siege rework

drogarito#2548

Now that we all know that tower defense siege "rework" is a debacle, here are some things that I would like to see in the game in the upcoming days:

Unique siege machines / unique siege defenses: - Every race should have both unique siege attack and defense machines. Having ballista and catapults on walls as pre-deployable would be great! ladders, battering rams, and towers are so boring. We have it in every Total War game. We need something better, something unique and creative. Maybe doom diver -like catapults that can throw gobbos inside the settlement or something like that. Or some molten lava that the dwarves fire upon the attacker (- xyz armor for armored units + bonus damage to armored units) or Nurgle's slime (slow for units) etc.

Stronger walls: With unique siege engines for attack and defense, stronger walls should be mandatory.

Burning oil at the Gates + stronger gates - I was playing a siege battle with Nurgle and I saw some green slime at the gates. I was like, it would be so cool if this is not for cosmetic purposes only. Taking the main gate should give a lot of momentum to the attacker.

Wall climbing: Some units should definitely have the ability to climb walls. The first ones that come to mind are death runners, sneaky bastards that can enter the city and capture the point or even open the main gate for you. I am not sure should monsters or only skinny infantry units have the ability to climb walls.

Pre-deployables: Since tower-defense in-game building traps are so bad, it would be better to have pre-deployables just like the ones you had in Rome 2 or Medieval 2 . Maybe races like elves, orcs, skaven, human etc should have some unique pre-deployables as well...

Capture points/Objectives: Capture points make a lot of sense. But the game does not tell you what is going on when you capture the point in vein-like: MAY LORD! WE HAVE CAPTURED THE POINT! WE HAVE THE MOMENTUM! (and then on the screen it appears what bonuses you gain from having or losing momentum) NOW PRESS ON WITH THE ATTACK!

In-battle buildable towers should be abolished: Towers are just way too strong. I destroyed 3 armies with 2 towers, heavily outnumbered. Bring Warhammer 2 style of towers back. Maybe they should be nerfed if you have unique siege defenses as well.

Siege tunnels: Skaven and Dwarfs should be able to have siege tunnels. That way they can enter the city from within . Maybe the underground levels for settlements can be added. It makes for both races, with underground passes for dwarfs and under-cities for skaven.

Walkabout#1505

Agree with all above plus.

Non- corporeal Ghost types should be able to pass through walls but not capture locations.

Towers should have variable range based on level of the city.

drogarito#2548

Oh yeah! And of course, 360-degree sieges. They were the thing in every TW game other than Warhammer....

underwaterking

Inner walls, obstacles/traps outside walls, units defending the wall can throw the ladders back, make the walls the focus of the siege and not the streets, make it so walls can be fully destroyed, give agents some sabotage-like ability, capture points could heal/replenish ammunition/give more winds of magic to units in them (ally or enemy, whoever the owner is), destructible terrain...

drogarito#2548

Also, heroes like Skaven's warlock engineers should have some bonuses or abilities suitable for sieges.

AxiosXiphos#9040

drogarito92 said:

Now that we all know that tower defense siege "rework" is a debacle,

I stopped reading after this point - I knew everything after was going to be rubbish.

Ethorin#1178

Meanwhile... I like it.

Cyresdog#8125

Sure, a lot of those things would be cool
To think any of that will happen tho can not be beaten by anyone no matter how naive they are

drogarito#2548

AxiosXiphos said:

drogarito92 said:

Now that we all know that tower defense siege "rework" is a debacle,

I stopped reading after this point - I knew everything after was going to be rubbish.

What really is "rubbish" is the attitude of fanboys who are defending CA no matter what. They first said how Survival battles i.e. tower defense mode is going to be ONLY for the final battles in the campaign. So what they did is, they basically copy-pasted tower defense minigame everywhere - in final battles (FOR EACH RACE BTW) and siege battles because that was the cheapest way to go. And besides, the number of players on steam show that the fanbase is actually not so happy with the current state of the game. And that's an understatement.

SemtexOro#2225

Sieges are complete slog. Cant wait for a mod to remove them completely.

I get it was a cool idea, but the AI behaving + terrible pathfinding + towers that pop everywhere... just make me log out.

Id prefer field battles against 2-3 stacks, like huge garrisons, instead of sieges every day.

GeorgeTruman#8059

I don't feel like the feedback on the sieges has been that bad. The only glaring problem I see is that walled settlements have the whole victory ticket system that makes them actually tougher to defend in most cases.

I would love to see a version of sieges that involves no building of towers and barricades mid battle (and maybe some buffs to their health) but I think that would only ever be an option and I think its rather unlikely to see.

drogarito#2548

But Ogres are the worst. Why unique siege machines/defenses, when you can have siege attacks with almost every unit! It's definitely cheaper!

