Idea! Interception

[The_Doctor]

I am sick of the enemy being able to walk straight into my provinces and besiege my city. It is unrealistic and unfair.

So hear is my ideas.

1. Make the watch structure a building that you build in your cities, like in the other TW games. This will let you see anything that happens in your province, which is makes sense.

2. When an enemy/neutral army enters your province your get a message telling you that a non-allied army has entered your province, and some options. The options will include something like these:

-March our to engage to enemy (your garrison marches out of the city to engage the enemy at the borders of your province). This means the garrison cannot be a load of peasants, it has to be made up of good troops. It will also increase the number of battles in the game. And stop the AI sending 2 or 3 units to take a city.

-Prepare for a seige (Calls in peasants from the country side, gathers food to increase the time it takes for the city to starve, raises some extra units from the peasant, e.g. peasants, malitia)

-Do nothing

This would make sense, because somebody, like peasants or a patrol, would see an army coming and raise the alarm. The same would happen with brigands, only the message would be different.

They can put this in the expansion pack.

[The Stranger]

this is a brilliant idea. damn you're smart.

[Colovion]

It's a good idea - but I'd like to be able to just "Block Enemy Army's Path" or alternatively "Do a custom move" so that you can take the high ground or hide a division in a wooded area. (to name a few more options to that list of things)

[The_Doctor]

It's a good idea - but I'd like to be able to just "Block Enemy Army's Path" or alternatively "Do a custom move" so that you can take the high ground or hide a division in a wooded area. (to name a few more options to that list of things)

Deciding where to fight would be better, than just running at the enemy. It would also encourage people to use the ambush ability. The enemy has been sighted, we know where they are going, lets ambush them.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Very good idea. Just adding a cost depending on garrison size and city population for the "prepare for siege" option, and it's perfect IMO. While they're at it, I think there should be a manual management of how much food reserves you should have in a city ready for sieges, something that'd cost denarii and therefore not be used much in non-border provinces. And perhaps also add so that naval province cities would never starve unless their port is blockaded too...

[The_Doctor]

Just adding a cost depending on garrison size and city population for the "prepare for siege" option

I think I shall update my first post.

While they're at it, I think there should be a manual management of how much food reserves you should have in a city ready for sieges

Yes, good idea. You could have every province producing food, that you can move to other provinces to increase growth rate (a bit like grain) and resist seiges. Farms increase the amount of food the city produces and granaries increase the amount of food you can store.

Maybe there could be a "Sally out to recieve supplies" option, where you must sally out to escourt a supply train into your city.

And perhaps also add so that naval province cities would never starve unless their port is blockaded too...

I thought this would be in the game, but it is not.

I have loads of ideas for future TW games.

[Divinus Arma]

I like the way it is just fine. I get your point though,

What is really missing is the option of telling a faction to get the hell out. You can commit a transgression and be told to leave, but other factions can't. What the heck?

[The Stranger]

Very good idea. Just adding a cost depending on garrison size and city population for the "prepare for siege" option, and it's perfect IMO. While they're at it, I think there should be a manual management of how much food reserves you should have in a city ready for sieges, something that'd cost denarii and therefore not be used much in non-border provinces. And perhaps also add so that naval province cities would never starve unless their port is blockaded too...

well, most cities in ancient times didn't had a port but a HARBOUR CITY, like athens that werent directly connected to the city. so if they cut of the road (always shown on the strat map) to the harbour or block it or take the port (by putting a army on it)

[The Stranger]

maybe add the option scorched earth (destroy the province and evacuate)

[Bhruic]

I just wish there was some way to get around the turn-order issue. For example, I was playing the Greeks, and the Scipii had attacked me in Sicily. I fought them off, but then Carthage attacked. Because Carthage comes after the Scipii in the turn-order, they were able to attack right away. Had Carthage sieged first, there would have been a turn in between where I could have retrained units and such.

That was one of the things I liked about MTW, everyone plotted moves "together" (even if the AI did cheat ), so if you had 2 enemies move into your territory, everyone fought together, instead of bizarre order system.

Bh

[RexDomin]

Sounds like a good idea to make the siege part a bit more interesting, but if we are to strive for historical correctness, it's really not that appliccable. At some points of their frontier, the Romans did have an organized defence, as described by Edward Luttwak in his "the Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire," where they organized a "defence in depth", where they had fortified grain supplies, strategicly placed observations etc. However, modern scholars believe that this did not represent the overall situation. Territory was not concieved in the same way as we do today! It was more "spheres of influence", and it was often hard to decide actual borders. The Romans used the rivers of Germania and Dacia as borders, mostly because they were more easily defendable (Actually, they called them "frontiers" not borders) . But there was no way they could control the entire frontier. Ammelianus Marcellianus tells us about an event where the emperor, moving down from campaign in Germania, came across a city, that to their surprise had been occupied by barbarians! "Border incursions" were frequent, sometimes they were even recognized by the emperor, but often, they never learned about them before rumours started spreading of smoking villages in certain regions.

