forts and sieges

hey everybody

dont know if its been mentioned before or if its even possible, but anyway i think it would be cool if their were forts or defensive walls in some parts of the game that you could attack or defend. you could implement moveable seige ladders to scale the walls or maybe even siege towers, while the defenders could shoot arrows or pour boiling oil over the attackers.

Most likely not. If proper movie-style sieges are added into the game, it will be Waaay way down the track.

im really just thinking on a small scale here, like just simple wooden walls and stuff. i understand that full scale castles sieges are out of the question

cool idea

I've mentioned a similar idea myself to thunderous silence, because it seems to irritate the people who want huge armies assaulting formidable castles and having me suggest that idea may be impractical and out of character for a game that's focused on small groups of soldiers sort of makes me sound like I'm trying to kill the party.

If it (the full scale castle battle and siege)can be done so much the better. I'll be the first to say "You all were right." Party on.

However, my similar idea, which I think is more feasible, is to focus a combat setting on a part of a castle battle: say, we're defending a turret that's the last of the outpost turrets. Can we hold on until reinforced? You wouldn't have to simulate an entire castle or have thousands of troops, and it would appear that the castle was just out of our line of sight.

Or, your suggestion of a simple wooden stockade-type outpost defense sounds very do-able, if that's all you really meant: a circular fort,with wooden stockade, ramparts, maybe a small trench/moat surrounding it. Kind of an unimportant in the bigger scheme of things, but everything to the men defending it.

That sounds very do-able and I would like to see that.

I agree, defending a small fort would be very exciting, horses thundering up the hill as you try to shoot them.

Wood said:

I agree, defending a small fort would be very exciting, horses thundering up the hill as you try to shoot them.

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who would charge a wall on horseback? it's not like the horses can climb the wall now is it?

It's not like the horses can climb the wall now is it?

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Forts have gates, how else do you expect to get in?
The attackers charge the gate and try to break it down. The defenders fire arrows, throw stones etc, to try and slow them down.
When/if the gate is breached it becomes a straight fight between the attackers and the defenders.

yeah but a horse won't be breaking anny gates. usually the cavalry comes when the infantry is allready inside. and you'll be too busy fighting them off to shoot at charging cavalry.


I do like the idea of forts tough

Why would the infantry attack first? Fast horsemen could charge the gate before the foot soldiers could. I'm not talking immence 5000 man castle sieges here. And this was only an example, if you dislike using ranged weapons you could always wait for the gate to break and then attack the attackers as they advance through the bottleneck.

yeah but the cavalry isn't going to be able to open the gat, thats why the infantry goes first. as far as I know battering rams where manned by infantry and I think it's safe to assume that the people in the fort would close the gate rather then keeping it open as an invitation to a charge

Again, I'm talking small-scale battles here, only up to about 20 soldiers. We don't need a team of forty soldiers swinging a battering ram for half an hour to break down a huge triple reinforced door. A pair of well-armed knights should be able to break though the gate of a small wooden fort in about 10-15 seconds. It's only made of wood and knights are armed with heavy swords, axes and lances. I don't see a problem with mounted troops breaking the gate, they would do the same damage as foot soldiers when they reached it.

i expect knights would do heavy damage, but they would break their lances, blunt their swords, tire themselves greatly, and generally ready themselves to be owned by some peasant with a knife. and if they tried to do this while mounted, they would hurt their horses when the pieces of gate hit them. only some sort of heavy infantry could break down even a small door without siege weapons.

I would like to see forts and such too. But instead of having to fight to defend/attack them, you would "automatic" resolve the battle. Just like when you send your soldiers to fight and you stay back, the game resolves the battle itself. Of course this would mean more loses to your men...but it's the only way I see a siege working in this game.

compfreak said:

i expect knights would do heavy damage, but they would break their lances, blunt their swords, tire themselves greatly, and generally ready themselves to be owned by some peasant with a knife. and if they tried to do this while mounted, they would hurt their horses when the pieces of gate hit them. only some sort of heavy infantry could break down even a small door without siege weapons.

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on top of that, while the knights are bashing the wall, the defeder could easilly (spelling?) pour some burning oil on them. and then the animal rights groups would come and prohibit knights from ever using horses again.

Oil was never poured onto attackers, it was far too expensive to waste.
And guys, this is a game! Does anyone really care that historically knights had trouble getting into castles? I think this could be a very, very fun idea. At the end of the day, we all just want to have fun, don't we?

yes but fun is relative, you would find it "fun". me, I'd be annoyed with knights charging my closed gate! That may sound uncool or even square to you my young friend, but people do tend to have different views on what is "fun" I'm sure there are others that would be annoyed with it, just as there will be manny more that would find charging the gate with knights the ultimate form of enjoyment and entertainment.

A bit of an idea of mine, stolen in part from some other guy ages back:

Let's say a large party has the ability to besiege a town. When a party comes to an enemy town, it has the option of besieging a town. When a town is besieged, a large piece of white text appears over the town in the world map, saying 'Praven besieged' or something like that.

Mechanits of sieges: SIeges on't have to involve giant monsterous machines. All an attacking party needed to do was just cut off all supplies to starve the town into submission.
This requires a couple of other features in the game.
1. Towns need food, just like your party does. A town can have a cartain population of people, half of which can actually take up arms and fight in any battle. Normally, towns have a large stock of food, which is constantly replenished by farmers, foragers and caravans visiting the town.

During the siege, the defenders have the option of performing a sortie, which is where a group of defending soldiers comes out of the gates to confront the attackers. They would spawn right outside the front gate on a premade battlefield that included part of the town wall. If the defenders can successfully kill all of the besiegers, the siege is lifted.

Similarly, if a party allied to the besieging town comes along, it can attempt to defeat the besiegers.

I think this would be quite fun. If you were staying at some town and it became besieged, no-one can get in or out without defeating the besiegers, including you. Being involved in a last ditch measure to save the city...

a simple wooden stockade-type outpost defense sounds very do-able, if that's all you really meant: a circular fort,with wooden stockade, ramparts, maybe a small trench/moat surrounding it

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the door could be treated as a shield and the castle it self could handled like an invntory sceern where insted of items you place units and in the wepons slots you can put in catipults crossbows (if they are put in) samll cannons and you keep the food and where the horses would go you put what type of wall you whant and then give it a chariter sheet where you can upgread it like give it more room for a bigger garrison and more wepones slots and stuff

In combat terms, I was thinking of a sort of "Cavalry vs Indians" scenario. A small group of warriors defends against repeat waves of enemy attackers. To do so without having to create and program decent AI for ladders, fire, catapults, etc., basically trying to work with what's mostly already created, the wooden fort could be damaged by enemy weapons in the same manner as shields are now - as you suggest.

Nothing really elaborate, just similar to French Foreign Legion defending isolated outpost, or British Roarke's Drift type defense. Just something to think about. These repeated battles where we beam onto the field and race at each other: cool, but let's investigate more possibilities.