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!!!!

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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.

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why not just let walls take damage when the player sieges (not assaults) a city for several turns with an army that has siege weapons. If he waits long enough and then assaults the city, some parts of the walls will be weakened enough to be destroyed by concentrated artillery fire.
I think that's a much more realistic approach then catapults destroying a 6 meter thick stone wall with a few shots. You still get to blow holes, but it takes some time. If you think that's too slow/boring for some kids uhm... people then include uber catapult damage in the "arcade mode" option or something.

Excellent idea, Adherbal! You could even extent it by letting the besiegers build mangonels and trebuchets on the spot. The number of these siege machines dictate how long it will take before walls collapse.

The player can go into city view and place his siege machinery and picks walls that are to be attacked in the following turns. Then the players goes out of city view and is notified when walls have been collapsed. The siege weapons can be used as supporting artillery for the actual attack.

In my idea not that far fetched as the elements are all there already, they just need to be linked; building siege weapons, city view, attack order on walls.

Then the besieged can have the option not only to sally out but also to destroy the siege machines.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

Then the besieged can have the option not only to sally out but also to destroy the siege machines.

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On the issue of destroying siege machines, I was kind of annoyed recently when I sent men out of my castle and found they could not attack men climbing ladders. This was sad, as the idea of knocking the ladders over and the besiegers falling to their deaths was strangely appealing.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

The player can go into city view and place his siege machinery and picks walls that are to be attacked in the following turns. Then the players goes out of city view and is notified when walls have been collapsed. The siege weapons can be used as supporting artillery for the actual attack.

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I like the idea. Check it out:

The seige is viewable just as a city map is viewable. A "seige view". The attacker's army is cozily placed behind seige works and is not controllable by the attacker. The defender's army is snug behind the walls and is uncontrollable. The player may only choose which walls to bombard and with which seige equipment. This seige equipment would be built in the campaign map, on site. Trebuchets would be placed in this mode, as would balista behind seige works, etc. Seige equipment that is mobile would not have enough range to fire from a protected position, and would thus be excluded from this seige view until the actual assault. Now, the player would only see: one time placement of seige equipment such as trebuchets, and animation of the seige equipment firing, but with only minor superficial effects. It took time to break through a six foot or ten foot deep stone wall! The player could, of course, entirely skip the seige view and simply allow the computer to choose which walls automatically. The player would never see the AI setting up its seige equipment in "seige view" unless the player wanted to view his own city under seige. At the beginning of each turn, a notice would pop up telling the player stats on the damage that occurred to the walls during the seige.

This would incorporate seigeworks into the game, which would be amazing, of course. I'm sure a few simple animations of camp life could even be included for the assaulting army. This "seige view" would fix the inaccuracy of uber-seige equipment. This would prevent a boring prolonged player controlled assault-style portion as well as a boring AI controlled non-assault, where nothing actually occurs but wall damage. (Can you imagine playing for an hour just to watch your walls get worn down, over and over and over? GAH!)

:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by econ21

On the issue of destroying siege machines, I was kind of annoyed recently when I sent men out of my castle and found they could not attack men climbing ladders. This was sad, as the idea of knocking the ladders over and the besiegers falling to their deaths was strangely appealing.

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Oh I completely agree. I think the ladders need to be completely reworked anyway.

And players would still be able to use ladders, rams and siege towers to try taking the city without bombarding it first. Although the amount of casualities would be much higher, it provides the player with an interesting question; assault quickly and face the consequences, bombard the walls for an easier assault or starve out the defenders. Add a simply supply system and you've got a far more accurate medieval wargame.

:juggle2:

Edit: by the way, this is also partly possible already with R:TW using scripts (damage_wall). Just to show how close CA is to such a system.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

And players would still be able to use ladders, rams and siege towers to try taking the city without bombarding it first. Although the amount of casualities would be much higher, it provides the player with an interesting question; assault quickly and face the consequences, bombard the walls for an easier assault or starve out the defenders. Add a simply supply system and you've got a far more accurate medieval wargame.

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Exactly. Well put. I think that this "seige view" with limited player control could be just what the doctor ordered.

As to the supply side...

I have seen much discussion on the options of supplies utilizing scripts. I'm sure CA could have an easier time of it then through scripting, but I am sure that even a rudimentary supply sysetm could be implemented. CA should be able to experiment with a simple supply system in M2, if nothing else at least to gauge public response before investing resources in a more intricate supply system. Who knows? This could be extremely well-recieved and add a layer of depth to the campaign map that has not yet been seen. I'm also sure that this feature could be disabled for "popcorn" players.

And as a final plus, you wouldn't have to have a tech tree for seige engines, and the AI wouldn't bring 5 catapults to a field battle. Maybe have a tech-tree for engineers, which would enable what level seige machines could be built during a seige, but get rid of the normal battlefield use.

There could still be field artillery in the late medieval era. But you are right, for the rest artillery should be restricted to sieges. A trebuchet has no place in a normal battle.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

There could still be field artillery in the late medieval era. But you are right, for the rest artillery should be restricted to sieges. A trebuchet has no place in a normal battle.

