Seiges

Unlike what the people at CA think. Seiges werent done in a day. If you had onagers and other seige engines you didnt say "This friday, we start bombarding", you bombarded them for days and months until those walls went down.

In other words, the seige needs revamped. Some scenarios like sneaking food in, or raiding (to destroy progress on seige towers and the like) and stuff like that. Or maybe even slipping the army out. The army in the castle also needs to have the ability to capitualate in exchange for their lives (With or without the king's permission, this would be done by loyalty).

I don't know. I much as I like the realistic aspect of battering walls down over a period of many months, I also just happen to find it really enjoyable doing it on the battle map.

The game turns are really too long to simulate what you are suggesting holybandit. But personally, I'd like to see it taking longer to actually batter those walls down. The way they just collapse after having a couple of rocks hit them is ludicrous. They should be much tougher to break down, which would give a correspondingly greater sense of achievement if and when you finally broke through.

There is one bigger issue - some fortreses were just imposible to capture by starvation with only the army. If there was a port on in city and attackers had weak navy then they could sit for decades without effect.

Other problem is that small army cant siege big city because they are not possible to cut it from suplies. This is Hannibal's problem - his 40000 strong army was not able to neither assault nor siege Rome because of the city size.

In RTW even one unit could starve huge city to death.

Another issue. Home defence. It would be great if during siege new units appear it city, according to it's size, to represent people living in city who defend they're homes. Those units would be automaticaly disbanded after the siege is over. And losses will affect city population.

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Originally Posted by O'ETAIPOS

There is one bigger issue - some fortreses were just imposible to capture by starvation with only the army. If there was a port on in city and attackers had weak navy then they could sit for decades without effect.

Other problem is that small army cant siege big city because they are not possible to cut it from suplies. This is Hannibal's problem - his 40000 strong army was not able to neither assault nor siege Rome because of the city size.

In RTW even one unit could starve huge city to death.

Another issue. Home defence. It would be great if during siege new units appear it city, according to it's size, to represent people living in city who defend they're homes. Those units would be automaticaly disbanded after the siege is over. And losses will affect city population.

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Your last idea...is great.

I agree...
I always though of the people in the towers in RTW as the home defence, and the defenders thank the gods that each archer is an expert sniper

I think low class militia units should appear during a siege, nothing too well trained but enough to have a minor effect... they are defending their homes and lives after all

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Originally Posted by O'ETAIPOS

...Home defence. It would be great if during siege new units appear it city, according to it's size, to represent people living in city who defend they're homes. Those units would be automaticaly disbanded after the siege is over. And losses will affect city population.

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I think that's a great idea! Kind of like horde units from RTW:BI.

As for revamping the siege process, I'd like it to be more realistic. As Furious and screwtype mentioned, when artillery was used in sieges, they battered the walls continually for months. To represent this, I would make it so that each turn a town is under siege, its walls will take damage, determined by the amount and type of long-range artillery (catapults, trebuchets, cannons, etc.) and the "level" of the walls. This would have no relation to the amount of time it would take for the city to give in due to starvation. It could be shorter or longer. But once the defenses are sufficiently pounded, you could assault the city. In the battle, the walls would be just weak enough that you to still have to use a number of volleys from your siege equipment in real-time (which is just for show, really) to actually knock holes through them.

That way, you still get to use siege equipment in real-time battles, but successfuly besieging a city would require much more time than it takes to simply build the equipment and assault (as it is in RTW). Plus, if the siege was lifted for some reason, the city would still be damaged to varying degrees, requiring repairs.

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As for revamping the siege process, I'd like it to be more realistic. As Furious and screwtype mentioned, when artillery was used in sieges, they battered the walls continually for months. To represent this, I would make it so that each turn a town is under siege, its walls will take damage, determined by the amount and type of long-range artillery (catapults, trebuchets, cannons, etc.) and the "level" of the walls. This would have no relation to the amount of time it would take for the city to give in due to starvation. It could be shorter or longer. But once the defenses are sufficiently pounded, you could assault the city. In the battle, the walls would be just weak enough that you to still have to use a number of volleys from your siege equipment in real-time (which is just for show, really) to actually knock holes through them.

