In Seige Assault Defense: My Guys On The Walls FALL Off! What!

Alright, as the title stated, in many seige assaults from the AI on my cities, I've put my men on the walls, hoplites, archers, peltasts, etc.

But, at the start of the battle, like 100+ men from the units fall OFF the walls and die upon contact! Why is that!!! ~:confused:

Nearly 500 men now have died in that process, its not right.

Maybe those Spartans are allergic to stone, which could be the REAL reason they didn't have walls. ~D

Seriously, I've never had that happen. I thought it was, but upon close examination I found it was people who were killed in combat falling off the walls.

I've seen this happen almost every other siege battle I play. In alot of units, whether on the ground of wall, men get knocked back right when you start. This might seem as an annoyance, but when they're on the wall the entire back row will just go flying off and die. You can actually see a nice line of dead bodies behind the wall! Its just weird, and I've lost alot of archers this way.

Ok, that is weird, because I, like Quillian, have never had this happen. In my experience, units behave on the walls much better than I would expect, especially taking the bridge problems into account. To those who have this problem, explain how you go about placing and ordering your units on walls, as well as what units you put on walls. In the case of hoplites, I could definitely imagine them shuffling themselves right off. It just seems odd that some have the problem and others don't.

Siris. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you were using spartan hoplite on the walls? Try some non-hoplite units, just to see if that helps. I seem to remember hearing that phalanx units don't always behave on walls, but I may have dreamt that.

I've seen this happen both on walls and on the ground.

You click the start button and there's a cry of alarm from many voices and loads of men fall over. The only difference being that if it happens on a wall and the men fall over the edge its fatal, whereas on the ground they just pick themselves up and rejoin the ranks.

It seems to happen when I have been a little bit over eager during the deployment phase and tried to cram to many units into the same area.

During normal movement units ordered to occupy to small a space force their way through each other barging each other out of the way knocking men over right left and centre. If this happens on a wall they can and do knock their freinds off the wall to their deaths. I learn't this the hard way when trying to focus too many defending units on the same attack from an enemy seige tower.

However, during deployment units deployed into the same space can't push each other out of the way because the game is frozen. Instead as soon as you click the start button all the pushing and shoving needed to make the unit enough space happens at once with sometimes disasterious results.

Personally, I am always very cautious when deploying units on walls making quite sure they are no too close together and never ever allowing them to overlap.

Sometimes Hoplites and walls don't mix, And I would take a wild stab and say you were useing Spartan Hoplites...

I can see it now...


"Men into phalenx formation!"

"On a wall?"

"Yes of course, what could possibly go worng..." *SPLAT* "Eww other than that..."

Here's the shocker, I keep my Spartan Hoplites in a three unit defense on the gate, in a /-\ type formation, with the gate at the bottom, so just incase the gate gets battered, the enemies running in will face the elite of my army, in a wall of spears. Once they attack the - guys, the / & \ guys flank them on their left & right, massive slaughter of the enemy, the spear phalanx just massacres them.

I rarely use Spartan Hoplites on the walls, primarily Armoured Hoplites & archers, or peltasts, which are the units that have been falling off sadely. The Spartan's I use primarily as my Main Attack forces. They are the first wave-first strike weapons of my military, in assaulting enemy armies, or taking enemey cities, like the Marines of the U.S. army, the first to be used in battle, rarely in defense, and when they are on the defense of my cities, their in the /-\ formation at the gates.

And to your post, guy with the massive SIG, which was posted while I was typing that reply, when on the walls they drop their spears typically, and pull out their small swords, no phalanx.

I know I was only haveing sum fun. ~;)

I believe that making the ranks fewer would help this problem. I have actually seen it, but fixed it by changing the ranks a bit when placing them on the falls.....

I am thinking that Didz has the right of it. I never have tried stacking two units in the same space (aside from wardogs on offense; it makes it easier to let slip the dogs of war through the gate without the handlers running in) during the setup, but they definitely shove people out of the way when running through.

Ah HA! It just happened to me! :wall:

Byzantium, stone walls, 2 units of 120 man eastern infantry mercs. On walls 4+ ranks deep. Lost 50 men per unit. I was beseiged again that turn, so I tried with some more of the same units, except I kept the ranks thinner, 3 deep. As said before, that seemed to help. And I learned that phalanx is disabled on the wall. Probably smart.

Man, do they ever make a noise!

I had a different incident on the walls, where my men decided it would be fun to run towards and bunch up around one of the towers...

Basically I had a unit of Creeshan Archers on the walls of Syracuse and when i ordered them to move slightly further along, they all rushed to the tower in a big mob and some men fell off.

