Boiling Oil...

[Kobal2fr]

Hm, what would be VERY nice, would be to have a whole list of possible improvements, and then have to choose only one(or two)... There are a lot of things people used to strengthen castles in the middle ages, but it wouldn't be very appropriate to have all of those on one castles...

Eh, that reminds me of the first Lords of the Realm... god, I loved that game. Although of course, my castle designs were so extensive they took 300 years, enough stone and wood to choke God, and the wealth of the whole of England to build, not to mention every single peasant around. No harvest for you !

But yeah, barbican would be nice, or at least the option to build a gate on the *outside* of the castle wall, instead of in a convenient recess that shields the ramming team. Or just the ability to shoot right through a castle's metal grate. Then again, that recess will probably become a deathtrap when boiling oil is in...

Moats ? Of course they should be added. What's a castle without a friggin' moat+drawbridge ? If only to buy your wall archers some comfy killin' time while the siegers fill it with dirt/wood/straw... That always bugged me back in MTW/VI, and it still does in M2TW (I know the Romans also used to have very extensive landtrap and pitfall systems, but IIRC it was mostly when they were on the sieging side, no ? Anyway, it wasn't such a sore point to me in RTW)

@Zenicetus : I don't agree with you that sapping made things easy.

It was very costly in terms of build points, would tire the sappers a lot, would take a long time to work (leaving time for the defender to man the spot ahead, theoretically. Of course, the RTW AI wouldn't, but that could be changed for M2.) and of course, while you would have a nice opening into town, the towers on each side would still be murdering you on the way in until you'd climbed up the walls and cleared the defenders anyway. Sure, you could always rush the square I guess, but that always striked me as a hugely gamey way to win a battle...

[Foz]

But yeah, barbican would be nice, or at least the option to build a gate on the *outside* of the castle wall, instead of in a convenient recess that shields the ramming team. Or just the ability to shoot right through a castle's metal grate. Then again, that recess will probably become a deathtrap when boiling oil is in...

Reminds me of murder holes. I'd really like to see archers packed in defensive structures right around the gate, wrecking the ramming team by shooting them full of arrows. That always felt more up close and personal to me, which is definitely an effect I like in medieval sieges. Maybe they could represent it similarly to how the towers currently work - they fire arrows, w/o you seeing the archers.

[IrishArmenian]

I am incredibly giddy about the return of Boiling Oil. Yes, I said giddy, like a pubescent school girl after the cool guy "looked at her"*.

*Damn, I admire said schoolgirls' optimism.

[Fußball]

More fortifications should definitely be added to the game. I never played RTW so I do not know how sapping worked in game but it sounds like it made things easier than it should have. One way to balance all these things out so'z it would not be impossible for an attacker to take a castle with a full garrison would be to make a garrison limit for the defender. Depending on the size of the structure, the amount of units the castle could garrison would be different.

In somewhat reply to Kobal2fr: I enjoy having to go "inside" the gateway to ram open the gate. But instead of being offering protection as it currently does, it should be something your men do not want to do. Made possible by boiling oil or water, burning sand, stones or even arrow slits for bows or crossbows.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Kobal2fr]

@Fußball : basically, you bought sapping points before the battle like you would a ram or ladders (a sapping point was worth 75 building points), then when the battle started you'd have tunnel entrances on the map, some way out of your deployment zone. Those entrances were fixed points, you couldn't move them around.

Then, during the assault, if you had an inf unit with the "can sap" trait (don't think I've ever seen any inf unit without it, come to think about it) target it, it would slowly enter the tunnel and disappear in it, then you saw a trail of darker dirt evolve slooooowly from tunnel entrance towards the walls in a straight line (you couldn't tell them where to dig to, they always went straight towards the nearest wall), and when it reached the wall it took away 10% of it every few seconds until the wall just crumbled as if destroyed by siege weapons. After some time, the diggers would emerge from the tunnel entrance, all "very tired" or "exhausted". The whole process could take up to 1/4th of your allowed battle time.

Think of it as a very limited/specialized catapult any inf unit can man (but which you can't control, that can't destroy towers or gates, can't kill the enemy etc...), and you're not that far off.

[Jambo]

I never liked Burning Oil as it just ruined the AI during siege assaults. It would kill the general and rout all their units as they tried to enter the gates. CA had better make sure that the AI is capable of using any new features they introduce.

[Furious Mental]

Sieges and fortifications generally are a bit basic in MTW 2. Nothing to throw on the besiegers, only one door at every gate (for comparison with a truly formidable real castle, the King's Gate at Caernarvon was intended to have 5 doors and 6 portcullises), no ditches or moats, no sapping, no flanking towers or barbicans.