What happened to layered defenses?

[Terco_Viejo]

After rereading the blog and observing different in-game scenes, @JustinTime49 you are (you guys are) right. The actual fortification scenes are a far cry from what we were told in the devblog. Here is an example of native and a subjective interpretation of how this system should had be implemented:

 

[Riffraff99]

After rereading the blog and observing different in-game scenes, @JustinTime49 you are (you guys are) right. The actual fortification scenes are a far cry from what we were told in the devblog. Here is an example of native and a subjective interpretation of how this system should had be implemented:

Good comparision!

I guess it was just too complicated, like everything else they promised.

 

[danEN]

As much as I would love this feature, I am having trouble making sense of how it would work in practice because:

1. Battles are over in less than 5 minutes and most of that time is taken by just dragging the siege stuff to the wall...
2. The max number of units being 1000, with the average option chosen by player usually much lower due to performance, means there are just not enough units to make this feature work.
   1. I guess you could just make the respawning of reinforcement more selective, spawning units further into the defenses as the outer ones are taken, but this again would need much larger army sizes. I think 1500 was the largest army I have ever seen in Bannerlord, with much smaller ones a lot more common
   2. How do you balance this with attackers respawning point being all the way back in the map? The difference in distance of respawn could be crippling to the attackers. They would need to move attacker respawn points into "taken" defenses to make this work.
3. Auto-resolve would need to be changed drastically to help maintain some level of parity of success rate between auto-resolved sieges and player-led ones.

In the end, Keep battles ought to be enough to make sieges more impactful and fun.

Go to 4:30 and you'll already see a random mod so early is development like Bretwalda has a simple implementation of multi-layer sieges

 

[stevehoos]

TW has dropped the ball in this game on almost every front. This is nothing like what I thought it would be.

 

[Riffraff99]

@Callum

 

[Rungsted93]

TW has dropped the ball in this game on almost every front. This is nothing like what I thought it would be.

For real, isn't it actually false marketing when half the stuff you show in devblogs and at conventions isn't even going to be in the game? There must be a certain limit as to how much you can hide behind the "subject to change" statement.

 

[guiskj]

Go to 4:30 and you'll already see a random mod so early is development like Bretwalda has a simple implementation of multi-layer sieges

This mod was not on my radar, thank you. It looks really good!

 

[Riffraff99]

False advertising is described as the crime or misconduct of publishing, transmitting, or otherwise publicly circulating an advertisement containing a false, misleading, or deceptive statement, made intentionally or recklessly to promote the sale of property, goods, or services to the public.

False advertising - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[kreamy]

It is a layered defense - only some of the paths work for siege towers.

Soon they will enable more paths, and therefore, more layers to assault. Soon.

 

[Bloc]

Stop complaining.
It's a layered defence alright.
In every single siege, you have a layer of brain-dead state-of-the-art dynamic AI bots stuck in front of siege equipment. If that's not a challenging layer, I don't know what is. Everyone can breach inner walls. Try to breach single wall of moving soldiers if you want some challenge.
Game is exactly like how it's advertised

Play the game the way you want to play it! Plot your own path to power in a dynamic sandbox adventure where no two playthroughs are the same.

As you can see, each siege is dynamic and your AI soldiers are fulfilling the sandbox adventure by acting like 1 y.o. kids in the sandbox. And yes AI soldiers are waiting in front of the ladders, but are they waiting exactly on the same coordinates? No. So here, you also have two distinct playthroughs which are not the same.

 

[niekdegrijze]

As stated by someone in the suggestion board, siege battles need their own order menu. For example:
Defend left/right wall.
Reinforce the gate
Leave the wall( but defend the towers)
Pull back and form a defensive line in the street.
This would already be a layered siege.

I hope the keepbattles require addition preparation time, to increase the chance for a relieve force. It wouldn’t be of much strategic use otherwise.

there was video of an defensive sortie to attack siege engines (2016) I thought there was a rumour this was still being worked on.

