Impossible Conquest

[greenhell666]

I love this game, but in certain aspects it is completely broken ... ...

I am around lvl 30 with almost 2000 renown leading the Vaegirs as marshall,
right now we are only at war with the Nords and the only place they have left is Tihr ...

I'am tryin' to conquer them for almost 12 hours with no progress so far ...

The siege map of Tirh is an ASS!!! 

Two small ladders, the stupid bots get stuck in the first ladder,
my army goes one by one through the corridor to the second ladder with rains of arrows,
axes and javelins running through them ... but then it gets worse ...

All the nobles are stuck in the city, the last city with no castles or villages to help,
and they generate and progress new soldiers everyday in an obscene rate!

I left them one time with around 50 soldiers ... but my army was wasted and all the allies too;
it took me two days to remake my army ... and when I got back to Tihr they have 250 soldiers!!! 

Here are my points:

-The chance to capture another noble is too low, it should use the prisioner management skill
-Other towns and castles should generate an ammount of soldiers equivalent to the total castles, villages and towns of that kingdom
-WITH ONLY ONE LADDER!!! Sorry but ... WTF!?  And why a ladder so thin!

And at last

-The morale of the party goes down too damn quickly, it makes no sense,
two days of marching and my soldiers want to commit suicide and with do I loose morale by running away from sieges
when in the results I have killed at least twice the number of soldiers the enemy has killed ?

This really game need some balance tweaks and depending of the siege map the bots AI is broken ...
not to mention the great walls with the tiny ladder of suicide 

*I know my sugestions should go to another forum section ...
But I really just want to complain and hear what you guys can say about this case.

 

[Shishou]

Greetings and welcome to the forums.

Tihr is indeed a notoriously difficult target to besiege due to its double walls, perhaps the hardest in the game under the right circumstances.  That said, it is blessedly unique in that way, so I don't have too much of a problem being what it is.  Even then, attacking the Nords at Tihr with the Vaegirs should be doable if you turn the battle into an archery duel.  The Nords are relatively weak when it comes to ranged combat, while the Vaegirs can really dish it out, so bring lots and lots of archers, tell them to hold position near the edge of the map, and let them shoot it out with the defenders.  While that front wall will obstruct some shots, you should still be able to put a hurting on them, and you can use the wall for cover as you do your own sniping.  If you're lucky and personally good with a ranged weapon, you'll cause a fair number of enemy casualties without losing too many troops.  When low on ammunition, retreat, rinse and repeat.

As for the broader changes, one quick thing: M&B is a highly modifiable game and so there's an easy tweak for lord capture chances, courtesy of TheMageLord; if you don't like the chance for your game, change it.  Information on this can be found at http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,37023.msg958292.html#msg958292 (and there's a lot more in the thread.)  Given that this option exists, I don't see a strong reason to change the core chance for capturing lords.  There's a similar TML tweak that addresses morale: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,36638.0.html.  The other changes, well...

 

[Temuçin]

I disagree. It is nice to have some castles with 2 walls. In case of Thir, I think there should be men on first wall too but I agree with the outher wall ladder. It is too small. However, no castles can stand aganist a horde of huscarls 

A good strategy to prevent this from happening is trying to conquer towns first. Since they are harder to conquer, in later game, they become crowded and crowded just in your case. However, if you conquer towns first, enemy lords will gather at a castle which is comperatively easy to take.

It would be really hard if all those in Thir 

Spoiler

 

[zulu]

your morale is linked to your leadership, party size and food stocks. a higher leadership, good supply of food and a lower party size will help with your morale.

 

[Moss]

Keep in mind sieges were designed for the relatively easy battle sizes default to the game, not the couple of hundred + most people play on. Each enemy lord has their own funds they get through rent from their fiefs, however making them lose these fiefs does little at the moment as they tend to have quite a bit of money saved so their recruiting won't be slowed down for several dozen game days at best. Hopefully that will be fixed in the expansion.

Until then, this might make Thir just a little more bareable.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,57569.0.html

 

[greenhell666]

thx so far

I think I will keep the siege, my char is a great archer and I am using vaegir marksmans,
I was putting them in the outer wall, I think I will try the snipping tecnique (LOL)

But it looks like I'll have to grind up some levels, my STR AGI INT are around 20 but my CHA is only 12,
that's cuz the allies soldiers are pretty much cannon fodder

I think i'll have to grind up something around 150-200 archers 
and my soldier limit is still 123 ...

I just hope vaegirs and nords dont MAKE PEACE 

 

[Erunno]

I actually ha the exactly same problem. I was playing Vaegir, got into a war with the Nords and pushed them back all the way to Tihr. The siege of Tihr lasted for about 4 in-game months. Failed an attack, retreated, got betrayed by the Vaegir lords who had to go chase a group of 5 sea bandits with their 300 man armies, got attacked by the Swadians and had to go defend my own city, etc.

Then one day... I did it. Tihr fell. It felt so awesome when I was victorious but then I discovered that the faction actually remains "alive" one you conquer all their cities. Nowthe Nords desperately send new trops from the far north-western part of the map, trying to get new land.

Conquerng Tihr should be an acievement in my opinion.


About the ladder problem: Theres a mod that adds extra ladders to sieges in the native module. Don't recall it's name right now but you can find it in the thread "List of Native compatible mods".

