Seiges

[Vades]

What is EB's possition on sieges, i'v read that actual assaults on citys were rare, and if so are you going to change the way sieges/assaulting citys works? or if your not going to change the amount of sieges, the length of time it takes to siege a city and have the enemy surrender? I dont really know anything so if im completely off on this or it doesn't make sense for some reason i'd suggest ignoring me

[Rodion Romanovich]

I'l like it if rams could have build time 0 turns, or if small towns/cities with ridiculously small 2-3 unit peasant/town watch/skirmishers garrisons and wooden walls would surrender instantly when a 20 unit high quality army puts it on siege.

If there, historically, were so few sieges, how come so many cities could be conquered? Well, obviously because not all cities needed and assualt or siege in order to be conquered!

If rebellions would be beefed up for compensation I think it would be more historically accurate.

[Vades]

hmm i think i worded that wrong, and i guess there would have been lots of sieges, but the actual assault is what i'm talking about. i dont think that happened all that often but im not sure.

[curufinwe_91]

Yeah cities were taken but if a conquerer made an example of one city, then the rest of the faction's cities in the area would probably surrender when asked to. Could you not get the diplomat to have a "surrender" demand to cities under siege?

[Furious Mental]

If taking one city allowed the player to instantly force the surrender of every adjacent city, the game would be not be chalenging and therefore not fun. Whole factions would disappear or be rendered impotent with the fall of a single province.

[Steppe Merc]

Well sieges did happen. And rember, there were a lot more real towns than the one in the game. So in a way if you do take over the one big one, the other "near by" (non existant in the game) towns do give up.
But sieges did happen. Also about the whole surrendering, that is what bribing is for. That is the "surrendering": bribe the town.

That said, sieges will be different... not quite sure how, as my factions rarely if ever use as complex siege equipment, as they only had captive Greek engineers.

[Rodion Romanovich]

If taking one city allowed the player to instantly force the surrender of every adjacent city, the game would be not be chalenging and therefore not fun. Whole factions would disappear or be rendered impotent with the fall of a single province.

That's not what I meant. I meant that if a faction holds a very small town with say 1000 population and a garrison of 100 peasants, it's pretty ridiculous that they'll try a stand against an army of 10 legionaries, 4 archers, 1 artillery and 5 cavalry, or whatever you happen to have brought to besiege the town. All larger cities should still try to fight, just not the almost abandoned towns, especially not if you're seen as a liberator. Also making exampes should work for quicker surrender, but not if you exterminate all cities blindly - that should lead to fiercer resistance. BUT - even if the actual conquering of the cities become easier, they should be harder to hold, with larger rebel armies spawning outside cities.

In vanilla R:TW the pattern is like this: kill all larger enemy armies, put cities under siege, assault. Every fifth turn a new brigand army of 3-7 low quality units will be spawned outside the city.

The pattern I want is: kill all larger enemy armies in very hard battles and with strategic cleverness shown by the enemy. Eventually the player gets an advantage and can start conquering. He puts larger cities under siege (and maintaining a siege should IMO give besieger casualties like in M:TW) with losses due to disease, harassing, night raids etc., then conquer the larger cities by assault or starving them. Some sallying attempts and relief attempts, then the city falls. If you've conquered all major cities (perhaps the 5 largest of the 7-8 the faction holds), the others should just surrender and let you occupy them without any fight, at least if the garrison is small. A few pockets of small rebel armies move around in the newly conquered lands - they're the last defenders who try to hold out, but then the area becomes completely calm. But then, 10-20 turns later, a large rebellion of 3 full stacks is spawned in the area, with around 8 units of high-quality footmen supported by many lower-quality footmen and (fewer) missile and militia cavalry units. You beat that rebellion, and things become calmer again for a while, but then after 30-40 turns another rebellion is spawned - maybe not as large if the last one was beaten quickly. If a rebellion would be successful, it should grow and get more stacks spawned, especially if the player was a cruel conqueror (high taxes, unprovoked attack, many exterminations, much tearing down of enemy temples and culture buildings*), but not if the player is popular.

In total I think those changes would make the game HARDER, not EASIER, than it is now.

* That's also a feature I'd like to see - a possibility to be respect local religions when conquering a faction, without getting a penalty from it. It's strange that for example a shrine to dionysos means a culture penalty if you're a faction that can build a shrine to bacchus - bacchus is almost the same guy as dionysos (please correct me if I'm wrong)!