Yeah it’s a stupid decision to force players into always rushing the walls and not use any real tactics. I loved making siege armies in previous total war games.
Every time i have to fight a siege battle it kills my excitement from playing the game , and what triggers me the most is when you break down the gate and u give order to your troops to go through the gate but they pull ladders out of their ass and start climbing the wall 😡😡😡
That is true that the troop movement is dumb alot of times, specielly with gates. I usally take down a wall as well or instead, actually works better lol
Sieges should be tiered. Turn it into 3 battles (outer wall, inside the town and inside the keep or acropolis) and have a chance which units will fight having an economy of force for each tier for the defending army to effectively fight for attrition. It will keep the ai focus on what task it has.
I would prefer to remove free towers completely and expand the garrison in settlements. I feel like these towers are like free damage that I want to avoid. There's no reason to attack in multiple places when all you get is more damage from the towers. Also, I think the problem is that we have too many siege battles in the game. Besieging something like Altdorf or Praag just feels like attacking another random city. Minor settlement battles are almost non-existent now. I think it could work great if we had this system: 10-14 building slot city: Unique siege battle 6-8 building slot city: Minor settlement battle (If you build walls, you'll get a siege battle) 1-4 building slot city: Land battle (If you build walls, you'll get a minor settlement battle) It would be nice to have something like a siege preparation menu where both defenders and attackers have several options on what to do before battle rather than just building unnecessary 1-2 rams or siege towers. Even something unique for each race like Vampire Counts could, for example, have the ability to revive 2 units of zombies/skeletons at the graveyard in the city during an attack, thus disrupting the city's defense. You should also have the option to attack a city after one turn of siege so that both sides have a chance to do something.
-Remove ladders or change them into only 1 ladder for each stack of units -Reduce the amount of angles the enemy can attack from -Reduce range of towers, remove ability to rebuild towers -Reduce amount of pathing issues inside cities The sieges are so damn bad at the moment, city is too big to defend every angle, ladders make walls have more or less no impact, towers being able to fire at you from the very start of the match because of their range is really annoying. Pathing issues when inside the cities make big battles inside really clunky and awkward
This. I wish they at least made the AI concentrate the attack on one point it would be already much better. If they gave some advantages to units on walls such as higher range and a small health Regen it would help make the walls feel useful.
Towers already cannot be rebuilt, that change was made last year. I agree with the rest but they only improve a bad system. What sucks most about sieges imo is how indefensible all the maps are. Each capture point has no less than 3 paths into it, some 5 or 6. How are you supposed to defend that with a small garrison?
Sieges will always be repetitive and always have an optimal solution no matter how good the AI is. Tweaks will ultimately only change what this optimal solution is. The question is how to tweak it in such a direction, that the optimal solution is at the same time the one the largest amount of people find most enjoyable. Then it will just be the drive to solve the puzzle better, faster, with less tools. Ultimately the player doesn't fight the AI, the player fights the high score. So the real question is: What do we want out of a siege battle? What do we want to happen? Both as the defender and as the attacker. Then we create obstacles and incentives to turn this play style into the optimal one. Let me begin: Autoresolve should always come at a tax. It should always be worse than what I can do in manual. Both land and siege. On VH it mostly is, but on Easy autoresolve can produce results I wouldn't be able to reproduce. As the defender, I want options to have this "last stand against all odds". Meaning, to pull off a defence so outnumbered that, if I had been the attacker, I could've afk'd that battle and won. Some of the most memorable battles in TWW2 were actually siege defences, where, with limited tools, you gotta pull something out of your hat. As the attacker I want the feeling of laying siege to a settlement. It should be sensible for me to engage with the siege mechanic and build siege towers etc.. I should of course be able to just go in and conquer the place, but there should be a price tag on it. Costin is entirely right when he mentions that you should never wait a turn and lords without siege attacker are garbage as it stands now. I want walls to be sensible, to have a reason to be there, which means they have to be more than a minor obstacle. Ladders have to go (make them produceable siege equipment that gives you say 5 "Ladder Banners" that can be equipped on units and give you the ladder ability and -10 speed or something. Some ninja style units should always have the ability - they have climbing gear, hooks, or some magical stuff, whatever) Losing the walls should hurt, which means the walls should give a significant advantage and other ways of getting in should be at a disadvantage. Gates can still be damaged by all units, but crossing through a still intact gatehouse while there are still enemies on top should damage your unit massively (murder holes - they pour oil and throw rocks down - also gives some meaning to the separate gatehouse hp). If they have a ram they gain immunity (Steam Tanks, Stegadons, Skullcrackers, Ironbreakers, etc. have this ability inherently). Siege towers