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  1. #1

    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    I understand that. I'd simply be happier if the "mysterious guards who cannot be killed but switch sides real easy" would be replaced by real units. And there should be enough of them to make storming the castle much more costly than it is now.

  2. #2
    Praefectus Fabrum Senior Member Anime BlackJack Champion, Flash Poker Champion, Word Up Champion, Shape Game Champion, Snake Shooter Champion, Fishwater Challenge Champion, Rocket Racer MX Champion, Jukebox Hero Champion, My House Is Bigger Than Your House Champion, Funky Pong Champion, Cutie Quake Champion, Fling The Cow Champion, Tiger Punch Champion, Virus Champion, Solitaire Champion, Worm Race Champion, Rope Walker Champion, Penguin Pass Champion, Skate Park Champion, Watch Out Champion, Lawn Pac Champion, Weapons Of Mass Destruction Champion, Skate Boarder Champion, Lane Bowling Champion, Bugz Champion, Makai Grand Prix 2 Champion, White Van Man Champion, Parachute Panic Champion, BlackJack Champion, Stans Ski Jumping Champion, Smaugs Treasure Champion, Sofa Longjump Champion Seamus Fermanagh's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    An interesting question.

    In most of the really "up scale" mods -- XGM, EB, et. al -- the walls come with progressively higher levels of Law and Happiness scores reflecting public and commercial sense of security. This would have been good for Vanilla as well, IMO.

    In Vanilla:

    Palisades are useful only for buying you one turn -- no immediate break-throughs unless expensive elephants or slow artillery are brought to play. That's about it. Towers are few and usually ill-placed. Still, a competent defender in SP (In MP I assume rams have support teams) can sally during an assault and steal the rams from the attacker, winning a quick victory. Thus, a smaller force can defend for much longer against a bigger one -- unless they build 5-6 rams, in which case you're dying in the square.

    Wooden Walls are an abhorrent waste. There is, in practice, so little time difference between breaking a wooden wall and a palisade that it adds nothing and the restriction of cross wall missile fire goes both ways, since (of course) the wall is erected without a fighting platform or firing loops. Bottom line, keep an eye on your population, only build the stupid wooden wall in the last two turns before you become eligible for the next tier government building -- so that you can get a stone wall as soon as desired. If you're in a backwater, don't bother -- a palisade is all you'll ever need against 98% of all rebels and brigands.

    Stone Walls bring the first new defensive strategies. Fighting on the walls is often the best choice for sword troops and javelins from above hammer home without shield unless the target is "turtling." Shooters on walls take far fewer casualties and can missile duel at great advantage. Towers are better placed, though silly blind spots are still too frequent. Once you know you cannot hold the walls, it is often possible to stall the attack and still set up your street/square defense after attritting the attackers to good effect. Above comments about garrisons are apt, however. A small garrison must sally during the assault and take siege towers/ladders out for a quick win (rams burn 97% of the time "on their own" it seems), otherwise, they get killed by multiple break-ins etc. The instant tower conversion is patently silly and a gross advantage for the attacker.

    Large Stone Walls have towers that hit much harder and ladders cannot be used against them, requiring siege towers -- and taller ones -- or mining for the attacker. The siege towers built by the attackers mount the same firepower as the walls, so the advantage there is to the attacker, who doesn't have to go nose-to-nose with a tower as there are still blind spots. The only real advantage here is time. It takes significantly longer to undermine, knock down or climb a tower tall enough to deal with these walls, and ladders are the only "fast" way up.

    Epic Stone Walls have towers that hit just as hard and fire even faster -- but so do their siege tower opponents. But the city KEEPS ITS SAME BLIND SPOTS DESPITE 3 or 4 iterations of walls built acrosse 7+ game years! Epic Gatehouses have slightly better fields of fire, but that's about it for differences. Usually not worth the cost or time -- since your probably only a couple of provinces away from winning by the time you can build one of these anyway.


    Thoughts:

    Walls, for SP players who've disabled or grossly extended the battle time limit, are not much of an obstacle. One turn of construction and you're probably killing more defenders with "turned" towers than the AI kills with the long-range shots it gets before you're safely snuggled in a blind spot. With a 45 minute or less timer on, however, Large and Epic walls are much more of a defense as any kind of "finesse" in siege tower placement etc. can cost lots of those minutes and leave you without time to get to, climb up, climb down, get to square, kill general and last pike unit. This forces a more "frontal" strategy where the AI actually gets to attrit you a bit -- more challenging.


