Some Simple Siege-Related Requests...

**Rhyfelwyr** · 01-19-2008, 00:33

Right now, constant siege warfare is ruining my Byzantine campaign. At the end of every turn I am forced to fight petty battles against quarter stacks of enemies, or sometimes enemy armies 3/4 full with artillery.

Over the last turn the Milanese besieged me at Bordeaux and Marseille, the Portuguese at Toulouse and Cagliari, the Germans at Frankfurt, the Hungarians at Vienna, and the Polish at Magdeburg. Out of all those besieging armies, only the Polish have a large, sensibly composed one.

Please make some simple rule so that the AI will only attack if it has say 10+ units in its army, as the settlements in TW games tend to represent the major regional ones anyway. Another rule saying say no more than 5 enemy artillery in each stack would also be nice.

And as for sieges when the player is on the offensive, please include some diplomacy system where you agree not to 'exterminate populace' or something along those lines in order for the defenders to surrender and perhaps be freed. This would perhaps come in to effect if the defenders are outnumbered by a certain ratio, and whether or not they accept could be influenced by factors such as your factions reputation.

These changes would be so easy to do, and would improve gameplay massively.

**Hoplite7** · 01-20-2008, 08:33

Heh, that's what made me quit my Byzantine game. Constant siege fights, which wouldn't have been too bad, if the enemy wasn't made of 3/4 cannons, with a few crossbows tossed in. (And not to mention the AI MUST unload all ammo before attacking, even if that means tediously moving their cannons to the other side of the castle...)

In general I think this reflects a larger issue with the AI. They really don't think invasions through at all. Basically they automatically attack anything you leave undefended. (That's why they love blockading so much)

Bad choices to invade coupled with bad army composition basically makes it wack-a-mole...

**Barbarian** · 01-20-2008, 09:32

Originally Posted by Caledonian Rhyfelwyr

And as for sieges when the player is on the offensive, please include some diplomacy system where you agree not to 'exterminate populace' or something along those lines in order for the defenders to surrender and perhaps be freed.
These changes would be so easy to do, and would improve gameplay massively.

I like this suggestion. Moreover, it is 18th century, not the 13th, exterminating shouldn't happen so often.

Originally Posted by Hoplite7

And not to mention the AI MUST unload all ammo before attacking, even if that means tediously moving their cannons to the other side of the castle...

That's true. I never understand why they need 10 holes in the walls, when 2 are enough to get into the city quickly

**Rhyfelwyr** · 01-21-2008, 00:15

I really can't emphasis this point well enough, it is an absolute game-breaker later on in campaigns. And it would be soo simple to sort.

@Hoplite: I'm also playing a Byz campaign at around Turn 180, the only thing that's keeping me going is my ship with some Elephants to the New World. Its taking its time getting there all the way from Baghdad, its at Sicily right now...

**pevergreen** · 01-21-2008, 03:51

With the new AI being made, I doubt this will be a problem.

**Abokasee** · 02-12-2008, 19:46

Originally Posted by pevergreen

With the new AI being made, I doubt this will be a problem.

But for now, we can only hope and pray

**Furious Mental** · 02-13-2008, 08:08

Something I would appreciate in sieges would be if we could order construction of siege fortifications to circumvallate a city, and the digging of trenches to approach the fortification safely. Since the outline of cities in TW games always seem to have been from a limited number of templates it shouldn't be that hard to implement since it's just a matter of creating a slightly edited map with said trenches and/ or siege walls. And I have heard that one can order construction of ad hoc field fortifications on any battle map.