Seiges

[Lord Adherbal]

Nobody thinks that sieges were done in a day. However, we do know that "simulating" weeks and weeks of careful bombardment would be extraordinarily dull and a miserable *game* experience.

why not just let walls take damage when the player sieges (not assaults) a city for several turns with an army that has siege weapons. If he waits long enough and then assaults the city, some parts of the walls will be weakened enough to be destroyed by concentrated artillery fire.
I think that's a much more realistic approach then catapults destroying a 6 meter thick stone wall with a few shots. You still get to blow holes, but it takes some time. If you think that's too slow/boring for some kids uhm... people then include uber catapult damage in the "arcade mode" option or something.

[Duke John]

Excellent idea, Adherbal! You could even extent it by letting the besiegers build mangonels and trebuchets on the spot. The number of these siege machines dictate how long it will take before walls collapse.

The player can go into city view and place his siege machinery and picks walls that are to be attacked in the following turns. Then the players goes out of city view and is notified when walls have been collapsed. The siege weapons can be used as supporting artillery for the actual attack.

In my idea not that far fetched as the elements are all there already, they just need to be linked; building siege weapons, city view, attack order on walls.

Then the besieged can have the option not only to sally out but also to destroy the siege machines.

[econ21]

Then the besieged can have the option not only to sally out but also to destroy the siege machines.

On the issue of destroying siege machines, I was kind of annoyed recently when I sent men out of my castle and found they could not attack men climbing ladders. This was sad, as the idea of knocking the ladders over and the besiegers falling to their deaths was strangely appealing.

[Divinus Arma]

The player can go into city view and place his siege machinery and picks walls that are to be attacked in the following turns. Then the players goes out of city view and is notified when walls have been collapsed. The siege weapons can be used as supporting artillery for the actual attack.

I like the idea. Check it out:

The seige is viewable just as a city map is viewable. A "seige view". The attacker's army is cozily placed behind seige works and is not controllable by the attacker. The defender's army is snug behind the walls and is uncontrollable. The player may only choose which walls to bombard and with which seige equipment. This seige equipment would be built in the campaign map, on site. Trebuchets would be placed in this mode, as would balista behind seige works, etc. Seige equipment that is mobile would not have enough range to fire from a protected position, and would thus be excluded from this seige view until the actual assault. Now, the player would only see: one time placement of seige equipment such as trebuchets, and animation of the seige equipment firing, but with only minor superficial effects. It took time to break through a six foot or ten foot deep stone wall! The player could, of course, entirely skip the seige view and simply allow the computer to choose which walls automatically. The player would never see the AI setting up its seige equipment in "seige view" unless the player wanted to view his own city under seige. At the beginning of each turn, a notice would pop up telling the player stats on the damage that occurred to the walls during the seige.

This would incorporate seigeworks into the game, which would be amazing, of course. I'm sure a few simple animations of camp life could even be included for the assaulting army. This "seige view" would fix the inaccuracy of uber-seige equipment. This would prevent a boring prolonged player controlled assault-style portion as well as a boring AI controlled non-assault, where nothing actually occurs but wall damage. (Can you imagine playing for an hour just to watch your walls get worn down, over and over and over? GAH!)

On the issue of destroying siege machines, I was kind of annoyed recently when I sent men out of my castle and found they could not attack men climbing ladders. This was sad, as the idea of knocking the ladders over and the besiegers falling to their deaths was strangely appealing.

Oh I completely agree. I think the ladders need to be completely reworked anyway.

[Duke John]

And players would still be able to use ladders, rams and siege towers to try taking the city without bombarding it first. Although the amount of casualities would be much higher, it provides the player with an interesting question; assault quickly and face the consequences, bombard the walls for an easier assault or starve out the defenders. Add a simply supply system and you've got a far more accurate medieval wargame.



Edit: by the way, this is also partly possible already with R:TW using scripts (damage_wall). Just to show how close CA is to such a system.

[Divinus Arma]

And players would still be able to use ladders, rams and siege towers to try taking the city without bombarding it first. Although the amount of casualities would be much higher, it provides the player with an interesting question; assault quickly and face the consequences, bombard the walls for an easier assault or starve out the defenders. Add a simply supply system and you've got a far more accurate medieval wargame.

