Let's talk about sieges...

[LittleRaven]

I love this game. And I particularly love the changes to 'castle' assaults. They sucked in Shogun, were much improved in Medieval, and flat out rule in Rome. But that said, they do have a few issues that I think should be discussed.

1) The timer. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, because I think everyone realizes that it's quite broken for large city assaults. You don't even have enough time to get to the plaza in a huge city, much less kill the bad people. Even removing the timer won't quite do the trick, because the countdown will still kick in for the defenders eventually.


2) Does anyone know if it costs the attacker anything to keep a siege up? Because as far as I can tell it doesn't, and that's a real shame.

It's a problem for two reasons...

• It doesn't jive with history. Historically, a siege was almost as hard on the attackers as it was on the defenders. When people saw the attackers coming, they gathered all the food in the area within the walls of the city. Unless the enemy army was very well prepared, they quickly stripped the nearby area of food and started to get hungry themselves. Disease was another common factor. If fact, attackers frequently performed assaults because they knew that there was a good chance the defenders would outlast them. Right now, though, only the defenders suffer casualties. (though not very many, which is a very positive change from Medieval.)
• It doesn't jive with gameplay. One thing we can surely all agree on is the city assaults kick ass. The cities look beautiful, fights on the walls are exciting, and boiling oil is just plain mean. Once the timer issue is fixed, these things will be one of the highlights of the Rome experience. So we should do everything we can to encourage them, and allowing the attacker to unrealistically sit outside the walls at no cost does the exact opposite.

These problems existed in the initial build of Medieval, too. Eventually, a patch caused the upkeep of an army performing a siege to double or triple. That was a good change, though I think the upkeep costs should probably be even higher. (remember, performing a siege should be a very expensive option for the attacker) Another idea would be to cause the attacker to suffer casualties as well, especially after the first turn. (to reflect the fact that the attacker has stripped the area of life and is beginning to starve themselves) This would also give added incentive to build large and epic stone walls, which currently have problems. (see 3)


3) There's very little reason to upgrade beyond stone walls. All that does is allow the attackers to build better siege towers. And what's really strange is that the biggest, meanest siege tower costs just the same as the rickety wooden one. Also, every stone wall is equally vulnerable to sappers. So why bother spending time and money building a better wall? Even the greater food stocks don't help you, because there's no penalty for the attacker waiting around, so why should he care if it take 5 or 8 turns to starve you?

Fortunately, this has an easy fix.

• Towers: Make better siege towers more expensive. Personally, I lean towards making each level of tower twice as expensive as the one before it, but at least make the iron-plated juggernaughts a little more expensive than the wooden deals.
• Sap points: Two options here. The best would be to require multiple sap points to bring down large and epic stone walls. So while a sap point completely destroys a stone wall, it only does 50% damage to a large stone wall, and 35% damage to an epic stone wall. That way the attacker has to build three sap points to bring down a single epic wall, and expend three units to dig them. This one would enhance the walls the most, but would probably be the trickiest to implement. In fact it may be beyond the scope of a patch. So, option 2: Make sap points against large and epic stone walls more expensive. Again, I'd go for each level being twice as expensive as the one before it. So sapping a regular stone wall costs 75 points, sapping a large one costs 150, and sapping an epic wall costs 300.

What do you guys think?

[King Azzole]

To your first point = Supply lines. Perhaps distance to your nearest settlement would dictate the losses you sustain from prolonged sieges? I also suggest an army can take "food points" sorta invest some money into an army before a siege, the more you invest the more food they brought and the longer they can last before starting to get hungry and deseased.

Second point = I love the timer, it helps gameplay but I dont think if it runs out you sohuld break off the siege. Perhaps cycle to night time by the time the timer runs out and have the attackers break off to make camp, unless they are in the town square, then the timer should be turned off.

On your last point, I agree wholeheartedly. When I built my first epic wall I was so excited to see a siege I basically begged my nearest enemy to attack me. When I saw those massive, steel coated siege towers I almost cried... Then a single sap point brought down the entire wall. I think epic and large stone walls should require larger sap points, which take 2 units to use, and everything be more expensive. As it stands now your 100% right, theres no point on having the larger walls.

[Orvis Tertia]

Good points all round.

I agree strongly with the assertion that a seige should be more costly to the beseiging army. I want the AI to have more reason to assault my cities.

I also think that a failed assault (when the timer runs out) should not break the seige. It should be perfectly acceptable to have minor assaults meant to test or weaken the enemy, and you should be able to pull back and maintaing the seige and not have any negative attributes picked up by your general.

[LittleRaven]

To your first point = Supply lines. Perhaps distance to your nearest settlement would dictate the losses you sustain from prolonged sieges? I also suggest an army can take "food points" sorta invest some money into an army before a siege, the more you invest the more food they brought and the longer they can last before starting to get hungry and deseased.

Good ideas, but I doubt that either are feasible for a patch. Maybe they could be implemented in the next generation of TW games, (TW makes huge strides in the high level strategy department with each interation) but I'm looking for something that CA can do now.

[Lord of the Isles]

Agree 100% LittleRaven, nice post. I find it strange that CA, having listened to their fans when patching seige behaviour in the M:TW patch, have gone back to the flawed way of doing things for R:TW. Oh well.

1) The timer. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, because I think everyone realizes that it's quite broken for large city assaults. You don't even have enough time to get to the plaza in a huge city, much less kill the bad people. Even removing the timer won't quite do the trick, because the countdown will still kick in for the defenders eventually.

