Sieges

[The Mercenary]

Discuss.

 

[amade]

I thought someone... Lord whatshisname... was reworking on the scenes?

Overall, I'm happy with the troop balance, before and after .58... Actually it'd be more accurate to say I've never cared about troop balance, it's never hindered my enjoyment regardless of which faction I'm playing. So I'd like to see more ladders, or siege towers... Anything that'd make the siege mechanism more realistic yaddayaddayadda yeah we've all heard of this before.

 

[Hansundfranz]

Sieges suck in all flavours of M&B.
The ones with a siege tower are tolerable but still not good.

The ones with ladders are a cheesy grind.
You can eother have your soldiers fight a war of attrition with the defenders, drinking coffee in the meantime or you can exploit weaknesses of the AI (bring a halbard and just stand there on the ladder hacking away (once you sniped the enemys crossbowman and elite archer).

 

[The Mercenary]

Oh, perhaps I should have been more clear.

With the siege pack. (.582 download thread)

 

[amade]

Oh, perhaps I should have been more clear.

With the siege pack. (.582 download thread)

Ah, didn't notice that. Will try it out. Cheers!

 

[The Mercenary]

I'll see what I can do.

 

[Tri]

Tihr doesn't murder everything that comes over the first wall unless you actually have a good garrison, awesomeness.

 

[Ossian]

edit: Posted in another topic

 

[Wellenbrecher]

隐藏

I've found a big exploit in sieges resulting in myself taking out hundreds of men by myself.  As far as I know it's for ladders only.  Sorry for the horrible MS paint.

Normally a a castle wall is shaped like so.

I quickly order all my troops to hold ground and send the infantry forward a few steps to take the enemy fire with their shields and I leave them there.  I run to the wall with my shield up and once I reach the wall I attack the enemy archers like so.


After I've eliminated all the archers on that side of the wall I move over towards the other side.


After all the Archers are dead on the parallel outcrops I walk up the ladder with my shield up incase some nasty ranger was hiding with the ramp defenders, once I close the range to only a few steps away from the defenders I make sure no archers are firing and switch to my bow and move closer. I get so close that the enemies start attacking the air between them and I trying to bypass that annoying barrier holding them back, I switch to first person mode and just go to work headshooting everyone at pointblank range, not even lords are safe from this barrage that 1 hit KO's.  I empty every arrow I have into the crowd and I retreat, taking whatever wounds I get as punishment (What is a -4 strength compared to a free town?) and I repeat, after the second time there are no more archers and I simply have to watch out for infantry with a ranged weapon, but it's easy and saves countless allies.

I dunno what could be done, perhaps make a trigger when you get close enough that they start swinging that they can bypass the invisible wall and slice you to pieces, I really feel like I could take every large town doing this.  I want something to be fixed here. 

That is just M&B and nothing the siege pack added.
If enemy behaviour in sieges could be reliably improved via mod everyone still playing M&B would be überhappy though. I'm pretty sure 'bout that, hehe.

To this point I really like the siege pack. Could be the "new, new, new" factor, but .582 feels really nice right now. (Haven't actually played .58 and jumped from .57 to .582 with all it's new units and the bows... back to playing  )

 

[Ossian]

Hm, okay I'll edit it out and put it in a separate topic.  Still needs to be addressed because it's basically a free win.

 

[The Mercenary]

It's not just sieges. There are different scenes for villages and towns as well. For example, Tihr. It now has a harbour.

 

[amade]

It's not just sieges. There are different scenes for villages and towns as well. For example, Tihr. It now has a harbour.

Will we have ships in the future... and possibly... EXPANDED LAND??? [/offtopic]

 

[Mini Marine]

Don't know if its doable, but I'd like to see the defending infantry sit behind cover till the attackers infantry actually gets to the ladder, as it stands you can come in with an archer heavy army and pick off most of the defenders, and then just send a few infantry in to mop up the rest.

It makes sense for defending archers to expose themselves to hostile fire, since they are actually shooting back, but for melee troops to expose themselves for no reason is just a bit dumb.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

I don't want to be forced to use low tier troops. I want there to be a REASON though to use lower tier troops. IE up wages drastically of high tier troops and make it simply financial, but don't force us to use YOUR standards of an army. That would ruin the mod and make me for one stop playing. Part of the fun of working up those top tiers is getting them put to use afterwards. Having an army of top tiers is an amazing feat and fun to do, I myself use mostly infantry though and already have a hard enough time keeping my high count of top tiers alive. Not to mention that with the game "Balance" The player, even at level 39, is fragile as all **** even in full lordly lordly armour. LAst thing we need is to make town raids a predetermined slaughter fest where you are going to trade blows because you can't force your high tier troops you earned to get off their asses and actually swarm the enemy.

