Kipsta
I have tested every single siege map the game offers in custom battle with the following settings:
400 Defenders
500 Attackers
Level 2 Walls
Four ballista for defender
No siege weapons for attackers
One tower, ram and ladders
Factions were mostly based on proximity of castle or mirror match
I excluded Battania from testing (kept one result in) since they get Battanian Heroes in custom battle who are beyond op in sieges and have an unfair advantage against the other factions.
Vlandia&Sturgia were set to 50% archers and no horse archers to keep the infantry, archer(50:50) ratio intact.
I have identified multiple problems which stem purely from bad design practices which should be easily fixable.
2. Bad positioning of control groups
The reasons for this I discussed above. Many maps also suffer from this in two other regards which are the gate troops and both wall troops. On way too many maps the defenders are too far away from the gate to stop the enemy from pouring in once it has been breached. This negatively impacts the utility of murderholes in gatehouses and scrutinizes the defense of the walls which will easily be swarmed by the gate attackers who are going to charge in. On some maps the wall defenders have trouble for two reasons: One they are placed in a bad position from the beginning where they can be shot upon or are stuck and two they do not defend at the right location which would be right in front of the siege tower or ladders. They'll honorably wait for their enemies to scale the walls and engage them somewhere on the wall while allowing the enemy to clean out archers in the opposite direction.
3. Aggressive placement of attacking archers and BLOBS
Paradoxically on many maps the attackers spawn with their archers close to the walls ready to shoot while defenders actually have to go to their designated archer positions. This is compounded by some maps putting defenders at an absolute firepower disadvantage. This is what I mean:
The defending archers face an overwhelming force at all time. This leads to nonsensical siege scenarios where the defenders either trade 1:1 or do worse than the attackers. Optionally it gets even worse when the attacking infantry waits for the assault to begin in front of the attacking archer blobs and thereby absorb most of the ranged fire with their shields. Most maps are like this, but there are positive example on how to do it better which are Pen Cannoc, Quyaz and Seonon. Archers are farther away from the wall reducing deadliness, but there are many fortifications with assigned archer positions for the attacker improving the atmosphere by a lot.
4. All windows are useless
Some castles have up to 50% of their important archer positions indoors firing from a slit window position. They are just broken. Archers will not shoot through the tiny windows most of the time, only when all stars align will a bot even attempt to do so for once.
5. Lack of archer positions
To wrap this up another short point: Many maps seem to lack archer positions where they make sense, for example on top of the gatehouse, looking down the murderhole or some towers.
After posting negatively about sieges I wanted to get the whole picture and went ahead testing them extensively. My results actually surprise myself as I wasn't expecting map design to have this much of an impact on the enjoyability of sieges. While all of this has nothing to do with attackers being unable to climb ladders effectively I no longer think that having them do so will make sieges automatically good. In fact it will exasperated existing problems of badly designed sieges which weren't properly tested. There is a world of difference between fighting a siege at Car Banseth or Pen Cannoc to Baltakhand or Ustokol Castle. Level designers have a lot of control over how a siege plays on an AI level, so I am really looking forward to the modding tools being released soon.
400 Defenders
500 Attackers
Level 2 Walls
Four ballista for defender
No siege weapons for attackers
One tower, ram and ladders
Factions were mostly based on proximity of castle or mirror match
I excluded Battania from testing (kept one result in) since they get Battanian Heroes in custom battle who are beyond op in sieges and have an unfair advantage against the other factions.
Vlandia&Sturgia were set to 50% archers and no horse archers to keep the infantry, archer(50:50) ratio intact.
Fortification | Attacker | Defender | Result for A | A-D Death Ratio | Negative Observations | Positive Observations |
| | | | | | |
Ain Baliq Castle | Empire | Aserai | Win | 278-390 | Archers on major tower broken, barely shoot; Medium towers aren't properly manned; Inaccessible ballista on one tower; Gate killzone archers have trouble shooting; Many bots get stuck on gatehouse stairs; | Plenty of stones to throw; |
Argoron | Sturgia | Empire | Loss | 438-119 | Infantry doesn't properly defend against siege tower, keeps running away from it and returning; | Good ballista placement and use; Decent archer utilization besides bugged window archers |
Baltakhand | Empire | Khuzait | Win | 355-390 | Initial formation placement is bad; Only uses five control groups; Very few archer positions, some that make sense aren't even unused; Defenders don't block the gate; Boring straight wall section | |
Car Banseth | Vlandia | Battania | Loss | 329-56 | Both gate ballista weren't used; | Nearly all archer positions filled and properly used; Awesome design |
Chaikand | Empire | Khuzait | Loss | 414-238 | Only uses five control groups; Towers and gatehouse top don't have archers; Infantry does not properly defend against ladders on right side (always defender perspective); Boring straight wall section; Attacker archers just blob up in front of walls | |
Galend | Empire | Vlandia | Loss | 486-363 | Unused inner wall section on right side; Hill offers op archer blob position; | Awesome design, especially the staggered wall section; |
Hakkun Castle | Empire | Khuzait | Loss | 484-339 | Same as Baltakhand&Chaikand | |
