Assisting garrisons

It is way to easy to take over a castle or a city, just engage a lord outside and the garrison will assist him and you can ride down all the Archers etc without worrying about food for a siege or climbing any walls and then after the battle you just march into the castle/city and claim it.

I suggest that the feature of garrisons assisting nearby battles is removed.

No it makes sense that a nearby garrison would assist their lord at all costs.

It's a good trick to get the enemy to sally out, I'd say it's more of a tactical choice of taking a town.

If not cavalry then when sieging a town just bring 50% archers as first wave, line them up and watch them absolutely rip apart the guys on the walls.  It's way too easy that way as well, so there is no reason to remove this feature, because it's just taking away a choice we have to take a place.

MickDick said:

No it makes sense that a nearby garrison would assist their lord at all costs.

It's a good trick to get the enemy to sally out, I'd say it's more of a tactical choice of taking a town.

If not cavalry then when sieging a town just bring 50% archers as first wave, line them up and watch them absolutely rip apart the guys on the walls.  It's way too easy that way as well, so there is no reason to remove this feature, because it's just taking away a choice we have to take a place.

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Yes, if the lord they were assisting WERE their own lord then a strong effort might be made to sally forth in a rescue...and a sally would never be 100% of the defenders.  At most a SMALL sally force would be sent out the slow attackers enough for an allied lord to escape to safety, and perhaps a larger sally force for the lord who rules that town/castle, but such a sally would never stand a pitched battle.

At best, it should be changed so that if you engage a lord outside of a town/castle, instead of 100% of the defenders joining a pitched battle, the lord and/or town/castle would automatically lose a # of troops the same as if you had chosen to leave some units behind to cover your own escape, and then that lord would be safely inside the town/castle walls.  THAT would be more realistic.

Taking a town or castle with masses of ranged units is easy enough as things stand now, but I think things are being done to make it much tougher to do so.

Usually the attackers are faster than the lord, that's how we manage to catch him next to the castle.

True, and when you first start a game with a new character, any attacker going after YOU that is too strong for you and prompts you to use the option to leave a few troops behind to cover your retreat is almost always faster than YOU.  No difference here.  The sacrificed troops buy the lord enough time to escape into the "safety" of the town or castle is all.

My point in general though is the game is too easy as it is.  Abusing an exploit such as this doesn't change how easy it is...just means you take a little less time to move into the town/castle...but on the open fields you can do it with better protection and speed of movement (heavily armored steed).  Less challenge in wiping out all the defenders this way.  The game needs things tweaked so that it is more challenging, and closing a loophole such as this while not completely eliminating any advantage in catching a lord outside of the walls as he tries to flee to safety would be a good step in that direction.

If they improve sieges (more ladders, fix 25% of your army spawning behind the wooden spikes when attacking, you know, etc) then it would be fine.

but as it is at least we have the option to avoid siege maps...  Terrible.

There are already far too many ladder maps as it is, I'd rather see a shift to siege towers on most, if not ALL, maps.

Ladder maps give far too much advantage to the attackers, letting them get up into melee range way too fast.

City sieges do need to be adjusted so they are more like castle sieges though...attackers start way off at extreme arrow range and have to charge forward to the walls rather than starting right AT the walls unscathed.

Digital Terror said:

True, and when you first start a game with a new character, any attacker going after YOU that is too strong for you and prompts you to use the option to leave a few troops behind to cover your retreat is almost always faster than YOU.  No difference here.  The sacrificed troops buy the lord enough time to escape into the "safety" of the town or castle is all.

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Not really, that only happens when the pathfinding bugs out and makes the player move in stupid ways. It's easy to avoid being caught by lords. The lords, on the other hand, can't avoid the smaller all-elite-cavalry 10+4 pathfinding player party unless their headstart is enough to get them into that castle before being caught.

Digital Terror said:

There are already far too many ladder maps as it is, I'd rather see a shift to siege towers on most, if not ALL, maps.

Ladder maps give far too much advantage to the attackers, letting them get up into melee range way too fast.

City sieges do need to be adjusted so they are more like castle sieges though...attackers start way off at extreme arrow range and have to charge forward to the walls rather than starting right AT the walls unscathed.

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LOL I would say siege towers are more advantageous, the only disadvantage being how long it takes to build it, but lords siege every castle/town and go in at any time they want, but it seems to be randomized a bit.

Siege towers = much larger width for more troops to move onto and attack more people and break through the enemies and take the wall, and while the siege tower is moving in you just move your infantry forward and have archers a little behind (so enemy focus on the shielded infantry) and they just pick them off, mostly including the enemies ranged troops, then your troops move onto the siege tower as described unimpeded by any ranged troops, and after taking the wall very easily throw the archers in and tell them to stand ground when most are on the wall, and watch the slaughter begin.

