Make castles and cities harder to conquer.

[Lychee Nut]

I mean I know I am beating a dead horse here, but seriously, having a defending 130 vs. 500 attacking, and the casualties are not that much better than if it had been a field battle is just absolutely horrendous. Castles were meant to be painful to attack, or time consuming to starve out. I have not seen any developers mentioning plans to make castles any better. I mean there is talk about changing their upgrades so you can fix their supply or loyalty, and bugfixes yes, but I haven't seen any information regarding about big additions or changes coming in the future to make things far more defendable

Some castles and cities are actually pretty good, with multi tiered defenses that slow down the enemy enough for their ranged units to pick people off, and with some cities even having 270 degree fields of view on the ram or even amazing Sturgian Killboxes on the inner gate, but the majority of locations on the world map perform so poorly the actual assault isn't punishing like it should be.

This ends up coming from a variety of things:

10 or so years in and castles that have not been sieged before are at max upgrades and may only have roughly 120-200 men including militia, which is nothing vs armies of 700 or even up to 1600. I mean we shouldn't expect them to hold up in 7 to 1 odds or always contain like 400 men, but when its only 1 against 3-4 odds that is supposed to be their forte.

Siege equipment doesn't really have much time to do damage to soldiers before they reach the walls. most castles and cities don't have equipment placed so they can keep firing at enemies close to the walls either. if the assaulting army has lots of ranged units keeping soldiers on that equipment is incredibly difficult, they tend to die more than they kill.

Rams are op, you can just push a castle with a ram before the AI has a chance to build any defenses, and the gates have almost no health, they take a very short period of time to take down with a ram. The inner gate is not much better.

- Related to the above, no fire arrows?

The gate itself doesn't have a lot of arrow slits or defenses, no pitch to pour on the ram and its users for some extra damage, no rocks or ditches to slow down the ram and force engineers to fill them or remove them. The gate is meant to be the hardest point of a castle to take, being the natural entry way, it is the castle's weak point and thus most heavily defended and designed for deterring attackers. The gates are incredibly weak in Bannerlord overall.

There is a very short period of time for attackers to reach the walls with equipment, the defenders don't have much time to spend shooting the soldiers to get some early kills. The difference in pushing a piece of siege equipment to the walls in Bannerlord and the amount of time it took in Warband is huge. In Warband that was one of the main damage dealing opportunities for defenses with lots of archers. I could easily get a hundred kills before the tower hit the wall in Warband and I got swarmed by a thousand men.

separately, AI is pretty bad, they tend to let defenders in through the breaches, or the gate instead of using them like a choke point and cutting attackers off. They also often send most men to defend a gate that hasn't broken yet, instead of focusing on the ladders or towers that are dumping people on them.


Hoping to see developers address the problem with these siege battles, because it looks like there are no changes planned, just fixes. Changes would help solve steamrolling on the map, since assaulting would be costly in lives if you didn't have huge number advantages. Thus forcing lords to spend more down time recruiting and recouping losses.

 

[veronicaaltoids]

the developer already make the siege experience so terrible that I no longer siege the castle myself
the AI soldiers just don't climb the ladder, it got stuck at the wall but just don't climb it, sometimes it's all moving into one big group, even you follow them and kill them one by one, they wont fight back , because they are AI controlled, they need to move to the destination

it's driving me crazy , I would even choose to die in battle , then let the AI fight themself, to save me some time

 

[Lychee Nut]

the developer already make the siege experience so terrible that I no longer siege the castle myself
the AI soldiers just don't climb the ladder, it got stuck at the wall but just don't climb it, sometimes it's all moving into one big group, even you follow them and kill them one by one, they wont fight back , because they are AI controlled, they need to move to the destination

it's driving me crazy , I would even choose to die in battle , then let the AI fight themself, to save me some time

I don't know when the ladder and tower bug came back but I have seen it too. I can still roflstomp a fortress of 150 with 200 men. It depends on the castle. and just because they are bugged doesn't mean the castle is hard because it is well made. its hard because the game doesn't work.

 

[Apocal]

Changes would help solve steamrolling on the map, since assaulting would be costly in lives if you didn't have huge number advantages. Thus forcing lords to spend more down time recruiting and recouping losses.

No, it wouldn't. Autocalc sieges are already brutally punishing in terms of losses, easily three to five times the casualties of a manually fought assault. It doesn't do much to slow down snowballing though, because while one army is spent, another can come up and continue the offensive.

Most sieges are autocalc, of course.

