A little thing I'd like to see in sieges...

...is counter-siege heavy weaponry. You know, e.g. trebuchét-ish thingies firing their loads onto the unfortunate besieger. Obviously, they should only be available on the larger types of fortifications, and have limited ammo, like any other missile _unit_ in the game (the unlimited ammo of the wall towers in city sieges have, from time to time, caused me much grief).
Another suggestion would be to make some "plateaus", on the larger types of fortification, built on extended sections of the wall, where it would be possible to place one's faithful ballista unit, catapult unit or whatever one may have. The risk with this would of course be that enemy artillery just as easily could destroy yours. There could for example be room for 2-3 such "plateaus" on each lenght of the wall in larger cities.

Whaddya think?

Maybe too late to implement such things in EB, but anyway.

I'm pretty sure RTW doesn't allow for artillery to be placed on walls, even if it does fit. I do think counter-seige artillery is a good idea though, if someone figures out how to do it I'd like to see it as well.

You can't put siege weapons on walls, but you could always power up the towers to reflect the idea that they contain ballistae or whatever. Trebuchets are way out of the timeline, needless to say.

-Simetrical

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Originally Posted by Simetrical

You can't put siege weapons on walls, but you could always power up the towers to reflect the idea that they contain ballistae or whatever. Trebuchets are way out of the timeline, needless to say.

-Simetrical

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Yup, I know. That's why I wrote "trebuchét-ish thingies" ~;)

On the towers, I guess one could beef them up, but I was rather thinking about weakening the importance of them, replacing them with actual artillery units. That way, you couldn't just sit back and relax during your sallies, as your units (artillery/missile) would actually be fired upon and take casualties, something the towers don't, except the few times the AI brings catapults/onagers to a siege.
Would've been great to see such sieges in EB..guess it's all hardcoded though. Will EB do anything with the way siege/counter-siege works?

We can't - it is all hard-coded, as you suspected. At least, we, nor anyone else that we know of, have been able to affect the siege mechanics at all.

Sim's right, we can put heavy stuff into towers, although I'm not sure it would be good for balance. A couple months ago somebody at TWC was doing experiments with it, got the towers throwing flaming stones and whatnot. It looked cool, but i wonder if he managed to capture any city with this thing on :)

Well, I mean aside from the towers, sorry...

Towers with flaming stones would probably have to fire a lot slower than the quick-fire archery normally in towers. And have the typically bad accuracy, and lower ammo. But right now, I've never really successfully used artillery to defend a town (I often blow up my own walls). And something's wrong with that. I'm pretty sure I read about archimedes using catapults to defend syracuse. I doubt he blew up the town's walls. ;) Oh, if the larger (epic) walls are being removed, maybe they can be replaced with walls of sensible height, but with artillery defenses, available only to select factions.
On the subject of walls, I have a feeling that the Gauls should be able to build something at least a little better than some cheap wall made of sticks, and yet, probably not as nice a wall as a Greeks or Romans at their height (or whomever the top wall-builder is).

If we had unit/model space, we could probably clone the siege engines models/animations to regular foot units...although that would result in minimum six engines per unit on small size. It _could_ work, but would be a lot of work, and I think we'd be out of unit limit way before that...

Just a thought...
I have often wondered if something like this (ie using seige machinery as a defender) might be accomplished if cities had higher elevation within them... so the seige equipment could sit at a higher level than the seigers below.





________(rest of city)>>>
wall> I /
I ________ /
I /
_____I___

havnt got a clue what you mean.
but have you seen troy (i know, its crap) but you mean liek that? where the city rises further and further into teh center? its a kidn of cone-shaped. als happens in lotr3 teh huge city.

If we make earthen embankments around the city, wide enough, then it should probably work... but then there couldn't be regular walls around the city, because the walls = city borders, and you can't place defending units outside city borders. It would look weird if there was a giant hill build _behind_ the walls, for artillery to shoot from. Practical in RTW, perhaps, but not very realistic...

