need a manual control for the freaking gate

[Taiwan Legion]

Seriously, how hard is it to do that?

Why would they just let the gate be like an automatic doorway? If you can open the gate manually, you could just charge right out, and wouldn't have to wait at the gate and be bottlednecked when you sally out to meet the enemy.

[JCoyote]

Agreed. Also, you should be able to shut it, regardless of how close anything is to it... or under it. If I close the gate on some of my own men... so be it. If I catch a few enemies... hehehe. The balance though should be the gate opening and closing slower as a balance. The big huge gates in those days didnt move at a moment's notice.

[sapi]

My guess as to why a manual control isn't ingame is that it would lead to some members of a unit being stranded, and as we all know, when some men get stuck at the bottom of ladders etc it really stuffs things up.

Adding another aspect of the game sure to cause such problems wouldn't be a great idea, imo

[SMZ]

^that's a good point, but I'd like to see some simple control of the gates, towers too - I don't know why I can't tell my towers which units/siege engines to fire at... ie: if they throw ladders up against the walls and their general moves forward into range I'd rather my towers fired at the general out in the open rather than at the men climbing onto my walls because half the time they end up hitting my own defending unit in the back of the head =/

[R'as al Ghul]

I don't know why I can't tell my towers which units/siege engines to fire at... =/

I think that would make things very easy. Think about it, the enemy breaches your walls and while storming through them their General approaches into firing distance of your towers. How many shots do you figure would you need to hit him? Also, what would the tower crew think? Rather than shooting at the enemies that approach their position and threaten their lives, they shoot at a Cav unit that can't enter the tower and is outside the castle anyway.

I think it's fine that we can't control the towers.
I think the gates can use some tweaking, it's not good that cav can charge through when chasing infantry and thereby takes the gatehouse. Also, the way over the ramparts in larger castles needs to be closed for enemies. It doesn't make sense to have different wall levels when you can just walk through a door and that's it.
The doors and gates need to close immediatly after the friendly unit, even if that means killing enemies with the falling gate.

R'as

[Rollon]

It should also be possible to repel ladders, that's what halberdier where all about.
Too many 'shoulds', I know [sigh].

[Zghuk]

My guess as to why a manual control isn't ingame is that it would lead to some members of a unit being stranded, and as we all know, when some men get stuck at the bottom of ladders etc it really stuffs things up.

Stranded men? Who cares?

We have to defend a city and the closed gates are more important... I think in MTW1 there was a manual button, right?

[Lusted]

We have to defend a city and the closed gates are more important... I think in MTW1 there was a manual button, right?

No. Gates clsoed and opened as you mvoed your troops through.

[Northnovas]

YES! YES! There should be a manual control. Nothing worse then a bad mouse click in the heat of battle and a unit sallies out. The enemy infantry was routed off the walls and there is just enemy calvary outside the walls. Now the gates are wide opened and no way to close them quick enough because of an errand unit in the wrong place. ARRGHH!

[sapi]

Stranded men? Who cares?

We have to defend a city and the closed gates are more important... I think in MTW1 there was a manual button, right?

Stranded men = uncontrollable units

The same issue which causes units to be practically unusable once they start climbing a ladder would cause severe problems if they got split up between inside and outside the walls.

[HoreTore]

No. Gates clsoed and opened as you mvoed your troops through.

Yes, but you did have the option to lock it so it wouldn't open for anyone, friend or foe. It still wouldn't close until a unit was completely through it however.

[dismal]

The real need here, I think, is to be able to lock routers out. Though sometimes I find my gate getting opened by strange pathing choices. It would be nice to have a lock button.

I'd like to be able to send a unit of cav out on a mission (i.e., to kill the enemy catapults) without having them open the gate when they rout. Horse archers in particular seem to rout easily, and can do strange things near the gate if you leave skirmish mode on.

[Whacker]

Some good discussion. I'll go on record stating that I am definitely in favor of adding the ability to control gun towers and the gate, and giving the gate a locking mechanism.

Sure controlling towers would make the game easier, but it would also force the player to make choices. Do you attack the ram or the ladders coming at you? Perhaps something that would even this out a bit is not being able to control each individual tower, and that you have to pick a single target and all towers in range will fire at them. Any other towers that can't reach the target unit will go back to autofire and engage at their own discretion.

Regarding the gate, I have the same complaints as the OP. Adding a means to control this would be a godsend, but sapi and the others had some good points. Let's face it, the pathing in this game and the blobbing isn't that great, at least as of v1.1, even with Carl's great patch. I think there's a few key points to the gate mechanic, at least as I see it.

