A little thing I'd like to see in sieges...

[Sfwartir]

...is counter-siege heavy weaponry. You know, e.g. trebuchét-ish thingies firing their loads onto the unfortunate besieger. Obviously, they should only be available on the larger types of fortifications, and have limited ammo, like any other missile _unit_ in the game (the unlimited ammo of the wall towers in city sieges have, from time to time, caused me much grief).
Another suggestion would be to make some "plateaus", on the larger types of fortification, built on extended sections of the wall, where it would be possible to place one's faithful ballista unit, catapult unit or whatever one may have. The risk with this would of course be that enemy artillery just as easily could destroy yours. There could for example be room for 2-3 such "plateaus" on each lenght of the wall in larger cities.

Whaddya think?

Maybe too late to implement such things in EB, but anyway.

[QwertyMIDX]

I'm pretty sure RTW doesn't allow for artillery to be placed on walls, even if it does fit. I do think counter-seige artillery is a good idea though, if someone figures out how to do it I'd like to see it as well.

[Simetrical]

You can't put siege weapons on walls, but you could always power up the towers to reflect the idea that they contain ballistae or whatever. Trebuchets are way out of the timeline, needless to say.

-Simetrical

[Sfwartir]

You can't put siege weapons on walls, but you could always power up the towers to reflect the idea that they contain ballistae or whatever. Trebuchets are way out of the timeline, needless to say.

-Simetrical

Yup, I know. That's why I wrote "trebuchét-ish thingies"

On the towers, I guess one could beef them up, but I was rather thinking about weakening the importance of them, replacing them with actual artillery units. That way, you couldn't just sit back and relax during your sallies, as your units (artillery/missile) would actually be fired upon and take casualties, something the towers don't, except the few times the AI brings catapults/onagers to a siege.
Would've been great to see such sieges in EB..guess it's all hardcoded though. Will EB do anything with the way siege/counter-siege works?

[khelvan]

We can't - it is all hard-coded, as you suspected. At least, we, nor anyone else that we know of, have been able to affect the siege mechanics at all.

[eadingas]

Sim's right, we can put heavy stuff into towers, although I'm not sure it would be good for balance. A couple months ago somebody at TWC was doing experiments with it, got the towers throwing flaming stones and whatnot. It looked cool, but i wonder if he managed to capture any city with this thing on :)

[khelvan]

Well, I mean aside from the towers, sorry...

[Danest]

Towers with flaming stones would probably have to fire a lot slower than the quick-fire archery normally in towers. And have the typically bad accuracy, and lower ammo. But right now, I've never really successfully used artillery to defend a town (I often blow up my own walls). And something's wrong with that. I'm pretty sure I read about archimedes using catapults to defend syracuse. I doubt he blew up the town's walls. ;) Oh, if the larger (epic) walls are being removed, maybe they can be replaced with walls of sensible height, but with artillery defenses, available only to select factions.
On the subject of walls, I have a feeling that the Gauls should be able to build something at least a little better than some cheap wall made of sticks, and yet, probably not as nice a wall as a Greeks or Romans at their height (or whomever the top wall-builder is).

[eadingas]

If we had unit/model space, we could probably clone the siege engines models/animations to regular foot units...although that would result in minimum six engines per unit on small size. It _could_ work, but would be a lot of work, and I think we'd be out of unit limit way before that...

[ENSAIS]

Just a thought...
I have often wondered if something like this (ie using seige machinery as a defender) might be accomplished if cities had higher elevation within them... so the seige equipment could sit at a higher level than the seigers below.





________(rest of city)>>>
wall> I /
I ________ /
I /
_____I___

[jerby]

havnt got a clue what you mean.
but have you seen troy (i know, its crap) but you mean liek that? where the city rises further and further into teh center? its a kidn of cone-shaped. als happens in lotr3 teh huge city.

