Walls in M2

[Burns]

Does anyone think that walls are pathetically weak? Even huge stone walls can't last long against Catapult stones. I can understand cannon blasting down walls, but stone throwers of any type be they catapults or trebuches were said to have taken a long time to significantly damage walls, and not least to actually be able to smash them down. I think that the siege weapons and cannons need to have their damage vs. buildings toned down.

Secondly, has anyone actually been able to fire either catapults or other artillery from inside a settlement? I can't say that I've ever seen a catapult fire unless it was through an opening in the walls.

[Bullethead]

Does anyone think that walls are pathetically weak? Even huge stone walls can't last long against Catapult stones.

This used to bug me in previous TW games, but then it occurred to me why it's like this...

Remember that in all TW games, a single strategic map turn is a very long time, ranging from several months to a couple of years, depending on the game. So even if your sieging army didn't need to build anything prior to the assault, it's still got at least a few months of gametime in which to conduct the battle. Therefore, you could assume that your arty had been pounding the walls for months or even years prior to you playing the actual assault battle. Thus, what you see in the game is the "last straw" :D.

Basically, it seems CA just stuck the wall-busting in for cool cinematics in battles. In real life, of course, the bombardment went on and not much else until the attackers created a "practicable breach" in the walls. Then the assault would go in. But this could take months or years, which would be boring for the player. Besides, if the battle started with the breaches already there, it wouldn't be as cool as being able to flatten the walls yourself.

[shifty157]

Bullethead pretty much gave the exact reason.

[Waleed]

Also it depends what you are sieging. I've noticed City walls are pathetically weak wheras castle walls take multiple bombardments to finally bring down. I like the way that's set up, makes castles have real strategic value other than just being a settlement that produces military units. I actually dread sieging a castle as it can be a very painful process. I LOVE IT! Cities are a breeze unless there is a large garrison.

[TheFluff]

I noticed that when the attacker scales walls via seige tower or ladders, they usually get slaughtered by even the weakest pesent archers. Has any one else noticed this? unfortently i've lost a few fudual foot knights to this sort of attack against town milita. I had made a thread about it but no one responded, but seeing as this one is simmilar i figured i'd ask.

Also i agree, walls seem somewhat weak at times, that or seige weapons are awfully strong. It only took a few hits from a trebuches to bring them down, and tends to kill tons of your soilders in the process.... (IE, mongols) >.>

[BigTex]

I noticed that when the attacker scales walls via seige tower or ladders, they usually get slaughtered by even the weakest pesent archers. Has any one else noticed this? unfortently i've lost a few fudual foot knights to this sort of attack against town milita. I had made a thread about it but no one responded, but seeing as this one is simmilar i figured i'd ask.

Also i agree, walls seem somewhat weak at times, that or seige weapons are awfully strong. It only took a few hits from a trebuches to bring them down, and tends to kill tons of your soilders in the process.... (IE, mongols) >.>

They tend to get slaughtered becuase their disordered and usually are so tightly packed their recieving bunching effects. Generally if you want to take a wall by storming it with a latter or tower, the unit needs to enter the ramparts a little ways away from the other units. Also you have to remember those towers will fire on you continually until you capture them. I'd suggest storming them with plenty of powerful shock infantry.

[hoom]

Historic battle Siege of Setinel shows the defenders trebuchets firing out of the castle.

[Burns]

My main problem is that catapults still have ammo to spare after breaking down a wall.

[Quillan]

Try assaulting a city or castle with ballista or cannon towers. Now you'll REALLY have fun.

[Mithradates]

Do the towers still hvae mystrious arrow firing with no men abilities?

[Bob the Insane]

Do the towers still hvae mystrious arrow firing with no men abilities?

Yes and no...

Now in order to 'activate' the towers you need some of your troops parked near them (not necessarily on the wall). As a handly little feature the flags appear on top of the towers when they are active...

[PaulTa]

They tend to get slaughtered becuase their disordered and usually are so tightly packed their recieving bunching effects. Generally if you want to take a wall by storming it with a latter or tower, the unit needs to enter the ramparts a little ways away from the other units. Also you have to remember those towers will fire on you continually until you capture them. I'd suggest storming them with plenty of powerful shock infantry.

On the contrary, I'd suggest assaulting with lots and lots of crap infantry. If you are bound to lose a major portion of the unit no matter what you do because of a lack of unit cohesion (which is beautifully accurate... :D) then make sure that your heavy hitters are going through the gates in formation, rather than scrambling over the walls.

Any faction with anything like woodsmen, for instance, should probably try to use that kind of cheap unit for dirt jobs like pushing rams, scaling walls, etc. The high attack of the woodsmen also means that you'll probably get more bang for your buck.

[Doug-Thompson]

True story:

Edward I "Longshanks" was besieging Stirling Castle, which was held by a bunch of Scottish rebels. He'd just bought a new trebuchet from France.