1. Give us the ability to lock it, if not open/close. I'd actually prefer just the lock instead of manually opening/closing it.
2. The lock function would immediately close the gate and lock it. Anything caught under it should be instagibbed.
3. Anything caught outside after the gate is closed , such as split units, would either force the game to A> keep the split units at the gate or B> dynamically split off the affected men from the parent units and treat them all as routers, and route them off the map away from the nearest enemy. Given my experiences so far with the TW engines I kinda doubt the latter is possible, so it might just be the former and you're stuck with your units massed around the gate.

Just some stuff to consider. Whatever happens I still think CA needs to put some serious effort into unit cohesion, blobbing, and pathing. Hopefully 1.2 will be a good step forward.

[JCoyote]

I think we should be able to tell towers what to do.

Ra's argument against is entirely based on balance. But the argument for is simply logic and history. The commander of a city can't direct the towers where to fire? At all??? That's just illogical. Next thing you know, because human players win so easy. you'll say we don't need to control troops either...

It's not about balance, it's about the choices I COULD have made as a military commander that I can't. Yet.

"Tell the towers to fire on that battering ram before they have the gate in pieces!"

"Sorry sir, we can't let you do that?"

"And WHY NOT?"

"Wouldn't be sporting, we have to give those chaps out there a fairer chance to kill us all."

[R'as al Ghul]

"Wouldn't be sporting, we have to give those chaps out there a fairer chance to kill us all."

That's the spirit.

[SMZ]

lol @ JCoyote

exactly, and like I said - it really pisses me off with the ladders situation, because sometimes there's as few as one man jumping onto the wall at a time and he would be instantly slain normally because he's surrounded by 70-something of my men.... butttt, the zealous tower crew is firing away nonstop and skewering their own men over and over

"Fire and ashes Jimmy, you shot both of my cousins!"

"Sorry Douglas, we've got this bolt firing quota tho, gotta use em all..."

"Guess you're right Jimmy, too bad all we can see thru the doorway is the boys from the 5th Militia Infantry... oh well, hand me a crossbow"

[Bob the Insane]

The real need here, I think, is to be able to lock routers out. Though sometimes I find my gate getting opened by strange pathing choices. It would be nice to have a lock button.

I'd like to be able to send a unit of cav out on a mission (i.e., to kill the enemy catapults) without having them open the gate when they rout. Horse archers in particular seem to rout easily, and can do strange things near the gate if you leave skirmish mode on.

I was under the impression that the gates will close if the enemy is too close even if routers are trying to get back in...

However it will probably not close if any of the routing unit has made it back through the gate before the enemy get close.

As the attacker and have definately finished off routers trapped outside a closed gate more than once.

The control of the gates can be odd though, with them opening way too early for the approching unit and sometime note closing again if there is a unit defending behind the gate...

[sapi]

The best method for gate control, imo, would be to let the player control it manually, but only if they have the walls on either side of the guardhose garrisoned.

If they are, you should be able to click 'close' and any split units (half in, half out) should immediately lose all the men outside with no hope of recovery.

[JCoyote]

I'd go with that Sapi. Or my way would be to just have them stand at the gate and defend themselves in melee until they die. IE, split them from the unit and let the AI make them do whatever comes naturally until they're gone. Or just have any troops out there route off the map or surrender... which also works. There are plenty of options, just divide them from the parent unit and hand them over to the AI to do whatever reflects their morale.

Leftovers of enemy units trapped inside is harder but could be similar; the leftovers would automatically do whatever their morale dictates. High morale guys might fight to the death, others might surrender. Also, as abuse prevention, if the gate was being battered and you raised it, the ram should roll in just a little... wedging the gate open. Leaving the gate open at the wrong time with the wrong enemies should definitely keep you from closing it. All it would have taken was chocking some stout lumber under the gate and it wouldn't close anymore... so if you aren't careful, manual gate control could work against you.

[R'as al Ghul]

How about split troops just disappearing, like captured routers?

[Whacker]

Meh, I finally decided I'm against manual gate control. When I'm managing a battle the last thing I want to worry about is whether or not the gate is open, odds are I'm dealing with another problem. Locking would be optimal IMHO, it would let me control if it opens or not, and the game should be smart enough to handle when to open/close it. If they did give us manual gate control it wouldn't be the end of the world, just something that'd be a pain to manage, esp. in multi-walled castles.

[derfinsterling]

I think we should be able to tell towers what to do.