A single ladder?

1 troop goes up at a time to get gang banged by 30 troops at once.

BTW there are siege maps as you describe where you start off freaking miles away from the castle...  I do not remember the castle name, but it's in the mountains near sarranid sultanate desert, marinian territory.

It sucks, kind of... it really just takes freaking forever to get to the ladder and you don't lose too many people on the way there, no real difference.

MickDick said:

BTW there are siege maps as you describe where you start off freaking miles away from the castle...  I do not remember the castle name, but it's in the mountains near sarranid sultanate desert, marinian territory.

It sucks, kind of... it really just takes freaking forever to get to the ladder and you don't lose too many people on the way there, no real difference.

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Yeah, that just turns into an annoying slog as people push the tower and get shot etc etc.

Besides garrison assist tricks, the other is just "have lords with you, outnumber the garrison several time over, hit magic button"

Alavaria said:

MickDick said:

BTW there are siege maps as you describe where you start off freaking miles away from the castle...  I do not remember the castle name, but it's in the mountains near sarranid sultanate desert, marinian territory.

It sucks, kind of... it really just takes freaking forever to get to the ladder and you don't lose too many people on the way there, no real difference.

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Yeah, that just turns into an annoying slog as people push the tower and get shot etc etc.

Besides garrison assist tricks, the other is just "have lords with you, outnumber the garrison several time over, hit magic button"

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That's where the increased defense advantage lies with siege tower maps...the attackers have to take a lot longer pushing the tower into place and getting the crap shot out of them.

Defenders (especially AI defenders) need all the extra little boosts they can get, wherever they can get them.

The magic button is autoresolve, which apparently does not notice it is a siege battle

Kind of late to the topic, but just started playing Sword of Damocles: Warband. Awesome music btw.

I'm not a big fan of siege fights in this game because of the fact that it essentially always boils down to "attackers have 1-2 ladders or siege tower", and then a battle of attrition takes place. There's no siege weapons in play, such as trebuchets and even battering rams, and the defenders don't have access to stuff like boiling oil/water to pour down on the attackers.

I think historically the garrison commander would meet with the attacking army, and essentially say "If no relief forces show up within x amount of time (I think it was 2-4 weeks), the entire garrison would abandon the castle provided the attackers let them leave peaceably. This was generally the preferred outcome on a siege, because neither side really wanted to have to shed blood and lose men in a pitched bloody siege assault. Attackers would be more willing to let the defenders leave on peaceful terms, but if they had to defend, you can bet they probably would've slaughtered the entire defending force once if they manage to capture it.

Note that I realize this is a limitation of Warband itself, not this mod, which again is why I'm not a big fan of sieges. As a result I love being able to force the enemy garrisons out into the open if I catch one of their lords nearby first. Hey, not my fault that combined force of 400 troops thought they could defeat my 150 troops being skillfully led by me (and I realize the game mechanic limitation of showing too many troops would lag your computer horribly, hence the arbitrary headcount in the battle sizes).

Sieges will be different in the next release.

The mod light and darkness should make siege a bit more interactive with siege weapons if they ever release an update. Not to re-direct to another mod or anything just saying it should be possible to add catapults and such.

Computica said:

Sieges will be different in the next release.

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Well, I hope you keep the "garrison assists nearby friendly forces" option in there. Some days I feel like climbing a wall while getting pelted with arrows, other days I just want to fight dudes in a pitched open-field battle. And even if I lose, I want to take out as many of them as possible before they win.

Ash45 said:

Well, I hope you keep the "garrison assists nearby friendly forces" option in there. Some days I feel like climbing a wall while getting pelted with arrows, other days I just want to fight dudes in a pitched open-field battle. And even if I lose, I want to take out as many of them as possible before they win.

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I'm splitting the garrisons up between permanent town defenders and the levy which don't defend the wall but can march out and attack nearby hostiles and defend the inner city itself. If done right we could see several stages of attack done for sieges.

Ah yeah.. the amusing result of killing everyone was that I had to take every walled fief by siege. Very annoying...

On a map of that size i found it less annoying to let your marshall do it, Alayen was pretty usefull for that since he would go on a sieging spree and all i had to do was distribute. I hope in the next version lords opinions will be gathered more efficiently though since i usually had to talk to vassals myself for their opinion to be show by the staff in my capital.

Didn't work, my faction was at war with my faction, and so the marshal would siege my own fiefs...

I never did check if he would attack me.