Should units from siege towers be able to ungarrison over walls?

[Obelix]

see: Issue #2038 ([PATCH] Let units from siege tower ungarrison over walls)

Design Input is needed on above-mentioned Issue over there at Gitea. A patch from 13 years ago exists, but rebasing might be complicated. @Itms set the Milestone to Release 29, so maybe some folks are ready for some task force work.

@ShadowOfHassen, @Atrik

[Perzival12]

I personally think that this particular idea is a bad one, as it means that walls (already kind of useless) become even more so, as a single siege tower can ungarrison 20 units over enemy walls.
A better idea might be the suggestion earlier in that issue, to add a capture attack to enemy walls by the tower.

[ShadowOfHassen]

I was thinking about this at work. I don't like the idea of walls being useless because of a siege engine and that you'd have to garrison men inside the walll all the time, but i think the idea has promise.

 I was wondering if we could make walls big enough that units could move them.  Defenders can get through the walls through wall towers that are upgraded to be entrance stairs. You can garrison mele units on the wall in order to shoot down at attackers.  Then when seige  towers attack they just drop units on the wall and then you can have a fight on the wall with the melee units fighting to get into the town.

You'd kinda also seriously buff the walls so they couldn't just be destroyed by soldiers, but it may be a good idea.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think firstly that walls must be made more useful and less buggy before another countermeasure to them (new Siege Tower features) is implemented. Walls need:

1. Environmental Snapping, such as to (very important) cliffs and impassable water edges, and to objects such as stone mines. 

2. A health/cost/buildtime rebalance once they become more ubiquitous in multiplayer. The balance here will be crucial. Perhaps they should be slightly OP in most situations so that countermeasures such as Siege Towers (and other things? Undermines?) are warranted in the first place.

3. (not crucial) I'd like to add Sally Ports, which are like narrow "gates" but only allow one unit through at a time. So, they allow your units through and are more defensible than gates, but are allowed much lower passable bandwidth (and only let soldiers through, not civilian units, elephants, or siege weapons). Battle for Middle Earth II had these and they were nice. 

4. I think the way archers "unturret" off of the wall is goofy-looking. Furthermore, which side of the wall they ungarrison to is not immediately clear nor easily controlled (if currently even possible at all?). We should fix this somehow. Maybe we can animate units running laterally across the wall's parapet to the nearest wall tower and ungarrisoning from those. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Not crucial to the features of a Siege Tower, but I think their model needs updated. Perhaps 2 or 3 different Siege Tower models, or the player starts with the generic wooden tower, but with the 'Armor Plating' tech their actor updates to an armored Siege Tower which has a civ-specific look (same goes for Battering Rams for that matter). 

[phosit]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

4. I think the way archers "unturret" off of the wall is goofy-looking. Furthermore, which side of the wall they ungarrison to is not immediately clear nor easily controlled (if currently even possible at all?). We should fix this somehow. Maybe we can animate units running laterally across the wall's parapet to the nearest wall tower and ungarrisoning from those. 

It would also be nice when they are weaker/capturable from that side.

[Stan`]

I'd also want to have turret restoration patch merged/improved

[LeJardindEpicure]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think firstly that walls must be made more useful and less buggy before another countermeasure to them (new Siege Tower features) is implemented. Walls need:

1. Environmental Snapping, such as to (very important) cliffs and impassable water edges, and to objects such as stone mines. 

2. A health/cost/buildtime rebalance once they become more ubiquitous in multiplayer. The balance here will be crucial. Perhaps they should be slightly OP in most situations so that countermeasures such as Siege Towers (and other things? Undermines?) are warranted in the first place.

3. (not crucial) I'd like to add Sally Ports, which are like narrow "gates" but only allow one unit through at a time. So, they allow your units through and are more defensible than gates, but are allowed much lower passable bandwidth (and only let soldiers through, not civilian units, elephants, or siege weapons). Battle for Middle Earth II had these and they were nice. 

4. I think the way archers "unturret" off of the wall is goofy-looking. Furthermore, which side of the wall they ungarrison to is not immediately clear nor easily controlled (if currently even possible at all?). We should fix this somehow. Maybe we can animate units running laterally across the wall's parapet to the nearest wall tower and ungarrisoning from those. 

Yes environnemental snapping is a must, we need to find a way to make sure the wall is impassable. Too many NOMAD games where we discover that there just a tiny little gap that allows all the enemy cav to come right through.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 hours ago, Stan` said:

I'd also want to have turret restoration patch merged/improved

100! 

I totally forgot about that! Wall Tower replacement is a crucial item. 

Let's fix up walls to be really nice abd feature-complete, then let's design countermeasures for them.

[Thalatta]

On 07/08/2026 at 12:14 AM, Perzival12 said:

it means that walls (already kind of useless) become even more so

Indeed this should not happen, but I also think siege towers should be used for what they were actually used. Then, some other things would need to be changed, like making siege towers extremely slow and expensive.