But in rome there were embankments sa well as h eseven hills so we could get away with it if we were clever where we pu tthem.

Yeah, probably Athens too..but then again, such hills should't be modded to unrealistic scales.

well before everyone yells at me for how stupid this idea is, you have to understand I dont know anything about modding so I dont know whats possible but here it goes.
Troops can be placed on walls and on ground, while artilley can only be placed on ground right? Is it possible to alter the code of the tower/wall/plateau that uses the ground data on the wall? example: use the road data on the wall since the wall walkway is hard coded? possible or am I just stupid?

Basically, not so anyone's figured it out. Something vaguely along those lines may be possible, but any such solution would probably require giving up stuff like the towers (which can't be stuck randomly around the place—they have to be part of a contiguous wall, which can't have siege engines on it).

-Simetrical

well, probably the bgi problem will be when you cracked that code shit will really begin: people dragging ballista's/onagers up the stairs? major issues will be on the way when the manuever. still nice idea. not stupid at all

hah thanks for the support. If that is possible couldnt you just have a spot on the towers that you could place the onagers during battle deployment? That way you have one shot at doing it, and if not then thats too bad.

Onagers is at least 400 years beyond the timeline. Ballistae were too large to be placed on a wall or inside a tower. However, the late Sir Marsden speculated that the towers at the ruins of Ephesus (Greek ruins in SW Turkey), could have accomodated the katapeltai oxybeleis (spear thrower) and perhaps some small stone-throwers (katapeltai petroboloi). Still, this is pure speculation.. the best place you could have a counter siege artillery at would be behind the walls, not ON the walls. Siege artillery was not yet powerful enough to be warranted such a common role. Ancient siege artillery took a lot more time to do its magic than medieval siege artillery did. Counter-artillery would certainly be useful for getting the enemy siege towers. The besieger had to prepare a 'runway' 2 weeks before he could roll up his siege towers. This was done under small rolling shelters known as "chelones" (latin: testudo). Shelters on wheels. They would have workers underneath these shelters filling in any ditches, removing any lumps on the ground.. flattening it all. Thus, the defender knew precisely where the siegetowers would come, and could align his artillery perfectly, in good time.

However, sapping is something which is more prevalent. And it's here there should be some form of counter-sapping. But I'm afraid the hardcoded nature will make this difficult. Not to mention the sapping happens too quickly.. it tooks weeks or months to dig - these were not molemen, they were just men.

The romans usually just used ladders. Or sometimes, like at Lilybaeum in the 2nd punic war, and Alesia, they used circumvellation. This was inspired by the greek Periteichismos (encirclement) of the Peloponnesian Wars in 413 BC.
The Romans did another thing very often. They worked under rolling shelters to make ramps of dirt up to the walls. These very tiny rolling shelters were like segmented "worms" of shelters lying on the ramp. These shelters were called "vinea". And so, they just built a ramp of dirt up to the enemy wall and walked right over it. The non-fancy "brute force" theme usually comes up with the Romans as you would have noticed. Very little siege artillery was used at all by the Romans. All they did was to capture Carthaginian and Greek siege artillery, they never constructed their own artillery in a standardized fashion until the time of Vitruvius (Caesar's engineer).

Artillery was used to defend city walls, it`s not pure speculation.

The syracusian artillery played the most important part to repell the roman assault in 214BC.
Polybius, Histories Book 8 5-7
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...lybius/8*.html

The defenders of jerusalem in the first jewish war used captured roman artillery from the walls.
Josephus Flavius, the jewish war Book 5 chapter 6.3
http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-5.htm

There may be more examples if i search for them.

Also I know Sulla and Pompeius used artillery earlier in the 1st century BC, before Vitruvius time, at least before he was an adult. (during the sieges of Pompeii in the social war and the siege of temple in jerusalem). I always had the impression that the romans started to use artillery regulary some time after the marian reforms.

