years.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
yeah that was a bug that i initially pointed out to them, dunno if it's been tackled yet though!?
Quote Originally posted by Nachi:
Sorry, I did not know. I am new at this forum.
Anyway, do you think it possible to reach the designers through this forum so as to make them know our comments? It is unbelievable the designers failed to grasp the most important basics of medieval warfare, just as if they had no no military history advisors or no mediaval history advisors at all.
There are another couple of things utterly unreallistical in the game that ruin the strategic campaign game and I would like to share. Would you and other veterans be interested?
This all is a pity, cause the tactical battle mode is excellent. I feel we lost a unique chance to get the ultimate wargame on my favorite period. If only we could convince them to change a few key parts of the strategical game it would be sooo great a game...[/QUOTE]
First of all, the devs tried to make a fun game that WORKS, and sometimes this means that all the little nuances of actual warfare will not be present in a given game. For example: no deaths from disease/cold/logistical problems. It would be impossible to model all the myriad complexity of actual warfare in any 1 game, so why should they try to do it halfway?
An attacking army, kept well supplied (higher support cost accounts for this) and provisioned can simply 'blockade' an enemy castle, and try to stop anyone from getting in or out. This is what happens in MTW. The besiegers blockade the castle and simply wait for the isolated defenders to run out of provisions. I do not see how killing off besiegers would be a good idea, regardless of the fact that attrition occured historically.
The truth is that EVERY army suffered attritions AT ALL TIMES, even when sitting peacefully in their barracks at home. This has not been modeled in the game. Why? it would be a feature that annoyed many while adding no strategic depth to the game. (It would add alot of random luck).
""It is unbelievable the designers failed to grasp the most important basics of medieval warfare, just as if they had no no military history advisors or no mediaval history advisors at all.""
- You assume they didnt make a well-informed decision to NOT include beseiger attrition because you have simply ASSUMED that anyone who knows history would arrive at your conclusion: you are wrong.
Assuming that your idea WAS implemented, why should my armies suffer from attrition on the attack when my large powerful empire is fully capable of sending supply trains to ensure they remained fed? You take that choice away from me: my men must and will die for no other reason than having been stationed in an enemy territory.
And as for HISTORY, the truth is that many leaders forced their troops to forage because it was CHEAPER than shipping supplies. Shipping supples was not impossible, and in fact it did happen, but monarchs were far happier to sacrifice some lives than to spend extra money to keep their men well fed. This historical choice is not available in the game: you must feed the men you send abroad, even when it is expensive to do so (triple support costs).
So I do not see what you are complaining about. As for the full, balanced implementation of a system of choosing how well to supply your men, or adding in attrition from disease/etc, I would assume the rather large development effort is not warranted by the meager rewards.
""Logistics were too simple to support a large force from distant bases""
#1 Luckily in MTW your bases will always be right next door, or you will be supplied by ships.
""Furthermore, combatant and non-combatants concentration in provisional camps favored all kind of epidemics.""
#2 Epidemics occur even when troops are safely at home. You want your massive 3 stack army to lose a few hundred troops because a random game event deems that an epidemic broke out? what fun......
""it kills the main defensive purpose of fortifications: that of attrition to a superior force without risking open battle with inferior forces.""
#3 Sorry but on this you're flat wrong. Castles exist to prevent a superior force from destroying a smaller force without considerable effort. If you want attrition, try your hand at taking the castle by force and watch how many men you lose. Alot of tricks the defenders had are not implemented in game, but neither are the tricks the attackers had: maybe you cant sortie out but neither can he dig mines beneath your walls, or safely catapult diseased corpses, etc. And your sortie could fall into an ambush. what then?
""you starve, he does not, you starve, he does not, you starve, he does not"
#4 He gets supplies, you do not, he gets supplies, you do not, he gets supplies, you do not. BTW the patch will ensure that defenders will hold out longer so waiting for you to starve to death will be far more costly. ALSO if you take a castle without a fight, it downgrades one level, and that is a HUGE price to pay.
"you lost yor army, castle and province, he lost nothing, just spent a few years campaigning."
#5 He lost (A) The money spent to train all those troops in that superior army (B) The use of those troops for the length of the siege (C) The increased support costs of that large army for the length of the siege.
The use of castles in MTW is simple: You delay and tie up an attacking army for a few years at least to possibly many years. During this time, you can put together reinforcements to life the siege, or counterattack his territories now that his troops are tied up. Even if his forces are vastly superior, you can force him to spend 2 turns to take even the weakest province (level 1 castle and 1 unit of peasants) away from you instead of 1 turn. If he wont attack the castle directly, it might take 4-5 turns!
Thanks you all for replying to my comments. I am happy they caught your interest.
First of all I have to say that as a foreigner my English may cause confusion. I do not intend to teach you my lessons or spread an absolute truth, even though I speak my conclusions after studying medieval military warfare for nearly 9 years both individually and with some renowned scholars. What I post is just my opinion, as debatable as anybody else, and I hope told as politely and constructive as I can. Moreover, I did not intend to bash the devs, they did a great job in most parts of the game -specially the tactical battles. But I have to constructively critizice what I believe is not so great.
