A realistic approach to a full siege

would this be a fantastic addition ?

  • yes - it would change the entire experience

  • no its too complex

  • not really bothered


Results are only viewable after voting.

Users who are viewing this thread

At the time of writing this, the game is early access and I acknowledge developments are underway

I don't know about you guys but im actually bored with the siege system. it really is the same thing copy and pasted from warband with a couple of tweaks, you storm the wall and the enemy actually just hurl them selves into a full frontal effort to make their way to a set location or two. there is no actual strategic value in storming the city - as soon as you get behind their defensive block in front of the gate you can just stab them in the back over and over again. troops get stuck on the ladders and thus become pin cushions.

what I would like to see:

Ladders become a constructional option when building the siege camp
Ladders must be carried to the wall by troops rather than being pre laid in front of the wall

Siege tower ramps do not drop until a sufficient number of men are ready to advance over the ramp.

Allied archers improved AI as I have noticed out of 30 archers only 10 will be firing back.

Taking strategic points
In reality when conducting an effective siege the castle or city would be divided into strategic segments with a defensive value.

Walls
As it currently stands based on my observations a number of defending troops try to push past attacking units to man a segment of the wall. the result of this is basically a one way slaughter. instead the attacking army should have a tactical approach of securing an area and advancing appropriately while the defending force would benefit from a tactical retreat system

Gate house
At the moment a large and disproportionate number of men camp the gate house and only attack the player or NPC units that enter a small radius of the defensive block. instead the units should only rally on the gatehouse when ordered to do so, the inner gate is actively attacked or the walls are taken by the attacking force

Keep
as we all know once the routing programming kicks in, a lot of the enemy will make a mad dash to the keep - however we see no level of combat take place within the keep. I would nominate that the keep becomes a tactical hard point. once the walls and gatehouse have been taken by the player a secondary battering ram could be carried up to the keep door, personally I would suggest a small four man ram be designed and added with no protective frame, just a basic log ram with handles that four men will run up to the keep with breach the gate. from that point forward the attacking army would simply proceed to the lords hall and once secured the battle is over. this would also provide defending players with a small outnumbered army an option to simply deploy all their forces it to the keep and give a realistic hope of holding out until help arrives or the attacking army can not sustain the siege.

add your feedback and ideas below
 
At least let the AI put archers into chokepoints after the outer defenses are breached. Those new fancy city maps are huge, but most of it is barely used.
 
Would be nice if the defender AI know how to retreat and regroup their forces. For example, when the significant amount of attacking troops climb onto the walls, the defenders should leave the walls and regroup somewhere in the city center (there are barricades for a reason). IDK if it is possible to create additional spots on the rooftops in the city for archers too.

What's AI doing right now is spawning and rushing back on the walls when there are a vast amount of attackers already waiting for them. And as soon as the walls and gates are taken, defenders just run away, never regroup (as they do in the field battles by the way) and pah - you've got the city. Boring.
 
Would be nice if the defender AI know how to retreat and regroup their forces. For example, when the significant amount of attacking troops climb onto the walls, the defenders should leave the walls and regroup somewhere in the city center (there are barricades for a reason). IDK if it is possible to create additional spots on the rooftops in the city for archers too.

What's AI doing right now is spawning and rushing back on the walls when there are a vast amount of attackers already waiting for them. And as soon as the walls and gates are taken, defenders just run away, never regroup (as they do in the field battles by the way) and pah - you've got the city. Boring.
I could not word this better my self
 
I don't have problem with sieges beeping somehow schematic -with preset entry points. it would be very hard to program and probably very buggy and easy to abuse otherwise. It is however much more expanded system from what Warband offered. My complain is that player can not really control troops much. Giving him control over what troops to attack/assign were (gate, laders, tower...) and when would be nice.

However I agree that defending AI is very bad right now. Shieldwall is completely ineffective formation for close fighting and having large group of men camping in front of the gate does nothing. They just get slaughtered. They should switch to charge as soon as gate breaks.

I also like your idea of AI being more tactical about tactical locations. They should be like defensive nodes that AI needs to hold or take in certain order and not just sending soldiers on ignore everything command to the location on the other side of the map. AI -both attacking and defending one should try to secure one "key" location before proceeding to attack/defend another. Every such location should have two positions, one for infantry and one for archers (different for attacker and defender obviously) and infantry should have certain radius in which they will charge any enemy, not just stand in the shieldwall waiting to be killed.
 
I don't have problem with sieges beeping somehow schematic -with preset entry points. it would be very hard to program and probably very buggy and easy to abuse otherwise. It is however much more expanded system from what Warband offered. My complain is that player can not really control troops much. Giving him control over what troops to attack/assign were (gate, laders, tower...) and when would be nice.

