Sieges battles are easy and boring, here's my suggestions

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Glavius

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Hi guys,

I really like the new siege system, it's far more immersive than in Warband, but I'm super sad to see that sieges are almost really boring to do. I can say that's it come from the AI which is really lacking of strategy, but it also come from a real lack of content. Here some suggestions to make sieges better :

1 ) AI should be able to use loopholes correctly. I mean, this is maybe the point which make AI completely useless in defense. They cant use towers correctly. They just pack on the walls, and 80% of the archers just dont shoot at all.

2 ) Add doors to towers and walls. Do you know any castle in the world and in the history, which dont have any doors ? Once the besieger manage to use the ladders to go on the walls, the battle is over. The besieged just cant do anything and the archers are useless once the attackant is on the wall. Archers should be able to stay in the towers to continue to defend the castle even if the besieger managed to breach the walls.

3 ) Add flamed arrows. The besieged just cant stop the besieger because archers cant shoot flamed arrows to destroy the battering ram or sieges towers. There's a reason if in history, besiegers used animal skins on these siege weapons, it was to make it fire retardant.

4 ) Improve the siege tower. In history, the siege tower was an amazing siege weapon, maybe the best of all time if you look at closely at the history of siege weapons. Actually, the one ingame is poorly designed. Most of the siege towers were made to being able to carry some archers to directly shoot from the siege tower. There's a lot of reference on Internet. Also, the attackant should put some of their soldiers directly on the tower to directly run on the walls. Actually, AI push the tower to the wall, and then, go on the tower, the first guy open the ramp and it make the tower completely useless.

5 ) Improve the AI to make it retreat when the first wall is lost. The logical way to manage a defense of a castle, is to firstly try to defend the first wall/door, and if these are lost, you retreat and go to the second wall/doors. AI should use also the big towers for big cities, it make that archers are way too ineffective because they stay on the walls and get slamed by attackants infantry.

6 ) Improve cities walls. Ok, make the small castle being able to be take with simple ladders and all, why not, these are just meant to be Lords castles. But big cities need way more bigger walls. Actually, you can take a big cities with no siege weapons at all. Cities should be rework and make it attackable only if you have siege weapons. Also, the door break way too fast with the battering arm, onager and trebuchet are just useless.

7 ) Make Onager and Trebuchet better. These weapons are ineffective and useless, I have nothing more to say, you can just notice it ingame.

8 ) More siege towers variety. With my suggestion of bigger city wall, I guess a real siege tower, a big one, with differents floors and archers inside could be amazing.

9 ) Boiled oil. I mean, it's just a basis of castle defense. Also, AI should be able to use these defensive weapons to make siege harder.

10 ) Add a true capital city model. Actually, I cant say which city is the capital of the Western Empire, the South Empire, Battania, etc, because every cities are the same. Could be cool to get a capital city model, very hard to take and all. With big towers, big walls, a big gate, and a big garrison. Could be awesome, with an AI rework, to make the siege end in the dungeon or something like.

These were my suggestions. Siege really need some love to be really cool. This is the mode I like the most and sadly it's way too easy and boring. A city with 100 defenders should be able to defend a castle against 300 or 400 besiegers, there's a reason if some sieges took years and years in the history.

I hope my suggestions will be read by developpers, and I hope sieges will be better in the future, this is maybe the best mode ingame.
 
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These were my suggestions. Siege really need some love to be really cool. This is the mode I like the most and sadly it's way too easy and boring. A city with 100 defensers should be able to defend a castle against 300 or 400 besiegers, there's a reason if some sieges took years and years in the history.
In addition to the big problems with AI, I completely agree with you, the walls of castles and cities do not protect the besieged garrison. Most of the guns are useless, I tried it once, then they are not needed in the game, it makes no sense to build them, because the garrison cannot resist the attackers even with comparable forces from both sides.
 
