SP - Battles & Sieges Siege tower issues, Siege issues in general *bit of satire to boot*

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Dozer3115

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I normally don't build siege towers, they are too slow and against siege equipment and AI accuracy they are a waste of time. I did try and use them in the deep south and found that not only are they too tall for some walls (causing troops to just stand on the platform and get stabbed in the legs), but that the charge command totally ruins the friendly AI's ability to climb, they just stand at the bottom having a picnic.

Ladders have been 90% effective, I love the pokey stick to knock them down (but this ability should be available to ALL pole arm type weapons). However 10% of the time my lads start to have a small mosh pit at the base, whilst the rest of my troops watch. There have even been occasions where a defender or two jumps off to crowd surf, or surf surf (peasant army). *side note, need to include a loot player in my task force. Keep moral high on the field and that.*

After loading a save (pre assault stage of siege) the siege can go a bit... odd. Click the attack button and before you know it, you are on your horse, in the lords hall with 200 of your finest and 200 of theirs playing sardines. After about 5 minutes of headbutting each other, all of the enemy are gone but the battle is not over, the stats board says so. Now I'm no professional hide and seek player, but im nearly certain that hiding inside of walls is an illegal move. My troops procede to headbutt the wall until I call the retreat.

What happens next? An award ceremony, rose petals from the balconies as I parade my victory down the streets?
No. Another ****ing siege. This time against 5 goat herders, who presumably have had an argument and so have dotted themselves as far appart as possible. So up the ladders, time for a 4 minute conga line! (with intermittant bouts of headbutting each other and walls).

Has anyone else encountered the same or similar issues?
*Note to devs*: I like where this game is going, please include battle bards, brigandier bagpipes and lordly war lutes.
 
Siege towers definitely need work. Right now, ladders seem more effective. They should either be ramps instead of ladders or the ai should have enough space and programming to load up on top of the tower before the tower gate opens. When 3 ladders are that close together, the defending ai dogpiles on top of it and will massacre anyone using it. The default ladders are much safer since the ai has to spread between the 3 different points.

That said, so far the best way to break through a siege that I have found is to have everyone follow me, break down the front gate with a ram (the ai very rarely seems able to break these even with full siege weapon set up) and then just run past the guards behind the second gate with all the troops following me. This works because there seems to be two additional problems with siege defender ai:

1) the ai defenders right behind the main gate will just stand there. I don't know if they just don't have enough room to attack or what, but I can regularly run right by/through them and not get hit at all. The ones on the edges will slowly fight back but the ones in the center usually stand there waiting to die.

2) The ai never seems to utilize the kill box between the main gate and the second gate. I don't think I have been killed in there once. It is essentially a safe place for attackers when it should be one of the most dangerous places to be. To be fair, defender ai in general is a problem and one of the hardest parts of being on the defensive side of a siege (half the time my troops won't even get on the catapults or ballista no matter what I click).

The sieges look great and the foundation is there for epic gameplay, but there definitely needs to be some work done here. Maybe custom orders or some different plans that can be given pre-siege to alter behavior away from the field behavior.
 
My current tactic is to build siege towers, but not bring them into battle (free XP) and bum rush a wall with two ladders. Stand the ladders up first thing, position 40+ archers facing the ladders and mow down the enemy whist they try to poke the ladders down. once my skirmishers stop throwing javalins then climb up with all infantry, followed by archers. Archers are then sent to cut off the escape route whislt the conga line of death works it way round the walls.
 
Siege towers are definitely buggy at the moment, in some castle seiges they roll the tower up to the wall then run away to somewhere else, or bounce between the ram and tower not knowing what to do. Give the "follow me" command doesn't seem to fix the issue as they stand at the bottom, milling about.

Sometimes its in reverse, ram takes down gate and they leave it to go to siege tower and not climb it. ?‍♂️
 
Siege is somewhat broken: with the exact number and power for the besiegers as for the defenders, the latter ones should still lose confortably. It's illogical. What use are the walls then?

In comparison with M&B the first, you've got between one to 3 more choke points where to invade the walls, one more if you've built a ram, and others more with the siege tower. It makes the defender having to stretch his forces too far and the AI isn't able to react to an opponent who concentrate his efforts on a single or two points. Thus the defense will be thin everywhere, where it was dense in the first game. Thus the defenders will lose quickly, even with equal forces.

Another problem is the siege deployment: "My lord, the enemy is storming our walls! [the lord] Soldiers! Quick, leave this lovely court picnic and go defend my walls at once!"

Well, that was awkward... The defenders should be at the ready on the walls at the beginning of the siege action scene. Not down in the court! By the time you reach the defensive positions, your opponent is almost at your walls and the ram two thirds of the way to your door. Correcting that could actually correct a good part of the balancing problem.
 
Siege towers are definitely buggy at the moment, in some castle seiges they roll the tower up to the wall then run away to somewhere else, or bounce between the ram and tower not knowing what to do. Give the "follow me" command doesn't seem to fix the issue as they stand at the bottom, milling about.

Sometimes its in reverse, ram takes down gate and they leave it to go to siege tower and not climb it. ?‍♂️
This happened to me today, the bug for the npcs who not climbing the siege tower is because the door is still closed up there, i ended up by going in person open it and all the troops came back from the other side of the wall to climb it properly, this needs to be corrected.
 
Siege towers definitely need work. Right now, ladders seem more effective. They should either be ramps instead of ladders or the ai should have enough space and programming to load up on top of the tower before the tower gate opens. When 3 ladders are that close together, the defending ai dogpiles on top of it and will massacre anyone using it. The default ladders are much safer since the ai has to spread between the 3 different points.

That said, so far the best way to break through a siege that I have found is to have everyone follow me, break down the front gate with a ram (the ai very rarely seems able to break these even with full siege weapon set up) and then just run past the guards behind the second gate with all the troops following me. This works because there seems to be two additional problems with siege defender ai:

1) the ai defenders right behind the main gate will just stand there. I don't know if they just don't have enough room to attack or what, but I can regularly run right by/through them and not get hit at all. The ones on the edges will slowly fight back but the ones in the center usually stand there waiting to die.

2) The ai never seems to utilize the kill box between the main gate and the second gate. I don't think I have been killed in there once. It is essentially a safe place for attackers when it should be one of the most dangerous places to be. To be fair, defender ai in general is a problem and one of the hardest parts of being on the defensive side of a siege (half the time my troops won't even get on the catapults or ballista no matter what I click).

The sieges look great and the foundation is there for epic gameplay, but there definitely needs to be some work done here. Maybe custom orders or some different plans that can be given pre-siege to alter behavior away from the field behavior.
Rarely seems do break battering rams? I have had about 90% of them getting oneshotted by onagers every freaking siege, thus making me build them of myself grinding through the idioticly random siege part of destroying the enemy onager only to see them in the assault yet again sometimes! it does seems the best way to minimise losses to have all infantry moshpit the main gate instead of headbutting the weapons waiting for them at the end of ladders and siege towers.
And speaking of onagers or siege weapons in general,using them is such a pain in the ass, since they are so goddamn inaccurate when using them yourself. If I have it finally dialled in as to hit a tower with a enemy siege weapon I literally never going to hit it again no matter what I do, the second shot goes over, the third one I adjust with 1 or 2 ticks lower aim, then it hits almost the base of the tower or somewhere halfway down, so I adjust 2 ticks higher, now it flies over it like I wanna hit the town next over. Its just so goddamn random that I leave it to the ai to hopefully hit something. Also destroying walls is too frustrating to reliable do, build 4 trebuchets, they destroy the onager etc, so far so good, although they are incredible retarded with the random target switching, if that was all and they focus fire on the walls but nooooooo, lets just hit all three randomly and stop at the 1% mark just to hit the other parts before destroying that wall... great. just ****ing great... I want to control what targets to aim for as you should be able to as the man in charge of the siege AND somewhat reliably hit the same spot. I will say 100% accuracy is not needed but the random deviation is just too damn high right now, or is it because my throwing skill is super low, that my aim is ridiculously low, which is also something that should not be linked to siege weapons. If anything crossbow is the better choice imho but we need a dedicated siege weapons skill line of this ****.
 
Siege towers definitely need work. Right now, ladders seem more effective. They should either be ramps instead of ladders or the ai should have enough space and programming to load up on top of the tower before the tower gate opens. When 3 ladders are that close together, the defending ai dogpiles on top of it and will massacre anyone using it. The default ladders are much safer since the ai has to spread between the 3 different points.

That said, so far the best way to break through a siege that I have found is to have everyone follow me, break down the front gate with a ram (the ai very rarely seems able to break these even with full siege weapon set up) and then just run past the guards behind the second gate with all the troops following me. This works because there seems to be two additional problems with siege defender ai:

1) the ai defenders right behind the main gate will just stand there. I don't know if they just don't have enough room to attack or what, but I can regularly run right by/through them and not get hit at all. The ones on the edges will slowly fight back but the ones in the center usually stand there waiting to die.

2) The ai never seems to utilize the kill box between the main gate and the second gate. I don't think I have been killed in there once. It is essentially a safe place for attackers when it should be one of the most dangerous places to be. To be fair, defender ai in general is a problem and one of the hardest parts of being on the defensive side of a siege (half the time my troops won't even get on the catapults or ballista no matter what I click).

The sieges look great and the foundation is there for epic gameplay, but there definitely needs to be some work done here. Maybe custom orders or some different plans that can be given pre-siege to alter behavior away from the field behavior.
oh that killbox does get used quite a bit with my playthroughs, but not really effective, only 1 to 3 archers either shooting or throwing rocks down. Getting your troops to hack down the door (ridiculously as it is) can do if you select the troops you had push the ram, and clicking on the door. At least in the current patch they do after a little bit.
 
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