Which is why the Time Limit Negator mod is a must:

http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db...mods&cat_id=10

Never leave home without it.

[LittleRaven]

I find it strange that CA, having listened to their fans when patching seige behaviour in the M:TW patch, have gone back to the flawed way of doing things for R:TW. Oh well.

Ehh, I don't blame CA for that. They were busy making Rome at the same time they were patching Medieval. And they must have been pretty busy, because this game kicks ass. It's not surprising that a few things got lost in the wash. They fixed it in a patch before and I'm sure they can do it again.

Which is why the Time Limit Negator mod is a must:

Doesn't quite work, though. Last night, I was assaulting Syracuse as Carthage. It took my Iberian infantry a LONG time to clear all the armored hoplites off the walls. Just as they finished, the little '3 minute' counter started running for the Greeks. I raced a cavalry unit to the square, but that didn't stop the timer. As soon as it hit 0, I lost and the siege was broken. *sigh*

[Botis]

"2) Does anyone know if it costs the attacker anything to keep a siege up? Because as far as I can tell it doesn't, and that's a real shame

- From my play so far it doesn't look like costs increase for the beseiger. Or for field armies. For that matter I haven't noticed any attrition either except a very small amount sometimes when under siege. I could be wrong about both of this though.
- It's not unreasonable to increase the support cost of an army "in the field", and/or increase unit support costs when in hostile territory. I don't know enough about ancient army logistics to say what they did, but I know in later periods sieges were frequently abandoned due to dwindling of supplies that armies took with them. Don't know if it should cost any more to support an army in a siege.
- Armies in reality also suffered sometimes horrendous attrition as you say, particularly where they had to make a lengthy stay such as during a siege (digging latrines next to drinking water... real smart!). Some level of attrition for the beseiger seems reasonable to me - should be lower than the besieged IMHO.

Mind you there are times when some attrition would be reasonble in general, for example, playing as Parthia, I found my city of Susa under seige from an enormous Egyptian army that had just marched for 2 years or so through Sinai, Nabataea then Arabia with what looked like full forces intact (now if their general was Moses I would say fair enough! but no).

For gameplay purposes though, I reckon cutting attrition back from MTW is a good thing. In MTW you'd often end up storming a castle held by 3 seriously diminshed units, thus making the castle assault a matter of catapult the walls take as small a force as poss in and kill the general to avoid too many losses to towers. In RTW you've got to either wait & know the enemy will sally with pretty much its full force rather than surrender or die off ala MTW, or you've got to try to storm it. Sometimes you've got to storm the town to get it before AI brings up reinforcements to attack from behind.


"
3) There's very little reason to upgrade beyond stone walls. All that does is "


I reckon you've forgotten the key reason to upgrade the walls. IT JUST LOOKS COOLER. That said, i think a bigger and more complex seige tower should take longer to build, and more work would be needed to successfully sap and collapse bigger walls. So I agree with you.

[TinCow]

One thing that has been bothering me about sieges - they're not really sieges. You notice when you fight during a siege (assault or sally) that the beseiger only can deply around half of the city. In addition, depending on the location of the beseiging army in relation to the city on the strat map, it is possible to move units into the city from outside by entering the city from the opposite direction. A siege has to surround the city and cut it off from supplies. Since it seems clear the beseiging army only camps on one side of the city, how can it really be considered a siege, especially for starvation purposes?

[solypsist]

i still always autoresolve sieges
i always lose less men that way, insome instances i've lost 4-10 men on a big siege with autocalc, and then went back to play it myself and lost over 300.

[Oaty]

Well what should happen when the timer runs out is it should either do a calculation......... 2000 men vs 500 .......... timer is out 1700 men left vs 30 men left, everyone knows that those last 30 men would be doing all they could to surrender(unless they are spartans). Those 30 guys just dissapear and the city is yours.

Or there could be two 3 minute timers, the first 3 minute timer tells you you have to kill or route the whole enemy army and when the second 3 minute timer kicks in you have 3 minutes to withdraw all your men outside of the castle walls any men inside after the 3 minutes is up is deadmeat.

The other thing I hate about sieges is I withdrew my archers because they were out of ammo, no sense in keeping them around just in case things go bad well the timer is out and the battle is over. I'm a bit mad since the siege is lifted but figured I could live with it. Then I looked at the stack and noticed that every single unit that was withdrawn from battle was disbanded, now after I saw that I was forced to reload the game and download the timer mod

[Colovion]

Well what should happen when the timer runs out is it should either do a calculation......... 2000 men vs 500 .......... timer is out 1700 men left vs 30 men left, everyone knows that those last 30 men would be doing all they could to surrender(unless they are spartans). Those 30 guys just dissapear and the city is yours.

Or there could be two 3 minute timers, the first 3 minute timer tells you you have to kill or route the whole enemy army and when the second 3 minute timer kicks in you have 3 minutes to withdraw all your men outside of the castle walls any men inside after the 3 minutes is up is deadmeat.

The other thing I hate about sieges is I withdrew my archers because they were out of ammo, no sense in keeping them around just in case things go bad well the timer is out and the battle is over. I'm a bit mad since the siege is lifted but figured I could live with it. Then I looked at the stack and noticed that every single unit that was withdrawn from battle was disbanded, now after I saw that I was forced to reload the game and download the timer mod

has anyone been able to withdraw from a siege and NOT have their units be disbanded?