I'm mostly annoyed with how the AI behave in sieges, both the defender and attacker behaves pretty weirdly and it breaks immersion.

As far as I can see the AI behavior is almost the same as in warband with all attackers running to one group of enemies, then to another group and so on. It should know how to spread out, archers should go and find positions to fire from and so on.

And the defenders seem to have some weirdly scripted behavior of where to go, if you attack them from range or with a polearm and keep distance they are unable to go after you and just weirdly gets pulled back in their scripted direction like there is some invisible force pulling them. Again it's immersion breaking and also very exploitable.

In normal battles it's a little better but the AI is still pretty dumb. I hope we see a real overhaul or at least that the AI is easily modded so we can have it fixed that way.
 
Number 3 is a no-no. The animal skin used on rams and towers were used to protect them from mainly the pitch. Altough im sure it offered some protection against smaller projectiles such as ballista bolts. Fire arrows may have been used rarely to burn smaller towns/villages but they weren't really useful in the heat of a siege assault, it was both dangerous and time consuming. Even if fire arrows were a thing they probably used it very very rarerly because we have little to no evidence about them being used. The towers and rams in the game move too fast for fire arrows to effectively set them fire and it would be highly annoying to see 3-4 successful hits ingiting the tower or ram, you would need many many arrows to ignite a ram because half the arrows would already be extinguished. A fire ballista or wide use of fire projectiles on onagers would make much more sense than having fire arrows.

Aside from that, even the attacker side has problem in the game right now. My troops sometimes raise the ladders and just wait in front of them, The soldiers accompanying battering ram immediately leaves the ram to scale the walls after they break the first gate. When everything works fine (no bugs or odd behaviours) siege battles are actually challenging.
 
Yeah, no fire arrows, anyone who think a flaming arrow can light something like a siege tower on fire obviously never tried to light a fire in their life. It's hard to set wood alight even under best of circumstances, much less if the defenders specifically do whatever they can to stop you from doing it.
 
I hope when (they will, right?) when TW goes and makes ever settlement and siege battle unique we'll get bigger and better settlements with multi-ringed walls. For now I just want my troops to notice there are three ladders on a siege tower, not one. And they don't have to wait to get on until the other guy makes it to the top...
 
Good suggestions. I imagine the capital city mechanic would also reduce the snowballing effect as an attacker would need to expend a significant amount of resources to finally wipe out a faction that's withdrawn to its capital.
 
The main problem with sieges at the moment is that they are far too easy for the attacker. The walls confer barely any advantage on the attacker; rams, ladders and towers turn it from a castle-defence into a chaotic field battle almost immediately.

The defenders should have some counterplay against those siege weapons. Perhaps it should be possible to raid the attacker's siege camp at night to destroy their work.
 
The main problem with sieges at the moment is that they are far too easy for the attacker. The walls confer barely any advantage on the attacker; rams, ladders and towers turn it from a castle-defence into a chaotic field battle almost immediately.

The defenders should have some counterplay against those siege weapons. Perhaps it should be possible to raid the attacker's siege camp at night to destroy their work.

I agree, the idea of the raid on the attacker's siege camp could be a nice idea, you could also reduce the number of attackants.

The defensive weapons are way too useless, there's some Scorpions on the wall but it's not powerful at all and totally useless.
 
i like these suggestions i also have one that would add to the immersion
siege engines all look so basic and very ramshackle (this makes sense for the barbarian factions) but for the empire to use really basic rams and siege towers is rather strange they should be more durable and not have the roofs shot off so easily( this could mean that it takes more time to get the ram to the gate)
another thing i have noticed is that when a army does come to the aid and try to beat the attackers the castle garrison should join the fight on the field as right now they dont. this could also reduce the speed at which factions take castles due to the fact they will need a bigger force
 
These were my suggestions. Siege really need some love to be really cool. This is the mode I like the most and sadly it's way too easy and boring. A city with 100 defenders should be able to defend a castle against 300 or 400 besiegers, there's a reason if some sieges took years and years in the history.
+1 to all
 
I'm not so sure. Yesterday I was on the attacking side where there were 300 defenders and 1000+ attackers. The defenders destroyed both the ram and the siege tower before they got to the walls, then they slaughtered around 700 attackers trying to climb up the ladders before the town was taken.