Back to the siege issue. You Kalt are right when you say that fortifications in MTW have the purpose of delaying an enemy, and that alone is a useful asset. Sorry for not replying to your well explained ponits, but I am not proficient with quoting at forum. I will try a general approach.
The problem is that delaying the enemy was just one of their historical defensive functions -and by far not the main one. Besides the delaying capability until a relief force or some other event took invaders away, fortifications had the main defensive purpose of depleting an army involved in protracted besieging through attrition.
Attrition of a besieging army was not "little nuances of warfare that will not be present in a given game". It was a dominant factor in medieval warfare. And I am not speaking about common day attrition -which I agree doesnt merit being reflected in the game. I am speaking about campaigning attrition at its best -an essential of medieval warfare.
Attrition of a besieging army was not a consequence of foraging instead of using other logistical systems -which BTW where not even available for most medieval armies. Attrition of a besieging army was an axiom in every medieval siege, even for the better payed, motivated and organized armies.
A complex and expensive logistical system -if available- will help reducing the attrition rate, of course, as well as high morale, regular payment, appropiate weather, better sanitasion and so on. But there always will be an attrition rate much higuer than common day attrition. Epidemics, local resources exhaustion, desertion and so on were absolutely inevitable in medieval period when an army concentrated for blockading an enemy. You could only try yo reduce the chances of affecting your army, but never to nearly 0%. I ASSUME it was this way because historically there was no other way. If you put it other way, then we are speaking of a deifferent period, or fantasy games or something else.
So the point for both the besieger and the blockaded is winning the attrition race that will develop for sure in every siege with no assault. The better suited for reducing your attrition rate, the better your chances.
That is why I think the siege should develop like this: You get attrition, he gets attrition, you get attrition, he gets attrition and so on. And then he lifts the siege because his reduced army fears a counterattack by relief forces, or negotiates a surrender or ceasefire, or launches an assault to stop his attrition, or holds the blockade until the besieged surrenders...
Besides this, the delaying reasons you explained so well must be taken into account.
This all explains with a few other factors -they might be off-topic but I could tell you about them if yo wish so- why medieval warfare was so defensively biased.
Finally I will put it another way: There are lots of examples of well known sieges that decimated the besiegers through non combat attrition -even if succesfull at last, like Antioch in the first crusade, or Harfleur in 100YW.
Now tell me just one historical example of a well provisioned medieval fortress or city that fell through starvation -no assault, no treachery- after a long siege to a sizable besieging army without causing it significant attrition. I can not remind one.
Thanx for your comments
I hate to be the doubting Thomas of the bunch here, but would lengthening siege time and increasing the costs force the AI to attack the castle?
I would agree that attrition in sieges for the attacking force ought to be modeled. The reason is because sieges were risky for both sides. Troops staying in a fixed location were always at higher risk to disease. Sanitation got worse the longer you were in one location, disease spread, food supplies were exhausted, weather got worse, troops deserted, etc.. Just look at all the sieges of Constantinople that failed over the centuries. And attrition would make besiegers more likely to attack rather than sit there waiting for the castle to fall. It does seem odd for only defenders to suffer when historically it appears that besiegers suffered as much if not more than the besieged.
Grifman
Hiver77, I am afraid you are right. Modifications in patch are welcome for sure, but they certainly are not nearly enough for drawing a besieger into an assault. Specially when under no circumstance your troops will diband for lack of cash -when you are in red numbers you cannot recruit new troops, but their is no penalty to already raised ones...
Perhaps the only solution for this topic is simply attrition to the besieger, just in the same way the besieged gets it.
Kalt, i am waiting for your example. Difficult to find, isnt it?
I think I remember that during the development besieging forces would actually take losses...
I wonder why it was taken out.
I am happy though that the sieges will be lengthened in the patch, that will force the AI to assault more. I have just recently won a giant siege with only 83 men. The AI lost about 1000 (sadly the kills made by the towers can't be seen) and didn't get past the first gate.
I would love to have more of those battles.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
i am in agreement with you, nachi -- the army laying siege gets off way too easily.
if there was to be a system of attrition to the beseigers, it should naturally vary depending on army size. a force of 300 men should lose men at an incredibly lower rate than a force of 1000. province "capabilities" would also have to be considered before kicking in some kind of 'starvation' penalty (e.g. an army in flanders would be able to live off the land for a while, but an army seiging, say, denmark would run out of food too soon).
these are complicated systems though, and the developers really had a limited amount of time. i really look foward to the patch to see the cost benefits of attacking a fortress and how frequently the AI uses them. it'll make developing castle defenses much more important, while currently you're better off facing the enemy in the field instead of behind your walls, which shouldn't generally be the case.
ltj - you hit the point: the system currently encourages defending on the field instead of investing on fortifications and their garrisons because staying behind walls is no option for the defender. Just the opposite to the historical thing...
It is even aggravated by this mechanic: if your army retires, you lose the castle. All stay or all withdraw. There is no way of retiring with your main force and leaving a small garrison behind.
I can remind of campaigns won exclusively through defensive-offensive siege warfare while at the same time avoiding field battles. For instance, this is the way the French expulsed the English almost completely from the continent in the 1369-1396 war.
Such a thing would be impossible in the current game, as the open field victor is always the war victor. There is no chance of winning through defensive siege warfare, not even of helping a win.
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