I was not happy that my stupid archers thought it would be cooler to inspect the tower walls, than stand up there shooting the enemy!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Siris

like the Marines of the U.S. army

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~:eek: :dizzy2:

That kind of talk can get you in serious trouble in certain quarters... ~D

Seriously though, the Phalanx was used as assault troops to achieve a decisive breakthrough

What I have noticed about walls...

If you try crowding multiple units into a fight on a wall, some individuals fall off..

If you try to get multiple units to run along a section of wall, through a tower and onto another section of wall they will get bunched up going into the tower and start knocking each other off... Towers on corners and lots more units moved through this area exaggerates the effect...

So the porblem appears with units running/charging and forcing multiple units into the same area...

Personally I have found I can use the effect as an attacker, if you are fighting on the walls and winning, slowly force the enemy unit back against a tower, if you select your men and double click the enemy for a charge effect, they will push harder and start knocking the enemy off the walls..

But it does look a bit stupid when the effect occurs in extreme and you get entire units falling off the wall when simply running from A to B through a tower...

Guys, my units are not all in one space! I stretch them out over the extent of the walls where I know that the towers will be landing, and putting the archers around the gate area so they can fire upon the battering ram.

The guys typically are 3 or 4 ranks deep, that is all, no phalanx, only small swords, and their not bunched together, all spread out to cover more grounds.

And they rarely fall off of the walls when charging people, its only as soon as I start the game that they fall off the wall, instantly.

I've never had guys fall off the walls, except in combat. But, often after I move my onagers in deployement and then press start battle button many of the guys fall over as if hit by something. They get right back up again but it's really weird.

This happens to me constantly. Usually only a few men, 5 or 6, sometimes more. I just wish there was this giant landing net where they could fall on. That would help.

I have noticed this problem. I'll set up an archer unit on the gate, press 'start battle' and to my amusement and anger, half of my archers decide to commit suicide and jump to their deaths. Idiots....

i too have never had it happen to me. but i never have my men more than 3 men deep on the walls either. siris, can you try it with 1-3 men deep and see if they still fall off?

Hm, I'll try, but they wont be able to hold their line as easily once those enemies make it over the wall.

You should see bridge battles.

Make an enemy route on one and they all try and go swimming. Quite funny but depressing too. Killed an entire 1200 man Gaulish army that way without a single loss; a solid wall of pikes at one end and a lot of archers.

I've never had it happen 3 ranks deep or less. But I have had it happen quite a bit when 4 ranks deep. I've been fiddling with this problem, and I'm beginning to think it has to do with how the program isolates walls from regular ground.

For instance, all units seem to have a default formation of 4 ranks deep for use on walls. Even unit which use horde formation, like peasants, line up nice and neat on walls. If you just right click them on to the wall, no problem. If you drag them 3 ranks or thinner, again, that's OK. But if you compress them into 4 ranks, and then keep going deeper, you will notice that the entire formation shifts one space over, instead of getting another rank deeper (which it can't of course).

I'm thinking this may be a sign of a glitch in how walls are handled by the comp. When the battle starts, you may notice that the 4 rank deep units may all simultaneously back up, or fall down and get up. It looks as if the computer thinks the unit is 5 ranks deep, when it's visually shown as 4 deep. That backstepping and falling motion you see is when the comp realizes this, and attempts to correct the ranks. Whatever is too close to the edge falls off. Since it's a function of all of the men in a unit simultaneously shuffling backwarsds, that also may explain why it this glitch may kill 5 or 50.

There has to be more to it than this, since I haven't been able to repeat it consistently. But that's what I've discovered so far.

I had another problem with people falling off things today. The gauls assaulted one of my towns with ladders, towers and a ram. When they started going up the ladder, they'd reach the top, some would get off, and he rest would fall off the ladder, to their miserable demise. Thanks to this problem, i won the battle.

This happens to me all the time too. The unit type doesnt matter, it works with tight ranked archers, infantry, or spear units. ive seen men on the ground fall down as well, but this is less critical than when it happens on a wall defense. i have tried to make my unit's ranks thinner in the wall (like 3 deep), but they still fall off. I cant figure out how to avoid it, so i pretend its part of the attrition cost. i hope this bug gets worked out for the 1.2 patch.

Obex, you've had them fall off when 3 deep? Hmm, that complicates things. Next time this happens, see how close they are to a tower. I'm beginning to wonder if some of this has to do with a unit's proximity to a tower or gate, because of how they can distrupt formation (kind of like trees/rocks).