allow you to gain access to the walls without fatigue and also grant immunity from the "murder hole" ability. Units with ladders will suffer if there is an enemy atop that wall. Also walls should grant significant missile block to all units on top of them. On the other hand, not all wall segments should count as stairs. For ease of mapping and in relation to existing maps, only wall segments that have either towers or gatehouses should allow getting on or off a wall. This generates chokepoints and can trap either attackers or defenders. It will also create a more dynamic flow of battle, where certain elements have to be held and others can be ignored. The deployables should include a "field hospital" or "triage point" and a "supply center", or instead special capture points could grant this effect in their zone. Definitely deployables should include some goodies, like different traps, a magical locus etc. All deployables are placed at the start of the battle, no passive points income. The towers (both wall and deployable) are a necessity to allow melee factions to counter fire against attackers. I would prefer a different solution, but that would be too hard to implement now. Some form of "stalk" should apply to the defender's units behind the walls, either always or until a certain condition is met (eg.: attacker conquers control point) to prevent "le sniperino". Also, why would you be able to see them? They're literally behind a wall. Garrisons need to be strengthened for all major faction capitols to prevent early wipes - might be a toggle. As you can see, the defender gets a major boost in capabilities. Both for the fun of defending against all odds in sieges and to make attacking more engaging. On the campaign map sieges should be engaging too, just attacking shouldn't always be your best option. That's why base line attrition should be done away with and replaced with a new mechanic, let's call it "submission". Submission is based on the settlement owner's level of control. Once a besieged settlement hits -200 it will capitulate. (Or you change control as it is now, spawning a rebellion at -50 and changing the values accordingly). Rebellions should spawn before the capitulation point is reached and still raise control to avoid a conflict, but not that much and they will lay siege to your settlements too, which would lower control again. When defending, you should get an "under siege" window (analogue to the attackers siege window - this will allow you to use a certain number of points - determined by Settlement level or garrison building level - to either counteract attrition, recruit militia into the garrison (low level units, act like a reinforcing army) or amass tokens for deployables. The siege window for the attacker, just as it is now, should allow certain actions based on available manpower (army value). Of course you can build ladders and towers, but you gan instead plunder the region (gain money lower control), try to poison the defenders (inflict attrition), set fire (inflict major attrition, damage defences, damage buildings, lower plunder and sack value), or undermine the walls. Having a city under siege should be a drain on the defenders economy (loss of income, loss of control, loss of vision over the region), while granting the attacker a passive raiding income and a portion of the opposing faction's trade (trade value/number of owned settlements). Sieges count as ongoing battles for all parties involved and will generate experience while they last. The damage done to a settlement should be relative to the damage you inflict. If you manage to force a city into submission without a fight (which would inflict major damage to buildings), you get the settlement at the same level it had and the maximum amount of loot, plunder or sack value (the latter will then damage the settlement). If local population corruption = your preferred corruption also gain "liberator" bonus on growth and control for X turns. All in all, having your army standing there and besieging shouldn't feel like a wasted turn, but rather you should feel like you gain something from doing it and also like a preparation for a really hard and cool battle. All of this does not demand a major AI overhaul or a lot of new assets, most of the things can be implemented quickly and easily - which leaves time for more fresh maps! Because variety is the spice of life. Also the shabby deployable towers should be different based on faction and tier. Modders did it - this is an afternoon's work CA. (Certainly not more than 3 workdays using existing assets) This is just my idea though, others might not want to engage with the siege mechanic at all, because they think it costs time and dials the pace down too much. But then again, it won't really, just dials the turn number up (maybe).
I like this idea. Mechanics that add a lot to think in changing environment. When TWW3 come they bust about how they make things better but we get all this ideas broken or water down. This can happen again.
I would say the maps are both way too big and way too small at the same time. Too big in a sense that you do not have enough units to defend/attack from multiple sides so enemies will most likely get into the city, so now the best strat is to simply sit on the last capture zone when defending - and this is where the "too small" comes in, as controlling armies gets way too micro or down right frustrating. I had few times units go completely wrong, because move order made them go the wrong way and they ended up on the street next to where I wanted them to go. I would like to have more interesting battles, but I feel I am fighting the game more than the enemy.
I know not a lot of people play it but in TW Pharoah, the sieges are really fun. You have to use equipment and rams. Its actually 360 degree map and you can use fire and other things. Might not be anyone's favorite game but I find the sieges enjoyable.