[eadingas]

If we make earthen embankments around the city, wide enough, then it should probably work... but then there couldn't be regular walls around the city, because the walls = city borders, and you can't place defending units outside city borders. It would look weird if there was a giant hill build _behind_ the walls, for artillery to shoot from. Practical in RTW, perhaps, but not very realistic...

[Spitful]

But in rome there were embankments sa well as h eseven hills so we could get away with it if we were clever where we pu tthem.

[Sfwartir]

Yeah, probably Athens too..but then again, such hills should't be modded to unrealistic scales.

[soibean]

well before everyone yells at me for how stupid this idea is, you have to understand I dont know anything about modding so I dont know whats possible but here it goes.
Troops can be placed on walls and on ground, while artilley can only be placed on ground right? Is it possible to alter the code of the tower/wall/plateau that uses the ground data on the wall? example: use the road data on the wall since the wall walkway is hard coded? possible or am I just stupid?

[Simetrical]

Basically, not so anyone's figured it out. Something vaguely along those lines may be possible, but any such solution would probably require giving up stuff like the towers (which can't be stuck randomly around the place—they have to be part of a contiguous wall, which can't have siege engines on it).

-Simetrical

[jerby]

well, probably the bgi problem will be when you cracked that code shit will really begin: people dragging ballista's/onagers up the stairs? major issues will be on the way when the manuever. still nice idea. not stupid at all

[soibean]

hah thanks for the support. If that is possible couldnt you just have a spot on the towers that you could place the onagers during battle deployment? That way you have one shot at doing it, and if not then thats too bad.

[Shigawire]

Onagers is at least 400 years beyond the timeline. Ballistae were too large to be placed on a wall or inside a tower. However, the late Sir Marsden speculated that the towers at the ruins of Ephesus (Greek ruins in SW Turkey), could have accomodated the katapeltai oxybeleis (spear thrower) and perhaps some small stone-throwers (katapeltai petroboloi). Still, this is pure speculation.. the best place you could have a counter siege artillery at would be behind the walls, not ON the walls. Siege artillery was not yet powerful enough to be warranted such a common role. Ancient siege artillery took a lot more time to do its magic than medieval siege artillery did. Counter-artillery would certainly be useful for getting the enemy siege towers. The besieger had to prepare a 'runway' 2 weeks before he could roll up his siege towers. This was done under small rolling shelters known as "chelones" (latin: testudo). Shelters on wheels. They would have workers underneath these shelters filling in any ditches, removing any lumps on the ground.. flattening it all. Thus, the defender knew precisely where the siegetowers would come, and could align his artillery perfectly, in good time.

However, sapping is something which is more prevalent. And it's here there should be some form of counter-sapping. But I'm afraid the hardcoded nature will make this difficult. Not to mention the sapping happens too quickly.. it tooks weeks or months to dig - these were not molemen, they were just men.

The romans usually just used ladders. Or sometimes, like at Lilybaeum in the 2nd punic war, and Alesia, they used circumvellation. This was inspired by the greek Periteichismos (encirclement) of the Peloponnesian Wars in 413 BC.
The Romans did another thing very often. They worked under rolling shelters to make ramps of dirt up to the walls. These very tiny rolling shelters were like segmented "worms" of shelters lying on the ramp. These shelters were called "vinea". And so, they just built a ramp of dirt up to the enemy wall and walked right over it. The non-fancy "brute force" theme usually comes up with the Romans as you would have noticed. Very little siege artillery was used at all by the Romans. All they did was to capture Carthaginian and Greek siege artillery, they never constructed their own artillery in a standardized fashion until the time of Vitruvius (Caesar's engineer).

[cunctator]

Artillery was used to defend city walls, it`s not pure speculation.

The syracusian artillery played the most important part to repell the roman assault in 214BC.
Polybius, Histories Book 8 5-7
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...lybius/8*.html

The defenders of jerusalem in the first jewish war used captured roman artillery from the walls.
Josephus Flavius, the jewish war Book 5 chapter 6.3
http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/war-5.htm

There may be more examples if i search for them.

