Sieges kinda suck

Are sieges fine as they are?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 10.9%
  • No

    Votes: 41 89.1%

  • Total voters
    46

Users who are viewing this thread

Rbtparker13

Veteran
You're on a battlefield with hundreds of men. The siege engines groaning under the weight as they fire into the enemy. The walls come down and we rush into the city to seize the keep. Expect you don't. In bannerlord, your men fight the enemy in three spots, on the walls and the front of the gate. If the walls are destroyed, then you fight besides the wall, with the enemy constantly just in shield wall, easy to just go around and kill them all. Then after a few hundred dead. The enemy routs to presumably the keep. When in warband you have to sometimes fight in the streets, and then the keep itself. In bannerlord you take the walls and then you're done. What happened to the hundreds of men that routed? Do they just disappear? Why would they even rout when it's their home? The sieges may be just more simpler than I imagine, but they feel incomplete, as if we only got the crust of the giant battle that should have happened.

Don't get me started on the Ai, why are they always just stuck in shield wall?
 
You're on a battlefield with hundreds of men. The siege engines groaning under the weight as they fire into the enemy. The walls come down and we rush into the city to seize the keep. Expect you don't. In bannerlord, your men fight the enemy in three spots, on the walls and the front of the gate. If the walls are destroyed, then you fight besides the wall, with the enemy constantly just in shield wall, easy to just go around and kill them all. Then after a few hundred dead. The enemy routs to presumably the keep. When in warband you have to sometimes fight in the streets, and then the keep itself. In bannerlord you take the walls and then you're done. What happened to the hundreds of men that routed? Do they just disappear? Why would they even rout when it's their home? The sieges may be just more simpler than I imagine, but they feel incomplete, as if we only got the crust of the giant battle that should have happened.

Don't get me started on the Ai, why are they always just stuck in shield wall?
A pls remember this is beta slash that alpha when you make these post.
siege is over to quickly in my opinion also take the damn ladders away from the walls makes he troops carry them there that's the best way into the castle currently and ai is accurate as hell with siege equipment can we drunk them up a bit damn.
 
According to the devs blogs, which were released before the EA itself, the defender side should've been abled to retreat from their initial positions (walls and gate) if the advantage is lost. They should've been abled to regroup at the city centre and try stopping the attackers from there. If you take a look at some towns during the assault, you'll notice some barricades and other primitive defence things, which tell us, that the mentioned above is actually a possible scenario.

However, sieges look a bit unfinished at the current state. The defenders spawn points are terribly close to the walls, and what's worse, after being spawned, they just rush onto the walls even if there are thousands of attackers just waiting for them to be slaughtered. And, as the gate and walls are taken, the defenders just run away. Ironically, sieges are easier than a field battle, since you don't even have to command your troops and think of some tactics to win.
 
According to the devs blogs, which were released before the EA itself, the defender side should've been abled to retreat from their initial positions (walls and gate) if the advantage is lost. They should've been abled to regroup at the city centre and try stopping the attackers from there. If you take a look at some towns during the assault, you'll notice some barricades and other primitive defence things, which tell us, that the mentioned above is actually a possible scenario.

However, sieges look a bit unfinished at the current state. The defenders spawn points are terribly close to the walls, and what's worse, after being spawned, they just rush onto the walls even if there are thousands of attackers just waiting for them to be slaughtered. And, as the gate and walls are taken, the defenders just run away. Ironically, sieges are easier than a field battle, since you don't even have to command your troops and think of some tactics to win.
Something like that would be nice. Maybe the player can have some say on what could be constructed inside the town. It would be nice to explore the city while still having fun
 
Something like that would be nice. Maybe the player can have some say on what could be constructed inside the town. It would be nice to explore the city while still having fun
Yep, not being able to choose which siege machines should be built when you defend the city is ultra stupid. Instead of building ballistas, which are extremely good for defence, they build stupid catapults and can't hit a thing with them. Neither can I, since I can't understand how to aim with them. Recently I was able to defend a castle having apr. 200 militia men against 600 Khuzaits thanks to ballista. I would never do this having catapults instead. Give us the choice, TW!

And other thing that looks strange to me is that when I was defending a castle, I had something like 15 men of my own party (tough fight), but the castle itself had 200 militia men. But I couldn't give any orders to them. Why?
 
