There is NO successful siege defense

[Sirwalterhorstsock]

For the pleasure of gameplay I LOVE the secret tunnel idea. Human players don't want to sit around guarding the castle hoping the enemy will attack it so that isn't a good option. If you've built up cool troops then you hate to see them decimated breaking in as much as it's more realistic. The secret tunnel could be something that only the fief owner can use and knows about and also must be constructed. So you basically have recourse to defend your own castles and cities. It'd be super fun to have my party inside the walls during a siege but I never want to pay the cost. This would mean that you can't bring an army in, but you can get your own party in (and maybe companions?). The AI is perfectly happy to sit with like 6 small armies inside a city so this gives the player a similar option without just sitting around so they can enjoy doing PC things in the game and then still rush to defend a castle.

Wait the ai sieges your Castles and cities when you are defending if I went into the city they would just never attack currently .. I actually love the break in mechanic currently in game just wish you could do it like a hideout and actually control the sneak in vs the siegers lookouts and get to the gate / tunnel entrance, maybe have the longer or more troops you bring the more enemy forces spawn in in waves to represent the siege camp sending in people to stop the break in. Secret tunnel I mean yeah I guess that could work sounds kinda lame and gamey to me vs a cool realistic break in. Imagine you and your chosen band breaking through a patrol to get the guards to open gate and let you in glorious !!! If only the ai would still attack after

 

[neolae]

Wait the ai sieges your Castles and cities when you are defending if I went into the city they would just never attack currently .. I actually love the break in mechanic currently in game just wish you could do it like a hideout and actually control the sneak in vs the siegers lookouts and get to the gate / tunnel entrance, maybe have the longer or more troops you bring the more enemy forces spawn in in waves to represent the siege camp sending in people to stop the break in. Secret tunnel I mean yeah I guess that could work sounds kinda lame and gamey to me vs a cool realistic break in. Imagine you and your chosen band breaking through a patrol to get the guards to open gate and let you in glorious !!! If only the ai would still attack after

oh no they just attack weakly defended castles and I can't do anything about it other than attack something of theirs instead, but I'm never waiting around anyway. Sometimes a newly acquired castle I'll sit in it a day or two so the jackals get caught up doing something else.

Your idea is also really good. I'd totally enjoy that. Would help utilize the really impressive city and castle models they have too. Well, you'd see the sewers of the city I guess

 

[MomentoFletor]

I

Yeah. But you get a butt load of Ranged experience as a failing defense lol

My guy had 99 arrows and was out and refilled 1 time by the time they got to me =p

I have defended one in which I killed 472 enemys. The idiot IA tried to storm the city without a ram with like 1000 soldiers having the defense like 500 soldiers. It was a massacre and the defense won.

 

[DocShotgun]

If you have huge army with you sitting in the castle, then that's reasonable thing to do for the AI. You do the same thing. However if you have small force and enemy have sufficient advantage, then they will siege you.



That I can agree with, but I can't see how to change it without making enemy lords suicidal and their AI stupid. Why would lord sit in a castle that he have insufficient men to defend? And I prefer that enemy AI does behave rationally rather then me just having fun whacking their stupid heads around. It's no fun beating stupid inferior enemy. There's no challenge in the fight and no satisfaction in such a victory.

While I agree that the AI is trying to be smart in avoiding attacking strong defenses, the issue is that if you play optimally as a player, you will generally never have a chance to play on the siege maps on the defending side (outside of custom battle lol). The player has to make an intentionally poor decision to either sit in the castle with no troops, or sacrifice troops to enter to even experience this aspect of gameplay.

 

[YariAshigaru]

I

I have defended one in which I killed 472 enemys. The idiot IA tried to storm the city without a ram with like 1000 soldiers having the defense like 500 soldiers. It was a massacre and the defense won.

Yeah it makes all the difference if your there but if they fought automatically the castle would've fallen with the attacking army probably only taking 100 casualties.

 

[staylee]

If you have huge army with you sitting in the castle, then that's reasonable thing to do for the AI. You do the same thing. However if you have small force and enemy have sufficient advantage, then they will siege you.