We also must remember that any counter siege artillery must possess a high degree of inaccuracy, just as the field artillery. Consequently, the possibility to simply change ammo type for the wall towers is in my point of view not the way to go. A wall tower with catapult ammo would be too powerful, as the towers seldom miss their target.

It always annoyed the hell out of me that towers fire without any crew anyhow. Can that be turned off?

It would also be cool if men climbing ladders could actually be shot at. The unit behavior with assault ladders was always screwy though. Escalade has always been the most succesful, and the most misunderstood form of wall assault.

Didn't Archimedes use giant catapults in the defense of Syracuse? Unless that's a mistranslation or an outright mistake, it makes me wonder how onagers could be out of period (is there a simpler pre-onager?) But then, these were supposedly pretty big catapults. And the game doesn't seem to allow for any such thing in the defense of cities which is really a shame. Maybe if the onagers weren't so stupid as to nuke their own buildings and walls even when in a good position. :p Ballistas should have been wall-placeable I figure.
And speaking of sieges, those darn wood and pallisade walls usually seem useless. They actually make it easier to archer the enemy to death, unless he withdraws to the center of town, in which case why have the walls anyway? It seems pretty clear archers should have been able to take defensive positions (defensive bonuses vs. missiles) on the lesser walls, to make them worth having.
Or, maybe, archers on the outside of walls shouldn't be able to target enemies on the other side that they couldn't possible even see. Always made me wonder how the invading archers could shoot blind over the walls and still do so well.

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Originally Posted by jerby

but have you seen troy (i know, its crap).

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Troy -the film- is not crap. It's murder in attempt degree against Homer, only failed because of the poor man -or compiler/s- yet dead.

The screen writer should be put against a wall and shot. At least he could have let live some people so we can have the rest of the tale. But, not. Apart from inventing a nice love story between Cassandra and Achilles, he spares Paris, who acts like a sissy, while he kills Menelaus, Ajax and Agamemnon, who never gets back to be murdered by Aegistos and Clitemnestra. Orestes and Electra sure got bored, playing parcheese with Iphigenia, never sacrificed in Aulis.

But, oh, yeh, teenie girls sure had a big time with Brad Pitt half naked around all the movie.

yes and only the teenie girls, cause he acted like shit...
But beware!! They're making this new movie about I donno what actually, I thought it was crusades or something. It'll probably be just as great as Troy!! YAY *sigh* :help: :help: :help: :help:

Do you mean Kingdom of Heaven, with that skinny little sod Orlando Bloom? KoH is a whole lot better than Troy, but still not good enough. That's my opinion, anyway. Might be because I hate young Bloom's "let's-try-to-look-philosophical-and-a-tad-concerned" look. Might very well be. That, and the wife likes him. That helps too.

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Originally Posted by Sfwartir

Do you mean Kingdom of Heaven, with that skinny little sod Orlando Bloom? KoH is a whole lot better than Troy, but still not good enough. That's my opinion, anyway. Might be because I hate young Bloom's "let's-try-to-look-philosophical-and-a-tad-concerned" look. Might very well be. That, and the wife likes him. That helps too.

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Kingdom of Heaven really really blew. In many different areas.

Yeah I think it's Kingdom of Heaven. Not sure if it's out yet, overhere in europe.

It has at least come to Norway, so I guess it's mostly everywhere in Europe. Not exactly the greatest film ever made, as pointed out above, but sure, watch it if you want to. Just don't expect too much. Anyway, an ok way to spend an evening. :sleeping:

And be prepared to suspend ALOT of disbelief.

As well as the laws of physics and other not too important stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by Dux Corvanus

Troy -the film- is not crap. It's murder in attempt degree against Homer, only failed because of the poor man -or compiler/s- yet dead.

