Siege towers

[Severous]

I had this problem yesterday. Was one of my first uses of seige towers. I seem to recall that asking the troops to walk rather than run seemed to help get a few men into the seige tower.

There is also a delay when troops are asked to capture a gateway. They will stand around for a few seconds before climbing the tower and capturing the gate.

RTW V1.5 No mods

[Quillan]

It seems random. I've had it happen a couple of times myself. Most of the time it's just irritating, but once it forced me to reload a save and fight again. I only had two siege towers (large stone walls), one was set on fire by the defending archers, and the unit on the other one got stuck when they reached the walls. What do you do? No rams, no saps, and couldn't build ladders because the walls were too tall.

[nameless]

True, I've had cases where men just vanish in the tower.....

Though in most cases I just starve the enemy out or bombard them to kingdom come.

[Severous]

Used them tonight OK.



I asked the towers to attack the walls. One set of troops went up ok. The other got attacked buy defenders at ground level. They needed a new order to make them go up the tower.

[Ciaran]

I think this bug only happens with the siege towers for Large stone walls, at least I´ve never experienced it on nrmal or epic ones. Of course, large walls are the most common ones...

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

Yup, large stone walls are the only wall set that is bugged. However, the bug is not present on every single wall section, it is every other wall section that is bugged. EG, section 1,3,5,7 etc work fine, but section 2,4,6 etc are bugged.

If you want to test this out, go into custom battles and fight a siege battle against large stone walls. Build the maximum number of siege towers allowed (think its 9). Once on the battlefield, position a tower in line with each wall section, and then test each section in turn to confirm which sections work and which are bugged.

The problem with this workaround is that the AI can't make use of it

[Ciaran]

That would explain something, though it´s extremely odd, at best.

However, I´ve found a better use for the large wall siege towers. However, the sucess on this tactic relies on planning ahead on the strategic map level and relies on the availability of onagers. I tend to attack cities from one of the corners - that gives me two sides where to deploy my troops. The siege towers start from the position in which they´re placed per default in the army deployment phase. The other, larger part is positioned in front of the gates on the other city side, this force needs to be equipped with a ram as well. The Onagers destroy the gate towers and maybe any towers in range to ensure the ram can reach the gate intact. The siege towers on the other side act as a diversion - it´s there where the majority of the AI troops are stationed and the siege towers are supposed to reduce them a bit, as well as the units on them are to tie them up.
Actually, I´ve got the idea from reading The Return of the King, where precisely this use of the siege towers is described - Tolkien knew his business, he was an officer in WWI, after all - and it works pretty well.