[Ultimate Aurelian]

On that topic i think Romans, Carthaginians and most Greek civs could have Siege Tower too (current model as placeholders, maybe new ones later).

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I should make an art task for more siege tower models. That way folks can post up some references. If we're going to go through the trouble of creating more siege tower models (which we should), then perhaps each civ's siege tower should look somewhat unique. 

I also agree to giving it to move civs. We need to make them more useful and less buggy, but that doesn't mean they can't have them yet. 

[Ultimate Aurelian]

 

 

As for their use, it does seem they were used more as archer platforms at first but starting in the Hellenistic period were ocasionally use to climb walls.

Ladders would be perhaps more common for climbing (although probably more difficult to animate).

Edited 18 hours ago by Ultimate Aurelian

[Ultimate Aurelian]

On 07/08/2026 at 4:35 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Not crucial to the features of a Siege Tower, but I think their model needs updated. Perhaps 2 or 3 different Siege Tower models, or the player starts with the generic wooden tower, but with the 'Armor Plating' tech their actor updates to an armored Siege Tower which has a civ-specific look (same goes for Battering Rams for that matter). 

Aside from the Helepolis at Rhodes i'm not sure armored siege towers were that common.

i think some factions could be able to uprade them to have artillery and to have rams (current model could be used for artillery siege tower since it has the firing port)

Helepolis could be unique to Macedonians, a heavily armored tower with artillery (very expensive and you can only build one).

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Ultimate Aurelian

[Outis]

7 hours ago, Ultimate Aurelian said:

Ladders would be perhaps more common for climbing

Ladders are a common early siege method. It may be a good way to compensate for erm... less complex civs in case siege tower has a prominant role for others.

[Ultimate Aurelian]

4 hours ago, Outis said:

Ladders are a common early siege method. It may be a good way to compensate for erm... less complex civs in case siege tower has a prominant role for others.

Another  option could be undermining.

It was used by the more technologically advanced civilizations too.

Probably easier to do than ladders (just a guy with a pickaxe).

Edited 6 hours ago by Ultimate Aurelian

[Outis]

51 minutes ago, Ultimate Aurelian said:

Another  option could be undermining.

It was used by the more technologically advanced civilizations too.

Probably easier to do than ladders (just a guy with a pickaxe).

Then we should have countermining as well since there should be a way to... well... counter it.

[Ultimate Aurelian]

On 06/08/2026 at 7:14 PM, Perzival12 said:

I personally think that this particular idea is a bad one, as it means that walls (already kind of useless) become even more so, as a single siege tower can ungarrison 20 units over enemy walls.
A better idea might be the suggestion earlier in that issue, to add a capture attack to enemy walls by the tower.

Perhaps it could unload them slowly.

It would be cool to have battles on top of walls like in total war but that would take a lot of work.

Edited 2 hours ago by Ultimate Aurelian

[Grautvornix]

My amateur "historians" opinion:  Isn't the typical infantry attack on walls somehow representing kind of an undermining? (frankly, you may hit a stone wall for a VERY long time with a sword, a spear, or arrows, even with an axe, but without ny thing breaking ewxcept your own weapons.This is why city walls were so successful until the late middle ages, I believe.)

[Grautvornix]

Instead I would like to suggest walls that can be walked on (mechanics: moving garrisoned soldiers sideways replacing the next empty slot) towards the area of attack.

Then, there could also be a successful attacker moving along the wall in the same way - garrisoning a wall segment from a siege tower or a ladder (and only from those) could be possible with a certain probability.

[Thalatta]

Undermining/countermining seems somewhat represented by direct infantry attacks on walls already (I see @Grautvornix just beat me to it). Adding it would be worth it only if tunnels/terraforming are somehow added to the game, but this doesn't seem a big priority to me, all things considered. What really needs to be added/improved first is the ladder/siege tower unloading on walls, and the fighting on top of them, without making walls even more obsolete, and that last bit is the tricky part. For starters, ladders should make units climbing them more vulnerable, and siege towers should be extremely slow, but I think none of this would be properly balanced without wall towers automatically shooting, which is something that was removed in the past already, I guess because spamming them was too OP.

My view to balance all this is that walls shouldn't include wall towers, but instead wall segments should be upgradeable to towers (I use this word for both current sentry and stone towers) that shoot automatically (imagining thermals would damage engines), for a more appropriate cost. Spacing limitations between towers would of course be considered. I know it seems this adds micro, but it really doesn't: one has to build towers behind walls anyway since wall towers are useless without a garrison, which is a waste of units and micro, and this should just improve what's already automatic. In conclusion: wall towers should be removed, while walls and towers should be better integrated, with towers and gates automatically doing anti-engine fire damage (additionally having attested catapult towers is something I already proposed), with garrisoning improving all this. Posted ranged infantry on the top of walls would shoot (like now), while melee infantry would fight unloading enemy units better.