The screen writer should be put against a wall and shot. At least he could have let live some people so we can have the rest of the tale. But, not. Apart from inventing a nice love story between Cassandra and Achilles, he spares Paris, who acts like a sissy, while he kills Menelaus, Ajax and Agamemnon, who never gets back to be murdered by Aegistos and Clitemnestra. Orestes and Electra sure got bored, playing parcheese with Iphigenia, never sacrificed in Aulis.

But, oh, yeh, teenie girls sure had a big time with Brad Pitt half naked around all the movie.

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I always found it amusing people would object to a director taking artistic liberties in a work that is pure fiction anyway. For one thing, Homeros probably never existed, and secondly; the Illiad we now know probably has little to do with the original story anyway.

I never saw the movie, but it's funny some people have real problems with this. I mean: who cares? Did anyone really expect that film to be 'true' to the movie?
Because boy, that would make for one sucky movie.

Then you probably have never read the Illiad....

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Originally Posted by Dux Corvanus

Troy -the film- is not crap. It's murder in attempt degree against Homer, only failed because of the poor man -or compiler/s- yet dead.

The screen writer should be put against a wall and shot. At least he could have let live some people so we can have the rest of the tale. But, not. Apart from inventing a nice love story between Cassandra and Achilles, he spares Paris, who acts like a sissy, while he kills Menelaus, Ajax and Agamemnon, who never gets back to be murdered by Aegistos and Clitemnestra. Orestes and Electra sure got bored, playing parcheese with Iphigenia, never sacrificed in Aulis.

But, oh, yeh, teenie girls sure had a big time with Brad Pitt half naked around all the movie.

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The Story sucked. i expected it to be more like the awsome book. with Menelaos living, ajax's suicide, Agamemnon living. Paris nOt being a pussy, and Patroclus being older than Achilles. Sword fights not looking like ballet .and NOT killing 100 people with 120 arrows:they dropped like bushes from arrows shot at them frontally!!
I liked the scenery and Hektor. thats all. teh rest should be shot, hanged, descecrated, shot and hanged again...just as a figure of speech of course ~;)

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Originally Posted by Sarcasm

Then you probably have never read the Illiad....

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Unfortunately, I had to read translate large chunks of it from Latin in high school.

So I'm pretty well aware of the original Illiad :-/

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Originally Posted by Jebus

Unfortunately, I had to read translate large chunks of it from Latin in high school.

So I'm pretty well aware of the original Illiad :-/

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Latin? Er...who translated it into Latin fromthe original Greek? Seems an unnecessary step ~:confused:

I suspect Romans :) They were always up to no good :)

Well, the Illiad wàs a canonical schoolbook in the Roman empire.

I dropped Greek in the second year, and my Latin teacher later on gave me detetion at least once a week, where I had to translate Latin texts, including the Illiad. So there.

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Originally Posted by Jebus

I always found it amusing people would object to a director taking artistic liberties in a work that is pure fiction anyway. For one thing, Homeros probably never existed, and secondly; the Illiad we now know probably has little to do with the original story anyway.

I never saw the movie, but it's funny some people have real problems with this. I mean: who cares? Did anyone really expect that film to be 'true' to the movie?
Because boy, that would make for one sucky movie.

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Considering that Wolfgang Petersen directed the masterpiece Das Boot, Peter O'Tool delivered one of the best performances in the history of film as Lawrence of Arabia, and Brad Pitt has displayed his talent in 12 Monkeys as well as Fight Club, I would suspect that the crapocity of Troy had little to do with innovative artistic license. This is especially true when one considers that story in the movie=crap, Illiad+Quintus of Smyrna=not crap

P.S. :furious3:

P.P.S. No hard feelings ~;)

Troy was, and always will be, a terrible film.

As a 'dramatisation' of the Iliad, erm, no deities, no Diomedes, no Aeneas, Patrokolos that young minx :dizzy2: etc etc. Utter shite. And Paris wasn't a wimp, he wouldn't fight for the same reason as Achilleus, people didn't respect him. Though Menelaus does beat him in that fight of theirs.