Exactly. Well put. I think that this "seige view" with limited player control could be just what the doctor ordered.

As to the supply side...

I have seen much discussion on the options of supplies utilizing scripts. I'm sure CA could have an easier time of it then through scripting, but I am sure that even a rudimentary supply sysetm could be implemented. CA should be able to experiment with a simple supply system in M2, if nothing else at least to gauge public response before investing resources in a more intricate supply system. Who knows? This could be extremely well-recieved and add a layer of depth to the campaign map that has not yet been seen. I'm also sure that this feature could be disabled for "popcorn" players.

[drone]

And as a final plus, you wouldn't have to have a tech tree for seige engines, and the AI wouldn't bring 5 catapults to a field battle. Maybe have a tech-tree for engineers, which would enable what level seige machines could be built during a seige, but get rid of the normal battlefield use.

[Duke John]

There could still be field artillery in the late medieval era. But you are right, for the rest artillery should be restricted to sieges. A trebuchet has no place in a normal battle.

[Geoffrey S]

There could still be field artillery in the late medieval era. But you are right, for the rest artillery should be restricted to sieges. A trebuchet has no place in a normal battle.

Agreed.

It also annoys me seeing catapults breaking huge stone walls. I like Divinus' idea, setting your besieging army to bombard a certain section of the wall; it makes things more tactical (choose which walls you want to assault when you're ready), and when the walls are near destruction they can be destroyed in an assault by the final bombardment.

To expand on the idea of assigning certain siege weapons to particular sections of the wall, why not be able to assign units to be positioned in front of a particular gate? For instance, if there are four gates and the player has twelve units the player can choose to stick to one side of the walls or spread his forces so all gates are covered; the more gates that are covered the shorter the siege is (due to lack of supplies), but spread too thinly and the besieged army could badly damage the army by sallying forth; when the besieged army attempts to break out the units are in their assigned positions, so it'd have a real influence on the battle. Keeps things interesting, and isn't complex at all.

[Ryanus]

I'll have to agree with Captain fishpants on this one. While I usually think historical accuracy makes a game cooler, no matter how you slice it any turns waiting around during a siege are turns that your not doing anything with that army, which in my opinion would be boring. Of course if you brought the siege engines with you (no time needed to build them), and bombardment was handled in the same was siege construction is now (3-4 turns max needed usually) then it would be all right. The walls could be weakened in "siege" mode but I think the actual destruction should be save for the assault to make the battles more dramatic.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Gah! If you call one of the vote options "no you're an idiot", it's really damn difficult to not fall for the temptation of choosing that option!

But I was strong, and managed to vote that I agree with some of your ideas.

[mfberg]

The GAH! button was left off this vote. It is required in all MTW polls, and should be included in the MTW2 polls for those of us who have nothing better to do than kvetch.

mfberg

[B-Wing]

I think Duke John and Divinus Arma have some great ideas. The "siege view" sounds simple and engaging enough to be worth implimenting while still providing the degree of realism needed to make sieges last longer than 1.5 turns. I think it'd be really awesome and satisfying to zoom into "siege view" to admire the damage you've done to a city with each passing turn.

To expand just a little, the sieges could also choose to target buildings, to worsen the condition of the defenders in situations where the sieging army is attempting to starve out the enemy rather than storm the city.

And I also agree with econ21 that the inability to knock down ladders is very strange.

[Trax]

The most important improvement would be AI that knows (from both tactical and strategic point of view) when to assault and when to starve out the defenders. This would improve the performance of strategic AI a lot.

[roman pleb]

I have a hunch sieges will be improved in M2TW. They've come on in leaps and bounds since STW; I think that trend will continue.

RTW sieges can be rather fun - storming the walls, climbing up siege towers etc. I've started to enjoy them - particularly in BI, where you can have large, aggressive AI armies. MTWs sieges seemed lifeless by comparison and STWs were rather sad.