When barbarians repeatedly sacked Rome in the late empire, they often came upon the city with surprise, moving down all of Italy, almost uninterrupted.

I believe that the current system of watchtowers already gives us a more than adequate "early warning system", which is a lot more than the Romans ever had. It also appears to me that the time for preparation etc. already is allowed for in the number of turns a city can survive. Besides, the siege mode in this game is so full of bugs already... do we really want to add more to that?

[Conqueror]

well, most cities in ancient times didn't had a port but a HARBOUR CITY, like athens that werent directly connected to the city. so if they cut of the road (always shown on the strat map) to the harbour or block it or take the port (by putting a army on it)

Didn't Athens have walls protecting the road connecting it with Piraeus (the harbor city) though?

Anyway, I'd like a system where you could set a "guard mode" for armies on the strat map. When set to guard mode, the army would be ready to move against any threats that appear. If an enemy begun moving close during their turn, you'd get the option to intercept it. For the guard mode to be functional, you'd need to have spared some movement points for this army before hitting the next turn button. These movement points would be used to determine the stack's ability to move to intercept hostile armies, ie the more movement points you have left over from your previous turn, the greater the distance you can move to intercept an enemy stack during their turn.

If the AI could also use make use of this sytem then it would make land battles much more common and massive, tiresome siege battle less common which would be a welcome change.

[screwtype]

They can put this in the expansion pack.

And while they're at it, they can put all my good ideas in there too

[tibilicus]

Martinus your a geius !!!

[The Stranger]

Didn't Athens have walls protecting the road connecting it with Piraeus (the harbor city) though?

Anyway, I'd like a system where you could set a "guard mode" for armies on the strat map. When set to guard mode, the army would be ready to move against any threats that appear. If an enemy begun moving close during their turn, you'd get the option to intercept it. For the guard mode to be functional, you'd need to have spared some movement points for this army before hitting the next turn button. These movement points would be used to determine the stack's ability to move to intercept hostile armies, ie the more movement points you have left over from your previous turn, the greater the distance you can move to intercept an enemy stack during their turn.

If the AI could also use make use of this sytem then it would make land battles much more common and massive, tiresome siege battle less common which would be a welcome change.

yeah athens had walls, but just a example to show that most ports weren't direcly in the city but a few miles out

[Rodion Romanovich]

well, most cities in ancient times didn't had a port but a HARBOUR CITY, like athens that werent directly connected to the city. so if they cut of the road (always shown on the strat map) to the harbour or block it or take the port (by putting a army on it)

Agree, this would only be cities that actually HAD direct access to the sea. I agree about scorched earth too.

[screwtype]

Anyway, I'd like a system where you could set a "guard mode" for armies on the strat map. When set to guard mode, the army would be ready to move against any threats that appear. If an enemy begun moving close during their turn, you'd get the option to intercept it. For the guard mode to be functional, you'd need to have spared some movement points for this army before hitting the next turn button. These movement points would be used to determine the stack's ability to move to intercept hostile armies, ie the more movement points you have left over from your previous turn, the greater the distance you can move to intercept an enemy stack during their turn.

That's a nice neat idea Conqueror.

My own suggestion earlier was to have unlimited movement each turn, but all factions moving simultaneously, with battles occurring whenever two warring armies collide with each other's ZOC. A system like that might need a bit of refinement but it would certainly make for all sorts of unpredictable events - and be quite realistic in terms of never quite knowing where the enemy was until you stumbled upon him. In addition it would make those territorial chokepoints much more important to hold and to garrison, to ensure you weren't suddenly attacked somewhere in your weakly defended rear.

[The Stranger]

neh than you could walk a army from egypt to england in one turn. way to boring.

about the ports

i think it's already showed correct on the stratmap that most port weren't directly in the city.because most ports were a few miles from the real city

[Beefy]

I am sick of the enemy being able to walk straight into my provinces and besiege my city. It is unrealistic and unfair.

So hear is my ideas.

1. Make the watch structure a building that you build in your cities, like in the other TW games. This will let you see anything that happens in your province, which is makes sense.

2. When an enemy/neutral army enters your province your get a message telling you that a non-allied army has entered your province, and some options. The options will include something like these:

-March our to engage to enemy (your garrison marches out of the city to engage the enemy at the borders of your province). This means the garrison cannot be a load of peasants, it has to be made up of good troops. It will also increase the number of battles in the game. And stop the AI sending 2 or 3 units to take a city.

