So, sieges are garbage.

[yeahchris]

Performance on sieges are terrible. Slowdown, stuttering, etc on a very high end rig. Never have any issues on normal battles -- even big ones. They also crash. A lot.

Units get stuck on terrain inside the castle, outside the castle. Basically everywhere.

Siege weapons are useless. At least for defense. Catapults? No way to aim them. Ballista? You can aim those, but they are placed in completely useless spots where you can't actually shoot at anybody. Basically they serve to waste time and cause units such as archers do siege weapon animations with zero effect rather than shoot people.

I don't need that. I would prefer they help me defend.

The rocks actually work. So that's one thing, I guess? Also the exploding jars are OP.

Here's the biggest problem with sieges: Armies are too big.

Nobody is going to attack your castle with fewer than 700 units. Which means the only threat your castle basically ever faces is a completely overwhelming one. At which point you are at the mercy of friendly AI armies. Either they come and rescue you or they don't. If they do, you're fine. If they don't, you're screwed.

I suppose you could recruit for days and days to pack that castle full of enough units to actually defend it against a 700 unit army, but then you're going to be pissing away money on fees and would be better off simply having no territory.

All in all -- not good.

 

[Ethalis]

Nobody is going to attack your castle with fewer than 700 units. Which means the only threat your castle basically ever faces is a completely overwhelming one. At which point you are at the mercy of friendly AI armies. Either they come and rescue you or they don't. If they do, you're fine. If they don't, you're screwed.

Well, it kinda makes sense that, given the defender always has a big tactical advantage in a siege, nobody would try to attack a castle without huge numbers. I think the problem is more that the AI focuses too much on offense at the moment, and doesn't seem that interested in defending its own faction's territory.

 

[Tyfedo]

Nobody is going to attack your castle with fewer than 700 units. Which means the only threat your castle basically ever faces is a completely overwhelming one. At which point you are at the mercy of friendly AI armies. Either they come and rescue you or they don't. If they do, you're fine. If they don't, you're screwed.

I suppose you could recruit for days and days to pack that castle full of enough units to actually defend it against a 700 unit army, but then you're going to be pissing away money on fees and would be better off simply having no territory.

I don't want to comment on the rest, as I have only 2 sieges under my belt so far. But it so happens, that those 2 sieges were ones where a Sturgian army took 2 cities with only 240-350ish troops. So smaller scale offensives do at least somethimes happen.

 

[toxidom]

I personally had no issues using the catapult. Got a ton of kills with it actually. Now the trebuchet... thats alittle harder for me lol.

 

[yeahchris]

I personally had no issues using the catapult. Got a ton of kills with it actually. Now the trebuchet... thats alittle harder for me lol.

Could be I'm using it wrong. I had no targeting whatsoever. I could move the catapult left and right, but not up and down. When I pointed it right at the defenders and fired the projectile went allllll the way past the siege encampment and exploded in a field somewhere.

Again, this was with defense. Could be useful for attack.

I actually got several kills with the ballista. The problem was that they put the ballista on top of a tower and pointed it in a useless direction. So I could shoot a couple square inches of field but... not the people attacking the castle.

 

[MightyFelix19]

Yeah I saw path finding issues in 1.02. Didn't know if they were fixed. Honestly it was the only reason we won the seige. We couldn’t get 3 guys on the wall before their entire reinforcement unit got stuck running in place

 

[yeahchris]

Well, it kinda makes sense that, given the defender always has a big tactical advantage in a siege, nobody would try to attack a castle without huge numbers. I think the problem is more that the AI focuses too much on offense at the moment, and doesn't seem that interested in defending its own faction's territory.

I will admit that it makes sense, but it also makes for crap gameplay.

 

[vota dc]

Never tried. They crash in custom Battle (even a 10vs10 troops siege) while in campaign I am still early game.

 

[toxidom]

Could be I'm using it wrong. I had no targeting whatsoever. I could move the catapult left and right, but not up and down. When I pointed it right at the defenders and fired the projectile went allllll the way past the siege encampment and exploded in a field somewhere.

Again, this was with defense. Could be useful for attack.

I actually got several kills with the ballista. The problem was that they put the ballista on top of a tower and pointed it in a useless direction. So I could shoot a couple square inches of field but... not the people attacking the castle.

There is a little red bar on side of catapult and treb that tells you the metering. you can see it move up and down when you hit w or s.

 

[yeahchris]

There is a little red bar on side of catapult and treb that tells you the metering. you can see it move up and down when you hit w or s.

Thanks. I didn't have a red bar. Maybe a bug.