#1609

WH2 : "Siege are boring, we don't want a simple wall, give more complex maps"
WH3: "Siege are boring, we don't want complex maps, we want a simple wall"
Or...
"Minor settlement are boring, we don't like fighting without walls"
"Siege are boring, remove the walls"
Or
WH2: "Land battle for minor settlements are not good, change that!"
WH3: "We wan't land batlte for minor settlements".
...
Anyway, I'm working on a siege rework mod. This a WIP, I have implemented the changes and plan to play a campaign to test them. If you are interested to test it, contact me. Or just give feedback about these ideas.

Here is the list of changes

There are a few things in the vanilla game that are feeling wrong:
• A Cathay cannon can destroy, before running out of ammo (22), 10-12 towers (two ammo to destroy one tower) at rank 1, or 8 segments of walls. So a single artillery unit can do a LOT of damage, wiping all the towers on one side, and breaching the walls. That’s too much for a single artillery unit.
• In the same way, a battering ram can destroy a gate in only two swings. That doesn’t feel right
• Even the base tower can fire arrow projectiles at a range of 350, a lot more than the regular weapons. There is little room for attacker to stay safe and bombard the city defences. Low level towers fire only a few shots, but with a range and damage which doesn’t match the base range weapons of the army.
• The races all have similar equipment, walls, and towers. Same HP, same damage, same speed, same costs… Except visually, there’s no difference, it doesn’t show well enough the race variety.

SWORD brings the following changes to try to improve the siege.
• Attrition for siege will start after 1 turn instead of 0. 2 turns for a port.
• Units get more fatigue when Climbing ladder or wall. Climbing speed almost halved.
• Units on wall reload faster.
• Weapon building damage has been reduced. Spears do very little, swords, fangs, claws are not efficient. Axes, and Hammers, especially great weapons, keep normal damage. The large monsters also keep normal damages.
• Siege engines are built twice faster (they require half the Siege Effort Cost).
• Siege towers have a base 8,000 HP instead of 12,000. Battering ram 10,000 HP instead of 16,000. They are easier to destroy, but since you can have more, it makes more dynamic siege battle. Battering ram base damage has been reduced from 3,000 to 1,500. The stats (HP and speed) vary a little with each race (see table next page)
• Towers now have a base HP of 11,000 instead of 7,500. Walls have 12,000 instead of 8,000. Gates have 9,000 HP instead of 6,000 HP. However, each race has now different HP (see table next page). The more “sturdy looking” stone towers have more than a fragile wood tower. The HP also increase a bit with the level of the tower.
• Towers have a 180° firing arc: they can fire on their side and cover each other. But be careful: they can now damage friendly units!
• The range and damage of the towers has been modified (see table). Instead of having a kind of generic weapon tower with similar stats, for every race, the projectiles are now based on missile weapons used by this race, with some changes (+20% range, marksmanship and reload bonus, + 100 % damage for level 1-2, +50% for level 3-4, number of bursts increased).
• Deployable cost less, so you have more at the start of the battle. However, you get new supply points twice slower. The building time for tower is longer, meaning it will be harder to deploy new tower mid battle. Other deployable building time is the same.
• Abilities:
o +25% range on wall, +15% on plateforme (instead of +20% on both), 20% missile resistance on wall instead of 10%, +10% on plateform (instead of 0), and ammo replenishment (0,1 on plateform, 0,2 on wall)
o Traps reduce speed by 35% instead of 15%, and give 10% vulnerability to missile, and -15% MD. They also reduce the charge bonus by 50%
o Monument gives +15 leadership instead of +10. They also give a small healing (twice stronger for unded and nurgle).

Note 1: Chaos Gods are for the moment using generic Chaos HP and keep their vanilla towers missile. This maybe modified later with further testings.
Note 2: Bretonnia, Elves, Vampire Coasts, Beastmen, Tomb Kings and Norsca are for the moment untouched. They will be modded later when the races are playable (so probably not before IE).

With these changes:
• A cannon could destroy only 7-8 towers or 5-6 walls (or 3 towers 3 and walls) before running out of ammo. A single artillery can still destroy towers and breach a section of wall, but not the whole side of a city. You’d need two artillery units for that.
• A ram would need 6 swings to destroy a get (average, it varies with each race).
• Since low level towers have a reduced range, the attacker can stay out of range of the weakest towers to bombard the city defences. But with improved towers, this can be a lot more dangerous. A single artillery unit can safely neutralize one section of wall / tower for low level city. At higher level, it requires more artillery since the wall are a bit stronger, and the artillery can counter fire. Especially with a larger firing arc!
• Each race has different towers and siege equipment, matching the normal range weapons of the army (missile infantry, or artillery). Some are sturdy and slow, some are fragile and fast, some are good, some are bad…

Dave1984

They already nailed siege battles with 3 kingdoms. Why didn't they just do that with a warhammer twist?