Requiring units to man castle defences - as M2TW apparently will - will go even further to enriching sieges. No more ghost archers, yay!

Having up to 3 rings of castle defence will make the largest sieges pretty epic. However, as Screwtype suggests, there may need to be more of an incentive to storm the castle rather than just starve it out - as storming a great castle does not sound easy.

i agree with all of that.

[paullus]

There are some excellent ideas here. I hope CA has been looking at them, and perhaps it isn't too late to incorporate some very immersive elements into M2TW. We can at least hope some of these ideas will be applied in some form for the next TW iteration.

[Sabuti]

Acctually in RTW a turn is 6 months so if you are waitung a turn to build seige towers and the like, then its is technically a 6 month wait. From what I hear in MTW 2 a turn will be about 2 years. As far as battle length, all the battles happen in sped up time. Major engagements didn't generally last 45 min or less. So should we also have 12 hour battles to enhance realism. Seiges are pretty much on scale with other battles. Just a historical note, when Constantinople (now Istanbul), was assualted with cannon in 1400 or there abouts, The walls pretty much immediatly crumbled, that's why its now Istanbul and not Constantinople.

[Alien_Tortoise2345]

I agree with sneaking food in. However, the revamp I would most like to see is being able to place catapults/ballistae (or whatever they are called in Medieval II) on the walls to fire on siege towers and besieging troops. I would also like counter-sapping to be available.

[Alien_Tortoise2345]

Acctually in RTW a turn is 6 months so if you are waitung a turn to build seige towers and the like, then its is technically a 6 month wait. From what I hear in MTW 2 a turn will be about 2 years. As far as battle length, all the battles happen in sped up time. Major engagements didn't generally last 45 min or less. So should we also have 12 hour battles to enhance realism. Seiges are pretty much on scale with other battles. Just a historical note, when Constantinople (now Istanbul), was assualted with cannon in 1400 or there abouts, The walls pretty much immediatly crumbled, that's why its now Istanbul and not Constantinople

Well from what I had understood, what actually happened was that the Byzantines forgot to close the Blachernae gate, and when the Turks realised this, they burst in.

[ByzantineKnight]

Yah, they need to be changed but how would you put the 10+ weeks you need to assult the castle into a realistic game without it taking a half an hour to seige a small outpost to say nothing of a huge fortress.

[sunsmountain]

I want more space in sieges, where your troops are still constricted by buildings, but you can move in between them easier, without your troops finding some complicated path.

So with the current collision detection, less buildings! And make them destroyable for a change, if i'm unloading wave after wave of heavy onagers upon their Palace (government building), remove it. If you won't let me build a governors house at least downgrade their level 5 building/farm/road so i can build over it.

[ChewieTobbacca]

Actually the walls of constinople didn't crumble.. in fact cannons fired so slow that some places could be repaired before another shot would damage that same area.

[Gorky]

in palace of ability: can sap
Special engineer or pioneer units

its like auxiliary troops
but it can build and use ballistas and catapults

(the armies can be build bonus siege equipment during a siege
as siege towers and sap holes)

the army with a pioneers can be move faster (it can be build wood bridge cross the rivers) the bridge can't be seen on strategic map because it's only a temporally bridge - in medieval the wooden bridges stand until the autumn flood or the winter ice wasted it...

Siege
I agree most of the ideas
there are three possibility:
- bombarding
- blockade (to starve)
- assault

bombard:
I thing it's enough to do a random destruction (at all kind of buildings - the civilians too - which has effect to the population)
the pit (mine/tunnels) has a same random effect (but dont cause civilian damage)
I speak random effect - because I think there are different walls with different strength and weakness
(the bombarding has a same effect as the blockade)

the attackers suffering a random casualties which is depend on the number of the defenders' siege engines including the towers of the walls

blockade:
random casualties both sides
but don't cause destruction at the buildings

assault - counter attack
the same as rome TW but there are no sappoints
we can see the result of the bombarding (and the mines)
and we can choose the location of the assault
where the walls are collapsed at 80%
(we can bombard them at real time until it completely fall to the ground)

the defenders are able to counterstroke and we able to place the defenders troops in front of the walls near the gates