Hey, I never defended Troy: the movie. Heck, I never even saw it.
I was speaking of artistic liberties in general.

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Originally Posted by Jebus

I dropped Greek in the second year, and my Latin teacher later on gave me detetion at least once a week, where I had to translate Latin texts, including the Illiad. So there.

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You, getting detention every week? I can't imagine why! ~;)

Jebus, I have nothing against 'artistic liberties', but if they include taking a masterpiece of universal literature -such as Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', for example- and make Macbeth and his wife inhabitant in a planet built by a breed of intelligent mutant ducks, while Duncan narrowly escapes from death by jumping on his motorbike while the witches chase him in a F-14, then expect that public attracted to cinema by a title "based in Shakespeare's immortal play" may feel a bit disappointed... ~;)

'Artistic liberties' should include 'artistic creation', instead of taking some other's work and convert it into... a silly popcorn-entertainment.

I am looking forward (as disappointed as I was; as incredibly and sadly disappointed as I was) to showing it to myth classes though in the evening for extra credit and having discussions on what the hell was wrong with it and why it stinks and so forth and so on. When someone does something really well it's often hard for a Myth 101 student to pick up on all the things they did well, but when someone screws something up bigtime, it's easier to try and piece together things or at least get them to recognize ways it differs and how it could have been better or more accurate.

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Originally Posted by Dux Corvanus

make Macbeth and his wife inhabitant in a planet built by a breed of intelligent mutant ducks, while Duncan narrowly escapes from death by jumping on his motorbike while the witches chase him in a F-14,

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Hell, I'd pay to see that!

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Originally Posted by Teleklos Archelaou

I am looking forward (as disappointed as I was; as incredibly and sadly disappointed as I was) to showing it to myth classes though in the evening for extra credit and having discussions on what the hell was wrong with it and why it stinks and so forth and so on. When someone does something really well it's often hard for a Myth 101 student to pick up on all the things they did well, but when someone screws something up bigtime, it's easier to try and piece together things or at least get them to recognize ways it differs and how it could have been better or more accurate.

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I mostly wasn't dissapointed in the movie because of its gross divergance from the story (which did make it worse), but because it was a poorly made movie despite the high-budget production, and the stellar cast and crew. In terms of movies that are just meant to be amusing diversions, I prefer that they last no longer than 90 minutes, otherwise they are just a sadistic form of water-torture :help:

You know, I think a thread split might be a good idea about now . . .

-Simetrical

Nah, I don't mind threadjacking. If these guys want to go off on tangents, I say let them! Unless the participants really want their own thread... ~:)

Well if siege-mechanics are definitely hadrcoded, then that thread has died a death anyway. I guess it's time for pastures new and pastures green... :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Jebus

Unfortunately, I had to read translate large chunks of it from Latin in high school.

So I'm pretty well aware of the original Illiad :-/

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Hmmm...well I guess it is a matter of taste then. I love epics. ~:)

About Siege Engines, in the Iberian peninsula campaigns, for example, in the siege of Numantia, more than 300 Catapulta (smaller, bolt or small stone-throwing engines) and at least 50 Ballistae (heavier stone-throwing engines), were used to protect a stone wall, that Scipio ordered built, which forced the city to starvation. While the smaller ones were positioned all over the wall and towers, the larger ones had their own emplacements.

There are also records of Siege towers, constructed by Greeks and Carthaginians that carried a lot of siege engines, some of really great size.

When Scipio took control of New Carthage, on the Eastern coast of the peninsula, it is reported, he captured 120 large catapults, 281 smaller catapults, 23 large ballistae and 53 ballistae of smaller calliber. And at the end of the 3rd Punic war, more than 2000 siege engines of various types were taken from Carthage itself. So siege artillery was probably more prevalent, when defending cities or fortified positions, than we may think, at first.

There are records of stones of 900g for the smaller catapults and from 12kg to 70Kg for the larger Ballistae, and ranges of at least 300m for the smaller engines.