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Good idea, I was thinking of something very similar.
Different types of siege weapons accomplish this with different ways. If you use sappers, the walls will be breached at some locations but the towers are left intact (due to their deeper foundations). If you use cannons or trebuchets (I'm not sure the latter was historicly capable of breaching walls), some towers will be damaged too. If you use a ram, the gates will have been damaged, but your men will take more casualties during the campaign map siege.
Lastly if your stack has a cannon, trebuchet or a catapult, the defenders should take increased casualties. The main purpose of the last two would have been to continuously fire stones or even dead carcasses into the city to demoralise the enemy, afterall.
Siege towers require the least tweaking, they seem reasonably well depicted in RTW.

I'm not well versed in medieval history, so all this is IMHO :bow:

Those all sound pretty good, but then catapults and onagers will be unable to inflict damage when you attack the city with your army, correct?

I suppose you could chose to use your artillery when you send your men unto the breach, but if it's to be realistic their awful accuracy will result in at least some friendly fire.

They don't seige in a day in the game. They choose a day to assault.

And IMHO, it would be nice if there wasn't a timelimit exactly, but something a little different.

It would be AWESOME to see the day progress from morning and into the night. It would be nice to end the assault at your choosing, but still maintain the seige.


Just imagine: The day progressing into night, and torches being lit throughout the army on both sides... Your attacking army is exhausted and you decide to retire them for the evening...

These assaults were long and strenuous ordeals, not the rapid fire game we see in RTW. We need a better system than an arbitrary time limit. What exactly, I am not sure yet.

The mangonels and other catapults were not very effective against city walls, only trebuchets really were.

Sieges definately need to be revamped. There unfortunately is no way to make realistic seiges. In real life defenders would build counter towers, dig countermines, conduct sorties on the besiegers foragers along with all sorts of make shift additions to walls to withstand rocks. The besiegers would also counter by building forts or castles along known supply points to the city, catapulting diseased animals into the defenses and bribe the less loyal of the defenders to open the gates or allow their wall to be scaled at night.

As for the game some simple things need to be changed. Realism is almost impossible to achieve thanks to the turns being biyearly (sort of) when most sieges lasted weeks and sometimes months. Units NEED to use up supplies. Castles and and cities hold X amount of supplies that way a small garrison can last longer in a siege. And for the besiegers X amount of troops need to be used to fully invest the city (stop supplies). Too few troops besieging the city would still allow X amount of supplies in per turn (assuming there was a road way open to a friendly province). And then there'd be the same sort of system for cities with a port (if they are present in the game) where you'd need ships to blockade the port.

Doubt we'll anything like you guys or myself have suggested though.

Armies need to start worry about supplies. Have a supply counter somewhere that shows how much supply the army still has.
Whenever an army gets into a friendly city it is resupplied. Whenever it plunders the countryside or an enemy city it receives X supply.
The number of infantry, cavalry dictates how much supply is used each turn when the army is in the field.

This will effectively reduces the range of operation for every army and it automatically also makes sieges more interesting as now also the sieging army needs to think about how long it can last the siege.

When there is only enough supply for, lets say, 3 more turns then units will start losing morale, 2 more turns and mercenaries are gone, 1 more turn and lower tier units will leave, when on -1 turn then the whole army is gone.

In my opinion an extremely simple system that will deepen the strategy alot.

but that's not realistic either. Sieges always took months, so the army would always be resupplied by nearby friendly cities. They would never try to live of the land, that's impossible.

Maybe in combination with your idea there could be supply trains looking simular to the trade caravans you see on the RTW campaignmap, going from the nearest friendly city to your army, using the shortest road. The enemy can then blockade these roads to stop these supply trains, and the longer the distance, the more expensive it becomes to maintain the supply train. The supply train can be switched on and off for each army, so the player has the choice to let small armies try to live off the land (which is the default option).

just thinking out of the box here :)

Your exactly correct Duke John. A supply system is need, with at least food and water as factors. Too many people don't understand that armies really didn't live off the land and that without effective prestocked supplies the foragable supplies in the area around a army rarely lasted long, certainly not long enough to even equal half a turn in this game.