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Agreed.

It also annoys me seeing catapults breaking huge stone walls. I like Divinus' idea, setting your besieging army to bombard a certain section of the wall; it makes things more tactical (choose which walls you want to assault when you're ready), and when the walls are near destruction they can be destroyed in an assault by the final bombardment.

To expand on the idea of assigning certain siege weapons to particular sections of the wall, why not be able to assign units to be positioned in front of a particular gate? For instance, if there are four gates and the player has twelve units the player can choose to stick to one side of the walls or spread his forces so all gates are covered; the more gates that are covered the shorter the siege is (due to lack of supplies), but spread too thinly and the besieged army could badly damage the army by sallying forth; when the besieged army attempts to break out the units are in their assigned positions, so it'd have a real influence on the battle. Keeps things interesting, and isn't complex at all.

I'll have to agree with Captain fishpants on this one. While I usually think historical accuracy makes a game cooler, no matter how you slice it any turns waiting around during a siege are turns that your not doing anything with that army, which in my opinion would be boring. Of course if you brought the siege engines with you (no time needed to build them), and bombardment was handled in the same was siege construction is now (3-4 turns max needed usually) then it would be all right. The walls could be weakened in "siege" mode but I think the actual destruction should be save for the assault to make the battles more dramatic.

Gah! If you call one of the vote options "no you're an idiot", it's really damn difficult to not fall for the temptation of choosing that option! ~:)

But I was strong, and managed to vote that I agree with some of your ideas.

The GAH! button was left off this vote. It is required in all MTW polls, and should be included in the MTW2 polls for those of us who have nothing better to do than kvetch.

mfberg

I think Duke John and Divinus Arma have some great ideas. The "siege view" sounds simple and engaging enough to be worth implimenting while still providing the degree of realism needed to make sieges last longer than 1.5 turns. I think it'd be really awesome and satisfying to zoom into "siege view" to admire the damage you've done to a city with each passing turn.

To expand just a little, the sieges could also choose to target buildings, to worsen the condition of the defenders in situations where the sieging army is attempting to starve out the enemy rather than storm the city.

And I also agree with econ21 that the inability to knock down ladders is very strange.

The most important improvement would be AI that knows (from both tactical and strategic point of view) when to assault and when to starve out the defenders. This would improve the performance of strategic AI a lot.

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Originally Posted by econ21

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.

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i agree with all of that.

There are some excellent ideas here. I hope CA has been looking at them, and perhaps it isn't too late to incorporate some very immersive elements into M2TW. We can at least hope some of these ideas will be applied in some form for the next TW iteration.

Acctually in RTW a turn is 6 months so if you are waitung a turn to build seige towers and the like, then its is technically a 6 month wait. From what I hear in MTW 2 a turn will be about 2 years. As far as battle length, all the battles happen in sped up time. Major engagements didn't generally last 45 min or less. So should we also have 12 hour battles to enhance realism. Seiges are pretty much on scale with other battles. Just a historical note, when Constantinople (now Istanbul), was assualted with cannon in 1400 or there abouts, The walls pretty much immediatly crumbled, that's why its now Istanbul and not Constantinople.:wall:

I agree with sneaking food in. However, the revamp I would most like to see is being able to place catapults/ballistae (or whatever they are called in Medieval II) on the walls to fire on siege towers and besieging troops. I would also like counter-sapping to be available.

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Acctually in RTW a turn is 6 months so if you are waitung a turn to build seige towers and the like, then its is technically a 6 month wait. From what I hear in MTW 2 a turn will be about 2 years. As far as battle length, all the battles happen in sped up time. Major engagements didn't generally last 45 min or less. So should we also have 12 hour battles to enhance realism. Seiges are pretty much on scale with other battles. Just a historical note, when Constantinople (now Istanbul), was assualted with cannon in 1400 or there abouts, The walls pretty much immediatly crumbled, that's why its now Istanbul and not Constantinople

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Well from what I had understood, what actually happened was that the Byzantines forgot to close the Blachernae gate, and when the Turks realised this, they burst in.

Yah, they need to be changed but how would you put the 10+ weeks you need to assult the castle into a realistic game without it taking a half an hour to seige a small outpost to say nothing of a huge fortress.

I want more space in sieges, where your troops are still constricted by buildings, but you can move in between them easier, without your troops finding some complicated path.

So with the current collision detection, less buildings! And make them destroyable for a change, if i'm unloading wave after wave of heavy onagers upon their Palace (government building), remove it. If you won't let me build a governors house at least downgrade their level 5 building/farm/road so i can build over it.

Actually the walls of constinople didn't crumble.. in fact cannons fired so slow that some places could be repaired before another shot would damage that same area.

in palace of ability: can sap
Special engineer or pioneer units

its like auxiliary troops
but it can build and use ballistas and catapults

(the armies can be build bonus siege equipment during a siege
as siege towers and sap holes)

the army with a pioneers can be move faster (it can be build wood bridge cross the rivers) the bridge can't be seen on strategic map because it's only a temporally bridge - in medieval the wooden bridges stand until the autumn flood or the winter ice wasted it...