I've actually seen a small oxybeles fire, and it's surprisingly accurate up to 50m or so, capable of hitting particular parts of a dummy. Farther than that or with heavier engines I do not know. Also it should be significantly more accurate to fire from an elevated position (i.e a tower) than from the sieging position.

Let's get this thread back on track! ~;)

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Originally Posted by Jebus

Hell, I'd pay to see that!

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ok a suggestion. Now that you finished school ans iliad is not mandatory go buy a nice translation of the book although the sound of original is magical imo. Im sure that you ll see that Homer had by far more interesting plot, characters and was much more objective, praising heroic deeds equally unlike that chewing gum Peterson who presented simply Greeks as a crazy mob that slaughtered everything after 3 days sitting on the beach.

Artistic liberties were the ones of Peter Jackson on LOTR. Troy was a massacre of historic-mythology. I wonder did they read the actual book?
By the way try reading the Age of Bronze comic. THIS is adaptation and artistic liberty.

Sing godess.... (see my sig)

when I saw the previews for kindom of heaven, I was sure it would be another Troy. I was pleasantly surprised. It actually is a good film ( not great, but good) IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Idomeneas

ok a suggestion. Now that you finished school ans iliad is not mandatory go buy a nice translation of the book although the sound of original is magical imo. Im sure that you ll see that Homer had by far more interesting plot, characters and was much more objective, praising heroic deeds equally unlike that chewing gum Peterson who presented simply Greeks as a crazy mob that slaughtered everything after 3 days sitting on the beach.

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Dude, I just told you I practically know it by heart. Reading a translation of it won't really change much.

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Originally Posted by Jebus

Dude, I just told you I practically know it by heart. Reading a translation of it won't really change much.

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Dude, you just told the community you spent a lot of time translating it from a language in which it was not written to another.
"removed baiting attempt - barocca".
'Cause Idomeneas seems to know a little greek, you know.

well, i also had greek. i bored my self to death for a year (the first year was nic,e second sucked) and i only truly understood teh actual lines when i read te translation. great book.

'O dear friends, if we, by fleeing from battle, would be young and immortal for ever, i would certainly not fight in the first line and also wouldnt ask you to join me. But now countless demons of death surround us-lets go...'

gotta love it. i did my best translating dutch to english. but its just impossible.

Umm... guys, stop flaming jerby just because he doesn't agree with you. Translating bits of Illiad from Latin is perfectly regular exercise in latin class. Don't know where you got the opinion that because of that he somehow knows Illiad less, or something.

Jerby? you mean jebus, right?

Well, just stop flaming anyone ;)

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Originally Posted by eadingas

Umm... guys, stop flaming jerby just because he doesn't agree with you. Translating bits of Illiad from Latin is perfectly regular exercise in latin class. Don't know where you got the opinion that because of that he somehow knows Illiad less, or something.

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We re just discussing not flamming anybody. I just thing that when something is mandatory as a class its reasonable to hate it and not try to see beneath the surface. Same thing happened to me in sclool with Xenophon's anabasis. I was so bored to examine that grammar and syntax of that text that i never minded to actually notice how great work it was. After school was past, i felt really bored one day and having read everything in my library i started reading anabasis just like that. BANG!!! i was amazed! like i had never read it 100 times before. The adventures the missfortunes the journey! it had everything you need to be hooked.
So Jebus give old homer one more try. If people are amazed for thousands of years by this story there must be a good reason ~;)

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Originally Posted by Idomeneas

We re just discussing not flamming anybody. I just thing that when something is mandatory as a class its reasonable to hate it and not try to see beneath the surface. Same thing happened to me in sclool with Xenophon's anabasis. I was so bored to examine that grammar and syntax of that text that i never minded to actually notice how great work it was. After school was past, i felt really bored one day and having read everything in my library i started reading anabasis just like that. BANG!!! i was amazed! like i had never read it 100 times before. The adventures the missfortunes the journey! it had everything you need to be hooked.
So Jebus give old homer one more try. If people are amazed for thousands of years by this story there must be a good reason ~;)

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Well hey, I never said I didn't like the Illiad.
Perhaps I should clear up some misunderstandings here.