Lyakis | Empire | Aserai | Loss | 456-289 | Attacker archer fortifications too far away to properly engage walls; Right side tower not properly manned; | Good design; Defenders actually block the gate; |
Jaculan | Empire | Vlandia | Win | 377-384 | Defenders don't block the gate; Archers perform very badly | |
Lageta | Vlandia | Empire | Win | 284-381 | Defenders don't block the gate; Archers perform very badly; | |
Lianoc Hen Castle | Vlandia | Empire | Win | | Awful fps unplayable | |
Lycaron | Vlandia | Empire | Win | 414-385 | Defenders don't block the gate; Archers perform very badly; | |
Makeb | Empire | Khuzait | Win | 442-384 | Defenders don't block the gate; Archers perform very badly; Blobs on wall | |
Pen Cannoc | Empire | Empire | Loss | 450-150 | Defenders don't block the gate; | Awesome design, best archer placement I have seen yet; No blobs on walls; Infantry moves from cover to engine sections only once they arrive, no pointlessly getting shot on the wall before that; Attacking archers don't have serious advantage |
Qasira | Aserai | Aserai | Loss | 441-165 | Defenders don't block the gate; Nobody defends against right side siege tower; | Decent archer setup, no wall blobs; |
Quyaz | Aserai | Aserai | Loss | 461-234 | Bugged wall section leading to stuck troops; | No op archery blobs in front of castle; Well designed attacker approach; Defenders properly block the gate; |
Seonon | Sturgia | Sturgia | Loss | 491-166 | Defenders don't block the gate; | Great design; Good archer placement for both the attacker and defender; |
Sibir | Empire | Sturgia | Win | 225-398 | Defenders don't block the gate; Too big to defend; Complexity remains unused and becomes a disadvantage | |
Simira Castle | Sturgia | Khuzait | Loss | 444-126 | Defenders don't block the gate; Some of the fortification for attacking archers are a little too far away; | Good design; Plenty of manned attacker fortifications; |
Tarkor Castle | Empire | Sturgia | Win | 356-376 | Blobs on wall; Archers don't man inner wall and gatehouse top; Attackers don't use archer fortifications, just blob; Infantry doesn't properly defend against siege tower left side and ladders right side; | Awesome design; Defenders actually block the gate; |
Talivel Castle | Empire | Vlandia | Win | 185-375 | Op archer blob right in front of wall; Archers blob on wall; Many archer positions unmanned; A literal death trap; | |
Thractorae Castle | Empire | Empire | Loss | 436-211 | Defenders don't block the gate; Archers blob on wall; Unmanned archer positions; | |
Ustokol Castle | Vlandia | Sturgia | Win | 158-372 | Only four control groups; Massive archer blob on wall --->almost entire castle remains unmanned(archers) due to blob; Massive enemy archer blob on the left side; | Good use of attacker fortifications; Gate properly blocked; |
Varnovapol | Vlandia | Sturgia | Win | 356-399 | Attacking archers too close to wall and too blobby; Literally nobody managed to climb up the siege tower right side; | Plenty of attacker fortifications; Awesome gate killbox; Defenders actually block the gate; |
Verona Castle | Empire | Empire | Loss | 465-344 | Attacking archers too close to wall and too blobby; Boring straight wall section; Defenders don't block the gate; | |
I have identified multiple problems which stem purely from bad design practices which should be easily fixable.
- Lack of using control groups properly
2. Bad positioning of control groups
The reasons for this I discussed above. Many maps also suffer from this in two other regards which are the gate troops and both wall troops. On way too many maps the defenders are too far away from the gate to stop the enemy from pouring in once it has been breached. This negatively impacts the utility of murderholes in gatehouses and scrutinizes the defense of the walls which will easily be swarmed by the gate attackers who are going to charge in. On some maps the wall defenders have trouble for two reasons: One they are placed in a bad position from the beginning where they can be shot upon or are stuck and two they do not defend at the right location which would be right in front of the siege tower or ladders. They'll honorably wait for their enemies to scale the walls and engage them somewhere on the wall while allowing the enemy to clean out archers in the opposite direction.
3. Aggressive placement of attacking archers and BLOBS
Paradoxically on many maps the attackers spawn with their archers close to the walls ready to shoot while defenders actually have to go to their designated archer positions. This is compounded by some maps putting defenders at an absolute firepower disadvantage. This is what I mean:
4. All windows are useless
Some castles have up to 50% of their important archer positions indoors firing from a slit window position. They are just broken. Archers will not shoot through the tiny windows most of the time, only when all stars align will a bot even attempt to do so for once.
5. Lack of archer positions
To wrap this up another short point: Many maps seem to lack archer positions where they make sense, for example on top of the gatehouse, looking down the murderhole or some towers.
After posting negatively about sieges I wanted to get the whole picture and went ahead testing them extensively. My results actually surprise myself as I wasn't expecting map design to have this much of an impact on the enjoyability of sieges. While all of this has nothing to do with attackers being unable to climb ladders effectively I no longer think that having them do so will make sieges automatically good. In fact it will exasperated existing problems of badly designed sieges which weren't properly tested. There is a world of difference between fighting a siege at Car Banseth or Pen Cannoc to Baltakhand or Ustokol Castle. Level designers have a lot of control over how a siege plays on an AI level, so I am really looking forward to the modding tools being released soon.
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