That I can agree with, but I can't see how to change it without making enemy lords suicidal and their AI stupid. Why would lord sit in a castle that he have insufficient men to defend? And I prefer that enemy AI does behave rationally rather then me just having fun whacking their stupid heads around. It's no fun beating stupid inferior enemy. There's no challenge in the fight and no satisfaction in such a victory.

The only thing to change is the standard to trigger a siege. The current situation is that the AI will attack only when player is GREATLY outnumbered such as 100 vs 800. You cannot have a good game experience like this. The second point is that AI lords NEVER defend inside the wall. Just arrange some family member to recruit army and focus on the defense will somehow solve this problem.

 

[staylee]

Maybe sieges should be like an event. Enemies can try to siege normally as usual, but sometimes you would get a message "enemy is planning to siege [city]", then you have some time to prepare, and the enemy WILL attempt the siege, with a big force. This might be dependent on your kingdoms intelligence of the enemy or something, but thats going a bit ahead.

On your side, when you make an army, it could have a goal - "campaign to besiege and capture [enemy city]". If you don't attempt an attack until certain time passes, or just fail, then army dissolves and you lose reputation.

Agreed. There should be some mechanism that may guide the behavior of both AI and player. This will at least give player a chance to prepare for a large campaign.

 

[Maximum997]

Even siege as atacker is a garbage. Becouse your troops just dont listen your commands AT ALL.

They just rush forward like a scripted morons

I give my archers order to stay outside the walls and shoot - they just rushed into melee

So you completely removed opportunity to command your troops in sieges becouse your AI just braindead and balance doesnt exist.

 

[Lesbosisles]

I have no idea how does AI calculates if he should or shouldn't attack the settlement. In the field, no matter of the Lord is outnumbered/has lower tier troops - he sometimes mindlessly attacks me and gets beaten without any casualties on my side.
However, when it comes to besieging setllements, in my case it is enough to dinate something about 200 high-tier troops for a garrison and I can be sure that this settlement will be besieged in about 5% of all cases (and of course it will be an army of 1500 men).

 

[karijus]

I had another realization while playing - when your siege towers get to walls, they don't have guys in them already, so the enemy basically occupies the siege tower and just kills everyone climbing up. Yesterday while this was happening, defenders destroyed my siege tower, and that killed like 20~ of their own troops that fell down lol.

Siege towers should have some troops already on top, waiting to charge in, like on medieval D-Day.

 

[Maximum997]

And again about siege AI. How to win siege 100 v 400 as atacker.

 

[Agroplode]

I dont think sieges are a finished product, that is why we have so little control.

What I like to see is something they had in Viking Conquest, where it takes at least a few hours or day to make a blockade of a Town.

The problem might be that all Lords have the Steward perk, Stand United, "if you are leading a siege, any party leaving or entering must engage first"

I agree that for now Sieges are not as fun and with the few bugs here and there, where soldiers get stuck on ladders or running around siege tower, can be frustrating.

 

[Sirwalterhorstsock]

oh no they just attack weakly defended castles and I can't do anything about it other than attack something of theirs instead, but I'm never waiting around anyway. Sometimes a newly acquired castle I'll sit in it a day or two so the jackals get caught up doing something else.

Your idea is also really good. I'd totally enjoy that. Would help utilize the really impressive city and castle models they have too. Well, you'd see the sewers of the city I guess

Thanks I don’t know how hard any of these thing s are to code and it’s ea for all I know they have a plan already I just don’t like never seeing a siege defense.

 

[Maximum997]

The problem might be that all Lords have the Steward perk, Stand United, "if you are leading a siege, any party leaving or entering must engage first"

Yes. I guess you are totaly right.

 

[einssi1]

A not so gimmicky idea would be for the player to fight through the sieging forces, probably in a special kind of map, not just flat "casualties taken" thing happening in calculation. Basicly just punch through to the other side of the map, while the enemy is trying to stop you. This would make faster, smaller, cavalry based relief forces viable for passing through the siege lines and join the defenders. It would probably be a good idea to heavily tax the players inventory suplies too, since they couldn't be taking their supplytrain with them.

 

[karijus]

A not so gimmicky idea would be for the player to fight through the sieging forces, probably in a special kind of map, not just flat "casualties taken" thing happening in calculation. Basicly just punch through to the other side of the map, while the enemy is trying to stop you. This would make faster, smaller, cavalry based relief forces viable for passing through the siege lines and join the defenders. It would probably be a good idea to heavily tax the players inventory suplies too, since they couldn't be taking their supplytrain with them.