1. I read the original.
2. I liked it
3. I never saw 'Troy'
4. My point was that it's pretty logical that a director is going to change some things when he's making a screenplay of a 3200 year-old-story.

Somehow, this ended up with people accusing me of not liking the Illiad... :dizzy2:

:dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by eadingas

Umm... guys, stop flaming jerby just because he doesn't agree with you. Translating bits of Illiad from Latin is perfectly regular exercise in latin class. Don't know where you got the opinion that because of that he somehow knows Illiad less, or something.

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I post one reply, stating that IMHO the illiad is phenomanal to read when fully pre-transalted. and suddenly Eadingsgas says everybody si agaianst me...i posted 1 thiny quote from homer....wat did i do wrong? :dizzy2:

Petersen definately didn't write the screenplay for Troy, David Benioff did. His screenplay was so bad I don't think any director could have salvaged it, and since the style of the movie was so different from Petersen's previous work, I'd suspect that the producers of the movie interfered with it.

Come on Jebus, why are you trying to defend a movie you've never seen? ;~p

Actually, Petersen didn't do a good movie ever since he left Europe. Perhaps he simply doesn't know how to deal with hollywood producers? I still can't believe what happened to the talent of a guy who did Das Boot. That was the best war movie _ever_. Where did all that go?

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Originally Posted by jerby

:dizzy2:

I post one reply, stating that IMHO the illiad is phenomanal to read when fully pre-transalted. and suddenly Eadingsgas says everybody si agaianst me...i posted 1 thiny quote from homer....wat did i do wrong? :dizzy2:

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You guys just have too confusing screennames :)

While I cringed at much of Troy, I did like the fact that they really seemed to get the feeling of mass into the big battle fights - IMO too many films do their battles where the soldiers are completely intermingled as though it were one big skirmish.

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Originally Posted by eadingas

You guys just have too confusing screennames :)

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As opposed to the _extremely_ straightforward and easy to spell eadingas? :tongue2: :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by eadingas

Actually, Petersen didn't do a good movie ever since he left Europe. Perhaps he simply doesn't know how to deal with hollywood producers? I still can't believe what happened to the talent of a guy who did Das Boot. That was the best war movie _ever_. Where did all that go?

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The Perfect Storm was at least mediocre, the boys down in Gloucester liked it though ~:cheers:

Yeah, Hollywood screws people up (in general ~D ). Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for $7,000 in Mexico without a crew, and when he got big Hollywood money all of his movies were crap.

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Originally Posted by bodidley

Come on Jebus, why are you trying to defend a movie you've never seen? ;~p

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I'm not defending Troy per sé, I'm more defending the right of producers to insert some artistic liberty in their works.

Anyway, I'm just a guy that likes to play advocatus diaboli, I guess.

No one says that artists don't have a right to artistic liberty, but if they make garbage then we have the right to bash their work ~;)

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Originally Posted by eadingas

You guys just have too confusing screennames :)

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~:) its ok.

I see Sarcasm is the last person so far to have an opinion on the thread issue, so thanks for that Sarcasm. Joe mentioned the hard-coded issue. I believe that even though we can't do anything with what is hard-coded right now, doesn't mean we'll never be able to. Who knows, maybe CA will make some things not-quite-so-hard-coded some day. Or even better (and a lot more likely), maybe someone will figure out a way to un-hard-code :dizzy2: things in the near future.
A small spot or two on each wall length, where the player can choose to put his/her artillery i f he/she wants to, is all we need really. Maybe the deployment spot(s) don't necessarily have to be a part of the wall itself? It must be within the deployment area of the fortress garrison though, for obvious reasons.

