Are sieges too quick now that ladders towers are fixed ?

[archaicwarrior]

I've noticed in sieges that it's far too easy / quick to get towers / ladders to walls .. this is totally unhistoric. First you need to fill in the moat / ditch, all while being shot at my archers etc. ie the Attackers should take casualties during this, but that doesn't seem the case in BL.

What do players think ? Should sieges be longer somehow, or speed is right but attacker should take casualties before the assault starts ? or current quick sieges are ok ?

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[vonbalt]

this is totally unhistoric. First you need to fill in the moat / ditch, all while being shot at my archers etc.

That part supposelly happens during the world map siege phase, when you order the assault everything is set in place to go up the walls and fight (with the classic holywood siege towers being pushed during the assault which is a non-historical use of them)

The sieges ending too quick is the same problem of battles in general ending too quick which is tied to arcadey AI fighting like suicidal madmen instead of properly using formations AND armor being made of wet toilet paper while everyone wields lightsabers for weapons, using a mod like RBM already solves a huge amount of this problem.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I spend a long time doing siege battle,1 it's either on a map with good placement and no scorpians, can use ranged to shoot them off the walls (if troops groups don't blob...) and send them up only wen less then 1/2 enemies remain. 2 Map with bad placement and scorpion, F it I'm just gonna treb down the wall and the gear (why not let engineer do something?), I'm still going to use placement and kill about half the enemies before I charge into the breach, maybe all of em. 3 if I want to I can just retreat my party and kill the entire town myself. It takes a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong
time, but if you don't want to waste you troops on siege crap, that's what you can do.

Now on the other hand, if you become a vassal you can just order other people's parties into you army and cram them up the ladders, who cares, it's not your resources. I don't think that's a question of "too short" but the army mechanic as a vassal is a bit too cheap and giving, you can easily just go on a siege stuper with 1/2 the faction in your army and leave your good troops in a garrison. This is assumedly TW intended path for the player and it's very easy and non-interactive.

I suppose they do need to use all thier ranged in a better position too, but I don't know if that alone is going to change siege very much.

 

[five bucks]

Tower speed is okay, but ladders need to be weaker as a means of attack. Perhaps by making the AI marginally worse at fighting while on ladders than it is now, or requiring the attackers to drag the ladders up to the wall, or allowing the ladders to be destroyable.

 

[archaicwarrior]

Tower speed is okay, but ladders need to be weaker as a means of attack. Perhaps by making the AI marginally worse at fighting while on ladders than it is now, or requiring the attackers to drag the ladders up to the wall, or allowing the ladders to be destroyable.

Med 2 total war has ladders that needed to be carried to the wall .. that was so realistic .. and cool

The more sieges I play, the more obvious that attackers have the advantage now .. it's almost impossible defend a LVL 1 fort.

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[Lucius Confucius]

I have had no problem defending forts against overwhelming numbers. But I suppose that depends on a lot of things, like troop quality, etc. I also have noticed improved AI defence in the latest 1.7.0 version. Gate guards will fight well, units will move to position when ladders/siege towers are being used, and will fight well there too.

 

[The_lol_King]

Med 2 total war has ladders that needed to be carried to the wall .. that was so realistic .. and cool

that would indeed be a cool mechanic

 

[archaicwarrior]

I have had no problem defending forts against overwhelming numbers. But I suppose that depends on a lot of things, like troop quality, etc. I also have noticed improved AI defence in the latest 1.7.0 version. Gate guards will fight well, units will move to position when ladders/siege towers are being used, and will fight well there too.

In history, the number one priority defending fortifications, was to keep the attackers off the wall, once attackers took the walls, the siege was basically over. In BL, getting on the walls seems easy, killing all the defenders is the tough job.

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[Lucius Confucius]

In history, the number one priority defending fortifications, was to keep the attackers off the wall, once attackers took the walls, the siege was basically over. In BL, getting on the walls seems easy, killing all the defenders is the tough job.

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I agree that it should take longer for siege towers and ram to reach the wall/gate. I made a small change for myself once where I increased gate health by many many times so that it took a while for the ram to breach the main gate. Maybe they could add more gate health?

Then again, if it takes longer for them to reach the wall it won't be any fun when the AI commands the siege, becase the AI never destroys the defenders onagers, so the onagers will just destroy all the siege equipment forcing you to retreat.