    Things I'd like to see:

    Towers all ballista equipped with mini arrow-firing "turrets" between. If they're supposed to represent garrison firepower, then let's have a goodly volume of fire.

    Fewer blind spots -- maybe one or rarely two in a whole wall, not the 3-5 typical now. Even one or two town plans without a blind spot at all.

    Cities NOT all built on flat level spaces, but nestled on hills etc. Masada would not have held out as it did had it been built on a Gaza beach. How about a semi-circle where the long "wall" is actually the water.

    Firing platforms to put artillery up on walls. As it is, I have to hammer the crap out of my own walls to lob bombs at enemy towers.

    Ladders getting pushed away -- at least once in a while -- by defending troops.

    A breach that looks like a breach instead of a neat cut-through doorway.

    Captured towers that stop firing -- for anybody -- once captured by the assault team.

    Cities going to the ally who takes and holds the square for 3 minutes and NOT just whoever initiated the assault (not that I havent' used an ally's full-stack to bleed for my 3-card stack's right to own the city ).


    Rant concluded.
    "The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman

    "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken

  3. #3

    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    Very interesting read! Do you know has any of this been implemented in MTW2?

  4. #4
    Praefectus Fabrum Senior Member Anime BlackJack Champion, Flash Poker Champion, Word Up Champion, Shape Game Champion, Snake Shooter Champion, Fishwater Challenge Champion, Rocket Racer MX Champion, Jukebox Hero Champion, My House Is Bigger Than Your House Champion, Funky Pong Champion, Cutie Quake Champion, Fling The Cow Champion, Tiger Punch Champion, Virus Champion, Solitaire Champion, Worm Race Champion, Rope Walker Champion, Penguin Pass Champion, Skate Park Champion, Watch Out Champion, Lawn Pac Champion, Weapons Of Mass Destruction Champion, Skate Boarder Champion, Lane Bowling Champion, Bugz Champion, Makai Grand Prix 2 Champion, White Van Man Champion, Parachute Panic Champion, BlackJack Champion, Stans Ski Jumping Champion, Smaugs Treasure Champion, Sofa Longjump Champion Seamus Fermanagh's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cruelsader
    Very interesting read! Do you know has any of this been implemented in MTW2?
    Haven't purchased it -- no computer I own would be able to run it save at the most "strippped down/downsized level" so I haven't bothered yet. I too would be interested to know if any of the points above were touched on in the new engine.
    "The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.” -- Milton Friedman

    "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." -- H. L. Mencken

  5. #5

    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    Theres always R2TW lol. The nestled settlements in the hills seem like a good idea, reminds me of Helms Deep.

  6. #6
    Member Member Celt Centurion's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    In all of the time I've played RTW and XGM, I've only lost one stone walled city. That was very early on in Barbarian Invasion in which I had a stone wall, but the barracks and archery facilities were inadequate or non-existent, nor was there money to build them. There was a blacksmith, but no armorer. Four full stacks of Goths laid siege and attacked simultaneously from all four sides. With four groups of limitaneai and one archers and a weak cavalry, there was not much I could do. While my archers burned the towers of one group and my infantry died on the walls above the gates, it was just a matter of time before they were overwhelmed, and they were.

    Large stone walls or epic stone walls might have helped, but this was too early in the game for them to be built.

    Now if I play BI, I move any nearby armies into these cities, discharge peasants and discharge "weaker" mercenaries to raise the population. Build better barracks and an armorer if possible and retrain all units every chance you get.

    The walls are great if you are being assaulted, but there needs to be an adequate defence garrisoned inside.

    Once you have an adequate garrison of strong infantry and archers, and a few units of cavalry to chase the last of the enemy from the field, a wall is not even needed, unless of course you find yourself assaulted by four full stacks of barbarians with upgraded armor.

    Strength and Honor

    Celt Centurion

  7. #7
    a RTW player Member paul_kiss's Avatar
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    Default Re: What's the point of having walls?

    W/o walls it would be damn hard to defend what is mine. There're a great number of tricks that help to make an attacker's life hard.

    Walls rule, no doubt here.
    Last edited by paul_kiss; 11-23-2007 at 12:22.

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