There's another issue I have with sieges: they aren't fun to play as a defender. The enemy never attacks your walls unless they're confident they can overwhelm your garrison, or until you've taken attrition, which was introduced to Warhammer 3 and I've hated since. I often never fight defensive sieges because they feel unwinnable due to the maps being too large and my forces either being spread too thin, or not having solid chokepoints to hold the line properly. I also DESPISE the defense supplies system as it is. It makes zero sense for me to just spawn towers or barricades from thin air.
I would like to see the other mechanics from survival battles in siege's, things like healing and the ability to withdraw units for healing could give players a way to deal with the losses of going for a full assult.
I usually like your videos but this one was rambling and incoherent. Was it really necessary to explain to total war players the basic concept of balance of power and taking losses = bad? What are you the advisor lol
I would honestly add some bonuses to autoresolve based on the length of besieging, new lord/hero effects that cause attrition and make it easier to win siege by actually besieging without waiting many turns unless the settlement has specialised building. Traditional historical sieges are not a viable strategy in total war, especially on higher difficulties where we don't have armies to spare and AI spawns a full stack by the time besieged City starts attritioning
It's too easy to cheese offensive sieges. For gunpowder factions in particular it's easy mode. It doesn't matter how many stacks are reinforcing you are going to inflict army losses and wipe them all out. The AI is the main problem, they seem intent on defending every square centimetre of the settlement and ai always trys contest you capturing a gate. The breach tactic is just too powerful against this. Cannons/arty negates towers and breach walls. Grudge throwers or mortars bombard from safety. Gunners stand outside the beach and fire into the settlement. The ai can even be baited out through the breach into a death zone of overlapping fire. Total carnage for the defender. And you won by making a breach and exploiting it. The ai needs to be flexible and pull back and defend in layers.
Him talking about the artiliary is real. I had no casualties yet versus an entire army of orcs until then end when my cannon decided to grape shop an entire squad only leaving 2 alive.
Hey Costin, I took Skavenblight last night as Elspeth. There are some major problems with sieges for sure. My reinforcing army took a bit of unnecessary damage because I had the RoR Cannon unit behind cover (a ginormous rock outside the city walls) and an almost invisible enemy tower that shouldn’t have been active because the enemy had no one on the walls there pretended that they didn’t see that and shot straight through the rock, not OVER it, through it. WHAT THE HECK? And my primary War Machines doomstack took a bit of damage that I was able to heal back, but only because I caught it quickly. I told Wonder of The Age (Landship) (it has a mortar) and War Wagon Mortars to shoot over the walls at units on the other side, and for a while they did, but then without any rhyme or reason, (the enemy units hadn’t moved) they decided that they thought they couldn’t see the enemy units well enough, and charged into the settlement through the gate that they inadvertently broke when shooting units ON the walls even earlier. Wonder of The Age thought it was a great idea to charge into a bunch of Stormvermin Halberds without my permission, while there was still a MUTANT RAT OGRE that needed to be cleared out! It took a bunch of damage and kept running into things when I tried to get it back out of the settlement again, even without the help of the reduced turn speed (a RIDICULOUSLY HIGH penalty to turn speed, 70%, that needs changing) from Full Power, and Land Ships are already ponderous and struggle greatly with pathfinding (basically just forget about using them in Minor Settlement battles, let alone letting them actively participate in a Siege Battle) thanks to their oversized hitbox which sticks out from the model. Fortunately, I was able to heal it back to full HP with my Jade Wizard though, and the Mutant Rat Ogre got Spirit Leeched and Carmine Dragon Laser Breathed for its trouble. The War Wagon Mortars tried the same thing later, but I caught it just in time and none of my 3 units of them took any casualty. I just REALLY hate Sieges, ESPECIALLY when my artillery decides to move on its own. We really do need a “shoot this if you can, but stay put if you can’t” order to prevent them from doing crap like this that you never ordered them to do. Just my 2 cents on Sieges, good video Costin.
Good shout in regards to ass ladders. If anything, using them is more of a detriment, because it fucks with the pathfinding. The only situation I found them to be legitimately useful is when you're commanding an army that relies on rushing the enemy with melee infantry and has no other tricks up its sleeve (early game WoC, Norsca, Khorne, Slaanesh, etc.) And even then, ladders are rarely necessary, just slightly more convenient compared to bashing your way through the gates. Poor map design, horrifically bad AI, shit pathfinding/LoS, barebones walls that are carried entirely by OP towers, and so on... Those are far more dire issues. The whole supplies thing could still use some tweaks as well, but compared to what we had at release, it's actually kind of tolerable at this point. I used to mod supplies out of the game, so the fact that I tolerate them now is a pretty huge improvement, as far as I'm concerned. It adds a couple of mildly interesting mechanics to sieges without taking over the whole thing and turning it into a stupid minigame.