 

[five bucks]

Med 2 total war has ladders that needed to be carried to the wall .. that was so realistic .. and cool

The more sieges I play, the more obvious that attackers have the advantage now .. it's almost impossible defend a LVL 1 fort.

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Defenders do have advantage still (if you give them an equal number of siege artillery to the attackers), but I would still agree they need to be stronger, as their advantage is not big enough to be realistic, make fortifications worth fleeing to, or make real battles match the results of simulated ones. In another post I did some tests.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/simulation-vs-mission.449042/#post-9774176

I ran a series of custom battles with the following parameters:

Battle size was set to High (500 spawned) on some battles, and Very High (600 spawned) on others. (Defenders did better on High.)
Defenders had 400 men (Empire 25% inf 25% ranged 25% melee cav 25% ranged cav), level 3 fortifications, two ballistae, and two catapults.
Attackers had 800 men (Empire 25% inf 25% ranged 25% melee cav 25% ranged cav), siege ram, siege tower, one ballista, and one onager.
I just let the battles run without interfering, but a good player could inflict 1-100 more casualties depending on how good they are with the catapult.

On Vostrum, defenders won with 159 men left (~60% casualties).
On Charas, defenders won with 68 men left (~80% casualties).
On Jalmarys, attackers won with 13 men left (100% casualties/routs, 10 remaining defenders retreated to the keep).
On Syronea, defenders won with 105 men left (~75% casualties).
On Quyaz, attackers won with 20 men left (100% casualties/routs, 5 remaining defenders retreated to the keep).
On Seonon, defenders won with 106 men left (~75% casualties).
On Sibir, attackers won with 30 men left (100% casualties/routs, 52 remaining defenders retreated to the keep).
On Chaikand, defenders won with 80 men left (~75% casualties).

So I would overall agree that defenders need more advantage in real sieges to compete with autocalc sieges. Your point of being discouraged from actually fighting the battle is 100% valid.

However, we should also consider that if the defenders have too much advantage that will make the game even grindier for the player, who has to besiege over 100 times to win the game. So, it could be argued that autoresolve defense calculation should just be reduced down to match the outcome of real battles. But that would increase snowballing by making the AI take territory faster, and would be unrealistic too - siege assaults in real life had a strong defender bias.

So I think the best thing is to meet in the middle; some small buffs to defenders in real battles, and a small nerf to the force multiplier of fortifications in autocalc battles.

I do agree also with @Lucius Confucius that nerfing melee siege engines is not necessarily the way to go.

Ladders should be nerfed first- harder for the AI to fight while on a ladder, ladders need to be carried to the walls, possibly even make ladders destructible - and then we can see how good defending is after that.

 

[kweassa]

That part supposelly happens during the world map siege phase, when you order the assault everything is set in place to go up the walls and fight (with the classic holywood siege towers being pushed during the assault which is a non-historical use of them)

The sieges ending too quick is the same problem of battles in general ending too quick which is tied to arcadey AI fighting like suicidal madmen instead of properly using formations AND armor being made of wet toilet paper while everyone wields lightsabers for weapons, using a mod like RBM already solves a huge amount of this problem.

^^^ This.

The "assault" in the game, is essentially the very final phase of the entire siege.

 

[archaicwarrior]

I agree that it should take longer for siege towers and ram to reach the wall/gate. I made a small change for myself once where I increased gate health by many many times so that it took a while for the ram to breach the main gate. Maybe they could add more gate health?

Great idea.

Then again, if it takes longer for them to reach the wall it won't be any fun when the AI commands the siege, becase the AI never destroys the defenders onagers, so the onagers will just destroy all the siege equipment forcing you to retreat.

Good point.

^^^ This.

The "assault" in the game, is essentially the very final phase of the entire siege.

Yes, but no attacking casualties are taken during the Prep phase ?? This is a big no-no.

I personally don't like the Strat prep phase of sieges - too kiddy / gimiky for my liking. I would prefer to see them on the battle map - Catapults firing at each other while towers / ladders / rams slowly move forward.

Although, I must say TW should NOT try to have ladders be carried forward like Total war, as this was very complicated to get right. I remember charging my light hose out of the gate to attack the ladder carriers, which would drop the ladder to fight me. I would then retreat my horsemen, leaving the ladder carriers in a confused state .. for short while until they picked up the ladder and headed for wall again. Cav - rinse and repeat ..

