Some Simple Siege-Related Requests...

[Rhyfelwyr]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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

[Abokasee]

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

But for now, we can only hope and pray

[Furious Mental]

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.

[rajpoot]

I just had a thought, seige battles in this era were relatively a lot quicker and clean affair than compared to the medieval era were they not? I mean, trying to starve your opponent out, blockading the city or taking walls etc all was reduced due the heavy use of cannons is it not? Infact on the frontier it were forts which were besieged and taken swiftly.............what if it is decided to do away with seige battles all togather and just focus on army vs army or ship vs ship?
After all they did say seige battles will have reduced importance......

[Furious Mental]

Well, the trace italienne had been devised to resist artillery fire although I think sieges still tended to be shorter. However I suspect that what made sieges less important is that as armies grew it became impossible to live off the land while carrying out sieges, and as they became more organised they could simply avoid bastions which in earlier times would have blocked their passage or disorganised the column. Hence it made more sense to invest in bigger armies than in fortifications. However, better artillery and guns could work both ways. Although they are a bit out of the period, Sevastopol and Petersburg are examples.

[SwordsMaster]

I just had a thought, seige battles in this era were relatively a lot quicker and clean affair than compared to the medieval era were they not? I mean, trying to starve your opponent out, blockading the city or taking walls etc all was reduced due the heavy use of cannons is it not? Infact on the frontier it were forts which were besieged and taken swiftly.............what if it is decided to do away with seige battles all togather and just focus on army vs army or ship vs ship?
After all they did say seige battles will have reduced importance......

Really? Read up on Breda, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Vitoria... Vicious resistance, street fighting, cities that needed to be cleared out room by room... Not all cities chose to resist the invaders since that meant destruction and civilian massacres, but those who did were vastly more vicious than anything seen before, which makes sense with larger populations and more advanced weapons, and the fact that you cannot use cannon on the street...

Sieges became more and more important as time progressed. Look at later day Santiago, Lima, Stalingrad, Berlin, Baghdad... If any kind of realism is to be kept, sieges are not to be underestimated!

[Furious Mental]

Yeah obviously there were major sieges but they don't seem to have lasted as long as some medieval and modern sieges. I can't think of any sieges in the gunpowder age that come close to, say, the seven siege of Harlech or the ten year siege of Khost.

[Axel JD]

Personally, I fear that sieges in ETW will be just like they've always been in the series: long, tedious, mostly boring and with a completely incompetent AI.

I've reached a point where I avoid sieges whenever possible, I close to never assault settlements and I will always sally forth unless the AI assaults. I would just want sieges to become, well, rarer. A vain hope perhaps, but I really, really hate sieges.

[rajpoot]

One way to make seiges seem less redundant is to put more variety in the city structure itself, insted of using the same plan over and over again. A little realism there would go a long way to make things better.

[SwordsMaster]

Yeah obviously there were major sieges but they don't seem to have lasted as long as some medieval and modern sieges. I can't think of any sieges in the gunpowder age that come close to, say, the seven siege of Harlech or the ten year siege of Khost.

Sure. But sieges lasting 6-7 months were long. The Siege of Breda lasted over a year IIRC. You have to take into account that warfare was becoming faster overall, and since you could now blow up walls instead of picking at them with an axe, it makes sense. However a 6-7 month delay was very significant for a campaign. Winter campaigning should be severely restricted for armies that packed for summer.

My point was, rather, that sieges should be rarer, more meaningful, and dependant on a general's reputation.

[Furious Mental]

No argument here. I would love some more varied city plans. Those in RTW and MTW2 are for all intents and purposes the same. For the love of god let's have some hills, rivers, etc in the cities for one thing.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Fighting across bridges in a city would be extrememly nice, as by the ETW period most major cities probably had rivers running through them.

Sieges were very important in the ETW perdiod. In Europe from 1680-1748 there were about 160 sieges compared to 130 battles. This didn't really change until the mid 18th Century, when between 1749-1815 there were almost 300 sieges compared to almost 800 battles.

Nevertheless, that shows just how frequent and significant sieges were.