Some other issues I'd like to raise when it comes to siege/sallies:

1#I think it should be possible for a defender to deploy forces outside of the walls, no matter the size of the walls, when choosing to sally forth (not when the besieger assaults, though). It takes forever to move one's army out of the city as it is now (vanilla). Guess this is hard-coded too.

2#Would it be possible to add a sort of earthwork line around the besieged walls, perhaps midway between the walls and the "thin red line"? It could act as circumvallation(sp?) lines built by the besiegers (anyone understand what I mean?). It would have to be quite high, perhaps the height of a infantryman x2, but of course easily possible to pass across.

3#It has been mentioned in antoher thread that the fact that you can sally forth as many times as you like per turn in vanilla is a bug. If it is a bug, it's a bug that makes the game more historically correct, and should be left in. Raids on a besieging army was indeed common, and has been so since people started sieging each other. Raids such as these were commited on a nearly daily (or should I say nightly) basis during a siege, with varying results of course, but it did happen. It could be from 10 to 500 (or more) men, depending on the size of the besieged city/settlement, that went outside to attack siegeworks, harass the enemy, kill off horses or soldiers/dignitaries. Sometimes, such raids were used as diversions, making it possible for the besieged to muster its army and attempt a breakout. So I say it's in.
With each turn being 6 months, you actually could sally forth roughly 180 times each turn and it would still be historically correct.

Anyway, I feel we've established that counter siege artillery is not entirely out of time frame, and that's at least a start.


On the other discussion raging on this thread, I don't mind it being here. I wish it would focus more on the horrible ( H o r r i b l e I tell you!) Orlando Bloom tho' ~D

The problem with #1 and #2 is this:
in the engine, the "city border" (the deployment line for defenders) = city walls. You can change the border through some fiddling, but only if there are no walls defined. If there are walls defined in the settlement plan, they override any border settings you might have. If there are no walls, you can probably make entire battlefield a defender's deployment zone, but then.. you have no walls. Unless we make some artificial wall-like buildings, but they will never work like "real" walls, they will simply act as unmovable obstacles.

Another thing I'd like to see in sieges is the ability to break out and retreat. I bet that one's going to be a long time coming though...

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Originally Posted by bodidley

Another thing I'd like to see in sieges is the ability to break out and retreat.

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Yes, that would be interesting too. If you manage to get your garrison across the thin red line, you loose the city but maintain your (full strength) army. Good suggestion!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eadingas

The problem with #1 and #2 is this:
in the engine, the "city border" (the deployment line for defenders) = city walls. You can change the border through some fiddling, but only if there are no walls defined. If there are walls defined in the settlement plan, they override any border settings you might have. If there are no walls, you can probably make entire battlefield a defender's deployment zone, but then.. you have no walls. Unless we make some artificial wall-like buildings, but they will never work like "real" walls, they will simply act as unmovable obstacles.

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That's not quite true. You can deploy troops outside of your walls as long as the walls are the thin, wooden kind. Granted, they need to be really close to the walls, but they're outside.

I do believe this is only because for the engine, they are still "within" the walls, because wooden walls are thinner and do not fill the entire area designed for walls.

Not too bad a movie. Some things are accurate, others are less, some are out of the place entirely.

This said, the walls defence techniques shown in this movie are good enough (though i doubt anyone ever downed siege towers this way, it remains possible.) Medieval siege weaponry is precise enough to send a 50 kg stone in the same hole 400 meters away again, and again, and again, and again. i doubt engineers in the antiquity were any less skilled in this domain. So breaking your walls with your own artillery is downright silly ~D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eadingas

I do believe this is only because for the engine, they are still "within" the walls, because wooden walls are thinner and do not fill the entire area designed for walls.

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Hmm . . . I wonder if it would be possible to model walls with an offset? Like, with "null space" of some kind on the outside? Maybe that could persuade the engine to let you deploy outside the walls?

-Simetrical