Defending archers do not do enough damage in siege.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If 1.2 addresses this in its final form, it's going to be one heck of a patch.

[Didz]

I usually build two seuge towers and two ladders. I find the ladders actually more effective than the seige towers in scaling the walls but I usually send the towers in first becuase they are slow and then run the ladders to the walls after they have dropped their ramps. So I get to choose points where the wall is poorly defended for my ladder assault, and usually run my crossbowmen onto the walls this way.

Once On the walls I capture the nearest gate to let the rest of the army in and then use the walls to gain access to the inner fortess.

[Daveybaby]

Yeah, ladders are great - up until the point where castles become too big to use them. Catapults are my fave - it does slow your army down and thus means you might take more turns to get to the enemy castle, but if you have catapults it means you can attack the very same turn you get there without having to stop and build rams/towers/ladders.

And while a couple of catapults will take up 2 slots that might otherwise be allocated to infantry, they more than make up for this IMO by taking out large chunks of defending units when the walls collapse. Theyre also invaluable for that bit after you take the gatehouse in cities, where you sometimes have masses of enemy infantry marching down the street from the central square towards you. A couple of catapults with flaming ammo, firing straight down the street works wonders in that situation.

But then I'm confused about the archer-on-battlement situation. Does the computer make adjustments to archer hit rates based on such graphical issues as battlement wall height, and required angle of trajectory??? This obviously COULD be done, but it seems a pretty fine-tooth approach, especially considering other calcs, like giving spears depth of rank bonuses, have apparently been removed from the game.

I imagine that things like battlements and forests (and shields and rocks) give fixed bonuses to any defenders - i.e. each arrow has a % chance to hit the battlements/trees instead of its target, as opposed to individually calculating the trajectory for each arrow and determining what it hit.

Probably for a flight of, say, 90 arrows, the game takes into account unit formations, locations, terrain, armour, accuracy etc etc etc etc and then works out how many of the arrows score 'wounding' hits (e.g. 20), how many score 'killing' hits (e.g. 10), and how many miss (60), then plays a load of arrow firing animations on the archers, then animates the arrows appropriately, then finally plays animations for the target unit - wounding animations on 20 soldiers, death animations on 10 soldiers, and 60 arrows hitting the ground.

[gardibolt]

So far I haven't seen any sign that CA is either aware of or cares about this bug. I wouldn't expect it in the final 1.2, or maybe even in the eventual 1.3.

[John_Longarrow]

DaveyBaby,

I'd be very surprised if CA went to all the work and effort of doing as you suggested. Were I the programmer, I'd just spawn the arrows going at a pre-defined angle with a pre-defined speed from each bow. Each arrow would have an "Affected by gravity" property which would simply be incremented every second. This would tell it by how much to deflect the arrow down. Then simple collision detection would ID who (if anyone) it hit and you can then do the “Did it hurt them” calculation when it hits.

That way you don’t have to worry about updating arrow paths as the target moves and it does explain why units besides the one you’ve targeted take casualties. Much easier than trying to figure this all out ahead of time then hope the player doesn’t do something to mess with your predetermined results.

If you tried pre-calculating the results, you’d have a nightmare of a time if you have more than one unit at the same location, let alone what would happen if the target gets hit by a cavalry charge before your arrows land. Much simpler to do it dynamically.

[Daveybaby]

Believe me, the way i described is far less work for both programmers and the CPU/graphics card. And, there's nothing 'simple' about collision detection - particularly when you have thousands of models, thousands of arrows, and complex terrain to take into account.

[Didz]

Personally, I prefer the collision detection approach. I think its one of the strong points of CA's system that missiles in TW hit whatever they hit rather than merely act as eye candy to support a predetermined result.

[LennStar]

There is definitly no pre-shot-calculating in Rome, and I haven't seen it in MTW2.
In Rome its easier to see:
Your General attacks spear-throwers. He retreats. They throw spears. What do you do? Moving ahaed and get hid by the spears? No, you make a turn and with a bit of luck NO spear hits your general - they all fall down far ahead of him (or left or right...).
In the same way your auto-fire rangeunits can kill your general just because you altered his target after the shot and he got in the way.

[Didz]

My favourite trick was with STW bridge defence battles.

Placing musketmen along the river banks allowed you to fire at the enemy troops close to the river, but looking closely you could see men way back at the rear of the enemy army being hit by stray overshots. I much prefer this to some other games that pre-determine casualties on the target unit and allow you to fire without risk even in to swirling melee's.

[Forward Observer]

I am happy since i never use siege equipment/spies, I just send 5 rams at the same time to the gate and usually one makes it. The losses are horrible even tho i use crappy units on the rams. If the enemy archers/xbows were any better i'd never make it past all 3 rings of a citadell

This is a little off the topic of the thread, but I had to comment on this.

To each his own I guess and no offense intended, but I never understand statements like this. I know a lot of people distain the use of purchased seige equipment because they don't like hauling them around, and have had bad experiences with them in field battles, but why waste a 1000 florin's worth of men when a single 360 florin ballista will take down any gate of any of any size castle or city while your troops have a coffee break in relative safety.

Add to this the fact that many times after the gate is down the enemy will park one of its best units right behind the portal, so you can continue to make valuable kills because of the low trajectory of the weapon. I have actually taken out the enemy commander this way on more than one occasion.