Ra's argument against is entirely based on balance. But the argument for is simply logic and history. The commander of a city can't direct the towers where to fire? At all??? That's just illogical. Next thing you know, because human players win so easy. you'll say we don't need to control troops either...

It's not about balance, it's about the choices I COULD have made as a military commander that I can't. Yet.

On the other hand, Towers never run out of ammo. You just need a unit nearby.

[JCoyote]

On the other hand, Towers never run out of ammo. You just need a unit nearby.

So? The problem is they pick the wrong targets, and therefore often can't get things done fast enough to make a difference. It doesn't matter if they shoot forever or not; what they shoot at in the first 5 minutes is most important. After that, the battle is often already won or lost based on what they did. I'm not commanding a field army that's fighting in a fortification; I'm commanding a fortress. So let me command the fortress.

As for ammo amounts? Actually, any decently reinforced settlement had far, FAR more ammunition than any field army could bring with them. Given the usual time constraints, any walled place would have practically unlimited ammunition compared to a field army. The besieging archer would have his regular old quiver, but it starts looking limited compared to the defender up on the wall who's pulling arrows out of a barrel sitting next to him...

[dismal]

I was under the impression that the gates will close if the enemy is too close even if routers are trying to get back in...

However it will probably not close if any of the routing unit has made it back through the gate before the enemy get close.

As the attacker and have definately finished off routers trapped outside a closed gate more than once.

The control of the gates can be odd though, with them opening way too early for the approching unit and sometime note closing again if there is a unit defending behind the gate...

The AI seems to have the ability to lock routers out, but I'm not sure it works for me.

I have had several upleasant experiences with the enemy bum rushing my inexplicably open gate.

I don't really want manual control so much as a lock button like they had in Age of Empires. You just clicked on the gate, and clicked the lock button and your men would not path through that gate.

[OssomTossom]

The best method for gate control, imo, would be to let the player control it manually, but only if they have the walls on either side of the guardhose garrisoned.

If they are, you should be able to click 'close' and any split units (half in, half out) should immediately lose all the men outside with no hope of recovery.

If you could do that when defending, then I think that any survivors of a split unit inside the walls should take some hit to their morale (I mean a stronger hit than the one from regular casualities). After all, their buddies have just been locked outside - effectively killed - by their own commander. Maybe the commander could have a chance of increasing his dread rating, as well.

[chickenhawk]

Some of this stuff takes a lot of programming, but a straight up lock, even in the setup phase seems easy.

Boiling oil really should make back in too. The crispy critter animations are already done and in use. How hard could it be to add? The gate would become like the stakes long-bowmen deploy, you just would not charge it.

It might make siege trains worth hauling around if trying to simply knock down the gate and charge was a fraction as expensive in good troops as it was historically.

This also simple enough for the AI to use well.

Then there are the moats....... :)

[FactionHeir]

As for ammo amounts? Actually, any decently reinforced settlement had far, FAR more ammunition than any field army could bring with them. Given the usual time constraints, any walled place would have practically unlimited ammunition compared to a field army. The besieging archer would have his regular old quiver, but it starts looking limited compared to the defender up on the wall who's pulling arrows out of a barrel sitting next to him...

Considering towers got unlimited ammo and archers/engines inside the town have the same limit on ammo as those outside, I think there's something illogical going on

[sapi]

@chickenhawk - i believe that boiling oil was removed because you could easily hold the enemy up in the gatehouse and kill them by the dozen.

Add that to the new building/wall control system of m2tw and it'd be carnage just to get through the gate...

[JCoyote]

Add that to the new building/wall control system of m2tw and it'd be carnage just to get through the gate...

What? You mean it's supposed to be easy to go through the gate of a heavily reinforced defensive position?

I think it would actually make siege towers, ladders, and knocking out walls with artillery more attractive options is all.

[Carl]

Ive got to agree with you JCoyote.

I've heard it was changed because in MP it and the old tower control system was making sieges extremely easy for the defender.

Without meaning any insult however, it's my opinion that much of this is the MP communities own fault for insisting on playing with equal florin levels. The entire point of towers, walls, gates, boiling oil and all the rest if it is that it gives the defender a LOT more firepower and ability for his army size than an attacking opponent. In effect, even with artillery and siege equipment it SHOULD take a significantly more expensive attacking stack to defeat a given size of defending force.

Rather than nerfing siege defenses to hell they should have introduced an algorithm into the custom/MP battle selection mode that ensures the attacker always has say double the defenders money. Thats the theoretical ideal IMHO, that a defending force should be about equal to a double size attacking force.