Quote Originally Posted by Eclectic
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.