Wall Tower Rate of Fire

[Afro Thunder]

Is the rate of fire for wall towers moddable? Or am I doomed to lose half my troops before they manage to get to the walls in each and every siege battle that I do against stone walls?

[deadmeat36]

I read somewhere it was hardcoded but I might be mistaken it was a long time ago

[bovi]

Assaults are meant to be costly... But I can't understand why you have quite such a hard time. Ladders on five different positions around the city will nearly always leave at least one of them without opposition. Send that one in and the AI will rush to block them, ignoring all the other ladders you're now setting in place. Grab all the wall towers and presto, the AI is the one losing half his army.

[LordCurlyton]

Better yet, just build 2 or 3 Siege Towers. Using those I rarely lose more than 10% to turret fire unless I choose a particularly bad stretch of wall.

[Magister Militum Titus Pullo]

Every time I beseige a city with a stone wall for protection, I use at least one of the units in my assault party to run along the ramparts, away from the enemy units, so I could rid the towers and gatehouses of the archers inside, making it safer for the rest of my army to enter the city with impunity. It works every time.

[Juvenal]

Bovi speaks wise words.

I always survey the walls for the best places to attack. There are usually a couple of places that are further from towers, or not in field-of-fire on one or both sides.

I put ladders in these places (for speed of assault). I always have other equipment (ladders and towers) elsewhere around the walls to force the AI to spread its defenders.

When the battle starts, I check to see which attack points got garrisoned, and choose somewhere else to attack.

If you can get two units onto the walls, then you will have no trouble capturing enough towers to allow the other assaulting units to get up without any casualties.

I hate large and epic walls because it forces me to use towers. Towers can get set alight, fail to dock properly or experience the 1.5 patch tower bug.

In conclusion, ladders are your friends - use lots of them and you can out-manoeuvre the AI and get over the walls with few if any losses.

[Centurion Varricus]

Considering how difficult a direct assault was historically, I think the rate of fire is too low. Most cities if I remember correctly in the Punic wars for example were resolved by seige ie starving out the enemy, rebellion from within or by someone opening the gates. I know there are exceptions, but direct assault was not attempted very often precisely because it was so costly.
Apart from towers and later on boiling oil, there is very little in the way of wall defences other than troops. I appreciate that there may be coding issues that prevent this from being resolved, but personally, I'd like it to be tougher in the interest of "realism"

[Juvenal]

I think the best way to make sieges harder is to use a garrison script. This adds extra defenders when a city is besieged.

Assaulting a city with a large garrison is not for the faint-hearted.

I believe SPQR mod already uses a garrison script.

[Afro Thunder]

Well, the thing I find most annoying is when I make a hole with a sap point, try to rush units through the gap, try to order a unit onto the walls, and the unit has to make sure its ranks are nice and neat before entering the tower, all the while getting shot at by that tower. I realize that this is a pathfinding issue, and those are very hard to solve, if at all possible to solve.

[Kralizec]

Well, the thing I find most annoying is when I make a hole with a sap point, try to rush units through the gap, try to order a unit onto the walls, and the unit has to make sure its ranks are nice and neat before entering the tower, all the while getting shot at by that tower. I realize that this is a pathfinding issue, and those are very hard to solve, if at all possible to solve.

That, and the fact that captured towers will shoot at enemies even if your own units are blocking the arrow trajectories (entire units decimated by friendly fire!) is what makes siege battles so frustrating sometimes

[antisocialmunky]

^--- YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Its not horrible, but its rather annoying especially with their range and that sometimes you have to advance through a street and they engage you but you're still within range of the towers so you units lose several men...

[Intranetusa]

That, and the fact that captured towers will shoot at enemies even if your own units are blocking the arrow trajectories (entire units decimated by friendly fire!) is what makes siege battles so frustrating sometimes

yeh, it's actually twice as horrible for you due to friendly fire cuz your units have their backs turned and the arrows hit their rear, doing wayyyyy more damage

[Juvenal]

My rule is to always capture towers from the walls. Getting a unit to enter an enemy tower from the ground is a frustrating and dangerous exercise - memories of which are burned indelibly into my brain.

I start by double clicking on the wall above the tower, nothing seems to happen, double click again - and five more times extra-hard for luck.

At last! they start moving. They arrive at the base of the tower leaving a trail of corpses behind - yippee! ordeal almost over, but no, what's this? why have they stopped? are they mad? - they are dropping like flies now, 10 more double-clicks on the darned wall - please, please just go up will you???.

FINALLY, something's happening - they have decided to do some square bashing, they seem to need to align the unit with the stars or rehearse for a Busby Berkeley musical some such before anyone can go up the stairs. More corpses pile up.

Eventually, if I'm lucky, the survivors will form a queue and start climbing the stairs. If I'm not lucky, they will either route, or an enemy unit will intervene.

Sending more troops just makes the carnage worse. If a unit gets engaged on the way to a tower I want to capture, it is almost impossible to make other units walk around the fight. All I get is more units stuck in melee getting slaughtered by the enemy tower.

Ugh. I'm getting all twitchy now, need to lie down with a stiff drink. Juve out.....

[skuzzy]

I definitely wouldn't use the AI's stupidity to my advantage where avoidable unlike bovi :P But yeah, I tend not to assault a well fortified city as said previously it was not a common occurrence to show up at high thick stone walls during this time period and say "that's nothing, charge!" One thing that I do find annoying is the city's building structures. Granted it's made like that to inflict casualties where the AI fails but it is truly annoying and makes me rather auto win and then disband a couple of units or more to mimic a successful assault. I really wish something could be done to just make a regular gridded city for the most part and implement that "garrison mod" as also mentioned that I hadn't heard about.