 

[stevehoos]

I expect the keep battles to be a terrible design idea as well.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

The siege of Makeb would be legendary if this was working

I think you mean Ortongrad? The one with three layers of walls which mean absolutely nothing to the AI as they sprint to the keep.

Stop complaining.
It's a layered defence alright.
In every single siege, you have a layer of brain-dead state-of-the-art dynamic AI bots stuck in front of siege equipment. If that's not a challenging layer, I don't know what is. Everyone can breach inner walls. Try to breach single wall of moving soldiers if you want some challenge.
Game is exactly like how it's advertised

As you can see, each siege is dynamic and your AI soldiers are fulfilling the sandbox adventure by acting like 1 y.o. kids in the sandbox. And yes AI soldiers are waiting in front of the ladders, but are they waiting exactly on the same coordinates? No. So here, you also have two distinct playthroughs which are not the same.

The inner wall is very useful if you compel the garrison to let you in, it's very good for safely thinning out the ranged enemies on the outer wall.
Mekeb and Ortongrad look the same to me, I think the Khuzait only have 2 town models for siege, not sure if the current wall levels effect it (I think it does?)

? ?

 

[Mad Vader]

I think the number of agents in battle is limited for performance reasons. The number of soldiers in parties/armies I think is entirely a design decision.

It could be just as simple to have parties and armies be ten times bigger. The problem really becomes how to handle suspension of disbelief when a 5k v. 5k epic battle becomes a 300 v. 300 field battle that is trickling in reinforcements for 10 minutes.

It would be awesome if battle scenes were divided in fronts for large engagements. Several fronts of 300 v. 300 that simulates the larger skirmisher of 5k v. 5k; If the player loses his front, the rest of the battle is resolved in auto-resolve. If the player's front wins, the player can decide to go fight in the next front or to let auto-resolve finish the battle, maybe with a limit of only 1 or 2 more fronts that the player can fight in and then have auto-resolve forced on him to simulate the fact that these mini front battles are going on at the same time.

... now I am getting an idea for a mod ?

Interesting thinking. Conventional game design logic would simply extrapolate the total battle results from your actual small/partial battle. Your alternative puts too much faith in autoresolve formulas, a common cause of player rage, so you'll need to improve the autoresolve to be more "realistic".

I expect the keep battles to be a terrible design idea as well.

Blobs in tight hallways, what could go wrong.

 

[guiskj]

If I may:

I expect the keep battles to be a terrible design idea implementation as well.

The idea itself is actually pretty good.

But even if it is a barebones implementation, I think they'd have to really, really, mess up to make Sieges worse.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Regarding Keep Battles... I wonder...

Will the AI be in command or will the player be given control tools? I think I'm going to have to change the strings on my violin ?.

 

[stevehoos]

Regarding Keep Battles... I wonder...

Will the AI be in command or will the player be given control tools? I think I'm going to have to change the strings on my violin ?.

Oh my gosh. I can only think X box when I see this.

 

[JustinTime49]

After rereading the blog and observing different in-game scenes, @JustinTime49 you are (you guys are) right. The actual fortification scenes are a far cry from what we were told in the devblog. Here is an example of native and a subjective interpretation of how this system should had be implemented:

This is precisely it. Even the example in the dev blog implies the ability for layered defenses:

Spoiler

From the example, after breaching the outer walls with ladders or a siege tower, the defenders should theoretically be able to fall back to that second layer, with archers on the ramparts and two divisions of infantry holding both inner gates. You know, actually making a siege a multi-layered DIFFICULT process for attackers while defenders have to split and mobilize ALL resources to maintain their defensive advantage that doesn't include the handicap of brain-dead bots unable to climb ladders.

