Ambush Missions - It's a trap!

[swally0ne]

Ambush missions are a feature to destroy enemy siege engines such as Towers and Rams as there is no way to destroy them before the actually siege battle starts.
When you are going for an successful ambush, an attack by the enemy was triggered and the siege begun - until 1.2.0 has been released - .


So i reached out to the support section and reported the missing attack as a bug, thinking the attack was intentional - it wasnt. here is the reply:

QA team informed me that the goal of ambushes is that destorying battering rams and towers and retreat. You can't destroy them with siege engines while on siege. There is no feature for AI to attack after ambush. AI will only attack when it thinks they got the upper hand. There are no bugs here.

The ai not attacking is turning ambush missions into a trap for the player, at least for most of the cases:

The besieger is not attacking after an ambush anymore - he continues to prepare the siege, all the time. That results in a longer ongoing siege.

All the enemy units which are wounded and not killed will replenish faster as yours so you dont really harm the enemy by limiting the units during the ambush - you more likely harm yourself.

It's also very rare that allies will come to aid you in a siege defence, so playing on time is the same like playing with fire as in many of the cases the settlement is having less food than the besieger or the besieger is getting helped out by allies - starvation & more besiegers is more likely than a beneficial outcome.

Basically you will find yourself in an endless loop of ambush missions until your city is starving or you get dunked by 3000.

The more time you spend in a siege the more likely you are not able to react to anything else which is happening during the siege: War declarations, other sieges, other battles + As a kingdom leader you can not make any proposals.
What i want as a defender is to make the siege as fast as possible - to make the enemy run into a trap -
you dont want to sit there for years for given reasons.

Ambush missions leave you in a paralyzed status without any useful or reliable outcome.

Iam concerned because i think it's obvious and i wonder how on earth the QA is coming to such evaluations. Am i missing the point?

 

[Jozzzza]

Yea I had it happened to me when I tried the ambush mission for the first time and after that I simply lost my castle bc it ran out of food causing the main part of the defences to simply starve lol.
Never thought of that much until I read your thread and wow, it's just such a Taleworldsy thing to do if you think about it.

 

[Dodgy]

Is there anyone that still bothers with playing defending sieges?
Not worth it in my opinion.

Much easier to abuse the stupid campaign AI, let them start the siege, wait until they lose their troops during the siege against the garrison/militia, and attack them with your own army as soon as their numbers have gone down significantly enough, just before they manage to conquer the fief and have a chance at recovering their wounded soldiers.

As you pointed out, allies will hardly ever come to your rescue quickly enough and by staying inside you are just risking to be starved and lose troops with the bombardments.
If you leave the fief empty the AI will think they'll be able to get it easily, and you just have to jump on them with the right timing.

It's sad but this is true for a lot of features in this game. They are out there but more often than not, there's no point in using them.

 

[swally0ne]

Much easier to abuse the stupid campaign AI, let them start the siege, wait until they lose their troops during the siege against the garrison/militia, and attack them with your own army as soon as their numbers have gone down significantly enough, just before they manage to conquer the fief and have a chance at recovering their wounded soldiers.

this is not always working if they attack a place with a ridiciulous higher ammount. even if you would bring your forces it would play out for them, especially if the siege ai is against you (i have seen sieges where defending troops get stuck while trying to get on the walls, troops showing there back to the enemy archers, etc.pp) and they are bring in siege engines.

imagine they siege a place with 300 guys in with their 1500. you are not able to form an army in time so you jump in with additional 200-300 troops. if siege engines are placed you could wind up in a trap - even without the ambush mission.
just play a little bit more and you might start to bother.

 

[JunKeteer]

So infinite siege ambush potentially ('til only you are left)? If there's no cost (ie hardwood) to continually build them besides time, maybe have the loser suffer additional food loss.
You successfully ambush a siege, shorten their besieging length capability due to hastening their starving risk.

The fact one can easily break siege too is odd, have it cost some time to deconstruct much like you have to for setting up. I'm sure it was because the AI balance would be completely further messed up if they did that though given how basic they are.

