need a manual control for the freaking 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.

[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....... :)