The engineers were close to completing the assembly of this monstrous new trebuchet when the Scots offered their surrender. Not being fools, they realilzed the battle was hopeless.

Edward refused to accept the surrender.

The first shot from the trebuchet caved in the castle's wall and part of the roof.

[TinCow]

I would have agreed with you until yesterday. I pulled up a very high quality siege army with 3 trebuchets to take down a city with huge stone walls. Feeling rather cocky, I setup in the usual style and began flinging stones. Almost as soon as I hit the start button, I began hearing strange booming sound effects. Within moments, one trebuchet fell to pieces and a quick check of the casualty meter showed nearly 10% losses. There was not a single enemy on the walls at all, but it turned out I was attacking a city with cannon towers, something I had not bothered to check beforehand.

I tried to pull back out of range of the towers, but they had a longer range than my trebuchets. Within moment, 4 of my 6 trebuchets were destroyed and I had 20% casualties. This is without the enemy units themselves firing a single shot.

I had to withdraw from the battle and I have postponed the assault on that city until I could build gunsmiths to produce my own cannons. Sure, it took huge stone walls with cannon towers to defeat me, but defeat me they did.

So... some walls may be weak, but not all of them are.

[PaulTa]

True story:

Edward I "Longshanks" was besieging Stirling Castle, which was held by a bunch of Scottish rebels. He'd just bought a new trebuchet from France.

The engineers were close to completing the assembly of this monstrous new trebuchet when the Scots offered their surrender. Not being fools, they realilzed the battle was hopeless.

Edward refused to accept the surrender.

The first shot from the trebuchet caved in the castle's wall and part of the roof.

You forgot that to mention that Longshanks refused the surrender because he wanted to test the capabilities of his new trebuchets.

[TheFluff]

On the contrary, I'd suggest assaulting with lots and lots of crap infantry. If you are bound to lose a major portion of the unit no matter what you do because of a lack of unit cohesion (which is beautifully accurate... :D) then make sure that your heavy hitters are going through the gates in formation, rather than scrambling over the walls.

Any faction with anything like woodsmen, for instance, should probably try to use that kind of cheap unit for dirt jobs like pushing rams, scaling walls, etc. The high attack of the woodsmen also means that you'll probably get more bang for your buck.

Im not sure though, I mean one could send a wave or two of town milita for instance (i usually use them since they have no bonus vrs cav) and i could understand if many of them died, but at the same time its just hard for me to comprehend a unit clad in armor geting poked to death by an archers dagger or a milita mans spear. I'll have to do testing on this, perhaps you are right in the fact that the first wave will allways take horrendus casulties but why are they takeing a combat debuff and not just have to have a moral check for scaleing the walls? I havent quite figured out the best ways to take enemy walls yet. I mean i can put a seige tower with Swordsmen and they will almost allways have a very hard time takeing the walls against milita. Whats odd is today in my english campagin i was able to take the walls of a rebel strong hold with just two waves of town milita, yet the first guys (carrying the ladders) had "defeat is a distinct possiblity" but the second wave (that at this point was mixed in on the walls with the first and had about the same ammount of men) had the exact oppsite, Very odd.



Its fun you al lmention about cannon towers. I notice they do alot of damage vrs seige towers and auto targert them, but dont seem to actually be able to take them down fast enough. I wish i could targert and focus fire on things :P

[BigTex]

On the contrary, I'd suggest assaulting with lots and lots of crap infantry. If you are bound to lose a major portion of the unit no matter what you do because of a lack of unit cohesion (which is beautifully accurate... :D) then make sure that your heavy hitters are going through the gates in formation, rather than scrambling over the walls.

Any faction with anything like woodsmen, for instance, should probably try to use that kind of cheap unit for dirt jobs like pushing rams, scaling walls, etc. The high attack of the woodsmen also means that you'll probably get more bang for your buck.

Maybe you misunderstood me, by powerful shock troops I do mean woodsmen, forlorn hope, bill militia's and so on. Their generally cheaper then your bulwork infantry. In defense their usually low but their high attack value's mean they can carve their way through quite alot. Also since they have less defense the defense reduction and attack reduction doesnt completely destroy their effectiveness when their bunched.

The best way to take a town though is by far to bring catapults and trepuchets. Make multiple breaches and storm them.

Shock troops like billmen always have their value.

[TheFluff]

Maybe you misunderstood me, by powerful shock troops I do mean woodsmen, forlorn hope, bill militia's and so on. Their generally cheaper then your bulwork infantry. In defense their usually low but their high attack value's mean they can carve their way through quite alot. Also since they have less defense the defense reduction and attack reduction doesnt completely destroy their effectiveness when their bunched.

The best way to take a town though is by far to bring catapults and trepuchets. Make multiple breaches and storm them.

