An idea how to reform the siege battles

[Hooahguy]

So right now I feel a bit let down by the sieges. Now if you have ever assaulted a level IV city, they are massive. Roma was a massive city. Huge sprawl, just awesome to see. But the garrison was lacking. I mean it was 10 units of levies, two units of legionnaires and five units of skirmishers, a total of 2142 men, which if we are going by numbers, that is fine against my army of 2500+ army. But composition-wise, its not okay. I am not okay with so many levies. A city that big, and the capital, would have many more heavier troops than just two units of them.

Anyhow, my idea was, prompted by this reddit post, which shows the problems with having an inner wall with a system where everything is thrown at the breach point anyways and there are three capture points, only one of which is within the inner wall. There is no point for the inner wall now because even if you hunker down to defend the point in the inner wall, the other two capture points fall and you lose anyways.

What I think might be an interesting idea to fix this is to split the garrison into two parts (though this would require making the garrison bigger) and put in a successive capture point system like in Company of Heroes. The first part of the garrison, which would be bigger than the second part, is defending the main area of the city. You would have to capture the two capture points in the main area of the city. Then the third and final capture point opens up, as well as the second part of the garrison, tasked with defending the final capture point and nothing else. Only when they are defeated and the final capture point taken will you win. I also think that garrisons need to be larger and have better units. Too many garrisons are composed of mainly levies and skirmishers. For level I and maybe even level II cities this is okay, but above that level its unacceptable.

I think in theory with two human players the capture points as we know them in R2 are a good idea because a human player would know when the gates/walls were lost and could pull back and defend the capture points. But the AI doesnt know how to do that so they throw everything at the breach and are usually defeated there. When I took Roma, a level IV city, the defenders had over 2100 men. They threw everyone at the breach I made, and kept throwing them until they were all routed. So in the end I waltzed through Roma unopposed after I defeated the garrison at the gate. To me, this is not acceptable. Roma as a level IV city is freaking huge. I should not be able to defeat the entire garrison at the gate, and more importantly, 70% of that garrison of a level IV city should not be levies. Taking a large city should be a challenge, and not just by the ballistas and onagers on the walls, which I easily bypassed by finding their blind spot.


By instituting the successive capture point system it would force the battle to also take place within the city as well, and not just where you breach the wall. How it can be instituted is by doing a deployment zone within the major deployment zone, sort of like a reinforcing army, but it starts out already within the city and are only "let off the leash" when the other two points have fallen. The final point though is a normal capture point. Think of the other two capture points as the gate winches you need to activate to open the final gate to victory.

I have also noticed that routing defenders don't rout to the city center for a final stand like they used to. I think if they were made to rout to the final capture point to join the second group of defenders would be much better.

[nearchos]

I agree with the CP issue as you propose, but as for the garrison composition, perhaps only in cities like Rome, Carthage, Alexandria the great metropolises of the ancient world, there could be a strong garrison at the higher level, both in numbers and composition.
In my opinion, as the best troops are in the field armies, the chalenge and difficulty must be in defeating them in the field, i mean, if it was me and facing an invasion, i would gather the best troops in the field and try to stop the enemy before get to the city, unless its very powerful, so in this case i will choose to defend behind walls so, in the garrison troops the standing army is added.
The way i see it, is that the garrisons are there for keeping the order and provide a minimum defence for the city and not defeating a standing army of prime troops, so i dont have any issue with the composition of the garrisons, but in the CP matter as well as the garrison behaviour during the siege, im 100% with you and for cities like Rome it would be reasonable to have a strong garrison of prime troops.

[Sp4]

I kind of liked siege battles in Rome 1. The AI actually did something with its units there and it was entirely possible to lose if something took too long somewhere.

[Bramborough]

I'm with Nearchos...garrison composition is okay. And the larger cities do have a few decent units to augment the mobs and levies. I could see perhaps biasing a bit toward more missile troops. The idea would be that if the enemy has made it to the walls of the capital at all, then most likely the cream of the the defending faction's military power has already been defeated or perhaps outmaneuvered. Historical examples of sieges at great walled cities manned with understrength garrisons would seem to bear this out. Constantinople in 1453 comes to mind.

100% agree with everything else in the OP, though. Especially a "reserve" garrison for a hard-to-crack citadel. An assault on a Level IV city should involve two distinct struggles; first outer wall and then inner wall. During the Mithridatic Wars, Sulla took Athens after a successful assault on the outer wall, but a smaller garrison holed up on the Acropolis and held out for another several months. There are similar cases from medieval warfare.

[Hooahguy]

As I said before, my problem with garrison composition is that medium infantry, which is what the levy spearmen are, simply cannot hold very long against heavy or very heavy infantry. They also rout fairly quickly when pressure is applied to them, making for relatively quick siege battles. My assault on Roma took about 20 minutes and that was with the pre-assault bombardment and the post-battle victory parade through the city, so the actual battle was about 10 minutes.

A compromise for this would be to give the faction capital much better troops, in addition to the level IV cites. Cities level III and above have walled ranged defenses like onagers, so I feel as an added defense should be my successive capture point system and the added garrison. I suppose that in non-capital cities they can be just run of the mill levies or the like, but for all the capitals, not just Roma and Carthage, they should have better units because after all, it's the seat of government and should be defended as such.