 

[Totalgarbage]

So infinite siege ambush potentially ('til only you are left)? If there's no cost (ie hardwood) to continually build them besides time, maybe have the loser suffer additional food loss.
You successfully ambush a siege, shorten their besieging length capability due to hastening their starving risk.

The fact one can easily break siege too is odd, have it cost some time to deconstruct much like you have to for setting up. I'm sure it was because the AI balance would be completely further messed up if they did that though given how basic they are.

Maybe ambushes could decrease the amount of army cohesion (idk -25% of max cohesion), so that armies will either choose to immediately go all-in in a siege battle, get forcefully disbanded due to having negative cohesion (if they don't think they can win the siege) or just use influence to fill their cohesion back up.

But I imagine this system probably has some faults that I haven't thought of.

 

[Jozzzza]

So infinite siege ambush potentially ('til only you are left)? If there's no cost (ie hardwood) to continually build them besides time.

I'm really liking the thought of Siege costing resources like HARDWOOD and TOOLS, perhaps even IRON, LEATHER and other.
We have so many resources in the game, lets make a good use out of them rather than just trading objects.....

To develop this idea even further, it opens up a whole new aspects to Smithing skill - What if you could actually smith AND CRAFT? parts for Siege equipment. For example, nails, brackets, axles, wheels, different reinforcements for rams and siege towers and so on. Maybe even being able to weave different sized baskets for my trebuchet to be able to fire More/Bigger stones with it. And being able to use Hides/Leather to make different straps for ballistas, bows and crossbows.

Imagine, much like the current smithing UI, where you see the sword you're about to make, but instead see your Ram and choose with a slider how long of a Beam you want it to have. Oh let me make the longest and fattest beam possible since it will give me the most damage even though it slows down the ram quite a bit, but idc, I want DAMAGE!!!!!
And since I'm already in the process of making a Fat boy Ram baby, let me add the reinforced steel head shaped as a ram the male sheep, or shaped as a dragon head, or shaped as... whatever I have unlocked.

Oh, and speaking of unlocking parts for smithing, I don't wanna stay in a town for half a year smithing sword after sword after sword to unlock... MORE SWORDS!! damn, what a waste of my life. Besides unlocking parts by smithing relevant items, Please let me unlock smithing parts also by Raiding caravans and looting their resources and getting lucky by them having... an awesome blueprint in there. Or maybe I fight with an enemy lord who happens to have some blueprints too, which I can learn and then being able to craft that weapon part as long as I have the skill requirement to do so
OR to make visiting towns more reasonable, you could walk the city streets, go to local blacksmith and pay him a big coin for him to teach you the making of it which takes you to a little minigame.

In the minigame you are in front of a furnace and anvil, you need to add stuff in the furnace, pump the air blower, keep the right temperature, take the iron out at the right time depending on how it glows, start hammering it at the correct part of the anvil, correct amount of times, being able to use bigger/smaller hammers. All while doing so, you have little side bars in the UI guiding you the status of the object in making (resembling the blacksmith dude teaching you) And if you fail, you're gonna have to pay again.

Obviously this requires a massive rework in the smithing skill, starting with mechanics, i.e being able to generate stamina whilst moving on the world map, much like health generation works. And completely reworking the perk tree.

Maybe by implementing the idea of Smithing skill being used more for your own good, we could get rid of the fact that Smithing with it's current mechanics is a big exploit in the game, pretty much a money printing skill.


Just my thoughts in this, feel free to judge and criticize!



Jozzzza

 

[swally0ne]

I'm really liking the thought of Siege costing resources like HARDWOOD and TOOLS, perhaps even IRON, LEATHER and other.
We have so many resources in the game, lets make a good use out of them rather than just trading objects.....

this could also give the warehouses that are introduced with 1.2.0. more sense.
instead of having workshops for the open market, you have them for yourself to be able to craft material required for siege machinery.

in the end it might be wishful thinking for vanilla bannerlord. but maybe worth for modders to take a look at.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Yeah. Although I feel this (lack of attack) is a huge blunder and should be altered I've always felt like this feature was nonsense anyways because it would always be better overall to just sally out and defeat them in a field battle. If you can't, you should leave and prepare a party that can defeat them, it will always be better over all then trying to do defensive siege with an underpowered force. Fiefs are worthless (other then paint the map markers)so trying to hold one when you don't have an Anti-army force is a waste of time: just get the anti-army force.

