SP - Battles & Sieges Sieges and the problems with it.

[berserkercookie]

I am not going to write anything about peformance issues here as i assume they will be fixed in future patches. I only focus on Siege Problems.

1. Sieges are way to easy to win as defender or attacker and this needs to change.
Attacker:
Build one or two battle rams. Keep the rest of your army out of archer reach and wait till the ram destroys the first door. Rally all your troops behind you and storm the gate. After few seconds where you hammer down the second gate flood the city/castle and win as the defenders can't understand what is happening and only a small portion is defending the gate. Once inside order the charge and watch how your troops massacre the defenders.

Defender:
Ignore the walls, the gate basically everything. Wait for the enemy to be at the ladders or near your gate with the battle ram.
Rally your troops open the gate and storm out. Even if you are outnumberd 10:1 you will slaughter them with ease as they are seperated and can't form a decent attack on you while your troops are in a bulk like a swarm flooding the enemy lines.
My personal best so far is 120 Troops vs over 600 of the enemy and i had 20 casualties while the enemy suffered over 400 deaths and almost over 100 wounded.

2. Siege towers are literally useless.
Neither the AI nor my troops are able to use them. If i manage to get them to the walls either all my troops go for the ladders somewhere else or they go and climb 1 of 3 ladders up getting stuck and blocking the way for everyone else. As for the moment i assume the AI is not fine tuned to make this work but i advise anyone till this is fixed to not waste time and build one. They do not work.

3. Walls need to be reworked so defenders can't fall off them that easy.
If you are a defender at certain citys or castles you can literally command your troops to jump off the walls if you gather enough man. I don't think this was intended at all and a fix would be nice. Cause many times when i attack a castle or city the most casualties come from wall divers and not actual fighting.

4. A Siege should mean insane casualties on attacker side. This aint happening so far.
I attacked a city with 300 men. Defenders got almost 400. I lost about 50 men and 20 wounded. The defenders however got slaughtered. And i reloaded this siege many times to see what is the most historical accurate outcome of a siege like that.

Only attacking with ladders. My troops overrun them quite fast. Minimal casualites on my side.
Attacking with Battle Rams. Slaughter of the defenders. Minimal casualties.
Trying to have my archers kill the defenders before i attack on ladders. Minimal casualties.
Blindy let my troops walk around from one side to the other to play "Catch that arrow" defenders manage to kill a bunch of my men before i order a ladder charge and roflstomp them again.

As a defender playing as the game intended does also not work.
Either the enemy overruns my castle/city quite with ease or i use the charge outside tactic and roflstomp them before they manage to form a line or countercharge.

In my opinion there are some ways to fix this.

A: Defenders get better accuracy on their archers when defending. And i mean sniper quality.

B: Towers get locked doors so the defenders get time to gather troops and defend certain areas of the walls.

C: Citys need a second line of defense with inner walls and another gate for the attackers to breach. A city should be a huge battle with many obstacles for the attackers to overcome and also should have a considerable amount of men actually outnumbering the defenders by far to actually manage to overcome them as the defenders should be able to inflict high casualites on the attacker for every meter ground they manage to take. Every meter should be bought with blood.

D: The automatic generated garrison troops for a city should be mid tier or high tier but never low tier. When i see a NPC army taking over a city with nothing but tier 1 troops and only a few mid tier troops i have to ask myself who was defending that city? Penguins with sticks? A City is the most valuable thing for a kingdom as it generates food, weapons, wealth and troops. Losing a City is a huge deal. Taking one is not. This needs to change.

E: Traps
Logs attached to walls that drop down and kill dozens of men then roll downhill killing even more.
Tar that is dropped then set on fire by archers. The most effective way to destroy a battle ram.
Fire Arrows to rain down on siege towers and battle rams. No Tar needed if you have enough fire arrows.
Tar fields to set on fire once the enemy moves near them by archers.
Stones that drop down once the enemy is at the inner gate.
Iron Gates that drop the moment the wooden gate is destroyed forcing the enemy back to attack over the walls (could be a very expensive city upgrade)
And i am sure people could come up with many more.


Thats it from me for now. To the devs still a huge thank you for the daily updates and all the work they put it. Its EA so we know there are alot of issues that needs to be adressed. But in time we will get there. So far i like the game very much and the peformance issues are way better then a week ago. I am sure there is alot of content in store for us that will be added once the game is in a stable version and crashes and freezes are a rare exception.
But i think its a good idea to even now start listing features or ideas for the future so the good ones make it on a list for way ahead in the future to be added or at least discussed.