Sieges are so bad i had to download a mod that change the enemy AI and makes it much more likely to try and face you in open battle; instead of turtling in their cities
I blow a hole in the wall, hole is too small my guy cant get in. I blow a hole near it to make it bigger, i stead i get the same hole near it. my guys cant get in, cant shoot trough it sometimes. the gates are small as my ahole man the list can go on...
12:00 Only time ypu cant auto resolve kill everyone in the other army is if there is only a lord. Then they take 50% damage and run away. So you HAVE to play those battles. But almost every other battle it’s often better to auto resolve over playing a battle since they allways kill the other army if the text is green. I kinda wish higher difficulty didn’t have or at least show the battle outcome beforehand. Like I won against a overwhelming force of trash tier Vampire counts because they lost too many units (about 1 army) so the rest of the 40 or so units just crumbled… like just suddenly they all died. My garrison + an army of 5 vs 3x 20 stacks. Arguably they were mostly zombies and skeltons but I didn’t feel like I would have been able to win the stuff I had if they didn’t all die after barely killing one stack of units. I feel ladders in ass is pretty boring, at least reduce climb speed by like 3x And build things before the battle and not during it.
medieval 2 siege battles where amazing for me worst aspects of sieges in warhammer 3 are wierd structure that change your camera postion (bridges in cathay big settlements), second copy paste of most settlements big and small, third amount of unnecessary walls in settlemst that cause no possibility for defenders to crate kill zone, lack of generic hero for garrison like captain and amount of places where i cant deploy more then 2 units in time because it will not have space for formation
Good tip on moving your defending army outside the walls to beat a fraction of the enemy army. But on your point of "sapping" and "tunneling" those mechanics already exists. Use heroes for that "Break Walls" simple as that. Nobody does that, but the option is certainly there.
I think there are things that settlement battles could be improved upon. I remember there was mention of making some unique regions in the game their own special settlement battle map, but I could be misremembering. Regardless, I think there is certainly still room to improve upon siege battles overall. I do however like many of the things siege battles provides, I find using the barricades quite a bit to slow down advance of enemy armies. Having played recent campaigns with under-powered factions (Bretonnia for example) It's been quite challenging and a more unique experience in some cases. However, unit pathing will likely always be a problem, it has reasonably become much more functional, but still has issues occasionally. I do like troops fighting on walls, that's a cool prospect. Hope they add more to siege battles, i'm also someone who actually enjoyed the settlement battles at the release of TWH 3 so I guess it's an unpopular opinion.
I kinda agree and kinda don’t. A siege should be longer and more difficult to win than a pitched field battle. I absolutely hate the butt ladders and I don’t understand why we can’t have build able Ladders again. Just let armies have like 2 ladders built automatically if they are large enough. Small armies would need to wait a turn to build those ladders. A few turns to build siege towers and why not add sapping locations to undermine the walls. And ofcourse all the walls and towers are destructible. No weird sections between each breach. Just so dumb that you can’t bombard a section of wall the knock it down completely. We had this is all previous total wars. Wtf
That's because the term "siege" is completely inaccurate to describe a full frontal assault. A siege is represented in these games by surrounding the city and starving them out over several turns on the campaign map. Opting to attack the city is a city battle. Not a siege.
Sieges suck for a couple obvious reasons. I don't know why it takes 21 mins to say it: Pathing is still garbage in the game and can lead to endlessly frustrating situations like part of a unit running off through a field to go around and the rest mosh pitting in an open gate you control. Overall design of most settlements aren't defensible so all the towers and walls mean virtually nothing with few exceptions. Garrisons suck to no end, there should be more meaningful ways to build out strong garrisons, being able to recruit units you actually want in the garrison or better unit upgrade options. autoresolve is broken. A high tier doom stack can have entire units or entities get wiped on a 'close victory' but using a stack of outriders with grenade launchers are virtually unstoppable in auto-resolve. Or at the very least, auto-resolve thinks they punch *way* above their weight. Better than landships or steam tanks.
One of reasons why Shogun 2 sieges were so great is that there was almost no artillery so you need to be tactical and even with good plan it was often not worth the effort imo to assault garrisoned AI. But with siege weapons it's kinda easy to just sit back and fire all your ammunition. Not sure if sieges will be ever interesting with arty in game.