 

[XDaron]

separately, AI is pretty bad, they tend to let defenders in through the breaches, or the gate instead of using them like a choke point and cutting attackers off.

in every castle I've seen until now, the defender infantry does not position them selves correctly near the gate, they give space so infantry can envelop them instead of creating a choke point at the gate

 

[Mikal Manfriedson]

I wonder about another mechanic: When a siege starts, the attacker builds up a siege camp. This is good and logical. The defender, however has to setup his tower defenses again and again and those things do not shoot the siege camp to inflict at least minor attritional damage? Even if hitting siege engines as if nobody was manning them. I mean...why on earth should you want to dismantle a ballista on your tower unless you want to replace it with something different.

 

[geala]

I wonder about another mechanic: When a siege starts, the attacker builds up a siege camp. This is good and logical. The defender, however has to setup his tower defenses again and again and those things do not shoot the siege camp to inflict at least minor attritional damage? Even if hitting siege engines as if nobody was manning them. I mean...why on earth should you want to dismantle a ballista on your tower unless you want to replace it with something different.

The attacker would build the siege engines outside of the defenders range and then pull it towards shooting positions. Also, such an intense artillery duel like in the game did not happen in real sieges often, maybe it never happened. In case of heavy trebuchets of the attackers which could not be moved after construction, castles usually had no big trebuchets installed and the smaller catapults and onagers used had not so much range to hit the trebuchets.

To OP, I would vote for towns being much more resilient to sieges, castles not so much. Bigger towns, as portrayed in the game, were usually much more difficult to siege and conquer than castles, because they on average had a much higher rate of defenders per wall meter than even the best garrisoned castles. It is rather unrealistic that militias in castles are often as plentiful as in towns.

 

[BoBB]

It's not simply that castles and towns are too easy to capture. It's the whole game right now. You destroy 1 army and the same few characters will respawn with full armies and are back again. It makes the game feel very tedious, fast.

So, a number of suggestions but it all comes down to slowing everything down a notch or two.

1. Nobles need time to rest and refit.

2. Triple the time of siege engine construction and make it so that everything is built in reserve, once everything is constructed, the siege proper commences and not the whack a mole version that we have right now on the campaign map (i.e. no siege engine duels on campaign map).

3. Slow the pace of battle by making AI care about their lives

4. When one side abandons the field, do not destroy the party but allow them to regroup.

5. Increase the size of militias.

 

[Lychee Nut]

in every castle I've seen until now, the defender infantry does not position them selves correctly near the gate, they give space so infantry can envelop them instead of creating a choke point at the gate

yeah that is another thing they do, like the left picture they usually just stand there too. I made tons of bug posts about that in the past but they aren't even labeled as being in progress yet so.

 

[a_ver_est]

Rams are op, you can just push a castle with a ram before the AI has a chance to build any defenses, and the gates have almost no health, they take a very short period of time to take down with a ram. The inner gate is not much better.

- Related to the above, no fire arrows?

The gate itself doesn't have a lot of arrow slits or defenses, no pitch to pour on the ram and its users for some extra damage, no rocks or ditches to slow down the ram and force engineers to fill them or remove them. The gate is meant to be the hardest point of a castle to take, being the natural entry way, it is the castle's weak point and thus most heavily defended and designed for deterring attackers. The gates are incredibly weak in Bannerlord overall.

This!!!!

The gate is just a count down, a short one if you ask me... it is just imposible to defend.

 

[Lychee Nut]

No, it wouldn't. Autocalc sieges are already brutally punishing in terms of losses, easily three to five times the casualties of a manually fought assault. It doesn't do much to slow down snowballing though, because while one army is spent, another can come up and continue the offensive.

Most sieges are autocalc, of course.

Depends if you actively participate in all the sieges like I do (cause I like sieges a lot) or not. I can lead or join an army of 600-800 and steamroll half a dozen castles before they need to regroup, or just for another group to take over. Which ties into what @BoBB said about recruiting and armies returning shortly. Although that depends on difficulty, it is just a separate problem related to campaign management of numbers. Enemies need more time to regroup, maybe the losing side in a war needs increased recruit bonuses to scrape some extra dregs out of the barrel(grabbing even militia or something to bolster numbers), but that really is a separate issue.

In regards to Campaign management, yeah castles aren't the biggest detractor when it comes to steamrolling on the campaign. The fact there are on average 3 different armies running around is of course going to mean there are 3 times the campaign resolution(time for campaign to be over). Warband had only one effective martial, and occasionally there would be a second lord running around with a minor party, but there needs to be limitations on size of armies, and how often they can form, because that's the real problem, 3-4 more armies means 3-4 more battles and sieges and theoretically 1/3-1/4 the campaign time it would be otherwise.