-Prepare for a seige (Calls in peasants from the country side, gathers food to increase the time it takes for the city to starve, raises some extra units from the peasant, e.g. peasants, malitia)

-Do nothing

This would make sense, because somebody, like peasants or a patrol, would see an army coming and raise the alarm. The same would happen with brigands, only the message would be different.

They can put this in the expansion pack.

THATS A STUPIDLY BRILLIANT IDEA

[Rodion Romanovich]

neh than you could walk a army from egypt to england in one turn. way to boring.

about the ports

i think it's already showed correct on the stratmap that most port weren't directly in the city.because most ports were a few miles from the real city

But SOME cities must have had direct control to the sea. If I'm not completely wrong I believe Athens had an extra wall reaching all the way down to the sea, for example. Byzantium is maybe not a good example as they didn't become a major city until after the R:TW time scope but the byzzies had a major strategical advantage with their sea access, which is what made it possible for them to endure some of the worst sieges they had. What I had in mind was that some cities would have a strategical importance due to them being impossible to starve unless the port could be blockaded. It'd probably only be a few cities in the R:TW period, but for those cities it'd really be a nice addition imo.

[Marshal Murat]

I think its a so/so idea.
I would like that, but I takes away from a "sneak attack" or sudden ambush kind of element in the game.
If I heard that Gaul was attacking my Arretium province, and coming down a road, then I may understand that.
But If Gaul hits the other province, and has a second army come through Pass L, then hide in forest B, with no watchtowers in sight, then the player shouldn't be notified.

I would be in favor of after learning of the assault on my province, of
A)Bringing in the food, rallying the militia
B)Scorch Earth policy, increasing the enemy upkeep, especially for elephant bearing armies.

[Marcus Maxentius]

Don't jump on me if this is a dumb observation. Wouldn't it be simpler to stand armies along the border to intercept these besiegers? But it would be good to have another option to click on for a campaign.

[Colovion]

This idea should only be implimented and give you the choice of what to do with your soldiers when a watchtower spots the enemy entering your domain. It makes no sense to just say that once the enemy crosses an imaginary line that suddenly it triggers something that makes you aware of them invading - it must be linked to a need for watchtowers to spark the movements of your troops.

[oompalumpa]

I like this idea a lot. Maybe if they are allied you could get an option to reprimand them for transgressition like they always do to you.

[Marcus Maxentius]

That makes sense. Watchtowers should be manned. If I'm behind a mountain range and an enemy is marching on the other side, I shouldn't be able to react to them until they're in view. To make things even less god-like, Maybe have a "scout" unit on horseback march back to the city so they can have time to reinforce their defenses.

Maybe they can erect some barriers that the besieging army has to break through before it can surround the city walls. The town can now have time to build defensive weapons like ballistas and boiling oil for more than just the city gates.

Another option would be for the scout to ride to a defensive garrison and let them know what's going on.

[Colovion]

Watchtowers, as they work now, make it so that whatever they can see you can see instantly. Seeing as we're dealing with 6 month timeframes this isn't a terrible thing. Watchtowers should simply make it so that the enemy can't sneak into your territory, giving you an option to do various different things once they are discovered by the watchtower to have invaded your domain. This would also translate onto the AI side of things so that you can't go about wandering through their empire unhindered, and would make the enemy coalesce their units into one area much more easily to withhold an invasion.

[Marcus Maxentius]

Another way to slow things down would be to enlarge the size of the provinces. Make the capitals farther from the borders.

[The Stranger]

But SOME cities must have had direct control to the sea. If I'm not completely wrong I believe Athens had an extra wall reaching all the way down to the sea, for example. Byzantium is maybe not a good example as they didn't become a major city until after the R:TW time scope but the byzzies had a major strategical advantage with their sea access, which is what made it possible for them to endure some of the worst sieges they had. What I had in mind was that some cities would have a strategical importance due to them being impossible to starve unless the port could be blockaded. It'd probably only be a few cities in the R:TW period, but for those cities it'd really be a nice addition imo.

i said most, of some cities had direct acces to their port. and the port was directly in the city. Athens did had those walls but actually the port wasn't directly connected to the city.

[The_Doctor]

Maybe there could be a patrol "building". When it is built you can see what is happening in your province.

[screwtype]

I think the real problem lies in the fact that you lose your income from a province the minute a siege is put in place - even it's by a single unit against a city with a 20 unit garrison.

The easy fix is to just make it so that you don't start losing income from a siege until the second turn of the siege. That way you get a chance to break the siege before losing any dough.

Most of my sieges I break right away with an immediate sally from the city, but I've already lost the income for a turn, which just isn't fair.