You should basically never be sitting in a fief for any reason ever, but I don't think TW or many players even consider the value of campaign time. To make a feature like this useful it should cause a immediate and potent advantage. Now I don't think a defensive siege battle is better then a field battle, but that too is a problem that should be changed.

People often argue against this, but I think making the AI COMMIT to siege so that the player can do various underhanded things to **** them over will add more interesting gameplay then letting the AI always avoid a battle they are under powered for. People try to say it wouldn't be fair but that's nonsense because it's always faster and easier to just defeat all the armies in the field anyways.

I guess I'm just disheartened because to me this and some other features are just nonsense unless TW changes 12+ other things to make them work and I don't think that will happen at all.

 

[swally0ne]

it would always be better overall to just sally out and defeat them in a field battle.

i combined that with ambush attacks on uneven battles. first i forced them into a senseless siege with ladders to make them run away and then sally out to defeat them on the open battlefield. it's not like every siege was necessary for an ambush but it added a layer to the ammount of options you can reach out to.

it just felt nice as with the lack of having defensive options it made sense in a weird way.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

i combined that with ambush attacks on uneven battles. first i forced them into a senseless siege with ladders to make them run away and then sally out to defeat them on the open battlefield. it's not like every siege was necessary for an ambush but it added a layer to the ammount of options you can reach out to.

it just felt nice as with the lack of having defensive options it made sense in a weird way.

Yeah that does seem like it could be appealing, especially if defensive siege battle gets improved a too.

 

[CaptainFracas]

Ambush missions are a feature to destroy enemy siege engines such as Towers and Rams as there is no way to destroy them before the actually siege battle starts.
When you are going for an successful ambush, an attack by the enemy was triggered and the siege begun - until 1.2.0 has been released - .


So i reached out to the support section and reported the missing attack as a bug, thinking the attack was intentional - it wasnt. here is the reply:



The ai not attacking is turning ambush missions into a trap for the player, at least for most of the cases:

The besieger is not attacking after an ambush anymore - he continues to prepare the siege, all the time. That results in a longer ongoing siege.

All the enemy units which are wounded and not killed will replenish faster as yours so you dont really harm the enemy by limiting the units during the ambush - you more likely harm yourself.

It's also very rare that allies will come to aid you in a siege defence, so playing on time is the same like playing with fire as in many of the cases the settlement is having less food than the besieger or the besieger is getting helped out by allies - starvation & more besiegers is more likely than a beneficial outcome.

Basically you will find yourself in an endless loop of ambush missions until your city is starving or you get dunked by 3000.

The more time you spend in a siege the more likely you are not able to react to anything else which is happening during the siege: War declarations, other sieges, other battles + As a kingdom leader you can not make any proposals.
What i want as a defender is to make the siege as fast as possible - to make the enemy run into a trap -
you dont want to sit there for years for given reasons.

Ambush missions leave you in a paralyzed status without any useful or reliable outcome.

Iam concerned because i think it's obvious and i wonder how on earth the QA is coming to such evaluations. Am i missing the point?

To me this change is great. On top of that, now when defending castles you can choose which siege engine you want to build.
It makes sieges harder and more strategic to defend. If you want to destroy the enemy army, you can't do it by defending a castle. You have to lead a big enough army to destroy the enemy army on the field. (or you can but by sallying out after a very successful defense)

Ambush missions will become useful in the future. Once the attackers of a siege align 4 distance siege engines at the same time on the campaign map. The only way for the player to counter that many siege engines would be to ambush (sally out to destroy the enemy siege weapons).

I don't really get why attackers would attack a castle once the defenders destroyed their siege engines Why would they build siege engines in the first place to attack without any of those in the end ?

 

[swally0ne]

Ambush missions will become useful in the future. Once the attackers of a siege align 4 distance siege engines at the same time on the campaign map. The only way for the player to counter that many siege engines would be to ambush (sally out to destroy the enemy siege weapons).

