The death of units who are pushing siege engines should slow down the siege engines' movement speed

[Totalgarbage]

As the title says, "melee" siege engines should have a movement speed proportional to the amount of units pushing them. So if 4 men are normally used to move a siege tower, killing 1 of them should slow it down by 25%. Of course we could go a more realistic route and say that you need at least X amount of men to be able to move the engine in the first place, but a proportional decrease is good enough for me. Currently only the death of all pushing units manage to stop the "melee" siege engines.

 

[niekdegrijze]

+1, at the start of EA i always tried to slow down the machines but was disappointed with the lack of results

 

[Jehiel]

The only issue I have is that in mid to late gameplay it's already easy enough to destroy siege engines before they get to your gates/walls (especially with fire ballista) so something like this will only make it even harder for the attackers. How do you recommend balancing for that?

 

[Totalgarbage]

Siege defences will be easy no matter what tbh, since TW programmed the AI to underestimate the player's party strength. If anything, this change will make siege defences more interactive, which is a good thing. Also you can straight up destroy enemy siege engines with an ambush, though I think the initial number of enemies should really be higher imo, as it's too easy to succeed with them now, but that's a separate subject.

This change will make siege offences harder by a teensy bit though, which is 9/10 of the siege battles players participate in. I pulled the number out of my ass but you get that players attack more often than defend. Players can't do keep battle defence either, so it's a balanced-ish trade-off imo.

 

[archaicwarrior]

The current system doesn't allow the "Siege Of Troy" defense, where spearmen phalanxes were placed INFRONT of the gates (remember that scene from the movie). You could do this in Med 2 Total war, where the attackers would drop their engines and attack the spearmen, leading to a massive battle infront of the walls. The benefit was to slow up attacks on the walls, allowing defending archers to loose most to their arrows. Of course the spearmen don't get any defensive bonus.

The current siege system works well enough, not historic by a long shot but good enough. It would be nice if Rams / towers slowed down when pushers are killed but many more siege aspects need correcting first I think.

 

[saittam]

I belive we havent seen the end of siege improvments. First we have an unused siege icon. Also with engineering skill there is build cap that does not seem to be in use.
I think your party engineer will have more affect on accruacy for example. One should also be able to say to him/her if the siege weapons should focus on, troops, the ram, towers.

That the speed of the ram right now does not matter. If you have 4 catapults they barely reach the walls. I think the devs knows this thats why the ai mostly charge with one tower and one ram. Ladders are always in backup.
But say the party engineer start to matter. The ram speed should be realistic. There are 6 or 8 now so the speed loss should be easy to implement. However the tower needs more pushers. And archers on top so the attacker has a chance of hitting the troops controlling the siege wepons on the wall.

 

[Totalgarbage]

I belive we havent seen the end of siege improvments. First we have an unused siege icon. Also with engineering skill there is build cap that does not seem to be in use.

Interesting, could you share this unused icon please?

 

[saittam]

Interesting, could you share this unused icon please?

You have in order of battle in every siege when you hover over a siege weapon. It´s just there. But does not function.

 

[Totalgarbage]

Oh you mean the gears thingy. Yeah they've been in the game for years now, it's to assign specific units or formations to siege engines. The problem is that it doesn't work that often due to AI command being delegated by default at sieges.

 

[saittam]

Oh you mean the gears thingy. Yeah they've been in the game for years now, it's to assign specific units or formations to siege engines. The problem is that it doesn't work that often due to AI command being delegated by default at sieges.

Does not work at all i would say. One can press that icon until the fingers bleed. Nothing happens.

 

[Totalgarbage]

Does not work at all i would say. One can press that icon until the fingers bleed. Nothing happens.

It worked for me sometimes if I told all troops to hold position and then told a specific formation to use the engine in a siege assault. It never ever worked in a siege defence though.

 

[saittam]

It worked for me sometimes if I told all troops to hold position and then told a specific formation to use the engine in a siege assault. It never ever worked in a siege defence though.

During order of battle or in the battle?

 

[Totalgarbage]

During order of battle or in the battle?

Only in battle and only sometimes. Sieges start off with your troops in auto delegate no matter what so it never worked for me during OOB.