Walkabout#1505

@Steph_F_David absolutely great proposed changes mate.

1. I really like that spears, daggers and claws do little damage to gates.

2. Definitely not a fan of towers being built in battle. Traps and barricades I can stomach as long as they take longer than they do at the moment in game.

3. Is there any way you reckon that ethereal units could get the ability to move through walls but not have the ability to capture points? Sort of like a flyer?

Nice one.

Vanilla_Gorilla#8529

drogarito92 said:

Now that we all know that tower defense siege "rework" is a debacle

To be honest you kinda give up the ghost here. I read the rest and the suggestions seem meh. I mean, you don't have to serve up suggestions to dislike the rework, but the one's you've served up just aint it.

Walkabout#1505

Vanilla_Gorilla said:

drogarito92 said:

Now that we all know that tower defense siege "rework" is a debacle

To be honest you kinda give up the ghost here. I read the rest and the suggestions seem meh. I mean, you don't have to serve up suggestions to dislike the rework, but the one's you've served up just aint it.

Dude interesting that you don't like the suggestions, personally I quiet like the OP suggestions. What are your thoughts on changing the sieges? Would it be more or less impactful or totally different?

BTW I agree the OP using "Debacle" is the wrong word for me, I view it more of a CA experiment that I personally don't like.

#1609

Crajoh said:

2. Definitely not a fan of towers being built in battle. Traps and barricades I can stomach as long as they take longer than they do at the moment in game.

I haven't found yet how to disable them completly. So I increased their building time. I ahve to test how it works to see if it need to be changed more.

Crajoh said:

4. Is there any way you reckon that ethereal units could get the ability to move through walls but not have the ability to capture points? Sort of like a flyer?

I don't think it is possible.

ammo2095#8079

I think these siege ideas would be great in the next Medieval title, honestly.

#776528

I wouldn't say it's a debacle but some of the factions should have gotten more unique defenses like for Vampire Counts instead of the same trap building that slows and debilitates enemies that everyone else gets they could have something that summons a relatively small amount of zombies/skeletons repeatedly to attack enemies nearby until it or it's supply point is destroyed.

Or a Nurgle Shrine that regenerates Nurgle units and does damage over time to enemies.

Crossil

Just remove the supply system and the rest works fine.

It's not great, the walls still need to be made functional and the buttladders need to be removed, but it's fine.

#1609

Mordren said:

I wouldn't say it's a debacle but some of the factions should have gotten more unique defenses like for Vampire Counts instead of the same trap building that slows and debilitates enemies that everyone else gets they could have something that summons a relatively small amount of zombies/skeletons repeatedly to attack enemies nearby until it or it's supply point is destroyed.

Or a Nurgle Shrine that regenerates Nurgle units and does damage over time to enemies.

Monuments already have different effects for each race.
Traps could be modded to be different

Walkabout#1505

Steph_F_David said:

Crajoh said:

2. Definitely not a fan of towers being built in battle. Traps and barricades I can stomach as long as they take longer than they do at the moment in game.

I haven't found yet how to disable them completly. So I increased their building time. I ahve to test how it works to see if it need to be changed more.

Crajoh said:

4. Is there any way you reckon that ethereal units could get the ability to move through walls but not have the ability to capture points? Sort of like a flyer?

I don't think it is possible.

Thanks

Marder

Make the siege prolonged, lets say 3 battles are needed.

Map one:
First battle, at the walls, attacker needs to get behind the walls make breeches hold territory. Attacker can build siege tools. like ladders, towers, rams.
If victory by attacker move to map two, can chose to attack imidatly with main army or supporting army or wait to refill loses. if lost attacker takes the loses and its counted as a lost battle attacker needs to wait one turn before attacking again. Defender losing takes loses he Suffert.

Map two:
City, Map with narrow corridors where the defender can build barricades traps and other stuff. Attacker needs to take points and hold them. If victory move to map three with main army now or wait or send supporting army.
Defender if wins pushes the enemy back to wall. can attack imidatly or wait.

Map three. main castles only a few narrow corridors and three cap points. If this is lost the the settlement falls.
Victory means city is taken los means push back to map two. now or later.

Who ever wins gets a reinforcement buff even if the city is sieged so who loses cant reinforce and repair his troops for one turn.
Sieges dont become a all in poker game. Now or never battle but fights take more time, more time for supporting army's of the defender to show up.

Citys feel bigger, look bigger instead of one one map, cockoloris.

