Siege Issues (post patch)

**JCoyote** · 12-31-2006, 04:31

OK so... running sieges I've noticed a problem lately. It's happened in a couple battles.

When I get attacked, and am in a castle, my cannon towers do NOTHING. I have to sit back with nothing but archers while my walls get hammered to pieces by artie. Is this a bug? Or is there some feature I'm missing?

Also, does anyone know if they are ever going to give players control over their settlement towers' firing and target priorities? I'm really sick of my towers firing at ridiculous and irrelevant targets while sitting there as commander I can't tell them not to. (For example, firing on fleeing peasants while a ram gets rolled up to my gates without a shot aimed at it.)

Thirdly, are we ever going to be able to put our own artie on the walls at least? It seems strange to be disallowed to, in most cases field pieces trapped in a sieged city would have been put to use up there.

And finally... it would be nice if some weapons could enter the fight loaded for goodness sake! While I understand siege weapons it would necessarily be a big deal, but when I'm defending my gates with a ribault, every single time I give the order to shoot, at the first possible time for them to target an enemy at all, they stand around trying to load the thing and get run over by cav coming through the gates. That almost breaks the suspension of disbelief. Honestly, defensive anti-personnel pieces like that would always be loaded long before the gates are being hammered. Perhaps a "Load your weapons" command could be added for us?

I know this isn't CA's site, but if I'm throwing this stuff out there I wouldn't mind some ideas for why any changes like this could be bad. But as you can tell some recent sieges have me a bit annoyed.

**Quillan** · 12-31-2006, 05:32

That's an issue that was around before the patch. Improved towers are bugged. In huge cities, for some cultural groups, ballista towers shoot cannons and cannon towers shoot ballistas. For all cultures, cannon towers in castles don't work at all. Hopefully this will be fixed with patch 2. Destroy the cannon towers in your citadels and rebuild them as ballista towers. You won't get cannon balls from them, but you will get something.

**sapi** · 12-31-2006, 05:32

- There is a bug with ballista and cannon towers that can cause them not to work at all, and huge cities get them by default (and lose them if you actually build them)

- No info on targeting priorities, sorry

- No, it'd defeat the purpose of cannon/ballista towers

- Agreed

Finally, welcome to the org

**OMGLAZERS** · 12-31-2006, 05:38

Originally Posted by sapi

- There is a bug with ballista and cannon towers that can cause them not to work at all, and huge cities get them by default (and lose them if you actually build them)

- No info on targeting priorities, sorry

- No, it'd defeat the purpose of cannon/ballista towers

- Agreed

Finally, welcome to the org

A user-created mod has been created to fix the towers issue. Ask about it in the mod section here or at twcenter.net

**sapi** · 12-31-2006, 05:43

I play unmodded, and this is practically the only game i do so on ;)

**JCoyote** · 12-31-2006, 09:59

Originally Posted by sapi

- No, it'd defeat the purpose of cannon/ballista towers

Not really. If you placed your artie on the wall, for one thing the cannon would be stuck there; no moving it down to fall back with your troops! (It really wouldn't have been practical to move the stuff back down in that age without preparations.) Also, it would have a much more limited firing arc than the towers, as towers are purpose built and field cannons firing over walls are improvised. Shooting through archer's slots, the fields of fire would be constrained. And, guns recoil, and as mentioned the mountings are makeshift. Occasionally firing a cannon on the wall should kick it right off the wall if it's not secured well enough!

It would still be far, far preferable to have cannon towers. Also, cannon towers have the advantage that they don't take up space in your garrison normal artie does.

And truth is, things like a ribault would be placed on walls over high traffic points, like over a gate.

Still, it'd just be nice to be able to have my ribaults fire a salvo through a breach when its made, and then reload after as it falls back and spears then fill the gap. Currently, I have to pretty near fire on my own troops if I want to use it defending a siege. It works, but it aint right and I doubt the morale's helped any by it.

**katank** · 12-31-2006, 21:53

Control of the towers would be nice indeed. Due to cannon towers not functioning in citadels, huge cities are in fact the ultimate in defense given the cannon tower upgrade.

As for mounting arty onto the walls, that'd be a cool idea. There could be minimum range penalties etc. attached + the limited ammo inherent in the siege piece.

As for using ribaults at breaches while not TKing, having your spears line up next to the breach will lead the enemy to attack your spears while your ribaults can fire straight at the breach.

As illustrated below where W is the wall, B is breached wall, S is your spears, R is your ribault, and E is your unfortunate enemy being torn to bits.

WWWWWBBBBBBWWWWWW
______SS__E___SS
______SS____E_SS
______SS___E__SS
______SS__E___SS

_________RRR