Siege Ideas and related

[Dade]

Hi all,
I reporte this at ticket system and I've been suggested to post it here for community discussion, which is great and I hope it can give more ideas to devs.

With the new capture engine I think it would be nice to redefine damage to buildings from units which are not designed for sieges (all except, siege weapons - rams, catapults, etc. -, Romans italic heavy infantry and Iberians Leial Zanduneira AFAIK).

This would have some direct consequences:

• Civs picks will have direct consequences when/if a siege situation come into the game
• Tactical decisions about how to manage armies, depending on situations or objectives (no more champions nukes zerging, for example), both for defenders and attackers
• Early game is relevant again

There are some ideas:

• Normal buildings: 30% percent of melee damage and 25% from ranged units
• Defensive buildings and Walls: 5% percent of melee damage and 2% from ranged units
  Of course, this damage modifications won't apply to any unit designed for sieges.

In my humble opinion, this would lead to a drastic change of what we have seen until now and will probably needs further modifications of other siege/game related parameters like: formations to protect siege units, specialization of some siege units as suggested in #2038 and much more.

I will try to keep the post as updated I can, so it can be a point of reference to anyone to start the discussion.

Have a nice day!

Edited January 27, 2016 by Dade

[Lion.Kanzen]

Is not difficult to implement. Except the formation, that need be polish.

some engines like Rams and siege towers have a creature to avoid be captured easily, garrisoning inside like a building.

 

in few words what are the changes that have great impact( I can't visualize your changes very well).

[Dade]

Hi Lion,

the opinion paragraph is just that, an opinion about what could possibly change after modifying units damage to normal and defensive buildings. Proposed changes are just:

3 hours ago, Dade said:

• Normal buildings: 30% percent of melee damage and 25% from ranged units
• Defensive buildings and Walls: 5% percent of melee damage and 2% from ranged units
  Of course, this damage modifications won't apply to any unit designed for sieges.

 

 

[Dade]

I have changed thread topic, so we can have a more general vision about siege aspects of the game. I guess it shouldn't be a problem.

Some additional ideas:

1. Castles should have the ability to train or improve a new and simple feature: rock throwing. Quantity could be standard and/or depending on garrisoned units. Mechanism is simple, whenever enemy units approach to your castle and stick to walls, they start draining HP because of this falling rocks. To counter this, civilizations as Romans had a siege weapon called musculus, which is nothing else than a very resistant box used by Romans to approach enemies fortifications
2. Soldiers positioned on walls should have much more armor rate, as they actually die as they were in the middle of the field. In addition, they should also have some other kind of advantage to reflect the fact they are positioned on a higher position than their opponents, this could be translated into game as little more damage, extra range or additional fire rate
3. This one could be probably hard to implement but it would be great if ranged units could not bypass buildings, walls or terrain with their shots. I'll put an example in case this one is not clear: suppose an Iberian player, which is being sieged by an enemy without catapults (hence, no danger to fear collateral damage) and it's main door is about to get down, no matter how hard he tries to repair it. With this feature, he could place his soldiers next to walls and have a last chance to defend his place. Unfortunately, actually everyone get hits from archers from the other side of the wall which is not realistic at all
4. Related again with ranged attacks, specially from arrows and slingers. Units inside forests/woods should receive less damage from arrows and slingers, are they are actually harder to reach/hit and units could cover.

 

[Phalanx]

Some questions directly relating to your points (not trying to be critical)

For 1.  What about other factions?  The barbarian tribes would be screwed in a siege then..

For 2. and 3. I believe that the devs are already trying to solve these, especially 3.

4. I believe it is on the devs' radar, but this would be a late implement, I presume.

 

The whole siege idea and building combat is still being de-bugged and looked at after the capture update.

 

Good ideas though!  Great thinking! 

[Dade]

Do not fear, the more we can discuss, the better we can improve ideas overall.

About (1), I talked about Romans, because I read about them but I guess other civilizations may have similar 'technologies'. About barbarian civs, that's exactly what I meant in the main post: "Civs picks will have direct consequences when/if a siege situation come into the game". In my opinion, barbarians would still be played by aggressive players which wants to brute force the match, or as the perfect complement in team games (thus you will need more synchronization with your team players).

Regarding the rest of points, I'm glad this is already planned at some point for the game

Of course, as you point out, there is still a lot to learn and think since the capture update but I am sure all together we can bring nice ideas and feedback to our nice devs.

Thanks for your compliments. I'll be glad to discuss more.

Have  a nice day!