Feel free to toss in your own ideas.

Thanks.,

 

[Pejot]

I am not going to write anything about peformance issues here as i assume they will be fixed in future patches. I only focus on Siege Problems.

1. Sieges are way to easy to win as defender or attacker and this needs to change.
Attacker:
Build one or two battle rams. Keep the rest of your army out of archer reach and wait till the ram destroys the first door. Rally all your troops behind you and storm the gate. After few seconds where you hammer down the second gate flood the city/castle and win as the defenders can't understand what is happening and only a small portion is defending the gate. Once inside order the charge and watch how your troops massacre the defenders.

Defender:
Ignore the walls, the gate basically everything. Wait for the enemy to be at the ladders or near your gate with the battle ram.
Rally your troops open the gate and storm out. Even if you are outnumberd 10:1 you will slaughter them with ease as they are seperated and can't form a decent attack on you while your troops are in a bulk like a swarm flooding the enemy lines.
My personal best so far is 120 Troops vs over 600 of the enemy and i had 20 casualties while the enemy suffered over 400 deaths and almost over 100 wounded.

2. Siege towers are literally useless.
Neither the AI nor my troops are able to use them. If i manage to get them to the walls either all my troops go for the ladders somewhere else or they go and climb 1 of 3 ladders up getting stuck and blocking the way for everyone else. As for the moment i assume the AI is not fine tuned to make this work but i advise anyone till this is fixed to not waste time and build one. They do not work.

3. Walls need to be reworked so defenders can't fall off them that easy.
If you are a defender at certain citys or castles you can literally command your troops to jump off the walls if you gather enough man. I don't think this was intended at all and a fix would be nice. Cause many times when i attack a castle or city the most casualties come from wall divers and not actual fighting.

4. A Siege should mean insane casualties on attacker side. This aint happening so far.
I attacked a city with 300 men. Defenders got almost 400. I lost about 50 men and 20 wounded. The defenders however got slaughtered. And i reloaded this siege many times to see what is the most historical accurate outcome of a siege like that.

Only attacking with ladders. My troops overrun them quite fast. Minimal casualites on my side.
Attacking with Battle Rams. Slaughter of the defenders. Minimal casualties.
Trying to have my archers kill the defenders before i attack on ladders. Minimal casualties.
Blindy let my troops walk around from one side to the other to play "Catch that arrow" defenders manage to kill a bunch of my men before i order a ladder charge and roflstomp them again.

As a defender playing as the game intended does also not work.
Either the enemy overruns my castle/city quite with ease or i use the charge outside tactic and roflstomp them before they manage to form a line or countercharge.

In my opinion there are some ways to fix this.

A: Defenders get better accuracy on their archers when defending. And i mean sniper quality.

B: Towers get locked doors so the defenders get time to gather troops and defend certain areas of the walls.

C: Citys need a second line of defense with inner walls and another gate for the attackers to breach. A city should be a huge battle with many obstacles for the attackers to overcome and also should have a considerable amount of men actually outnumbering the defenders by far to actually manage to overcome them as the defenders should be able to inflict high casualites on the attacker for every meter ground they manage to take. Every meter should be bought with blood.

D: The automatic generated garrison troops for a city should be mid tier or high tier but never low tier. When i see a NPC army taking over a city with nothing but tier 1 troops and only a few mid tier troops i have to ask myself who was defending that city? Penguins with sticks? A City is the most valuable thing for a kingdom as it generates food, weapons, wealth and troops. Losing a City is a huge deal. Taking one is not. This needs to change.

E: Traps
Logs attached to walls that drop down and kill dozens of men then roll downhill killing even more.
Tar that is dropped then set on fire by archers. The most effective way to destroy a battle ram.
Fire Arrows to rain down on siege towers and battle rams. No Tar needed if you have enough fire arrows.
Tar fields to set on fire once the enemy moves near them by archers.
Stones that drop down once the enemy is at the inner gate.
Iron Gates that drop the moment the wooden gate is destroyed forcing the enemy back to attack over the walls (could be a very expensive city upgrade)
And i am sure people could come up with many more.