That was on easy (1/3 dmg) difficulty, and my Battanian fian champions got 150 kills, half the kills of the whole army. On normal or hard, the attackers would have been utterly wrecked.
 
I reaaaaally agree on the fact that the siege are really not challenging. And boring , cause you just telle you army to charge and it's a win.
BUT, dude, do you reaaaaally think the dev don't know about flame arrows,boiling oil, and how a castle defense work? REALLY? How can you insult them this way. OFC they know everything, they build mount & baldes games for years, decades ! AND they are turkish, the ottomans history is based on castle sieges, just as Constantinople.

No really, if they did thoses choices, it was on purpose, and maybe we could just think of a way to balance it with other ideas?

Thanks for reading btw. Love.
 
Both the siege tower design and the battering ram design are truly awful. The ram offer no protection from arrows fired at it's front. The siege tower is a weird design that doesn't resemble any drawing of a siege tower in history. It's more of a mobile ladder system than an actual siege tower. I assume these two pieces of equipment were made flawed intentionally for balance reasons. Whatever the intent, as siege equipment goes, they are truly awful.

Why did the sieges in the 2019 Gamescom demo seem to work so much better than what we have in game now?
 
Hi guys,

I really like the new siege system, it's far more immersive than in Warband, but I'm super sad to see that sieges are almost really boring to do. I can say that's it come from the AI which is really lacking of strategy, but it also come from a real lack of content. Here some suggestions to make sieges better :

1 ) AI should be able to use loopholes correctly. I mean, this is maybe the point which make AI completely useless in defense. They cant use towers correctly. They just pack on the walls, and 80% of the archers just dont shoot at all.

2 ) Add doors to towers and walls. Do you know any castle in the world and in the history, which dont have any doors ? Once the besieger manage to use the ladders to go on the walls, the battle is over. The besieged just cant do anything and the archers are useless once the attackant is on the wall. Archers should be able to stay in the towers to continue to defend the castle even if the besieger managed to breach the walls.

3 ) Add flamed arrows. The besieged just cant stop the besieger because archers cant shoot flamed arrows to destroy the battering ram or sieges towers. There's a reason if in history, besiegers used animal skins on these siege weapons, it was to make it fire retardant.

4 ) Improve the siege tower. In history, the siege tower was an amazing siege weapon, maybe the best of all time if you look at closely at the history of siege weapons. Actually, the one ingame is poorly designed. Most of the siege towers were made to being able to carry some archers to directly shoot from the siege tower. There's a lot of reference on Internet. Also, the attackant should put some of their soldiers directly on the tower to directly run on the walls. Actually, AI push the tower to the wall, and then, go on the tower, the first guy open the ramp and it make the tower completely useless.

5 ) Improve the AI to make it retreat when the first wall is lost. The logical way to manage a defense of a castle, is to firstly try to defend the first wall/door, and if these are lost, you retreat and go to the second wall/doors. AI should use also the big towers for big cities, it make that archers are way too ineffective because they stay on the walls and get slamed by attackants infantry.

6 ) Improve cities walls. Ok, make the small castle being able to be take with simple ladders and all, why not, these are just meant to be Lords castles. But big cities need way more bigger walls. Actually, you can take a big cities with no siege weapons at all. Cities should be rework and make it attackable only if you have siege weapons. Also, the door break way too fast with the battering arm, onager and trebuchet are just useless.

7 ) Make Onager and Trebuchet better. These weapons are ineffective and useless, I have nothing more to say, you can just notice it ingame.

8 ) More siege towers variety. With my suggestion of bigger city wall, I guess a real siege tower, a big one, with differents floors and archers inside could be amazing.