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[rion4581]

Love the way sieges work now both on offense as and defense. Not saying this bout yall but some folks will never be happy. Sieges are fine lot of fun and ling with big armies

 

[archaicwarrior]

Love the way sieges work now both on offense as and defense. Not saying this bout yall but some folks will never be happy. Sieges are fine lot of fun and ling with big armies

You must love unhistoric easy console kiddy games ?

 

[Askey]

It should take 3 times the amount of troops to siege a fortification - thats how difficult it should be. I also love the ideas of carrying the ladders and receiving casualties during the initial stages of setting up siege weapons/tools/whatever.

..you can easily just go on a siege stuper with 1/2 the faction in your army ....

Siege Stupor, I love it. Sums it up pretty well. I have seen lords nonchalantly conquering castle after castle during my most recent campaign.

 

[five bucks]

Love the way sieges work now both on offense as and defense. Not saying this bout yall but some folks will never be happy. Sieges are fine lot of fun and ling with big armies

I love the new sieges now too but it doesn't mean they couldn't be improved a little bit - defenders should have more advantage in the siege battle, as otherwise there is no point to the player doing the siege actual battle instead of just using autocalc!

 

[rion4581]

You must love unhistoric easy console kiddy games ?

Translation. I am happy with the siege changes and your jealous lol

 

[archaicwarrior]

Translation. I am happy with the siege changes and your jealous lol

Actual: What's the point of having walls if it's so easy to capture them ?

 

[humility925]

It's depending, if catapults, rames, it's take a mouth due they build it, unless they had gunpower, cannon, they can bring it and can do matter of in day.

I read somewhere, larger city, longer it's will be, need huge attacker to do that last many weeks to do so, even so they might take over, but hold city is other matter, unless they trying to kill all people, then no point to hold as it's dead city, but people in living city won't be loyal to conquering unless their ruler is bad and one who conquering do care of people in city and improve their life, not seek to take from them but to gave them better life (that is very rare, most conquering would be jerk and selffish even cruel, they just take and take, not seek improve life of town for most part and cause suffering)

It's all depend on size of city/castle design, and how good defender and attacker are, number, equipment, morale, weather at least.

But in all, I had not try solo myself as attacker and defender yet, but I do join army that are attacker and petty easier, so I'm little worried that defender might be harder to do so, so I don't know. Defender should be easier than attackers unless attacker had huge number while defender had small number.

In normal battle, if small party see huge number of attacker, small party simple got away easy, fast, hide, so large number unable to get it, but of course town/castle/land can't move or got out of way or run away, end up got stuck and get attacked.

I'm not sure what high successful and failed sieges castle in real life history? I assume that castle is way useful till 16th century 1501 ad? True cannons come up in late 15 Century? I guess everyone see that castle is useless at that time, it's was useful, now it's not useful, but oddly american civil war, even lot of cannon, they still use "fort" in American land during civil war, I guess it's might be useful, Castle vs Fort?

Ah, I see, Castle vs Fort similar yet difference. Someone post this "Castles are fortified, full time residences for lords or monarchs. It's also an administrative center. Forts are simply garrisons of troops placed in strategic locations."

I guess Fort is still useful even vs cannon, it's just no longer ruler live in fort, I guess it's costy and better off flee then hide, from there control from shadows, more or less.

So castle might not useless, but it's not very cost efficient and draw unwanted attention from enemies, I mean too many castle here and there, but enemies take to fight in full power when they know where ruler live rather than fighting many castle here and there.

Once castle no longer called, but fort, meaning ruler hide somewhere, then enemies unable to take full power to fight one single place, and too many fort here and there that very costly going on.

just theory

I guess it's should be harder to take over castle unless huge number or full force of number or something like that, common army shouldn't take castle that easy more or less while it's should be easier to guard castle from attacker unless attacker is united many lords, and huge number.

 

[Targir]

I agree that it should take longer for siege towers and ram to reach the wall/gate. I made a small change for myself once where I increased gate health by many many times so that it took a while for the ram to breach the main gate. Maybe they could add more gate health?

Then again, if it takes longer for them to reach the wall it won't be any fun when the AI commands the siege, becase the AI never destroys the defenders onagers, so the onagers will just destroy all the siege equipment forcing you to retreat.

Where do you change the gate health? I tried to change Steam\steamapps\common\Mount & Blade II Bannerlord\Modules\Native\Prefabs
Prop_siege_gate_outer and inner . Created new games and still break the gates 11/12 ram