Siege
I agree most of the ideas
there are three possibility:
- bombarding
- blockade (to starve)
- assault

bombard:
I thing it's enough to do a random destruction (at all kind of buildings - the civilians too - which has effect to the population)
the pit (mine/tunnels) has a same random effect (but dont cause civilian damage)
I speak random effect - because I think there are different walls with different strength and weakness
(the bombarding has a same effect as the blockade)

the attackers suffering a random casualties which is depend on the number of the defenders' siege engines including the towers of the walls

blockade:
random casualties both sides
but don't cause destruction at the buildings

assault - counter attack
the same as rome TW but there are no sappoints
we can see the result of the bombarding (and the mines)
and we can choose the location of the assault
where the walls are collapsed at 80%
(we can bombard them at real time until it completely fall to the ground)

the defenders are able to counterstroke and we able to place the defenders troops in front of the walls near the gates

Central castle
I hope at this time we need to defend or occupy a central castle instead of a square
this castle looks like a small city walls with towers...
(like Battle Realms and Medieval I of course ;-))

Capture the city
If the city is not surrender (as someone write before - depend on the govenor's loyalty)
you can't occupy an unharmed city, after a siege it impossible to hold back your soldiers from pillage (this is his personal bounty)

automatical destruct of strange religious place
(this is cause only trouble and the AI don't able to demolis captured buildings,
and build his own religious place)

I welcomed the idea of Realism mod - when the first time at a captured town you can only build garrisons (phase I-II-III) and able to build only special local units and after you extend the right of citizenship (province) can be able to recruit the factions powerful units like legions

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eclectic

I like the idea. Check it out:

The seige is viewable just as a city map is viewable. A "seige view". The attacker's army is cozily placed behind seige works and is not controllable by the attacker. The defender's army is snug behind the walls and is uncontrollable. The player may only choose which walls to bombard and with which seige equipment. This seige equipment would be built in the campaign map, on site. Trebuchets would be placed in this mode, as would balista behind seige works, etc. Seige equipment that is mobile would not have enough range to fire from a protected position, and would thus be excluded from this seige view until the actual assault. Now, the player would only see: one time placement of seige equipment such as trebuchets, and animation of the seige equipment firing, but with only minor superficial effects. It took time to break through a six foot or ten foot deep stone wall! The player could, of course, entirely skip the seige view and simply allow the computer to choose which walls automatically. The player would never see the AI setting up its seige equipment in "seige view" unless the player wanted to view his own city under seige. At the beginning of each turn, a notice would pop up telling the player stats on the damage that occurred to the walls during the seige.

This would incorporate seigeworks into the game, which would be amazing, of course. I'm sure a few simple animations of camp life could even be included for the assaulting army. This "seige view" would fix the inaccuracy of uber-seige equipment. This would prevent a boring prolonged player controlled assault-style portion as well as a boring AI controlled non-assault, where nothing actually occurs but wall damage. (Can you imagine playing for an hour just to watch your walls get worn down, over and over and over? GAH!)

:2thumbsup:

Oh I completely agree. I think the ladders need to be completely reworked anyway.

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Hey guys.. now that I think about it, there is actually a game that has a siege system very similar to this suggestion :idea2:. It's called Lords of the Realm, and it's already 12 years old!

The beauty of it is that it has so much similarity to Total War, in that there is a turn-based strategic mode wherein you manage your province and reaise armies, and move your armies as well. Then when two opposing armies meet, it switches to a tactical view and fights the battle real-time! :2thumbsup:

I've spent so many hours on this game years ago, and I clearly remember how they managed sieges and it was quite rewarding.

Each turn lasts 3 months... When you siege a castle you assign your men different, temporary tasks for the siege either as foragers, builders or fighters. Foragers collect food from the countryside each turn, and you only need enough to sustain your army. Builders do the building while the fighters do the fighting. At the first turn, nothing really happens because nothing has been built yet (unless you want to throw your men away by telling them to climb up the walls with their hands and feet... yeah you can do that). The next turn, more options are available now that you have siege equipment (you can make ladders, catapults, rams, trebuchets and towers, a familiar list eh? :laugh4:). Anyway, you have to assign trebuchets and catapults which wall sections to hit, and assign fighters to towers and ladders and carryers to rams. Then everything is calculated automatically. Since each turn lasts 3 months, everything that happened during the 3 months is shown, like "June - Trebuchet fires at East wall: minimal success, light losses, etc...", you can even try to fill up a moat! Eventually you will get a "Your forces storm the citadel!" message once you've disintegrated the defenses and the castle is yours! The only downside is that it's all auto-calc, but it was already quite sophisticated for its time. I think someone at CA already had an idea like this, but they shot the idea down because they think players will be bored by it, which is absurd because they can put an option to storm the fortress anyway. Example, a message that says "the defenses have been significantly weakened my lord! Do you wish to storm the fortress?" after a couple of turns will still satisfy those who want to play out the sige, plus it will still be fairly realistic.

Total War can learn from this game. :2thumbsup: