Anyone Else Finding Argoron Impregnable Now?

[TechnoSarge]

There seems to be a new model in use for Argoron. When you siege it, your troops start well back and then advance into a cauldron. After multiple plays, I can't get any siege engines past the defensive onagers, and the troops either don't have ladders to use after the engines are gone, or won't use them, so the jig's up at that point.

I've also tried assaulting as soon as the siege perimeter is built, using ladders only. Ain't workin'. The militia archers shoot your men from three sides, so their shields get negated. My last attempt saw me dodging arrows from unseen archers far away (who really had many better targets) while popping out and potting 37 guys on the walls - a major piece of what my army of 750 managed. I saw many of my archers run out of arrows and retreat rather than face the maelstrom longer (WHERE ARE THE ARROW BARRELS FOR THE SIEGERS, AFTER ALL THIS TIME??). The melee guys plain gave up too.

After 27 months of Early Access, there is finally a castle model that FEELS like a castle to assault! Good job, TW!

...Now, is that what you intended? If sieges become unproductive, you will need to rethink the whole system of BannerLord wars.

 

[Lucius Confucius]

One tip is to clear the onagers with trebuchets before you assault. You set up four onagers at once by building them one and one and clicking on them when they are done, then put them in reserve. When you have built all four, unleash them and take out the catapults before you attack.

 

[TechnoSarge]

Thanks Lucius. I was aware of that. In this case, I was closely followed by an army that outnumbered me by 1,000 troops and didn't have time to build Trebs.

I played this siege about 6 times, to test strategies. I was hounded from the field 4 times, had a crash when I was leading on the 5th, and won on the 6th. In that one, I got onagers up and managed to take out the town's engines just before the enemy army arrived. With no onagers banging my engines, I got them to the walls and successfully but expensively assaulted.

I am still wondering if this design is good. In fact, my lefthand siege tower had to do a pirouette to get lined up on the wall, so the enemy archers got a fine shot at all the men following it. And since it paraded in front of my own onagers, I saw it get hit by them once. That, I think, could be corrected.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Haven't done that map on 1.8 yet, but in general you move your troops close enough to the ladders that the catapults can hit them, then gun down the the ranged with your own and transfer 20 troops to a new group and seek them on the gate. By the time you run out of stuff to kill on the walls the gate should be down (you must re-seek them on the inner gate, which has low hp).

WHERE ARE THE ARROW BARRELS FOR THE SIEGERS, AFTER ALL THIS TIME??

Hmmm, there's a few maps with them but it's rare. You can retreat to refill arrows and remove partial damage from troops too.

After 27 months of Early Access, there is finally a castle model that FEELS like a castle to assault! Good job, TW!

What feels really good is to build a ballista, attack and retreat your troops to make enemy infantry come out the gate and just blast the ballista into them as they conga at you.

 

[five bucks]

If you got it on the 6th try I would say that it wasn't exactly impregnable since you successfully "impregnated" it, but good on you for continuing to try, and this is a good discussion to have.

...Now, is that what you intended? If sieges become unproductive, you will need to rethink the whole system of BannerLord wars.

I would do two things here.

1: Make siege ladders weaker on most maps. On maps like Charas and Zeonica, there is little difference in whether the attackers need to build siege engines to win or not because ladders are good enough. Level 3 walls should matter more than that! On Argoron, if you only build ladders you lose.

2: increase the amount that the Engineering skill speeds up siege camp and siege equipment construction, so that the player does not have an excessively long time to complete the 100+ sieges they need to do in order to win the game.

Also, I just jumped into a custom battle on Argoron to check this out, with an attacking army of 400 of mixed tiers against a defending army of 200 of mixed tiers, and twice in a row, after the attacking army had taken 180 casualties they all just routed. Tried it a third time, removing all Tier 1 troops from both armies, and the attackers did not rout and won. So that was interesting.

Tried it a fourth time without siege engines for the attackers other than onagers and ballistae, and the attackers lost. To me, that is good balance.

 

[TechnoSarge]

@five bucks Three of the times my troops failed the assault, they ran away (in the fourth, I simply ran out of troops). I was disgusted, because they abandoned towers at the wall without dropping the ramps. My personal army of ~170 was nearly all 26's and above; my allies in the army had a mix.

 

[five bucks]

Did your troops tend to cluster up by the building on the right hand side (attacker pov)? Mine did and they got melted by onagers as a result.

 

[TechnoSarge]

I was on the left myself, so saw little of what happened opposite me. I did notice that my archers, who I placed in dispersed formation ahead of time, advanced and clumped up behind an outbuilding. That (a) meant they were not effective in attacking the walls, (b) were a juicy target for the enemy onager on the right, which just had to toss at that area to pick up 10 easy kills at a time.

 

[five bucks]

Sadly that buggy AI tendency is probably a significant part of the difficulty of this siege scene.