Central castle
I hope at this time we need to defend or occupy a central castle instead of a square
this castle looks like a small city walls with towers...
(like Battle Realms and Medieval I of course ;-))

Capture the city
If the city is not surrender (as someone write before - depend on the govenor's loyalty)
you can't occupy an unharmed city, after a siege it impossible to hold back your soldiers from pillage (this is his personal bounty)

automatical destruct of strange religious place
(this is cause only trouble and the AI don't able to demolis captured buildings,
and build his own religious place)

I welcomed the idea of Realism mod - when the first time at a captured town you can only build garrisons (phase I-II-III) and able to build only special local units and after you extend the right of citizenship (province) can be able to recruit the factions powerful units like legions

[Crian]

I like the idea. Check it out:

The seige is viewable just as a city map is viewable. A "seige view". The attacker's army is cozily placed behind seige works and is not controllable by the attacker. The defender's army is snug behind the walls and is uncontrollable. The player may only choose which walls to bombard and with which seige equipment. This seige equipment would be built in the campaign map, on site. Trebuchets would be placed in this mode, as would balista behind seige works, etc. Seige equipment that is mobile would not have enough range to fire from a protected position, and would thus be excluded from this seige view until the actual assault. Now, the player would only see: one time placement of seige equipment such as trebuchets, and animation of the seige equipment firing, but with only minor superficial effects. It took time to break through a six foot or ten foot deep stone wall! The player could, of course, entirely skip the seige view and simply allow the computer to choose which walls automatically. The player would never see the AI setting up its seige equipment in "seige view" unless the player wanted to view his own city under seige. At the beginning of each turn, a notice would pop up telling the player stats on the damage that occurred to the walls during the seige.

This would incorporate seigeworks into the game, which would be amazing, of course. I'm sure a few simple animations of camp life could even be included for the assaulting army. This "seige view" would fix the inaccuracy of uber-seige equipment. This would prevent a boring prolonged player controlled assault-style portion as well as a boring AI controlled non-assault, where nothing actually occurs but wall damage. (Can you imagine playing for an hour just to watch your walls get worn down, over and over and over? GAH!)



Oh I completely agree. I think the ladders need to be completely reworked anyway.

Hey guys.. now that I think about it, there is actually a game that has a siege system very similar to this suggestion . It's called Lords of the Realm, and it's already 12 years old!

The beauty of it is that it has so much similarity to Total War, in that there is a turn-based strategic mode wherein you manage your province and reaise armies, and move your armies as well. Then when two opposing armies meet, it switches to a tactical view and fights the battle real-time!

I've spent so many hours on this game years ago, and I clearly remember how they managed sieges and it was quite rewarding.

Each turn lasts 3 months... When you siege a castle you assign your men different, temporary tasks for the siege either as foragers, builders or fighters. Foragers collect food from the countryside each turn, and you only need enough to sustain your army. Builders do the building while the fighters do the fighting. At the first turn, nothing really happens because nothing has been built yet (unless you want to throw your men away by telling them to climb up the walls with their hands and feet... yeah you can do that). The next turn, more options are available now that you have siege equipment (you can make ladders, catapults, rams, trebuchets and towers, a familiar list eh? ). Anyway, you have to assign trebuchets and catapults which wall sections to hit, and assign fighters to towers and ladders and carryers to rams. Then everything is calculated automatically. Since each turn lasts 3 months, everything that happened during the 3 months is shown, like "June - Trebuchet fires at East wall: minimal success, light losses, etc...", you can even try to fill up a moat! Eventually you will get a "Your forces storm the citadel!" message once you've disintegrated the defenses and the castle is yours! The only downside is that it's all auto-calc, but it was already quite sophisticated for its time. I think someone at CA already had an idea like this, but they shot the idea down because they think players will be bored by it, which is absurd because they can put an option to storm the fortress anyway. Example, a message that says "the defenses have been significantly weakened my lord! Do you wish to storm the fortress?" after a couple of turns will still satisfy those who want to play out the sige, plus it will still be fairly realistic.

Total War can learn from this game.