Thats it from me for now. To the devs still a huge thank you for the daily updates and all the work they put it. Its EA so we know there are alot of issues that needs to be adressed. But in time we will get there. So far i like the game very much and the peformance issues are way better then a week ago. I am sure there is alot of content in store for us that will be added once the game is in a stable version and crashes and freezes are a rare exception.
But i think its a good idea to even now start listing features or ideas for the future so the good ones make it on a list for way ahead in the future to be added or at least discussed.

Feel free to toss in your own ideas.

Thanks.,

Right now when defending just focus on destroying battering ram (two decent shots from catapult on the wall). The attackers abandon siege straight after that.

 

[Timberwolf]

I am not going to write anything about peformance issues here as i assume they will be fixed in future patches. I only focus on Siege Problems.

1. Sieges are way to easy to win as defender or attacker and this needs to change.
Attacker:
Build one or two battle rams. Keep the rest of your army out of archer reach and wait till the ram destroys the first door. Rally all your troops behind you and storm the gate. After few seconds where you hammer down the second gate flood the city/castle and win as the defenders can't understand what is happening and only a small portion is defending the gate. Once inside order the charge and watch how your troops massacre the defenders.

Defender:
Ignore the walls, the gate basically everything. Wait for the enemy to be at the ladders or near your gate with the battle ram.
Rally your troops open the gate and storm out. Even if you are outnumberd 10:1 you will slaughter them with ease as they are seperated and can't form a decent attack on you while your troops are in a bulk like a swarm flooding the enemy lines.
My personal best so far is 120 Troops vs over 600 of the enemy and i had 20 casualties while the enemy suffered over 400 deaths and almost over 100 wounded.

2. Siege towers are literally useless.
Neither the AI nor my troops are able to use them. If i manage to get them to the walls either all my troops go for the ladders somewhere else or they go and climb 1 of 3 ladders up getting stuck and blocking the way for everyone else. As for the moment i assume the AI is not fine tuned to make this work but i advise anyone till this is fixed to not waste time and build one. They do not work.

3. Walls need to be reworked so defenders can't fall off them that easy.
If you are a defender at certain citys or castles you can literally command your troops to jump off the walls if you gather enough man. I don't think this was intended at all and a fix would be nice. Cause many times when i attack a castle or city the most casualties come from wall divers and not actual fighting.

4. A Siege should mean insane casualties on attacker side. This aint happening so far.
I attacked a city with 300 men. Defenders got almost 400. I lost about 50 men and 20 wounded. The defenders however got slaughtered. And i reloaded this siege many times to see what is the most historical accurate outcome of a siege like that.

Only attacking with ladders. My troops overrun them quite fast. Minimal casualites on my side.
Attacking with Battle Rams. Slaughter of the defenders. Minimal casualties.
Trying to have my archers kill the defenders before i attack on ladders. Minimal casualties.
Blindy let my troops walk around from one side to the other to play "Catch that arrow" defenders manage to kill a bunch of my men before i order a ladder charge and roflstomp them again.

As a defender playing as the game intended does also not work.
Either the enemy overruns my castle/city quite with ease or i use the charge outside tactic and roflstomp them before they manage to form a line or countercharge.

In my opinion there are some ways to fix this.

A: Defenders get better accuracy on their archers when defending. And i mean sniper quality.

B: Towers get locked doors so the defenders get time to gather troops and defend certain areas of the walls.

C: Citys need a second line of defense with inner walls and another gate for the attackers to breach. A city should be a huge battle with many obstacles for the attackers to overcome and also should have a considerable amount of men actually outnumbering the defenders by far to actually manage to overcome them as the defenders should be able to inflict high casualites on the attacker for every meter ground they manage to take. Every meter should be bought with blood.

D: The automatic generated garrison troops for a city should be mid tier or high tier but never low tier. When i see a NPC army taking over a city with nothing but tier 1 troops and only a few mid tier troops i have to ask myself who was defending that city? Penguins with sticks? A City is the most valuable thing for a kingdom as it generates food, weapons, wealth and troops. Losing a City is a huge deal. Taking one is not. This needs to change.