Unfortunately, I also believe it is many of the design choices for siege settlements that further hinder the idea of a layered defense. Take for example the Sturgian scenes such as Tyal, their keep ACTS as part of the outer layer wall where attackers assault, leading to situations like this:



I certainly don't comprehend the logic behind these decisions, however, what is clear is that they all work together to make sieges boring considering the number of times instances like that occur. It is repetitive and an eyesore to even experience. I just hope that keep battles will give more tactical elements to sieges, but from the looks of it, it seems like an excuse to simply elongate the hack and slash elements of the game (not necessarily bad, but disappointing).

Edit: I do feel like I might have teased you guys with that rock, so here is the rest of the siege clip.



Although, if I have to say anything specific about what I felt, it was frustration that while the enemy was trying to flee, many of the troops were simply cheering instead of hacking them to pieces. Although no immediate effects were felt with this battle, when keep battles get implemented, imagine a close siege and a dozen extra enemies are able to reach the safety of their keep because your troops cheer right in front of them, letting them go.

 

[Rbtparker13]

Honestly I would just be happy if the ai didn't get tunnel vision. The amount of times I just stand right outside a doorway or stairs and just keep swinging like no tomorrow is ridiculous.

Also what happened to the big ramps/ladders from warband? Those where we could actually defend ourselves while climbing up. And not just get instantly slaughtered when we reach the top.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Oh my gosh. I can only think X box when I see this.

Well... considering that this mechanic is being sought to implement definitively long before they told us about it in Dev Blog 11/04/19 still having the perennial WIP tag, a cold sweat ran down my back when I didn't see the sidebar for orders...

According to the blog and the clip from the last videoblog, all this together makes me suspect that the only evolution from Warband to Bannerlord in terms of keep battles, is an increase of agents on the scene and the decoration of the scene (barricades). I wonder two basic questions... can we use the command menu?, and, can we select the group of units we want to assault with (like in hideouts)?

This is precisely it. Even the example in the dev blog implies the ability for layered defenses:

Spoiler

From the example, after breaching the outer walls with ladders or a siege tower, the defenders should theoretically be able to fall back to that second layer, with archers on the ramparts and two divisions of infantry holding both inner gates. You know, actually making a siege a multi-layered DIFFICULT process for attackers while defenders have to split and mobilize ALL resources to maintain their defensive advantage that doesn't include the handicap of brain-dead bots unable to climb ladders.

Unfortunately, I also believe it is many of the design choices for siege settlements that further hinder the idea of a layered defense. Take for example the Sturgian scenes such as Tyal, their keep ACTS as part of the outer layer wall where attackers assault, leading to situations like this:



I certainly don't comprehend the logic behind these decisions, however, what is clear is that they all work together to make sieges boring considering the number of times instances like that occur. It is repetitive and an eyesore to even experience. I just hope that keep battles will give more tactical elements to sieges, but from the looks of it, it seems like an excuse to simply elongate the hack and slash elements of the game (not necessarily bad, but disappointing).

Edit: I do feel like I might have teased you guys with that rock, so here is the rest of the siege clip.



Although, if I have to say anything specific about what I felt, it was frustration that while the enemy was trying to flee, many of the troops were simply cheering instead of hacking them to pieces. Although no immediate effects were felt with this battle, when keep battles get implemented, imagine a close siege and a dozen extra enemies are able to reach the safety of their keep because your troops cheer right in front of them, letting them go.

I really don't want to put any more pressure on the devs... they already have enough to deal with. Of course I would love to see the defenders fall back to inner layers of defence ready to withstand several waves of enemy forces, culminating in the final defence at the keep battle.

It's obvious that they went for a less complicated, less labyrinthine design for the agents... and yet we still have the navigation problems we have (Look at the bots in your clip, they don't even detect you... more than a siege, it's a game of Whac-A-Mole...). Thanks for bringing this to light because it had totally slipped my mind; however I don't think we'll see this implemented eventually... I doubt they'll have scenes cooked up like that under the blanket and one of these days they'll lift it up exclaiming -surprise!

By the way, what camera mod do you have installed?