I like the army system, but there are very few checks and balances to keep them under control and get the game to last the 100-200 years of "stable" gameplay Taleworlds say they want. Although they are working on that now, it will really take a variety of introductions like down-time war activities and the like. People have been suggesting all over the forums different activities and tweaks to help slow them down, because honestly all the Lords CAN do is war atm. They have no reason to do anything else.


Also I want to point out @Apocal, you made me think about the auto-resolve casualties. It implies either the casualties are too high compared to developers intentions for auto-calc, which I doubt cause they tweaked them to be higher. Or more likely the castles simply just don't match up to their auto-calc difficulty, sure auto-calc is supposed to punish you a bit, is my understanding, but even if you factor in making it easier they are so far off the actual gameplay difficulty it makes me think the castles just do not hit their design mark. You can interpret it differently than that too of course.

 

[Aerational]

There needs to be a propensity for the AI to stock up garrisons of likely targets for enemies enemy borders. Also I've suggested before that AI nobles who are within range of an army that is marching toward a siege should automatically head toward that fief and wait to defend.

 

[Lychee Nut]

There needs to be a propensity for the AI to stock up garrisons of likely targets for enemies enemy borders. Also I've suggested before that AI nobles who are within range of an army that is marching toward a siege should automatically head toward that fief and wait to defend.

That would be a pretty good idea, until recently enemy factions would apparently just choose whatever castle they so pleased. In (1.5.6? I think) they made it so only bordering castles and towns would be targeted instead of random deep-striking across the map. So that is a feasible introduction.

Of course I haven't played enough from that version to verify it yet, but it does seem like all the fights and sieges for my faction so far (only a dozen or so) have all been border territory.

 

[Aerational]

That would be a pretty good idea, until recently enemy factions would apparently just choose whatever castle they so pleased. In (1.5.6? I think) they made it so only bordering castles and towns would be targeted instead of random deep-striking across the map. So that is a feasible introduction.

Of course I haven't played enough from that version to verify it yet, but it does seem like all the fights and sieges for my faction so far (only a dozen or so) have all been border territory.

Armies will sometimes randomly march deep into enemy territory to siege some unmanned castle but that puts them in a precarious situation even if it's an easy siege, it's likely just going to be retaken immediately anyway. The border fiefs are definitely the ones that need to be stocked up on troops because once a faction loses control of one it's harder to get it back permanently.

 

[Apocal]

Also I want to point out @Apocal, you made me think about the auto-resolve casualties. It implies either the casualties are too high compared to developers intentions for auto-calc, which I doubt cause they tweaked them to be higher. Or more likely the castles simply just don't match up to their auto-calc difficulty, sure auto-calc is supposed to punish you a bit, is my understanding, but even if you factor in making it easier they are so far off the actual gameplay difficulty it makes me think the castles just do not hit their design mark. You can interpret it differently than that too of course.

Devs have already acknowledged that sieges don't favor the defender as much as they want in manual battles. They want sieges to be massively bloody commitments, the capstone to successful campaigns. Not just speed bumps.

 

[Lychee Nut]

Devs have already acknowledged that sieges don't favor the defender as much as they want in manual battles. They want sieges to be massively bloody commitments, the capstone to successful campaigns. Not just speed bumps.

I haven't been able to find any developer feedback on that, do you have the post? I want to read

 

[Apocal]

I haven't been able to find any developer feedback on that, do you have the post? I want to read

...

This can be a good design what you offer but it does not suit current state of Bannerlord. First we must make equipments more important (starting assault with only ladder should result in very hard situation for attackers) and siege mission should be harder for attacker and they need these equipments to be successful.

In missions there is nearly no defensive advantage currently they are like field battle (biggest negative of Bannerlord imo, should be solved asap but not my part) but when Bannerlord is finished there should be at least 2X defensive advantage at also missions (I do not know how this will be achieved I hope it will be solved).

I know current siege design do not needs siege equipments much (for player siege especially) and this is something we need to develop. I inform mission side about this problem for long time. We need better siege defence AI (especially archers), more challenging sieges, we need more AI mechanics / tactics / equipments for better defence at sieges. Then player can feel he should build siege equipments to take that town. After all these we can add damaging projects during siege preperation / siege mission phase. So to apply this solution we need to solve other problems first otherwise it will not be a user-friendly feature.

 

[Lychee Nut]

...

Kudos! reading the thread

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

They want sieges to be massively bloody commitments, the capstone to successful campaigns. Not just speed bumps.

Well, too bad

 

[mikeboix]

...

Really, sometimes I feel like mexxico is the only developer at Taleworlds.