E: Traps
Logs attached to walls that drop down and kill dozens of men then roll downhill killing even more.
Tar that is dropped then set on fire by archers. The most effective way to destroy a battle ram.
Fire Arrows to rain down on siege towers and battle rams. No Tar needed if you have enough fire arrows.
Tar fields to set on fire once the enemy moves near them by archers.
Stones that drop down once the enemy is at the inner gate.
Iron Gates that drop the moment the wooden gate is destroyed forcing the enemy back to attack over the walls (could be a very expensive city upgrade)
And i am sure people could come up with many more.


Thats it from me for now. To the devs still a huge thank you for the daily updates and all the work they put it. Its EA so we know there are alot of issues that needs to be adressed. But in time we will get there. So far i like the game very much and the peformance issues are way better then a week ago. I am sure there is alot of content in store for us that will be added once the game is in a stable version and crashes and freezes are a rare exception.
But i think its a good idea to even now start listing features or ideas for the future so the good ones make it on a list for way ahead in the future to be added or at least discussed.

Feel free to toss in your own ideas.

Thanks.,

Ok, I don't disagree with all of this but I need you to please stop saying "...this needs to change...". It's an opinion, not a fact and we can all share our thoughts. That statement just comes across a little harsh, pointed and one-sided.

That said, I love the idea about traps and other fun things. I've often thought we could use more strategy in Warband and was hoping to see it in Bannerlord. However, I do disagree with your point on garrisons being mid-tier to high-tier. This would essentially mean that cities are un-takable (that's a word now) and that lords get free top-tier troops. It also doesn't entirely make sense, as historically we didn't see "garrison" troops beyond normal guards until much later in Medieval history (out into what we call the Renaissance if I'm not mistaken). What we should see (in my opinion) is a collection of weaker troops drawn from the citizens, trying to defend their home.

Now, a player, who has more refined tastes than AI, can stock his city with his choice of soldiers, can he not? But as I personally have seen, this gets insanely expensive with just 100 men, only half being mid-tier. I start losing money on a really wealthy city. Why should the NPC lords get so much more for free, in addition to their regular armies?

As a side note, in Warband and its mods I always felt that sieges only took troop quality into account if the player was present. Otherwise it seemed more based on numbers. Do we know anything about how they're doing this now?

 

[berserkercookie]

Ok, I don't disagree with all of this but I need you to please stop saying "...this needs to change...". It's an opinion, not a fact and we can all share our thoughts. That statement just comes across a little harsh, pointed and one-sided.

That said, I love the idea about traps and other fun things. I've often thought we could use more strategy in Warband and was hoping to see it in Bannerlord. However, I do disagree with your point on garrisons being mid-tier to high-tier. This would essentially mean that cities are un-takable (that's a word now) and that lords get free top-tier troops. It also doesn't entirely make sense, as historically we didn't see "garrison" troops beyond normal guards until much later in Medieval history (out into what we call the Renaissance if I'm not mistaken). What we should see (in my opinion) is a collection of weaker troops drawn from the citizens, trying to defend their home.

Now, a player, who has more refined tastes than AI, can stock his city with his choice of soldiers, can he not? But as I personally have seen, this gets insanely expensive with just 100 men, only half being mid-tier. I start losing money on a really wealthy city. Why should the NPC lords get so much more for free, in addition to their regular armies?

As a side note, in Warband and its mods I always felt that sieges only took troop quality into account if the player was present. Otherwise it seemed more based on numbers. Do we know anything about how they're doing this now?

Agreed but the fact that sieges are way to easy remains.

Cities should not be un-takeable but they should be at least challenging. And by that i mean if they have 300 defenders and you got 600 men you should die. Your men should die. And the defenders should be able to keep you as long off the walls or even the city itself as possible. Atm all it takes is to get your men on the walls. Once that happend the siege is over. The Defenders are dead or soon to be. This is not how a city siege should work.
If you bring 900 men and the defenders have 300 then you should be able to take the city. But other then that it should not be possible for me with the same amount of men as the defenders or even less to completely overrun them. I do not see a way to fix this unless the defenders get better troops or garrison gets way more HP and other attributes.
Other then that i have no idea how to fix this in a way that it feels more accurate and the AI doesn't snowball over the entire map at a certain point.

As for the tier list. Of course you can put high tier troops in garrison. I never managed to run out of money so far but i do run out of food if i do that. The better the garrison the more food they consume to the point where my city is starving where a siege does not matter anymore as they simply starve to death.