 

[Moss]

Actually once all the castles and cities belonging to a faction are eliminated the enemy Lords should have no place to respawn and so you should receive a "Faction Defeated" screen once that's happened.

Villager parties and caravans also need to be gone, but they disappear on their own once they reach their destinations. If you still have enemy Lords from that faction attacking you and reappearing check around, they must have a castle tucked away somewhere that you missed.

 

[greenhell666]

uh-oh;

the snipping method didn't work, I'm still trying to conquer Tihr ... 
but this time attacking  once per day and letting some armies get out of town so I can waste them outside,
not any progress so far ... dammit! I really don't want to use any mods but the developers of this game leave me with no choice 

I think I NEED the extra ladders mod because after all THIS is my biggest enemy:



The tiny ladder isn't the problem but the stupid bots who get stuck, it takes more than 5 minutes to all the bots get to the first wall 

 

[Moss]

Really, mods are a necessity for this game. All though it's a great game as it is, it simply isn't as polished as it could be. Things like the siege patch and the Battle Size Changer are easy to install, won't give you any problems and make the game much funner and less frustrating to play.

 

[Lord Shields]

Are you commanding them to charge? If so, try the Follow Me! command. Guide them up the ladder and go and you shouldn't have any problems. I never had a huge problem in my sieges that way. I'd climb to the top of the last ladder and jump over the enemy and attack from behind and then give the "Charge" command.

 

[huldu]

I was surprised the first time i saw this map.

However i didnt find it harder than any other map. First of all im an archer, which probably makes everything way easier. You alone can pretty much take down the entire wall defense. Use the infantry as meat shields in front of you.

Now the NPC is borked beyond what one thought was possible. If you enjoy sending your troops into slaughter(up the meat grinder ladder), then you need some very solid infantry and plenty of them. If you care about your troops, like me... to some degree! Then after clearing the wall of archers, you move slowly up the ladder and just pick the defense off 1 by 1 until its safe enough to send in your infantry. The thing is the NPC will stand up top of the ladder swinging at everything that come up the top, nothing new there. Now one might *think* that this is fine, i dont!

Out of all my siege warfare so far, ive seen them using full defense at the ladder. However once i actually saw them running down the ladder. Well, when that happened the table turned. All of the sudden my troops were leading the meat grinder down the ladder for once, hilarious!

The thing with M&B is that without the player its basically a number game. With the player playing you can turn the *impossible* to win scenario into a win with ease.

I took those Khergits and played them for a bit. We took keep after keep, everything turned purple. The hardest/most annoying factions to play against were by far rhodok followed by swadia. The rest were just a cakewalk. Why i found rhodok annoying... big shield + archer = not too great. They only have *1* hit area with that big shield, and that is their right leg lol. Well, unless you get up behind them. The swadia are pretty much the same, but smaller shield, makes it easier. Anything with a mount(non-siege) is just tedious to fight on the map, fights take forever cause npcs are just running around.

Well to sum it up, if you're an archer you make a big difference everywhere.

 

[Swadius 2.0]

I disagree. It is nice to have some castles with 2 walls. In case of Thir, I think there should be men on first wall too but I agree with the outher wall ladder.

The outerwall is indefensible, I think the Nords are just backing off and turning that area between the walls into a kill zone and to minimize their own casualties.

 

[Moss]

To fix the AI pausing at the top of the ladder, simply walk to the top, (or underneath the top) give a "Hold this position" order, then order the AI to "Advance ten paces". This will cause them to charge onto the wall swinging in order to get to the way point.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

I sometimes bring a small army of heavy infantry. When I assault, they sally out due to superior numbers. Pretty easy to butcher a few hundred that way. Then you can just assault it with your full army.
I've taken Thir by myself with this method. Though I consider it a bit of an exploit.

 

[Zaranthan]

It's actually pretty realistic. The idea behind a siege is that the defenders can't face the attackers on open ground. Historically, if you showed up at a castle with a puny army, they WOULD sally out and carve you up.

The exploit bit is that they charge down the ladder, rather than opening the gates. THAT would be cool.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Yeah, but I'm the one doing the carving. They really should surrender or at least hide in the walls when I (or rather my men) kill over ten times the number I lose.

Not that I care that much 

 

[Kapt Torbjorn]

Conquerng Tihr should be an acievement in my opinion.

http://knugen.org/x360ag/view.php?ach=5089

 

[greenhell666]

LOL!

Achievement Unlocked!

I finally did it, the problem was leaving Tihr to be the last place to conquer really,
with all the nobles there it was impossible, I also think their Trainer skill was making the garrisoned
troop level up so quickly.

So I let the nords take some of the castles near the town and spread around
and then conquered Tihr myself with 125 troops against 300 .. it was pretty funny 
I think they were also short of money because most of them were Nord Footmen.

I've put the archers in the inner wall and rushed stairs up with my infantry and suddendly the tide turned.

Now one question, the Nords don't have any castle, village of town ... when are they gonna give up/surrender ?

 

[This_is__CALRADIA!!!]

Now one question, the Nords don't have any castle, village of town ... when are they gonna give up/surrender ?

They won't give up. They all need to be defeated.

If they already all have been defeated during the last battle, then give the game a few hours/days, you'll eventually get the message telling Nords are no more.