Also I know Sulla and Pompeius used artillery earlier in the 1st century BC, before Vitruvius time, at least before he was an adult. (during the sieges of Pompeii in the social war and the siege of temple in jerusalem). I always had the impression that the romans started to use artillery regulary some time after the marian reforms.

[Sfwartir]

We also must remember that any counter siege artillery must possess a high degree of inaccuracy, just as the field artillery. Consequently, the possibility to simply change ammo type for the wall towers is in my point of view not the way to go. A wall tower with catapult ammo would be too powerful, as the towers seldom miss their target.

[bodidley]

It always annoyed the hell out of me that towers fire without any crew anyhow. Can that be turned off?

It would also be cool if men climbing ladders could actually be shot at. The unit behavior with assault ladders was always screwy though. Escalade has always been the most succesful, and the most misunderstood form of wall assault.

[Danest]

Didn't Archimedes use giant catapults in the defense of Syracuse? Unless that's a mistranslation or an outright mistake, it makes me wonder how onagers could be out of period (is there a simpler pre-onager?) But then, these were supposedly pretty big catapults. And the game doesn't seem to allow for any such thing in the defense of cities which is really a shame. Maybe if the onagers weren't so stupid as to nuke their own buildings and walls even when in a good position. :p Ballistas should have been wall-placeable I figure.
And speaking of sieges, those darn wood and pallisade walls usually seem useless. They actually make it easier to archer the enemy to death, unless he withdraws to the center of town, in which case why have the walls anyway? It seems pretty clear archers should have been able to take defensive positions (defensive bonuses vs. missiles) on the lesser walls, to make them worth having.
Or, maybe, archers on the outside of walls shouldn't be able to target enemies on the other side that they couldn't possible even see. Always made me wonder how the invading archers could shoot blind over the walls and still do so well.

[Dux Corvanus]

but have you seen troy (i know, its crap).

Troy -the film- is not crap. It's murder in attempt degree against Homer, only failed because of the poor man -or compiler/s- yet dead.

The screen writer should be put against a wall and shot. At least he could have let live some people so we can have the rest of the tale. But, not. Apart from inventing a nice love story between Cassandra and Achilles, he spares Paris, who acts like a sissy, while he kills Menelaus, Ajax and Agamemnon, who never gets back to be murdered by Aegistos and Clitemnestra. Orestes and Electra sure got bored, playing parcheese with Iphigenia, never sacrificed in Aulis.

But, oh, yeh, teenie girls sure had a big time with Brad Pitt half naked around all the movie.

[Spacemonk]

yes and only the teenie girls, cause he acted like shit...
But beware!! They're making this new movie about I donno what actually, I thought it was crusades or something. It'll probably be just as great as Troy!! YAY *sigh*

[Sfwartir]

Do you mean Kingdom of Heaven, with that skinny little sod Orlando Bloom? KoH is a whole lot better than Troy, but still not good enough. That's my opinion, anyway. Might be because I hate young Bloom's "let's-try-to-look-philosophical-and-a-tad-concerned" look. Might very well be. That, and the wife likes him. That helps too.

[shifty157]

Do you mean Kingdom of Heaven, with that skinny little sod Orlando Bloom? KoH is a whole lot better than Troy, but still not good enough. That's my opinion, anyway. Might be because I hate young Bloom's "let's-try-to-look-philosophical-and-a-tad-concerned" look. Might very well be. That, and the wife likes him. That helps too.

Kingdom of Heaven really really blew. In many different areas.

[Spacemonk]

Yeah I think it's Kingdom of Heaven. Not sure if it's out yet, overhere in europe.

[Sfwartir]

It has at least come to Norway, so I guess it's mostly everywhere in Europe. Not exactly the greatest film ever made, as pointed out above, but sure, watch it if you want to. Just don't expect too much. Anyway, an ok way to spend an evening.

[shifty157]

And be prepared to suspend ALOT of disbelief.

As well as the laws of physics and other not too important stuff like that.