I have issues not only with AI in battle, but during a siege no diplomacy. No tactics on where archers are placed. No keep defense/attack. If its not my city or castle but my relations are high with the lord that owns it, I should have some possible options in handling the defense of the castle. Also, make options on what im decided to do for policy if i am in command at the post. Deciding to sneak villagers out to increase traits or seeing fleeing peasants in world map that travel to other areas, affecting prosperity to other towns. Or having everyone stay and help in preparation in the defense gives honor but huge hit in culture, prosperity, future recruiting, and relations if you lose.
 
after being spawned, they just rush onto the walls even if there are thousands of attackers just waiting for them to be slaughtered
Ironically, this simplistic handling actually worked in Warband allowing the defenders to re-man previously lost walls if they managed to hack through the attackers.

I think it's the larger size of battlefield in Bannerlord (and, particularly, potential access points that attackers can use, especially if you broke through the walls) that contributes toward the issue. Well, that and the fact that even with two broken walls and ladders long at the wall, the AI still keeps camping inner gate instead of either trying to push back everyone coming through ladders and wall breach points, or falling back to another defensive position that doesn't put them in a surrounded position. Preferably a combination of the two.

Also, with the pre-set points and "formation holding" AI, I noticed depressingly hilarious "back and forth" in places like the wall towers. Basically the AI will set a squad of defenders inside the tower and along the wall further down from the ladders. If an enemy comes through the "trigger" doorway inside, they will all rush to defend... which wouldn't be bad, except as soon as that one drops, and they all run back to their positions. If the attackers are coming with specific distributed timing, it means some of the defenders get chopped on the back as they are trying to return to the position as the attackers run inside the tower.

If nothing more, the tower doorways facing the "lost" part of the wall where ladders are set against should be camped by a few defenders at all time once the initial "ladder" part of the wall is devoid of defenders. Though I still don't understand why the often large force parked inside the tower can't push back to retake the "ladder" wall, and drop ladders down altogether.

Oh, and I noticed all of this because going one level up inside the tower means no defenders will come gunning for you until you move haflway down the ramp leading up, either.
 
Every city should be defended by at least 600/700 men (i'd prefer 1000 or even 1200,sieges should be way longer and difficult) , it's too easy conquest a city when it is only defended by 300 men. So what happens? I take Sargot (easy win) then the enemy take Sargot so take back Sargot (forever and ever). It's too easy, i remember when in Warband i besiged three time a city to take it, it was hard and i lost a lot of man but it was gratifying. I would even add capitals (with unique design) defended by at least 1500 men and auto recruiting garrison (good governor = more troops every x day).
 
I think seiges are just unfinished. It'd be nice to have a kind of multi-stage seige battle, so you fight for the walls and then retreat, and anyone who makes the retreat is then able to defend the town cetner, and then you retreat into a keep or citadel, and only after you've slogged through several layers of defenses you take the castle itself.

Hopefully the seiges will be expanded as time goes on anyway, as they are they're "Basically functional" so it's nota huge issue.
 
.....The enemy routs to presumably the keep. When in warband you have to sometimes fight in the streets, and then the keep itself. In bannerlord you take the walls and then you're done. What happened to the hundreds of men that routed? Do they just disappear? Why would they even rout when it's their home? ...

I suspect that they haven't finished with sieges.But yeah, currently the way sieges are ...not good enough and I suspect the devs know this as well.
 
Last edited:
Too easy for the attackers, too hard for the defenders.
Siege engines on the defenders side are pretty useless, because battering ram and siege tower need only 30s to reach the gate and walls and then you can't do anything.

In my opinion ladders, siege tower, battering ram - this all should be spawned much further away to actually give chance defenders to use siege engines effectively and have the chance to destroy at least one of those things.
Ladders should be carried and then placed right under the walls.

And of course, garrisons should be bigger and actually we should command those people if there is no one else with higher rank than us.

Anyway, foundations are really good just needs a bit work here and there.
 
Sieges are definitely one of the more unfinished parts of the game, but also one of the most buggy ones. I prefer that they fix first what's already in the game before adding new features.