However I agree that defending AI is very bad right now. Shieldwall is completely ineffective formation for close fighting and having large group of men camping in front of the gate does nothing. They just get slaughtered. They should switch to charge as soon as gate breaks.

I also like your idea of AI being more tactical about tactical locations. They should be like defensive nodes that AI needs to hold or take in certain order and not just sending soldiers on ignore everything command to the location on the other side of the map. AI -both attacking and defending one should try to secure one "key" location before proceeding to attack/defend another. Every such location should have two positions, one for infantry and one for archers (different for attacker and defender obviously) and infantry should have certain radius in which they will charge any enemy, not just stand in the shieldwall waiting to be killed.

the principle idea of the ladders is that they behave in the same way as the towers, their approach path and speed is fixed in the same way so in theory the programming is already there for that. and the ability to order men directly to nodes would deffo be helpful.

the nodes could be determined by variables based on troops morale - because its already governed by factors such as kills vs losses it would be an effective mediator.

the engagement radius really needs to be addressed immediately because so many troops are just mullered from all sides because they camp it out until they run away
 
At the time of writing this, the game is early access and I acknowledge developments are underway

I don't know about you guys but im actually bored with the siege system. it really is the same thing copy and pasted from warband with a couple of tweaks, you storm the wall and the enemy actually just hurl them selves into a full frontal effort to make their way to a set location or two. there is no actual strategic value in storming the city - as soon as you get behind their defensive block in front of the gate you can just stab them in the back over and over again. troops get stuck on the ladders and thus become pin cushions.

I'll just simply say, the sieges are too easy. A small garrison should be able to hold off a larger force. That's what the castle walls are for. The walls seem to provide no advantage, and actually are more of a disadvantage to the defender. Ladders ought to be the most dangerous and horrible way to try and attack a castle, yet that is the primary way.

They just need to be more dangerous and high risk. Doesn't seem right to be able to overrun a castle and two day turns later, over run another.
 
The fact that current army just builds all the siege equipment on the field in 1-2 days, even without access to wood nearby, makes me mad. I think siege equipment should be brought in advance(carried by your troops, slowing down the whole army), and from defending side - built in cities in advance, as they magically disappear each siege. We deserve siege weaponry as a major aspect of the game - different, costy siege machines, with different stats, quality and durability, need to repair them and so on. But in current state - siege weaponry is something ridiculous.
 
Well i said this in another thread but ill reiterate.

Let AI/Player Siege defender Lords that are OUTSIDE the castle actually play a part in the Battle scene itself. Let them threaten to attack from whatever direction they are aligned to the Attacking force on the world map. Siege Attackers would now have to hold some men in reserve and face (possibly) the opposite direction as the castle to prepare to be assaulted themselves. Is this doable in the Engine? Essentially a sandwhich'ed operation
 
Would be nice if the defender AI know how to retreat and regroup their forces. For example, when the significant amount of attacking troops climb onto the walls, the defenders should leave the walls and regroup somewhere in the city center (there are barricades for a reason). IDK if it is possible to create additional spots on the rooftops in the city for archers too.

What's AI doing right now is spawning and rushing back on the walls when there are a vast amount of attackers already waiting for them. And as soon as the walls and gates are taken, defenders just run away, never regroup (as they do in the field battles by the way) and pah - you've got the city. Boring.
I'm assuming taleworlds are working on it. Otherwise there is no reason for them to expand the siege battle map. i.e. In both Warband and Bannerlord, we have a full city map, but in Warband, only area near wall is availiable during siege battle, but now in Bannerlord, availiable area during siege battle is much larger
 
Guys I'm playin on easiest and I feel same, and this game has so much potential for future, but how is gameplay on realistic or on some other difficulties? I mean on a siege I lay my archers and they kill half of walls, but on realistic this is surely different.
 
As long as sieges take longer than a few minutes I welcome any change. It was way more effort in Warband, and therefore a more rewarding experience.
 
Guys I'm playin on easiest and I feel same, and this game has so much potential for future, but how is gameplay on realistic or on some other difficulties? I mean on a siege I lay my archers and they kill half of walls, but on realistic this is surely different.

the harder you make the game in the settings the more cunning your enemy become (on the field) but in a siege battle its more or less the same but in easy mode your troops take half damage but deal full damage
 
coming back from work and reading all the replies lol wow, its definitely a wide spread resentment that the sieges are heavily out of balance - thankfully this is an early access so our in put could re shape its future because I love mount and blade. waited 8 years for this
 
Guys I'm playin on easiest and I feel same, and this game has so much potential for future, but how is gameplay on realistic or on some other difficulties? I mean on a siege I lay my archers and they kill half of walls, but on realistic this is surely different.
I play on hardest difficulty and routinely take zero losses and zero wounded when fighting armies double my size because it's far too easy to abuse the AI with archers, and horse archers. I can eek out a victory even when fighting 4x numbers. Siege AI is generally broken alltogether so it's really impossible to not take losses when you do sieges. but you can generally take your good army and take a siege of even numbers while not losing more than a third of your men. Just dont build towers they are bugged right now, all your troops will die on them, battering ram is the best.

