Please remove towers from sieges

#802825

Seriously, it's like I'm playing whack-a-mole. I just downloaded a mod to remove towers to see how it goes. The barricades add a nice flair and really allow you to play smart with how you spend your points. The towers are just lazy design. Just keep popping down arrow towers until you get army losses. No strategy there. Just king of the hill. No need to fall back to a more strategic point or hold multiple points when you can just hold one point and keep popping down turrets until the enemy army kills itself against you. Total War Warhammer 3 has essentially become a melee slog with how many ranged nerfs, ranged bugs, and how terribly implemented the new siege mechanics are. It just feels so boring.

Darksteel83#1113

I think building only in the deployment phase is better. There is also a mod for that. I use it all the time.
But the pop-up towers are indeed terrible.

Jman5#8318

I dislike the tower spam too, but they would need to replace it something to compensate. Otherwise siege battles will be even easier for the attacker.

One thing I would love to see replace the tower deployables is a limited reinforcement system that uses the supply system. Not only would this keep the level of challenge appropriate, but the system could also act as a spillover for garrisons that are currently over 20. Right now, they just disappear.

Picking Bones#8601

The MOD I use is to give more supply points at the beginning, but it will not replenish the points, that is, the demolished towers will not be reborn.

#802825

PickingBones#8601 said:

The MOD I use is to give more supply points at the beginning, but it will not replenish the points, that is, the demolished towers will not be reborn.

I've actually found that mod and decided to use it. Very very good mod. Would recommend to anyone who plays to get it because it just makes the game so much more playable

Loupi#8512

yep sieges are awful, even the spammable pop-up barriers are a total pain, makes moving through a town a total bore

#802825

Loupi#8512 said:

yep sieges are awful, even the spammable pop-up barriers are a total pain, makes moving through a town a total bore

I feel like the barriers need more HP to be more useful in terms of redirecting an army. As the AI is using them, they're literally just spamming them on top of your units to keep building a barrier which is stupid.

Asamu#6386

I actually don't mind the towers/building in battle mechanic. Though, I can understand the feeling of it being like playing whack-a-mole with buildable towers. It keeps the attacker active and gives a way to react to the opponent in battle for the defender even when heavily outnumbered, while also giving the defender a little something extra to help compensate for a numbers disadvantage, which the walls/towers generally fail to do. It also gives an incentive for the attacker to push into the city quickly to prevent defenses from being built up too much.

IMO, the far bigger problems with sieges are that siege towers/rams are pointless, the maps are excessively large, so even 40 units doesn't feel like a lot for many of the maps, and the pathing is terrible; the maps have practically no reasonably open areas within the city, most of the map only has enough space for 1 unit at max width, and lots of corners that units get stuck trying to path around, resulting in them conga-lining and taking excessively long to reach a location.

Also, campaign map siege mechanics are entirely lacking, and siege battles are extremely easy to win (if not as easy as WH1/2), so you pretty much always want to fight the battle as quickly as possible.

All in all, the towers/buildables are a pretty minor problem in the scheme of siege battles; they do what they're supposed to. There's certainly room for changes to them, but, personally, I think the "only built before the battle starts" "solution" is a pretty terrible one; it basically just kills the mechanic entirely.

Loupi#8512 said:

pop-up barriers are a total pain, makes moving through a town a total bore

That's sort of the point of them. To some extent, trying to move through a city should be a pain, and barriers that allow defenders, but not attackers, to move through them make sense.
Siege battles should be somewhat of a slog and pushing into the city in a defended area should be difficult (if less because of simple bad pathing). Siege battles being easy and the alternative of actually sieging the city being worthless and entirely unengaging, means you're practically forced to play them constantly. And then they're just slow, but easy (and not really any different in practice than WH2 aside from the towers, which don't even matter on some siege maps).

#802825 said:

No need to fall back to a more strategic point or hold multiple points when you can just hold one point and keep popping down turrets until the enemy army kills itself against you.

That's only because the AI is bad/broken though. That wouldn't work so well if the AI was even a little bit better, especially if it didn't just completely break sometimes in siege battles.