I think it all comes down to fine tweaking this stuff but i am not a modder so i don't know anything about that.
No clue how they do it know. But one of the reloaded sieges i tried i figured out that if you put your infantry on the walls and the archers below on the ground you can actually fend them off quite for long. Even if your infantry is completely wiped and the enemy is swarming the walls your archers have a go at them and they drop like flies.

So to me tactics now are way better then in warband as you can pull off quite some battles where the enemy outnumbers you with the terrain, the walls, the map itself. (let them cross a river and then charge the cav at them etc.
I just miss these kind of tactics in sieges as no matter what i do its either very easy or completely impossible.

 

[comradeDing]

Do defenders have the option to "sally forth" and engage the enemy in the field instead? This could maybe deter people from attacking with inferior numbers of higher quality troops. It could also allow defenders to engage in battle if their allies come to break the siege and counter attack the sieging army.

I like the idea of the siege minigames they added. I think if they refined the system and added different actions it could be really good. Some ideas:
1. like you mentioned, traps. Tar fields, boiling oil, spike pits, barricades, etc. With these you could funnel attackers into murder pits or outright kill them.
2. sending out raiding parties to steal supplies. This could even the odds if one side can hold out longer than the other. Its should be a gamble, so if it goes wrong, it could cost you a lot. Maybe you could even send raiding parties to open gates.
3. Tunneling under walls to crumble them.

If they invested a bit more functionality into the minigame, a siege could theoretically be won or lost before the actual battle is even fought. All in all, I agree with your assessment that sieges need to be way more expensive for attackers. It should be much harder to take a city than to defend it. If that were the philosophy behind sieging, it could potentially slow down the insane snowballing that people have been seeing.

 

[Timberwolf]

I like the ideas but I think one thing we're forgetting too is that most of this is probably only going to be for the player. The NPCs will still be able to take cities easily, as none of this could feasibly be entered into the programming unless we want to wait another 8 years. Some of this could be put in, but the more complicated we make the sieges, the more it will only be a disadvantage for the player. For NPCs it's still going to be a little bit of math.

And to respond to comradeDing, they can indeed sally forth. They did it to me several times, which helped me quite a bit as my men were better trained and were able to thin out the defenders before the actual battle.

Another thing to consider though, guys, is the fact that sieges take forever to set up. I've been attacked by 300+-man armies almost every time I've lain siege to a castle with my 100 man party. It gets incredibly frustrating to spend 5 or 6 in-game days building the camp and then 1 piece of siege equipment. That alone is the main defense of any settlement or castle. The hope that reinforcements will arrive, which is also very realistic and historically-supported.

 

[comradeDing]

I've been attacked by 300+-man armies almost every time I've lain siege to a castle with my 100 man party.

This is the main reason I’m not able to start my kingdom with my 110 man warband. I can’t build siege equipment before reinforcements get there and I can’t win 3-1 odds. Also, I hadn’t figured out how to cheese the siege mechanics like you guys have ?. I’ll give some of your tips a go. I think I save-scummed a siege somewhere in this play through...

I do see what you’re getting at though Timberwolf. The AI will never play with the same ruleset as we do. I hope they can find a good way to fudge it so the end results of a player siege and an AI siege are similar given the same parameters.

 

[Magnificent_Bast]

This is the main reason I’m not able to start my kingdom with my 110 man warband. I can’t build siege equipment before reinforcements get there and I can’t win 3-1 odds. Also, I hadn’t figured out how to cheese the siege mechanics like you guys have ?. I’ll give some of your tips a go. I think I save-scummed a siege somewhere in this play through...

I think the AI would be downright stupid if it did not prevent you from sieging their castles with 100 men they can easily chase off.

On the whole though, I do agree that sieges need tweaks - my main gripe is with siege towers, as the AI doesn't know how to use them properly - instead of waiting until a solid group of men is at the top before opening them, they open them as soon as they are on top and get flooded with defenders rushing the tower.

 

[comradeDing]

I think the AI would be downright stupid if it did not prevent you from sieging their castles with 100 men they can easily chase off.

Oh yeah, I’m not saying it’s a problem that the AI is defending their castle to the best of their ability. It’s good they are giving me chase. It’s just annoying (in a good, challenging way) when I’m I trying to snag a quick castle to get my independent kingdom off the ground. I’ve just had to get much craftier in when and how I do it. If that means cheesing the siege battle mechanics, so be it!