Pro tip, you can place your archers in loose formation in front of the walls, at the beginning of the siege before you deploy and immediately turn off their command AI with F6, they will fare much better than bunching up in crowds behind freaking palisades where they are either getting shot down by focus fire or just stand being completely useless the whole battle while your infantry and cav is getting slaughtered on the wall because not enough of them are spawned in due to your archer body count sitting there with a thumb up their ass.
 
honestly OP, at this point we should be asking that sieges just WORK...
Siege towers dont work,
Archers dont know what to do, they just take a smoke break behind the farthest palisade the entire siege
Troops dont know what side of the wall to climb
Ram will break down gate, and soldiers all leave to go climb wall
Siege weapons dont do anything during the actual siege
Disabling F6 while inside the town or on the walls breaks the AI and makes them do ridiculous stuff they will hug walls and fall up ladders.

You are asking for realistic sieges, when even the simulation needs a ton of refinement.
 
Some things I would like to see changed:
1: When you are building siege equipment, the town's defensive equipment just destroys it right after it's built. I would like to be able to build siege equipment and actually use it on the battlefield. It would be nice if there were a ranged siege battle before all the troops were utilized. At first, you take cover from enemy ballista/catapults and utilize all of your ballista/catapults/trebuchets to weather the defenses and break down some of the walls.

2. Better utilization of army. I want to be able to command multiple groups of similar troops. It would be nice if there were sub groups of archers/infantry/cavalry so I could send some to one point and others to a different point. This would be nice in sieges and in general large open battles. Currently there are 6 or 7 categories of selectable troops but any key I press after 4 just selects everybody...

3. Archer fire direction. It would be pretty cool to be able to tell your archers specifically where to fire. You can tell them where to walk to but telling them where to fire would be awesome.

3. TORTUGA FORMATION. Shield wall does nothing when you march towards walls with archers way above you. It would be nice if the rear formations could form a tortuga formation for arrow defense.

4. Troop Radius adjustments and collision. There is a mod for this that keeps troops from being able to flow like water through everything and really enhances the battle in a more realistic way and helps the defenders in bottleneck situations like in the main gate. It really makes two masses of troops fighting each other duke it out and prolongs the battle quite a bit. This mod however breaks sieges in other ways (at least for me). It keeps troops from going through the main gate until I break down the doors, and it breaks siege towers and ladders quite a bit. Troops just wait at the bottom as people SLOWLY get on the ladder. Keeping the radius that prolongs battles but fixing the AI using ladders/strairs/towers ect would be awesome.

The game currently becomes VERY repetitive with battles and sieges. I feel like with more refined controls of troops and troop actions you can really enhance the experience and create a much more varied experience. I think the game would be best when there is a large variety of outcomes in a battle instead of just...charge these guys, charge those guys, and I'm done. Prolong the battles, and give me more control over more groups of soldiers so there can be flanking maneuvers and tactical retreats ect. I feel like I'm asking for a lot, but when a game is in dev. for almost a decade and they just give you a more polished version of the same thing....where was all that time spent?
 
For the defenders destroying your siege weapons. Just pause when it is built, click on it and move to reserve. Then when you have 4+ you place them and bulldoze the walls.
 
For the defenders destroying your siege weapons. Just pause when it is built, click on it and move to reserve. Then when you have 4+ you place them and bulldoze the walls.

I just wish everything was implemented a little differently. I don't want to make it super easy to play, I just want some variety to what I'm doing and a challenge doing it.
 
As long as sieges take longer than a few minutes I welcome any change. It was way more effort in Warband, and therefore a more rewarding experience.

I don't have much sense of nostalgia for Warband sieges. They could be fun at times, but it was one of the weaker parts of the game compared to what it could potentially have been. Bannerlord is more ambitious about it, which is good... but there's a lot of problems to work through at this point.

For me Warband sieges kind of devolved into bringing an army full of Rhodok Sharpshooters and having them hold fire behind their shields until the defenders ran out of arrows. Then fire at will to wipe out a wave of defenders. Hold fire while the new wave spawned in and expended their arrows. Fire at will. etc. Repeat. Win.
 
Back
Top Bottom