Jman5#8318

Asamu#6386 said:

IMO, the far bigger problems with sieges are that siege towers/rams are pointless, the maps are excessively large, so even 40 units doesn't feel like a lot for many of the maps, and the pathing is terrible; the maps have practically no reasonably open areas within the city, most of the map only has enough space for 1 unit at max width, and lots of corners that units get stuck trying to path around, resulting in them conga-lining and taking excessively long to reach a location.

I agree with your points. However having recently fought a 40vs40 to take Karak Eight Peaks, I actually thought that the numbers felt really good for the map size. It was the first time I fought a siege battle that felt "right" in terms of scale. Something I would love to see instead of towers is some sort of reinforcement system where you could spend supplies to bring in a limited number of reinforcements. This would not only get us away from tower defense spam, but it would help settlement maps feel more populated. It would also solve that stupid problem where you can't have a garrison over 20 units.

Playing around with maps, the unit spaghettifying around corners is some sort of terrain bug with specific blockers. The only workaround I have found is that if you issue orders far enough away from the bugged asset, they will path normally.

#802825

Jman5#8318 said:

Asamu#6386 said:

IMO, the far bigger problems with sieges are that siege towers/rams are pointless, the maps are excessively large, so even 40 units doesn't feel like a lot for many of the maps, and the pathing is terrible; the maps have practically no reasonably open areas within the city, most of the map only has enough space for 1 unit at max width, and lots of corners that units get stuck trying to path around, resulting in them conga-lining and taking excessively long to reach a location.

I agree with your points. However having recently fought a 40vs40 to take Karak Eight Peaks, I actually thought that the numbers felt really good for the map size. It was the first time I fought a siege battle that felt "right" in terms of scale. Something I would love to see instead of towers is some sort of reinforcement system where you could spend supplies to bring in a limited number of reinforcements. This would not only get us away from tower defense spam, but it would help settlement maps feel more populated. It would also solve that stupid problem where you can't have a garrison over 20 units.

Playing around with maps, the unit spaghettifying around corners is some sort of terrain bug with specific blockers. The only workaround I have found is that if you issue orders far enough away from the bugged asset, they will path normally.

I liked how you could summon reinforcements in the final battle of the MSQ for 3. Albeit you're at the mercy of the devs or rng to determine which units you get but it's still a cool idea. I think the main issue is people's graphics cards might commit sudoku before we can get enough units on the map.

Jman5#8318

#802825 said:

Jman5#8318 said:

Asamu#6386 said:

IMO, the far bigger problems with sieges are that siege towers/rams are pointless, the maps are excessively large, so even 40 units doesn't feel like a lot for many of the maps, and the pathing is terrible; the maps have practically no reasonably open areas within the city, most of the map only has enough space for 1 unit at max width, and lots of corners that units get stuck trying to path around, resulting in them conga-lining and taking excessively long to reach a location.

I agree with your points. However having recently fought a 40vs40 to take Karak Eight Peaks, I actually thought that the numbers felt really good for the map size. It was the first time I fought a siege battle that felt "right" in terms of scale. Something I would love to see instead of towers is some sort of reinforcement system where you could spend supplies to bring in a limited number of reinforcements. This would not only get us away from tower defense spam, but it would help settlement maps feel more populated. It would also solve that stupid problem where you can't have a garrison over 20 units.

Playing around with maps, the unit spaghettifying around corners is some sort of terrain bug with specific blockers. The only workaround I have found is that if you issue orders far enough away from the bugged asset, they will path normally.

I liked how you could summon reinforcements in the final battle of the MSQ for 3. Albeit you're at the mercy of the devs or rng to determine which units you get but it's still a cool idea. I think the main issue is people's graphics cards might commit sudoku before we can get enough units on the map.

Well everyone is already forced to deal with up to 40v40 in sieges anyway, so you're not really increasing the performance load much beyond what is already required. You would not be summoning dozens of units at a time.

At the very least a reinforcement system would solve the problem of "what do you do with garrisons larger than 20 units?" Currently they just disappear, which sucks. With a reinforcement system you could just push them into the summoning pool.