Problems I see as the most urgent ones:

1. AI pathfinding on siege towers and ladders is still broken after every patch supposedly fixing them. Also siege tower lowering it's ramp before sufficient number of troops are on the top platform, resulting in defenders rushing in a slaughtering attacking soldiers still on the ladders.

2. Suicidal shieldwall in front of the gate. They should disband shieldwall and charge as soon as attackers break the gate, so that they can actually fight. Shieldwall is really only good as a protection against missiles. At last place the shieldwall so that it actually blocks the gate, right now you can just walk in and around them without a problem.

3. AI placing too many soldiers in to shieldwall at the gate while placing too few to defend the walls.

4. AI sending "reinforcements" from one side of the siege defense to the other. Reinforcements ignore everything all the way to their destination and get themselves slaughtered.

5. Broken pathfinding everywhere. Soldiers trying to walk through the wall or closed gate and so on.

6. Huge performance drop in sieges.

Generally I really like changes that devs did to the siege warfare compared to Warband and I see them as an improvement.
I am also not missing "keep battle" at all, as it made little sense. Last stand in the town square, yes. As far as it does not make defenses on the walls and at the gate less effective. I don't want defenders to be spread in a small groups all over the town and got overwhelmed one group at a time piecemeal. If AI would make troops from a gate and walls retreat once one of them is breached and concentrate them in some makeshift barricade in the town center, that would be welcome.
But keep battle where you loose whole siege if you fail? Please no.
 
Last edited:
But keep battle where you loose whole siege if you fail? Please no.

That did make me laugh though. I've got 300 troops outside the keep so i'll send 3 of them in to fight the defenders and if that doesn't work i guess we'll just call teh whole thing off.
 
Too easy for the attackers, too hard for the defenders.
Siege engines on the defenders side are pretty useless, because battering ram and siege tower need only 30s to reach the gate and walls and then you can't do anything.

In my opinion ladders, siege tower, battering ram - this all should be spawned much further away to actually give chance defenders to use siege engines effectively and have the chance to destroy at least one of those things.
Ladders should be carried and then placed right under the walls.

And of course, garrisons should be bigger and actually we should command those people if there is no one else with higher rank than us.

Anyway, foundations are really good just needs a bit work here and there.
What????

My experience for now: I could conquer 3 Western Empire Castles but had no chance whatsoever to conquer one of their cities, there were just to many defenders.(But I think now that I created more parties in my Kingdom I guess I might be able to take one if there is a war again)
Now the Battanians have almost lost and I want to vulture one of their castles too but I just bounce off.
I try to take the ladders -> Everyone of my men die while I pick out like 10-15 men from my ladder then their archers kill me, too.
I try to build a siege tower -> Half my men die while pushing the siege tower to the wall, the other half die while trying to take the wall (pushing me down from the bridge to the wall while doing so)

The point is: My men die without taking down any Battanians. Their archers have infinite ammunition, the melons somehow attract arrows, at any breach, there are enough defenders that you just cannot push through and every attacker is struck at by several defenders at once.
->Even 200 Defenders are to much when they all shoot infinite arrows at you from the safety of their melons

I'd love to take the defense side of a siege battle, the advantage is so great, I'd probably take on the enemies main army just with my retinue alone. But the only time I actually managed to be at a castle before it was besieged, the enemy actually broke the siege of after a week without attacking. And if you can't read the mind of your enemy and he arrives at the siege first your only option is to sacrifice like 90% of your army to break through, which is not really an option either.




I think besides a ranged damage nerf that should be good across all battles, the individual attacker AI needs to be improved in order to not be so suicidal and pushing physics have to be improved, so attackers can actually gain a foothold on the wall if they jump into the defenders shield first. And joining a defence should only sacrifice like 10% of the current value of troop, or, with good tactics maybe none at all.
 
When you actually get into a seige defense it is kinda awesome.

In this one the AI attacked with 900 men against our 250 defenders, they only had ladders and used 3 of them,i just sat on the wall picking off the elite units with arrows as they climbed teh ladder and let my troops deal with the melee fighting on the wall.

 
In addition to the defense AI previously mentioned, the attacker AI also needs working. Siege commands should be different from field battle. Right now the only tactical thing I could do is to hide my cavalry and horse archer at the edge of the map and hope they get to the wall later. During siege the player is just a super soldier instead of a commander. Also, where are the other lords in my army during siege? I'd love to see multiple lords leading the man on to the wall (and fall from ladder).