I play with the timer off, so I have time to do this---besides sieges were not timed events in real life. (I am not taking the official siege association's sanctioned competion events into consideration here--their membership dues are just too damn high)

I also alway put a spy in a settlement that I am about to attack, but not so much as to open the gate, but for the intelligence of knowing what kind of troops are behind the walls. This helps me decide if I assault immediately, or waste a turn while I build towers. If it is made up of a few fluff troops, I barge ahead, but if the defending force is more substantial I am going to plan accordingly. If one is not in the Pope's good favor, waiting a turn while you build towers and rams can cause one to have to call off the assault when the Pope gives you a warning to stop between turns.

Even if I get the message that my spy has opened the gate, I blow them down anyway for the reason stated above plus having them permanently open is less of an impedance to my troops. Of course I always bring along the heavy stuff to take out towers and wall if they are a problem, but then I have alway thought it advantageous to bring a gun to a knife fight.

Cheers

[Didz]

I must admit I never go through the gate, not even when one of my spies leaves it open. As soon as a unit sets foot inside you can guarantee that the AI has some really nasty surprise lined up for it. The usual is a fast cavalry unit that just trashes it before it can deploy.

I prefer going over the walls, that way you can capture the gate intact, if it isn't already open and once the walls are clear running some archers or crossbows up using ladders measn that you get the chance to use the walls against the defenders and get your own back.

Likewise there is direct access from the wall to the inner courtyard of every castle so it avoids the needs to lay seige to the inner defences. In fact, if your quick you can actually beat the defenders to their own keep.

[econ21]

Likewise there is direct access from the wall to the inner courtyard of every castle ...

OT, but I have not found that. For example, assaulting a fortress at Gaza (1.2 unofficial patch, there was no way to get my men from the outer wall to the inner wall, even though the walls were connected. If I clicked on the inner wall adjacent to my men (separated only by a tower/house thing), they just stood there: there was no move icon on the unit, as the target was inaccessible.

[sapi]

iirc it's not every castle, only those of [north/south/east?] european design...

[RickooClan]

I think the inner wall passage only works for the defenders? Not too sure on this.

[Didz]

OT, but I have not found that. For example, assaulting a fortress at Gaza (1.2 unofficial patch, there was no way to get my men from the outer wall to the inner wall, even though the walls were connected.

I've not come across a castle yet where its not possible to pass men through from the outer to inner wall.

However, its normally only possible on one side. The fact that you mentioned a 'Town/House thingie' suggests to me that you were trying to wrong side as the side where it is possible only has a small tower set on the curtain wall facing the outer courtyard. The actual join between the inner and outer wall is just plain wall with no towers on buildings guarding it.

I think the inner wall passage only works for the defenders? Not too sure on this.

The passage through the building might be accessible to defenders only, although I'm more inclined to beleive its just not accessible to anyone.

However, the access on the other side is unguarded as mentioned above.

[SadCat]

iirc it's not every castle, only those of [north/south/east?] european design...

Oh please don't tell me only europeans forget to lock the tower door ? Will that explains why I could not move from wall to wall. I was trying to do it in the Holy land. Now I need to read the bug reports to find out if it is a bug that I can or can not move wall to wall. I vote for can not unless my spy opened the front gate too. Thanks for the Info. I would like the defending archers to do more till I am outside looking in. SadCat

[econ21]

However, its normally only possible on one side. The fact that you mentioned a 'Town/House thingie' suggests to me that you were trying to wrong side as the side where it is possible only has a small tower set on the curtain wall facing the outer courtyard.

I did try both sides - neither were accessible.

[Lusted]

The unofficial 1.2 patch fixes this problem i believe.

[SadCat]

The unofficial 1.2 patch fixes this problem i believe.

Please defined fixes? Thanks SadCat

[Didz]

The unofficial 1.2 patch fixes this problem i believe.

Ah!...That might explain the reason our experiences differ. I'm still playing 1.1.

BTW: I second SadCat's query 'Please defined fixes?'

e.g. have they redesigned the castles so the walls no longer meet, or is there now some magical force field that stops your men walking along them.

[Shahed]

I played Egypt yesterday and got some Sudanese gunners. Used them in a siege on the walls and they are even worse than archers. Don't hit anything at all. Again same issue, they don't shoot straight in front of them.

Does anyone know how we can fix this ? Any ideas ?

[Lusted]

It's fixed in the leaked 1.2 patch, with soldiers firing through the crenels now.

[Shahed]

GREAT ! Thanks for the tip.

[Hun Sárkány]

Uhh-ohh.

I got the 1.3 patch all right.

But archers just don't react to targets in front of the walls in Fire-at-will mode. When I desigante a target for them, most of the archers are firing in a high arc, mostly not hitting a thing.

Moreover, I have no such file as 'descr_projectiles.txt' where I would be able to reduce the max firing angle.

Do you have any tips to fix this?

Muchas gracias in advance!

[FactionHeir]

They do fire through the crenels where they can, but mostly still fire in a long arc.
Projectiles file needs to be unpacked. Modding section for such type of questions. Its already been discussed there.

Also, please do not resurrect old threads like this.