Why not expand on this idea - your army, punching through the besiegers. You have the flat map, and the castle on the edge of it. If your troops reach the gate they get in, and the enemy army is stationed around. Sure it would be a bit tricky to do and balance properly, but that would be like the next gen evolution of options.

 

[Sirwalterhorstsock]

So new concept maybe to add to mercenary system/faction inner workings how about a guard region contract (hopefully ai could determine where to give it correctly) and player could also issue it to mercenary and lords not attached to an area specifically already. This would make it so you would both clear bandits and protect caravans in this area for money on top of a daily fee (or however payment would work),maybe even more complicated version of influence as a mercenary called like reputation or something where you gain it similarly to influence , by fulfilling contracts defending towns cities in your dependable area and it increases your wages for contracts maybe recruitment stuff etc and losing it by well, not doing your job well not killing looters in area letting caravans get sacked maybe losing as well maybe too little action for high wages cost you lose a bit of rep to set a balance so you don't just sky rocket in rep. your not lord of area just paid to guard it more money for higher problem areas, now this guard army would fall back to castle or city when a big presence entered its area of guard influence.this would make it so maybe just maybe a lord would actually be able to hold a castle during a siege and also at same time keep region prosperous when not under siege I don't code but i feel is some what possible. Player could also ask to hired for this role and maybe ai selects area or maybe player does, (would be really cool if player could ask specific lords who own region or governors and you could ask to guard their area specifically, and vice versa if ai mercenary or un- owned land lord (in allied,(maybe even neutral) faction),entered your land you could hire them to guard it, maybe even do that while you go crusading. This would i feel allow a shifting battle line as frontier high battle zones get more mercenaries paid to guard it by owners and what not (long term maybe have opposite where you can hire raiders to disrupt a region for pay ,a ying to yang type deal). Would also allow a new player play style by basically being an upgraded mercenary yield focused to a specific region but not only for a set time. great for role play as well and could be tinkered with as needed or wanted.As lord could maybe hire companions out to do this as well i don't know. This concept could be used many ways as well and could be a land owner perk thing where hiring them is cheaper more effective whatever you want as the land owner etc, just a whole new element to game that also i think addresses a game play issue. Not as easy to make as say i get but hey its a start. ( gonna make new post on this)

 

[andycott]

Hope that sieges will be better and more interesting in the future.
Defenders should have more options to either prepare for future sieges beforehand and in the process. They should be able to successfully defend walls even if there are much more attackers than defenders, while attackers should also have more options and preparation phases, and have harder time besieging a settlement, especially if they don't have significant advantages and are underprepared.

Right now it can sometimes be hard to defend or attack during sieges only because of bugs and dumb AI. But not because you can lose, but because it's annoying.

Oh yeah in a siege you have to enter the castle before the enemy starts making camp, would be nice if cities and castles could had an upgrade that created a secret passage for your army to enter it when it is under siege

The secret passage upgrade makes sense only for an urgent escape if you can use it by yourself without an army, but with your companions. And your troops must remain in the garrison.

 

[Turbofjes]

This is nonsense. M&B is supposed to be a somewhat realistic game. When a city or castle is under siege you can't stroll in with a hundred men to join the defense, just doesn't happen. Imo the amount of men you're able to sneak past the besieging army is too lenient as it is. Also you wouldn't assault a castle unless you could easily overwhelm the defenders, otherwise the whole point of a siege is to starve out the defenders. Granted there isn't actually any starving going on yet, but I'm sure that'll be added in time.

 

[luisedgm]

This is nonsense. M&B is supposed to be a somewhat realistic game. When a city or castle is under siege you can't stroll in with a hundred men to join the defense, just doesn't happen. Imo the amount of men you're able to sneak past the besieging army is too lenient as it is. Also you wouldn't assault a castle unless you could easily overwhelm the defenders, otherwise the whole point of a siege is to starve out the defenders. Granted there isn't actually any starving going on yet, but I'm sure that'll be added in time.

But you should at least be able to skirmish with parts of the enemy army with your cavalry units while they are distracted with the siege instead of having to engage the whole army