9 ) Boiled oil. I mean, it's just a basis of castle defense. Also, AI should be able to use these defensive weapons to make siege harder.

10 ) Add a true capital city model. Actually, I cant say which city is the capital of the Western Empire, the South Empire, Battania, etc, because every cities are the same. Could be cool to get a capital city model, very hard to take and all. With big towers, big walls, a big gate, and a big garrison. Could be awesome, with an AI rework, to make the siege end in the dungeon or something like.

These were my suggestions. Siege really need some love to be really cool. This is the mode I like the most and sadly it's way too easy and boring. A city with 100 defenders should be able to defend a castle against 300 or 400 besiegers, there's a reason if some sieges took years and years in the history.

I hope my suggestions will be read by developpers, and I hope sieges will be better in the future, this is maybe the best mode ingame.

Boiling oil is a myth, was most of the time boiling water since oil was to expensive and hard to get to "waste" it on besiegers unless it was the absolute last thing they could do
 
Both the siege tower design and the battering ram design are truly awful. The ram offer no protection from arrows fired at it's front. The siege tower is a weird design that doesn't resemble any drawing of a siege tower in history. It's more of a mobile ladder system than an actual siege tower. I assume these two pieces of equipment were made flawed intentionally for balance reasons. Whatever the intent, as siege equipment goes, they are truly awful.

Why did the sieges in the 2019 Gamescom demo seem to work so much better than what we have in game now?

looks like the siege towers they use in Vikings when attacking london, just "protected" ladders XD
 
9 ) Boiled oil. I mean, it's just a basis of castle defense. Also, AI should be able to use these defensive weapons to make siege harder.
I'm just going to reply to that. Boiling oil wasn't used or very rarely. It was water or sand most of the time.
 
I'm just going to reply to that. Boiling oil wasn't used or very rarely. It was water or sand most of the time.

It doesnt matter, the fact is that boiled things were used during siege battles, and that there's nothing like that ingame.

Both the siege tower design and the battering ram design are truly awful. The ram offer no protection from arrows fired at it's front. The siege tower is a weird design that doesn't resemble any drawing of a siege tower in history. It's more of a mobile ladder system than an actual siege tower. I assume these two pieces of equipment were made flawed intentionally for balance reasons. Whatever the intent, as siege equipment goes, they are truly awful.

Why did the sieges in the 2019 Gamescom demo seem to work so much better than what we have in game now?

Yes, I dont understand why the siege towers are so poorly designed ingame. I mean, there's a lot of reference on the internet. And I guess devs maybe read some books too. Siege towers were built when artillery failed to breach the wall, it was a powerful siege weapons and maybe the best siege weapon at this era. But in Bannerlord, you right, it's just look like "ladder tower". If you read some books, you also realize that some siege weapons were equipped with scorpions or ballista inside too.

I reaaaaally agree on the fact that the siege are really not challenging. And boring , cause you just telle you army to charge and it's a win.
BUT, dude, do you reaaaaally think the dev don't know about flame arrows,boiling oil, and how a castle defense work? REALLY? How can you insult them this way. OFC they know everything, they build mount & baldes games for years, decades ! AND they are turkish, the ottomans history is based on castle sieges, just as Constantinople.

No really, if they did thoses choices, it was on purpose, and maybe we could just think of a way to balance it with other ideas?

Thanks for reading btw. Love.

Well, the only thing I see is that siege mode is boring and too easy. I mean, if I share my suggestions here, it's because the siege mode is really lacking of content and really doesnt look like a siege which could have taken place in the middle ages.
 
I hope when (they will, right?) when TW goes and makes ever settlement and siege battle unique we'll get bigger and better settlements with multi-ringed walls. For now I just want my troops to notice there are three ladders on a siege tower, not one. And they don't have to wait to get on until the other guy makes it to the top...
hope ™
 
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