Shock troops like billmen always have their value.

It doesnt seem to work like that. In theroy that would be the most likely solution, and in RTW that worked (flaxmen anyone?) but i just tested that exact set up and acheved an average victory. Basically if you use billmen (the def 3 ones) for anything, they will die, woodsmen will have the same outcome since there stats are identical almost, but worse defence. mabye later inthe game the show there worth but defently now. I put one unit on a seige tower and had the other two attack another section of the wall with a ladder. They were slaughtered easily. During this i gained control of the gate via ram, and had to send armored swordsmen UP to clear out the walls. Now let me say that going in, these guys had 50 or so men (they had faught off town milita in front of the gate and won, took little casulties). But when i sent them up the stairs to fight the town milita, when it was all said and done BOTH swordsmen units had only 16 and 19 men left. So ya, there is defently something odd about the entire assault idea, because i can understand takeing alot of losses climbing out of a ladder or something, but when you are inside the city and climb up the stairway and your entire unit is on the wall and STILL looseing and takeing huge losses, then something is going on and i dont like it >.>

if any of you want to try it for yourself, load up a large town battle, make your ideal army, give the enemy all spear units and no archers and see what happens.mabye have one side with your "elite" tropps scaleing the wall, and the other with your "fodder" troops and see who does better. In the end, they both do pretty bad all considering. All i can think of is that mabye armor type has more to do with winning then total defence rateing. Perhaps those same units with there maxium upgrades would fair better, but you would have to rember the enemy would have the same...son in a sence it cancels out no?

[Oaty]

It's balanced to me. Trebuchets barely can breach a fortress and are deadly to assault, I havent done a citadel yet. But think of what a castle is defending and what a city is defending.

To keep costs down a castle protects a lot less acrage as it is limited on who it protects. Since a castle protects less they can spend a lot more money.

Also a city wall's main purpose intentionally was to keep out roving bandits and not to knowledgable historically but it was the citezens who paid the money for the walls. With no wall a group of 20 bandits could run into town rob a few houses and run back out.

Also for a city's walls to defend like a castle would cost an extreme amount of money. as instead of protecting a few acres it was protecting miles of city. And gamewise it would cost 25-50000 florins those walls and if you have that kind of cash you dont need to worry about being besieged.

[Somebody Else]

I dunno, personally I'd be hooped if I climbed a... what... 5, 10, 15? metre ladder wearing full, or even half plate armour. Wouldn't be able to do much except gasp at the enemy when I got to the top. Added to that, just how many men would be able to get on a wooden ladder before it buckles?

[TheFluff]

I dunno, personally I'd be hooped if I climbed a... what... 5, 10, 15? metre ladder wearing full, or even half plate armour. Wouldn't be able to do much except gasp at the enemy when I got to the top. Added to that, just how many men would be able to get on a wooden ladder before it buckles?

Thats not really a fair assesement because the same thing happens with troops who go up seige towers. Also i said that even if you go INSIDE the city, then go up the stairs, you still suffer a huge debuff.

[Somebody Else]

Maybe I'm unfit, I'd likely be fairly tired from getting up the stairs... Also, these fortifications were designed to favour the defenders, no? What with stairs corkscrewing upwards clockwise to favour a right-handed defender at the top, and how many people can rush through a doorway at a time - it would seem to me that the attackers would get clobbered several to one, as they file though, one at a time.

Personally, if I were defending a place, I'd to my damndest not to make it a fair fight. I'd rig up all sorts of nasty little booby traps, favourable fighting positions, &. I would be making life miserable for the buggers trying to get in, who would have (hopefully) no knowledge of what I was planning for them.

[Bullethead]

Thats not really a fair assesement because the same thing happens with troops who go up seige towers. Also i said that even if you go INSIDE the city, then go up the stairs, you still suffer a huge debuff.

I still won't have M2TW for a couple days so I can't judge for myself, but ...

I understand that towers only fire if defending troops are near them, but does that also apply to internal boobytraps? I recall that in RTW/BI, as you ran a unit along the top of a wall through towers, they'd lose many men inside each tower and would often eventually rout trying to go through one. This is besides the constant barrage of arrows they suffered between the towers.

[Quillan]

I tried to assault a huge city tonight. It had ballista towers, which I had sabotaged to 100% damage, but that doesn't stop them from working in the battle (What?). So, I brought along a trebuchet and a bombard. I set both up out of range of the towers, intending to destroy the gate towers first, then the next two towers along the walls, then the two beyond that. Once the two towers nearest the gate were down, I was going to dispatch siege towers to those wall sections, as experience has shown me that I lose FAR more men to the fire from the towers than I normally do to enemy troops. It took more than half the ammo supply just to destroy one tower! I didn't even GET to the next one, I ran out of ammo before it went down! Those huge walls are TOUGH!