Seriously, i dont get the hate against siege battles. I love them TBH. You can do a lot of stuff esp as attacker. Sneak some sneaky bois to some capture points to remove structures while the main army destracts the enemy. Have some big and fast units deployed at another gate to split the defence forces just to move them over quickly sending the slow infantry on a long stroll. Have some flyers circumvent all deployed enemys for some objective gaming. And the cinematics of it are awesome aswell. Have elite infantry climb the enemy walls to start the slaughter when they reach the top, maybe even have weaker units loose those engagements, forcing you to react to the enemys still on the wall shooting you. Have artilary tear down walls and towers. Have chariots, who are mostly terrible in sieges, run though a breach in the wall created later on to flatten enemy ranged units who are attacking your infantry at the gate. Ofc all of thos could be even better. And the fact that you almost never get to be defender in an evenly matched battle is a shame. But holy fuck the maps look awesome, the layouts are great for the most part and the theming is on point.
I agree as well, compared to how boring Siege battles were in TW 1 and 2, the ones in 3 are still a huge improvement, and not even as buggy currently. They definitly could need some improvements, but i have definitly more fun playing a Siege battle in 3 now, than i did in 1 and 2 .
@@Xxiev exactly. My only problem is, that they happen way too often. They should be highlights of the campaign not the most common type of batte you encounter. :D Also make walls better. Make it worth it to use a hero dmg wall action and stuff. Give raged units on the wall massive bonuses when mounted on a wall so you can have a venguard in front of your wall while gunpowder units rain lead down on the attackers. Currently the defender needs more of an advantage.
It's exhausting that you have to hold both the key building and plaza to generate VP. Basically now there is virtually no way to win a siege through cunning if you find yourself losing in terms of sheer power. Feels like the strategy/tactics part of the game has been sacrificed for the sake of making players fight sieges in the way they personally prefer. It's just silly to me I actually like minor settlement battles tho. They were too frequent in the past because the ai wouldn't fight the player, but I do find them fun
sieges feel like you are fighting against the pathing AI and not like you are fighting an army. they should simplyfy wall to just give you really neat choking point and elevated terrain. like wood elf or dreadfleet "castles" are. make it look pretty and its great-- even add some auto fire towers, fine.
Sieges are really good. Supply amounts a bit too high but the basic design is excellent (tho if h admittedly I mostly play multiplayer campaign not vs the dumb ai).
Irredeemable might be a poor choice of words because it refers not just to the present but to the future as well. If they are irredeemable, that means we shouldn’t even try.
I do not feel like sieges constitute even 1/5 of the battles I fight on any of my legendary campaigns definitely not most common like the video said. Just give me a way to rush construction of siege equipment, sitting for even 1 turn doing nothing on legendary is just asking to drag the campaign and letting the AIs catch up to me. If I'm gonna wait for even one turn sitting then I want to have all melee units with towers and my battering ram both with vanguard deployment and for the door to explode the instant I touch that gate.
Sieges in TW will be garbage. Becouse devs think that slow grind in narrow streets and chokes with no tactic and maneuvers is somehow fun. Shogun2 has best sieges. Becouse we dont fight in cities. We fight in castles with huge open space
I mean, I agree that Shogun 2 has the best sieges. But they are just 1. still a worse version of land battles and 2. They look ridiculous in Shogun 2. In games like Warhammer or Medieval at least some of the settlements look like actual cities. Most of the Shogun 2 sieges take place at a mini lump of dirt with one house on top lol
@@LuzikArbuzik77That's because generally speaking, Japanese castles weren't in cities. You can see in warrior cultures around the world, you had the ruler living separately and controlling the land. To control the land you unseated the ruler. Cities and towns were not sieged. They were raided occasionally and didn't need the fortifications. The lord would have a small town inside the castle walls to supply all the needs of the residents but that was it. You can't have siege maps in cities where there weren't any city sieges. Like Thrones of Brittania.
Am i the only one that like the new settlements? Its supposed to be a bit of a pain to take a settlement, specielly a walled settlement. Infact i think things like towers shoukd have far more range then they have, cause they so limited right now and dont do much. In WH2 a major settlement was so easy to take down that it was dumb. Really hate settlement battles or are bad at them? Just besiege them a round or two and they usally attack or get weakend so much you can take them.
But artillery damage to walls and structures, make ladders limited to only three units that you select before attacking. There, now they're actually siege battles and not moronic nonsense.
not gonna lie, i just autoresolve every single siege. They arent fun even with overwhelming force lol i will take extra turns to bring an army over to auto resolve instead of actually fighting the siege, its just not fun.
This is what made me uninstall and give up on the game. If they havent fixed sieges yet a core gameplay feature, they never will. Why woukd i play a game or buy dlc when 40% of the game is broken, unplayable, and straight up an unfun slogfest. So sad, WH3 could have been such a great game, wh2 is one of my favourite games of all time.
