Thanks for nothing, spy

[ElGuapo]

Before the last siege on the last Greek city, my Egyptian spy managed to open the gates. Seeing as my army is 80% cavalry/chariots, I gleefully attack the open gates without any siege equipment (incidentally, it would be nice if, as in M:TW, you could dismount calvary before an attack). Resistance is very light, a few hoplites.

So, I'm approaching the open gates of the stone walled city and rush in two units of cav to take the gates. Yeah, guess what comes next.

Flaming death from buckets of boiling oil rain down and wipe out a lot of my charnign cav. After going through the gates, I assume they are taken. Nope. The next group through gets chewed up to.

Is this a bug, or do you need to take the TOP of gates in stone walls to capture it?

Oh, and by the way, thanks for nothing, spy-boy.

[ibejeph]

Yup, you need to take the "top" of the gatehouse, otherwise you'll get clobbered by burning oil. It makes sense to wait a turn, build a siege tower or two or ladders and a ram. With the seige tower, take the walls and run your guys over the top of the gatehouse and it's yours. If your spy wasn't able to open the gate that turn, you can now use your ram. Wait until you've take the gatehouse before sending the ram, otherwise you'll get a bunch of deep friend soldiers. Of course, this only applies to stone or better walls. Wooden ones have no gatehouses or burning oil.

[Zorn]

If you have taken the gatehouse, the gate will open for your troops anyway, so you need neither a ram nor a spy.

[KiOwA]

The spy should also disable the gatehouse when he successfully manages to open it. Otherwise, it makes no real sense to depend on the spy to open gates.

[Red Harvest]

The spy should also disable the gatehouse when he successfully manages to open it. Otherwise, it makes no real sense to depend on the spy to open gates.

Yeah, we had a good discussion about this earlier. There are a number of approaches that make sense: no working oil at an open gate or at least a delay before the oil starts to work (since it is a surprise attack and they would have to stoke a fire rapidly to heat the oil.) Another suggestion was that the defenders should start out randomly scattered about the walls or within buildings and not be positioned properly at the start. Afterall, when the AI sallies the player is stuck in a position of the computer's choosing.

The usefulness of a spy to open gates is certainly terribly diminished by the oil issue. Most defended walled cities that actually succumbed to siege actually fell to treachery from what I've read. While bribing a garrison is a fair representation, a spy opening the gates could be made a bit more "real."

[The_Mark]

Yeah, we had a good discussion about this earlier. There are a number of approaches that make sense: no working oil at an open gate or at least a delay before the oil starts to work (since it is a surprise attack and they would have to stoke a fire rapidly to heat the oil.) Another suggestion was that the defenders should start out randomly scattered about the walls or within buildings and not be positioned properly at the start. Afterall, when the AI sallies the player is stuck in a position of the computer's choosing.

The usefulness of a spy to open gates is certainly terribly diminished by the oil issue. Most defended walled cities that actually succumbed to siege actually fell to treachery from what I've read. While bribing a garrison is a fair representation, a spy opening the gates could be made a bit more "real."

Good points. Wonder if they're going to fix this in the next patch?

But really, that would make much more sense, and maybe have the attack during nighttime, haven't seen any of those battles in SP. It is, after all, a surprise attack.

And yes, it is suicide to attack the gates, more so if they have a phalanx blocking the gateway. If they don't, well, you CAN storm through the oil but it will cause casualties.