Dessad

When looking at some of the datamined settlement graphics that came out a couple of weeks ago, I had to laugh and roll my eyes when I saw one of those brown, rickety, wooden Fortnite towers in the middle of a gleaming, bright blue and white High Elf settlement.

Not only are Fortnite towers profoundly immersion-breaking, from a functional stand-point (i.e., they remove strategic choice, add needless artificiality, etc.), they can also look silly and completely out of place, depending on the graphical style of the settlement in question.

Leping#7906

drogarito92 said:

Oh yeah! And of course, 360-degree sieges. They were the thing in every TW game other than Warhammer....

The warhammer town need background to show how they are abusively huge and absurd.

360° made it tiny, to much grounded for warhammer, like taking a little fortress. It's bad in a design and lore perspective

We can already circle around most of the cities, most for the minor ones, i don't know how some ° to make it 360 will improve anything

#1609

I much prefer the current situation. 360° would not look good and bring nothing.
Having 3 sides to defend is really sufficient.

drogarito#2548

@steph_F_David I agree with most of your suggestions, other than deployable and buildable towers. We have normal towers on walls and these buildable ones are way overpowered. I really like the idea that units climbing walls with ladders or carrying siege engines get tired faster. And I also like your recommendation that swords and claws etc would do little damage to the walls. Also, having different types of towers for each race with different bonuses to their attack would be cool. The same goes for the strength of fortifications for each race. Nobody would expect Norsca to have walls lol. However, I do not agree with the part regarding in-battle deployables and towers. It would make more sense that SUPPLIES are used for pre-deployables and EXTRA AMMO for ranged units. Also, it would be cool for each race to have unique pre-deployables with ups and downs for each race.
In Rome 2 you have Roman Bastion Onager, Roman Bastion Balista and Roman Bastion onagers that you can deploy before the battle wherever you want. If you remember Dwarfs trailer, they had some really cannons on walls. You should have at least 3 unique siege defenses for each race. Some races should have better anti-air defenses, some should have anti-cavalry defenses, some should have stronger anti-infantry defenses, etc. Some factions should for instance have some harpoons with nets that can trap air units. Of course, both unique siege war machines and unique siege defenses depend on your supplies (which would be a currency for sieges). So you should be careful about what you bring in for the siege.

One of the things that can be implemented are LIVING WALLS - just take a look at Nurgle's city. There are a lot of moving parts already. You have these worms with 1000 teeth. And sadly they are just background models now. You can use them as the actual defense buildings, "melee towers". Living walls could regenerate and be healed but they can also attack the enemy, or debuff them with poison etc. So instead of having OP in-battle buildable towers, you can now choose between Melee Tower (like these worms with 1000 teeth) or some other Ranged tower that can spit slime on the enemy or something like that. These Melle/Ranged living towers should be pre-deployed, and they should be limited by a supply cost. But they should be more vulnerable to infantry since you don't need siege attackers to breach them. Also, races like Ogres or Greenskins can have spiked walls that return damage to the attackers. Same thing can be applied to Wood Elves who can also have living walls with some thorns or something like that. Since living walls literally have eyes on them for the Chaos faction, it should give them increased visibility against units like death runners, who could climb them but without being invisible.

But since the attacker already has a lot of disadvantages, I think that capturing gates or capturing points should give you fatique reset, or some other buffs with also debuffs for capture points lost. Also, I think there are too many capture points now. The Ai does not know what to do with them. Also, unique siege war machines and unique siege defense should be balanced out so that both sides can win a fight.

#1609

Maybe you misunderstood my posts. What I listed is not what I would like (and cannot be changed unless by CA), but what I'm actually implementing in my mod. Because it DOES work.

For example, I haven't found how to fully prevent the deployement of towers mid battle.
The compromise is to make them less expensive so you can more at start, but reduce the supply gain during battle and increase the building time so it is more difficult to add new towers when the battle start. Maybe by increasing the time further (like 30 minutes to make one) they could be almost non existing, but this requires more testing to see adverse effect.

Instead of spending too much time complaining about what could be, I focus on what can be, and I actually play the game with these changes.

drogarito#2548

Yeah, I get it. And I am thankful for all the modders out there but I think it is CA's job to fix the game, not the modder's. This "mods will fix it" mentality does more harm because it makes CA lazy.

sasori1548#7252

I would make either of these 2 changes:

Option 1- Give the defender way more points in the beggining of the siege but disable building defences after the battle starts.

Option 2- Keep things mostly same but if a defence building is destroyed it cannot be rebuilt, which would stop the AI from spamming towers over and over.

Aside from either of these two changes (i expect the first option to be a mod) i really enjoy sieges as they are.