With attacker siege weapons like ram and siege tower, what's the point of dozens of infantry walking slowly after it? Infantry are being slaughtered while making no contribution at all. I would like the option to command small squads to operate siege weapons and let the majority hang in the back first. When someone pushing got killed, just get one/several guy auto-substituting from the back, and do a full charge when the siege tower/ram is in position.

When shooting arrows towards the defenders on the wall, it seems that there are invisible walls where the actual wall is broken. Some notches on the wall are bugged, defenders are not moving behind it, attacker arrows can't get through. I'm not 100% sure this is a thing though, anyone also encounter this?
 
well, to me sieges have to be much harder to win for the attacking side. Basically, if you bring 1000 men to take a 300 men town or castle, you should lose 3/4ths of your troops at bare minimum, always, unless you have some really smart moves up your sleeve, like a high level Medic, or, placement of multiple siege engines (which would require that we could stop the troops from storming so we could manually rain catapult shots on the walls/gates prior to them engaging, which is impossible atm). etc....

So the AI, should be taking massive losses after capturing each holding to slow down their ridiculous "chain captures".

To me what the AI should do by default is to starve fiefs to capture them, not assault every single one... So assaults should be made harder on the AI, and rarer, whilst starvation captures should be the rule of thumb. That'd make the mess that the map becomes much less noticeable, and slower. And the whole game would also become way more believable/realistic. As is, depending on who is getting attacked on their fiefs, they barely can defend themselves due to geographic disadvantages... So, Vlandia, for instance, almost always captures Varcheg at early game, which's ridiculous. And since they are so far away with a nice geographic distribution, I've never seen Vlandia lose any of their fiefs for more than a 1 game week, which means that when they lose something, it's Battania capturing one of the bordering fiefs, and losing it right after.

Empire, on the other hand, always loses a massive% of their terriitory, Sturgia almost always gets wiped, Aserai keep a back and forth war with Wester Empire / Southern Empire, but also almost never loses any territory, Khuzait steam-rolls anyone one that becomes weakened by other nations. At late game, Vlandia is always the strongest AI faction without player intervention, followed by Battania who manages to conquer at least half of Sturgia, the other half gets split between factions, but Tyal and Uriksala Castle generally get captured by Khuzait. It's basically a "pre-determined" fate for all factions from the get go due to lack of balancing the AI between themselves. Whilst the Player can interfere and save or strengthen a nation, Sturgia generally is the hardest because for some reason they insist on multi-front wars at all times.
 
Last edited:
There are many issues with the sieges, mostly with how defenders have too small advantage over attackers, if any (and sometimes it feels like actually it is the attackers who have the advantage).

Some things I can think of:
- Defending siege machines have too little use, normally you can maybe fire 2-3 shots from catapult before attacker moves out of range.
Attacker needs to spawn further, attacker siege towers should move slower, and defender catapults should have lower limit of minimum range.
- Defending archers have no real advantage. For me they seem too easy to hit, to the point that archer on the wall is sometimes easier to hit than archer on the ground, especially when the second one is moving. Part of the problem is that everyone is too accurate, in Warband you needed somehow high skill level to headshot archers on the wall from reasonable distance, while here almost everyone can do it. Another problem is the AI, defender archers seem to stick of their positions too much, instead of finding better opportunities. This becomes quite apparent when attacker AI, which is somehow better at using archers, move a large group of ranged units to small area, they can effectively clear part of the wall from any defending archers simply by creating local advantage, because defending archers don't move at all.
- Defending melee troops AI is bad, expecially at the gate or breached walls, where they just stand and get swarmed and killed. They should much aggresively "push" the enemy to not allow them inside. Part of the problem is also too small collistion radius of soldiers, you can freely move without stopping even through dense formation...
- Fortifications themselves dont provide enough advantage. Need more throwing rocks, boiling oil, fire traps, whatever. And the AI to use them. Anything that makes it very dangerous for the attacking troops to even be close to the walls. Right now they are mostly safe there as long as they have shield and use it to block arrows.
 
Back
Top Bottom