Analysis of the impact of map design in regards to sieges

[Kipsta]

Wait is this why your normal: 1 infantry 2 ranged 3 cavalry menu is completely messed up during sieges and why all your infantry and ranged are split up in tiny groups?

I wonder/hope that taleworlds will find a way to add the option of disabling this feature.

Yes. In fact there even seems to be a master ai at work who evaluates the threat to all three entrance points and will actually shuffle forces between the three melee groups. Sadly rotating forces are very ignorant of their surroundings and will ignore enemies on their way unless they take damage(even then they ignore them sometimes). You can observe this behavior often when attackers are walking past the gate troops onto the walls and wall defenders just walk into or past the attackers to reinforce the useless square. Archers who are heading for their wall positions are also ignorant of enemies on their way and will usually run into attackers with their bow drawn and only change to melee once attacked.

To satisfy both player and ai experience in sieges the current formation system lacks flexibility, I have come up with some other tests I want to try though thanks to you.

 

[Kipsta]

Pre-determined control groups versus player agenda
As I have laid out the rules for control groups in my original posts, let us examine the impact this has on the player in case of a siege defense. The siege starts with the player being able to freely create and move formations around, but how does interact with the developer given "rules" for where a certain formation has to be and how many formations there are anyways? For this I took a look at what happens at Car Banseth and Ustokol Castle since both are extremes for each case (8 control groups used versus 5 control groups used). It turns out though that no difference for the player exists, because in both cases the result is the same. Once you actually start the battle every control group is instantly set to delegated command and will reverse everything you changed. The only remaining change left at the start of the battle is where placed your soldiers who will promptly move to their pre-determined designated control group position. Even if you might try to turn off delegated command on all formations as quickly as possible they have already gotten their move order and destroyed your setup. In case there are less than eight control groups used at map start all your newly formed formations will be depleted the moment you start the battle to recreate the initial siege setup.

Conclusion: The initial siege setup phase is a sham. You can take command of your troops by turning off delegated command after the battle has started, but anything you do before that will be in vain. Of course you can never tell your archers not to man the walls for example which results in another buggy behavior in case you want to abandon the wall which is archers who are engaged on the walls will be very likely to flee. I have had a siege battle where my death ration was something like 350-100, but almost all my archers (~190) fled into the keep, because I didn't bother defending the walls.

 

[Stromming]

Pre-determined control groups versus player agenda
As I have laid out the rules for control groups in my original posts, let us examine the impact this has on the player in case of a siege defense. The siege starts with the player being able to freely create and move formations around, but how does interact with the developer given "rules" for where a certain formation has to be and how many formations there are anyways? For this I took a look at what happens at Car Banseth and Ustokol Castle since both are extremes for each case (8 control groups used versus 5 control groups used). It turns out though that no difference for the player exists, because in both cases the result is the same. Once you actually start the battle every control group is instantly set to delegated command and will reverse everything you changed. The only remaining change left at the start of the battle is where placed your soldiers who will promptly move to their pre-determined designated control group position. Even if you might try to turn off delegated command on all formations as quickly as possible they have already gotten their move order and destroyed your setup. In case there are less than eight control groups used at map start all your newly formed formations will be depleted the moment you start the battle to recreate the initial siege setup.

Conclusion: The initial siege setup phase is a sham. You can take command of your troops by turning off delegated command after the battle has started, but anything you do before that will be in vain. Of course you can never tell your archers not to man the walls for example which results in another buggy behavior in case you want to abandon the wall which is archers who are engaged on the walls will be very likely to flee. I have had a siege battle where my death ration was something like 350-100, but almost all my archers (~190) fled into the keep, because I didn't bother defending the walls.

Thats a SHAMe

In all honestly though, sieges right now are just plain broken

 

[lukkyb]

i wish there was a way to say send 5 men from one group to another and keep that number the same as i noticed in sieges the AI will move men between groups all the time sometimes moving alot from a wall that has just had a siege tower land to the gate where there are more than enough men to deal with the attackers there

If the player could be like i need 10 men to help reinforce that wall and 5 to go and deal with the ladders and help them that would be good or even a few men sat at the back as reserves to fill in gaps as they are needed but yeah i agree sieges are broken and need a rework im hoping that there placeholder like perks currently but i may be wrong

 

[svelok]

Once you actually start the battle every control group is instantly set to delegated command and will reverse everything you changed.

This might be a bug?

 

[Stromming]

It would be nice if it was more flexible in defensive sieges. Like you are standing in the middle on a tower, so we can see and direct the troops (WHY DO WE NOT SPAWN IN MIDDLE?) and you have the bulk of the forces by the gate. Then you can see your troops are getting hammered on left wall, then you send some troops to left wall.

"Reinforce left wall"
"Abandon right wall"
"Shield wall facing right" (to part troops in middle)

Probably too complicated for AI to handle or for developers to develop, but it would be a lot better than what we have now, which is just a mess where you cant put troops in any sort of good or meaningful way, and soldiers just flee left and right and UGGHJHHHHHH sieges really grind my gears

 

[Tercero]

To be honest I would expect the current system to be a "good enough not to break the game placeholder" that will be worked on at some point, that is my guess...

 

[guiskj]

The problem that I have is that Sieges are so broken and the fixes necessary are so diverse that I don't know how TW can even have the confidence that this can be a working feature...

If my programming team came to me and said they have a cool feature that never works and getting it to work takes fixes to Scene Design, AI and Pathfinding, I would have 0 confidence that I could deliver on it, as at that point this is less of a feature and more like wishful thinking.

 

[froggyluv]

That's what happens when you have one team of devs for design and other for ai, with little interaction between them. Designing scenes and maps in games is not a matter of looking good, the priority should be creating something that perfectly fits how the ai interacts with the surroundings, in a scripted and limited way, so that you don't have problems like this.

Amen brother!!

This is true of quite a few games. Good AI is dependent on a cohesive level design built to their strengths and to avoid their weaknesses. See FEAR and Half Life 1 for examples of how its done right

 

[Dionaea]

Personally I'd prefer that the castle/city militia and garrison do their thing and are under AI control and that the player can only control the soldiers that where in his own party, like in warband when helping out an allied castle. And that the units stay the same instead of being split in smaller groups, if we want to split up units we already have that option, it shouldn't be done for us

 

[Ettenrocal]

Really good feedback, remenbering other threads about siege problems, it's clear that TW devs have not a clear vision on how hard it should be to take a castle for attackers, i remenber a dev saying 3 attackers on 1 defenders was the average ratio to take a castle when it should be at least 5:1 and 10:1 would not be that irrealisitic. The only thing that has been improved is how archers positions themselves with merlons and crenels which is far better than before.

There is also that really weird way of positioning ladders too much upper the crenel, i think they did this for the defenders have possibility of using their wood stick to push ladders but in the end that completely ruin the gameplay, and seeing the soldiers climb the ladders like one meter upper than needed and then "falling" on the wall is really really weird.

I think the ladders should not exceed the wall, nobody would do that: that would be too easy to push it away even with hands. And the wood sticks to push ladders should be use more like that:

Spoiler: Siege ladder problem

Here the ladders are correctly positionned so that the defenders have an hard time to push them away

Spoiler: good ladder position

I think it's why the wood stick are long to use it outside the wall on not on the wall.

I also think that the doors of castles are exploded really too fast by battering rams and having all a group of defenders waiting behind the doors to explode is a little bit off... Like they would not be at better at defending the walls? The siege mechanics almost need a complete rethink.

It would have been also fun to have prepartions of siege assault phases, like filling the moat or installing attackers defense and then once all is done -> final siege assault.