 

[BumpInTheNight]

I'd give my right testicle (okay, maybe not) for the ability to pick how my force intends to take a target.  Ala choice of ladders, towers, battering ram, catapult punching down a wall etc etc.  A lot could be learned from Medieval 2's siege system, its still a game that takes RTS warfare of that era and just creates a big ol golden experience out of it.

As for how the mods specific impact I've only seen the additional ladders so far and that does create more diversity or at least more then just watching the grinder at the one choke point for a while until one side or the other gains the advantage. I'd really like to see that expanded to include multiple sides of a castle/town though, ala pick to spread your attackers out across multiple surfaces to again reduce the ever-present few choke points where you're foolish to do anything but just stand by and watch it unfold.  I'd love to be able to enter a battle late with a group hiding in some trees on the complete opposite side of where my bulk army is and hoist a ladder into place with a small group.  Options on how to siege a place is pretty much my biggest desire.

Retreating:  I should be able to opt to just book it with any forces that are still out side the walls without getting instant prisoner'ed.  Sure I'm still carrying a half dead army away from the castle but its up to the defenders to come out and chase me down proper.  If I'm inside the perimeter though all's fair.

ED:  Further thought on that choosing how to siege thing:  Benefits/costs associated with each that merit them, ala you can quick & dirty with ladders or you could spend some time and resources ( you know, like that wood object..oOoOo....) to build covered towers that protects your guys from the archers until they reach the wall itself.

Another possibility: You know that rather useful spymaster?  He outta be able to get some heavy funding from you to go and try to compromise the defenders of a castle or town so that when you arrive later on with your army the gates are mysteriously left open at a critical moment.  Amusing side effect is if you assume it'll always work and it doesn't that one time you could end up standing around at the base of the walls without even so much as a ladder ready as backup.

 

[The Mercenary]

I don't want to be forced to use low tier troops. I want there to be a REASON though to use lower tier troops. IE up wages drastically of high tier troops and make it simply financial, but don't force us to use YOUR standards of an army. That would ruin the mod and make me for one stop playing. Part of the fun of working up those top tiers is getting them put to use afterwards. Having an army of top tiers is an amazing feat and fun to do, I myself use mostly infantry though and already have a hard enough time keeping my high count of top tiers alive. Not to mention that with the game "Balance" The player, even at level 39, is fragile as all **** even in full lordly lordly armour. LAst thing we need is to make town raids a predetermined slaughter fest where you are going to trade blows because you can't force your high tier troops you earned to get off their asses and actually swarm the enemy.

Like I've said, if I up wages, high-tier troops will be even HARDER to train. Because they'll be up at level 60 or so. Then again, I wonder if I could use the mercenary double wage and set it to increase all high-tier troops' wages by 3 times...

Don't know if its doable, but I'd like to see the defending infantry sit behind cover till the attackers infantry actually gets to the ladder, as it stands you can come in with an archer heavy army and pick off most of the defenders, and then just send a few infantry in to mop up the rest.

It makes sense for defending archers to expose themselves to hostile fire, since they are actually shooting back, but for melee troops to expose themselves for no reason is just a bit dumb.

Nope. We have no power over combat AI, except to order them to run here or there.

 

[amade]

I don't want to be forced to use low tier troops. I want there to be a REASON though to use lower tier troops. IE up wages drastically of high tier troops and make it simply financial, but don't force us to use YOUR standards of an army. That would ruin the mod and make me for one stop playing. Part of the fun of working up those top tiers is getting them put to use afterwards. Having an army of top tiers is an amazing feat and fun to do, I myself use mostly infantry though and already have a hard enough time keeping my high count of top tiers alive. Not to mention that with the game "Balance" The player, even at level 39, is fragile as all **** even in full lordly lordly armour. LAst thing we need is to make town raids a predetermined slaughter fest where you are going to trade blows because you can't force your high tier troops you earned to get off their asses and actually swarm the enemy.

Like I've said, if I up wages, high-tier troops will be even HARDER to train. Because they'll be up at level 60 or so. Then again, I wonder if I could use the mercenary double wage and set it to increase all high-tier troops' wages by 3 times...

Actually, I think the current high tier troops aren't that all hard to train to begin with... Personally I wouldn't mind the challenge of keeping my men alive long enough before they upgrade, and when they do upgrade it should also be quite a big leap in skill/equipment upgrade. So you'll have to fight with lots of those not so tough mid-tier troops for very long and keep replacing them when they inevitably get picked off every now and then and you'll have very few who go on to survive and become (really!) elite troops which are damn expensive to maintain (well, we always end up with more money than we know what to do with anyway). And because they're so much better than mid tier troops and you have very few of them you'll want to put them at the bottom of the party list and only bring them up when you really need them because losing them in a clash with some bandits will be so damn painful.