Is there any given source for that feature announcement? I think this could make things more interesting then.

For now, ambush missions just dont make any sense. It's not necessarily about the attack afterwards (you're totally right it's complete unlogical).
It's about the missing sense of ambushes and their actual counterproductive part for now. With the bug they at least made a bit of sense.

Beside that, if ai is able to construct siege engines at the same time, then i can imagine that the attack would get triggered immediatly afterwards, making it impossible or very hard to ambush anyway. And even if, it wouldn't eliminate the main problem with ambushes that i mentioned. You would still wind up in a loop of siege preparation.
Even though i can see that you could buy yourself time to construct siege engines for defence, but wouldn't it wind up with the same problematic?
If the attacker is not attacking before destroying your siege engines - that would be a loop. Maybe iam to sceptical, but given to how the things are now, i have concerns.

Why would they build siege engines in the first place to attack without any of those in the end ?

It goes the same the other way round: Why ambush if they construct the siege engines again anyway?
As i explained at the beginning of the thread, it can go bad for the player for various reasons - at least for the majority of the cases. It would only make sense if the attacker starts the siege attack with your defending engines being up. If that is going to be the case then it probably plays out well!

 

[Totalgarbage]

It goes the same the other way round: Why ambush if they construct the siege engines again anyway?
As i explained at the beginning of the thread, it can go bad for the player for various reasons - at least for the majority of the cases. It would only make sense if the attacker starts the siege attack with your defending engines being up. If that is going to be the case then it probably plays out well!

Well this one is easy to answer; you would ambush & destroy their siege weaponry to make the enemy unable to carry out an attack, thus delaying them until reinforcements come to lift the siege. Of course, since you can't really call for reinforcements, this doesn't translate as well in Bannerlord.

 

[CaptainFracas]

For now, ambush missions just dont make any sense. It's not necessarily about the attack afterwards (you're totally right it's complete unlogical).
It's about the missing sense of ambushes and their actual counterproductive part for now. With the bug they at least made a bit of sense.

It goes the same the other way round: Why ambush if they construct the siege engines again anyway?
As i explained at the beginning of the thread, it can go bad for the player for various reasons - at least for the majority of the cases. It would only make sense if the attacker starts the siege attack with your defending engines being up. If that is going to be the case then it probably plays out well!

Think of it like the Fog of War system. Taleworlds added it too soon (with not enough features to make it work properly) and it made some aspect of the game (like the encyclopedia) more painful to use without adding a good gameplay loop. Now Taleworlds is adding features like the tavern keeper or the marriage proposals that gives the opportunity to the player to clear the fog of war in a fun and efficient way. (even more ways to do so would be nice but it could be added in deep features like feasts, alleys in enemy Towns spaying for you and so on...).

But yeah, to me we are in the same situation here. We just have to wait and see if Taleworlds will indeed upgrade the campaign AI to make it able to stock their siege engines and then place those all at the same time.

ps: I would love to see different tactics being used according to the personality and skills of the lords. A dump and non-skilled character would just attack a fortress with his whole army with just a battering ram and would not retreat before its entire army is killed. On the other hand, a brilliant and honorable commander would lay siege on a hard to take castle and would bombard it with many siege engines for a long time.

 

[swally0ne]

But yeah, to me we are in the same situation here. We just have to wait and see if Taleworlds will indeed upgrade the campaign AI to make it able to stock their siege engines and then place those all at the same time.

Ooh i understand now, it sounded like you have confirmation that siege engines will get established simultaneously in the future. In fact i do have my doubts about future changes for given reasons. I felt like raising the awareness as to me it seems like there isn't any. It is what it is

ps: I would love to see different tactics being used according to the personality and skills of the lords. A dump and non-skilled character would just attack a fortress with his whole army with just a battering ram and would not retreat before its entire army is killed. On the other hand, a brilliant and honorable commander would lay siege on a hard to take castle and would bombard it with many siege engines for a long time.

Yep that would be great. In general there are a lot of good ideas showing up in this thread. Sadly that all doesn't really seem to matter as long as the garisson deployment and ai decission making struggles.