I think the vanguard were supposed to live of the land (not 100% sure though).

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but that's not realistic either.

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I know, there were supply routes, and if those were cut off or threatened then normally the army would retreat. But I was thinking within the self imposed limits of CA; arcade gameplay and easy enough to understand for a 10-year old.

Edit: And I think that the trait system is a whole lot more complex to understand and play with than a (simplified) supply system. And babysitting your family members to avoid making them lazy or whatever fits a whole lot less in a game about war than worrying about supplies.

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Originally Posted by holybandit

Unlike what the people at CA think. Seiges werent done in a day. If you had onagers and other seige engines you didnt say "This friday, we start bombarding", you bombarded them for days and months until those walls went down.

In other words, the seige needs revamped. Some scenarios like sneaking food in, or raiding (to destroy progress on seige towers and the like) and stuff like that. Or maybe even slipping the army out. The army in the castle also needs to have the ability to capitualate in exchange for their lives (With or without the king's permission, this would be done by loyalty).

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Nobody thinks that sieges were done in a day. However, we do know that "simulating" weeks and weeks of careful bombardment would be extraordinarily dull and a miserable *game* experience.

I'm not in a position to comment on the suggestions in the second paragraph as far as M2TW is concerned, but RTW did include sallies by the besieged armies.

Could you have the army split into four sections outside each of the four gates? I.e. If your army had 16 units, then when the sally occured, 4 units would automatically be placed outside each of the 4 gates, thus accuratly portraying the starvation of the city, and also representing the usefulness of a sally against an opponent whose forces are thinner over a larger area.

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Originally Posted by Captain Fishpants

Nobody thinks that sieges were done in a day. However, we do know that "simulating" weeks and weeks of careful bombardment would be extraordinarily dull and a miserable *game* experience.

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Yes, but on the other hand you don't want to go overboard in the opposite direction and make it too easy to break down the walls. It was much too easy in RTW IMO.

I think, depending on the type of wall and the type of attacking siege weapon, it should take perhaps 50-100 shots to break down a wall. And that time is of course expiring while the attempt is being made, so that it detracts from the available battle time.

To make it more interesting, maybe you could have it that you have to aim and operate the siege equipment yourself, so that your own skill comes into how quick you get the walls down. And maybe units could also have a siege weapon skill factor that comes into play. Also if you can't get the wall down quick enough in one turn, you have to come back the next turn/year and resume where you left off (ie the walls don't get repaired in the interim).

I mean, there must be lots of ways to make sieging more interesting. They are just a few suggestions off the top of my head.

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Originally Posted by Captain Fishpants

I'm not in a position to comment on the suggestions in the second paragraph as far as M2TW is concerned, but RTW did include sallies by the besieged armies.

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I think the sally battles were a major problem in RTW. Instead of having to fight siege battles, I found that all I ever had to do was wait until the enemy sent a relieving force, which would trigger a sally battle where I could wipe out the salliers in open battle before the relievers could intervene, and then do the same to the relieving force itself. You then get to just walz into the undefended city afterwards, which means basically that you never have to fight a tough city battle.

Something needs to be done about this. Either the relieving force needs to be much larger, or it needs to appear closer to the city, so that you can't wipe out each army in turn, but have to fight them both together.

I always thought some of the defender attrition during the sieges represented the preparatory bombardments and assault attempts. The actual assault we play out is just the climax.

Personally, I would like to see a return of attacker attrition during sieges. It would add more to the trade-off between starving out and assaulting. It takes a long time to starve out a RTW city, so in principle there is the key trade-off already (time vs casualties). But often players can go at their own steady pace and so time is less of a factor. Then again, maybe the answer is to make the campaigns more tense so you can't afford to waste so much time.

Sieges are not my favourite, but I dont see how you can change this on a battle map.

