Sieges problems i have seen during gamescom 2019 single player playthrough

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The sieges are 100x times better than in Warband however i noticed things that could be improve.

Two things that should be really improve:

-Archers defenders make a very bad use (to be polite) of the of walls merlons, they are standing in middle of the intervals like really stupid soldiers and being an easy target. The best way of using merlons is to stand behind and shot at ennemy by side...

merlons.jpg

As an exemple, on the tower you should have at least four archers standing behind merlons in place of two standing stupidly in intervals.



-It seems that the sieges towers necessarly need to use a merlon destructed wall part. Siege towers are designed to adapt to normal walls. The bridge part just fall on the merlons and attackers are coming from upper which is even better that coming at the same level of the ennemy. So this idea of using siege tower only on destructed walls part is really weird and even tactically not really good. Why not just use normal walls ?

moyen-age-beffroi.jpg



Others nice pictures exemples:

godfrey-de-bouillons-forces-breach-the-walls-of-jerusalem-pat-nicolle.jpg


siege_constantinople_626.jpg


siege.jpg



Other little things:

About the siege towers, i think i have seen 4 guys pushing one oh my god they must be really strong ones :shock:

Ballista guys could deserve a little bit more protection on their sides, wood fence or shields ? But like that you're just screaming "hello i'm the target" !

Infantry is defending the walls far from the border of the wall, quite weird, noticed that in 2016 video !? I have to verify this with others 2019 videos.
Edit: after watching other videos this is crazy where is infantry on the walls ? There is only archers :shock: Its like defenders have very little armies in every sieges ?


 
I don't feel like these are big issues but if they fix them, that's great! I was mostly wondering if anyone saw the next stages of the sieges? Like fighting the last defenders in the Lord's Hall and so forth. I don't think I've seen it, just I hope it hasn't been scrapped
 
I understand much of people (the random gamer) won't even notice these issues but really for people that like medieval era and are passionate, those things are quite really bad. We could also notice the lack of gap near walls this was a really common defense used in medieval times to slow down the sieges preparations. You had first to fill this gap before use siege towers. Illustration of this:
siege_jerusalem.jpg


Archers could stand in the intervals of merlons when attackers are very far but not when there are so near like in the video.

That have also gameplay impacts, all that bag gameplay choices make the defenders really weak. All sieges that i've seen for now were quite ridiculous: the defenders are being crushed like mega noobs. Defenders are in position of force normally. In history you have sieges of towns with an army of 1000 (with help of population) that resisted for month against armies of 10000. I think an army of 200 in a castle could resist pretty well attackers of 500 and maybe more. What i've seen for now was really bad sorry to say it. Why would you put only your archers on walls and when attackers arrive on the walls with siege tower there is infantry spawning and charging from far ??? Exactly like Warband but battle size is 5 x times better than in Warband so what's the problem putting everybody on walls ? Walls should be crowded of infantry who can even throw rocks to attackers.

In reality defenders had little catapults that were lauching pack of rocks from the walls and were very useful to defend:
Castelnaud-la-Chapelle_-_Machines_de_guerre_7.jpg
Chinese invention during antiquity, it was used by saracens then and have been bring back from the first crusade (like many other things) to europe.
I don't say Talewords should put this in his game, but they could have, just saying this to explain why in history sieges were very hard for attackers.

All sieges i have seen defenders were really ridiculous and walls so empty :shock: and attackers suffered very few losses...

Also the battering ram exploded the doors pretty fast.

Guys pushing the sieges towers should need some protections, their shields should be put in front of them with some wood stick and some kind of roof should protect their head (made with shield or i don't know what). Nobody would want to do this like that its suicidal doing it that way.

Also what about fire arrows to try to burn siege towers ?

I have maybe 5 other things to notice but i need to take a pause.
 
Taleworlds should focus on optimizing their game rather then add new stuff. There are clear issues on the AI but nothing we are not used to, and i hope taleworlds fixes this.

Their first priority should be to get the game in a playable state before early access.

 
I think the repeated success of the attackers in the Gamescom sieges is mainly down to the damage settings being heavily in favour of the player's soldiers.

I also haven't noticed a lack of defending infantry on the walls, but that could be due to the player character getting up there late. A possible reason for the defenders not all being up on the walls is that the multiple potential entry points, including at ground level with the ram, mean that the defenders don't want to be committed to a position until they know where the attackers are getting in.

Regarding the archers not only using the merlons to hide behind and shoot attackers in the flank; well, for most of the approach the attackers are to the front of the towers and flanking isn't possible until the last minute, and it would be wasteful not to shoot at the attackers during their approach. I don't see anything wrong with this.