If its campaign based then yes you can add all the ideas you have put forward. But in the BATTLE mode you need your battering ram and towers etc to get the job finished in the time allowed.

I have a hunch sieges will be improved in M2TW. They've come on in leaps and bounds since STW; I think that trend will continue.

RTW sieges can be rather fun - storming the walls, climbing up siege towers etc. I've started to enjoy them - particularly in BI, where you can have large, aggressive AI armies. MTWs sieges seemed lifeless by comparison and STWs were rather sad.

Requiring units to man castle defences - as M2TW apparently will - will go even further to enriching sieges. No more ghost archers, yay!

Having up to 3 rings of castle defence will make the largest sieges pretty epic. However, as Screwtype suggests, there may need to be more of an incentive to storm the castle rather than just starve it out - as storming a great castle does not sound easy.

We need sieges in M2 TW. There were long sieges in medieval time. Many Byzantium cities were besieged in Minor Asia for many years by varius Turkic Ghazi states.

I can write a lot of exaples from Balkan peninsula where sieges were long.

Not to mention that Bayezid I "Thunderbolt" besieged Constantinopoles for some 10 years.

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Originally Posted by DukeofSerbia

Not to mention that Bayezid I "Thunderbolt" besieged Constantinopoles for some 10 years.

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Yes Constantinople was besieged for a long time but wasn't the actual climax only six weeks? Memory a bit vague but I believe the big guns took that long to finally break the walls.

Personally I believe what needs to be fixed about sieges is not their length, though I would like to see casualties return, it should be what is going on around the siege.

I rarely see an effective AI army marching to relieve their besieged mates. I also rarely see them counter-siege one of mine to try and draw me back.

With respect to the OP I don't think there is a problem with sieges being too short. Under the current engine you have to spend at least a turn sieging a settlement which has any sort of wall, even if it is a 500-people village(if you spend the first turn building the siege equipment and then assault straight away). With RTW turn being about 6 months this is plenty long enough for a siege of almost any city, and since the MTW2 turn will be about 2 years there will not be a problem there.
As for the bombardment of the walls taking weeks and months, the only way to simulate this would be to have the walls already breached when you start the assault, but I don't think too many people would like that. Or perhaps you could start the assault with the walls badly damaged but still holding, and you would then deliver the final blow which brings them down. But then, you would have to attack a predetermined section of the wall?
By the way, o'etaipos makes an excellent point about the size of the sieging army. It is not realistic to be able to siege Constantinople with a three-unit army, even if the garrison is small.

I think that the day sieges work for me, but it could be cool to have a shoot out with the catapults.

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Originally Posted by Alim

As for the bombardment of the walls taking weeks and months, the only way to simulate this would be to have the walls already breached when you start the assault, but I don't think too many people would like that. Or perhaps you could start the assault with the walls badly damaged but still holding, and you would then deliver the final blow which brings them down. But then, you would have to attack a predetermined section of the wall?

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Well if you have artillery, the walls could be damaged over al long line after months of bombardment. The assault would be when you concentrate your artillery on a weakened section to create a breech.
Sapping points in RTW...ugh. I understand that a game needs a certain amount of abstraction to represent the months/years it would take to breach a wall, but seeing them dig THAT fast just irks me.

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Originally Posted by econ21

Having up to 3 rings of castle defence will make the largest sieges pretty epic. However, as Screwtype suggests, there may need to be more of an incentive to storm the castle rather than just starve it out - as storming a great castle does not sound easy.

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Maybe if the new recruitment system is based on total population as is the rumour. Then during sieges if the attrition/starvation rate is reflected in the total population count it would be more of an incentive to assault earlier otherwise you could starve them out over a longer period but have no population to take over and therefore no economy or troops from that provence for several turns.

just a thought:inquisitive:

I agree with with captain fishpants. That would be boring.

I also agree with duke john. Supply should be relevant.

Solution: "Daily" assaults per turn, with a loss of supplies per army per turn. Supplies should be an extra perishable commodity managed by army in foreign lands.

Yay. Ballsac smorgashbordbouttercup lessbion. Oh no. To the backroom... AND AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!