The machine on the walls for defenders to use against attackers peforms the same role as the existing ballista, does it not? Or do you think it should be used as an anti-seige tower/catapult weapon? Now that I think about it, wasn't there the ability for defenders to destroy attacking siege towers in early siege videos (maybe I am imagining that).

The idea of digging a trench that needs to be filled in doesn't seem to me to be a battle map feature- such things would surely need to be filled in over days of vigorous work by the attackers.
 
The little defensive catapults is to launch a bunch of many little rocks everywhere, to "make a rain of rocks". I think ballista were used also to harpoon siege towers and make them fall.

For archers sorry but they are very badly place, they should at least have a part of them covered (an half) by merlon that would permit to shoot in front but not like that like a target in plain middle of the interval. Also the weird absence of infantry on walls make it easy to see them  :mrgreen:
 
They probably had the same issue in warband where archers can't fire to the sides if there are bits of walls in front of them, since there is nothing in place for the AI to lean out of cover. But still it's really silly seeing these huge gaps between merlons with an archer standing there. In warband these archers were sometimes pretty hard to hit, but here it looks like you could easily snipe them all.
 
Everything is pointing to the AI, I have seen countless errors both in the beta (Captain Mode) and in the GC19 videos. In these, ai is terrible at the moment; I have seen how a group of bots actively ignore the PC. On the other hand, a positive thing to emphasize is that the ai when defending is able to knock down the scales with poles; I'm glad this is implemented.
 
NUQAR'S Kentucky "Nuqar" James XXL said:
In warband these archers were sometimes pretty hard to hit, but here it looks like you could easily snipe them all.

Totally agree, in Warband they take a better cover than in gamescom videos.

Terco_Viejo said:
the ai when defending is able to knock down the scales with polesed.

Do you mean npc uses pole arms to knock down soldiers with sales armors (which is a very effective armor) ?


About fires arrows i've heard thats this was not very effective and a kind of legend popularized by movies, maybe they were using more oil jars + something to put fire to it ? Launching a torch or burning coal with little catapults or ballistas ? Trying to put fire to these siege towers would be an immense fun !
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons

The AI for archers should behave like this if attackers are very far they don't care take cover and throw a rain of arrows on attackers

If AI is averagely far they half cover themselves to permit shoot in front.

If attackers are really near should take cover the maximum possible and try to shoot by side.
 
Yeah i agree with you fire arrows is quite a myth (except sometimes they were attaching something to some arrows as i was reading in this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_thermal_weapons), i'm not always right :iamamoron: This could be a feature added later, i think everybody want to play it the sooner !


Oh yes the "scale" ok i didn't know that word in english :ohdear: yes this is good !!!
 
Yeah fire arrows are more or less a myth, it would have been very difficult to use them effectively with medieval componds. Lindybeige has an entertaining video on them.

I suspect the perceived ease for the attackers is due to player allies taking less damage and dealing more. The siege defence video a few years ago was  equally onesided.

I can see how the AI that works on open fields could have difficulties with the confines of the walls. I'd love to see how they handle the middle phase of city battles. Taking the streets was always the weakest parts of the siege battles.
 
Ettenrocal said:
Oh yes the "scale" ok i didn't know that word in english :ohdear: yes this is good !!!

The correct word is actually ladder. Scale as a noun is not used to mean a ladder in English, though it is a verb which means 'to climb'- so one can scale a ladder.
 
What a great Wikipedia-driven nitpicking thread.  :party:

Jesting aside, I would love to see better siege gameplay for sure.

Bannerlord sieges are a clear evolution over Warband's, and the attackers seem to have a good time because of difficulty settings.

We don't need a perfect fit between Calradia and real life history, we need a fun game to play.
 
You don't need Wikipedia and you need "fun games". Ok great for you. I'm jesting too :party:

Sorry, sorry, i have think it was a medieval simulation not and arcade game, but maybe i'm wrong ?
 
Ettenrocal said:
You don't need Wikipedia and you need "fun games". Ok great for you. I'm jesting too :party:

Sorry, sorry, i have think it was a medieval simulation not and arcade game, but maybe i'm wrong ?

Yes because it isn't a medieval simulation. It's not even close.
 
As I understand it, there were measures taken by besieging forces that were common when it was known that a defending force had fire pots or boiling oil, to cover siege equipment in wet skins.  leather/wool doesn't tend to burn very well in the first place and soaks up quite a bit of water and would cause oil to run off quickly and easily vs. slowly dripping hot oils off the edges or soaking up hot oil to be easily ignited.
 
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