#You are besieged... wait, where are you going?

209 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lofty swan
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Often I find myself in situations where I besiege an enemy city and their army just leaves, only to come back in greater numbers.

When this happens and I'm the defender, I do admit it's very satisfying to sneak out of my city, behead the enemy general and go back inside my walls... but it shouldn't be a thing by default.

Solution:
Either make a "backdoor" building that allows armies to escape the city while under siege or make it some sort of special unit trait.
By default, besieged units are besieged, surrounded by enemies and shouldn't be able to just prowl around their territory. Not everyone is Helm Hammerhand, but we do love Helm Hammerhand.

low lantern
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yeah it is weird that they can exit a besieged city at any time

versed crystal
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You can surround the city with your units if desired

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I think it is useful to have armies able to move in or out of forts mechanically, but yeah perhaps it'd only be viable to surround if campaign map armies projected a zone of control like melee units on the battle map

lofty swan
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Build a hidden passage upgrade to your fort that allows this. Kind of like Battle for The Middle Earth. Very different game, but it would still work.

low lantern
versed crystal
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Historically fully encircling cities required more manpower than defending them

low lantern
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it takes 12 stacks to fully surround a city

versed crystal
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If you are encircling a couple of enemy units then split your stacks into groups of 1 and encircle

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If your enemy has 3 full stacks and you do too then surrounding them completely wasn't typically viable historically either

low lantern
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dividing yourself so that the enemy can subject you to defeat in detail, great idea

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this game is very abstracted when it comes to details like this

versed crystal
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Yes, exactly, that's why fully surrounding a settlement is hard to do and requires force superiority

low lantern
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and if total war games let even a few spearmen prevent a full doomstack from exiting a city or castle without having to attack and kill the former first, no reason why that would not be applicable here

versed crystal
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The Art of War suggests 10x the numbers to completely surround another army without suffering from force concentration issues

low lantern
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and those games have more history and less abstraction than this

versed crystal
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Why should total war games be relevant here? Do we think the 1 spearmen siege of total war is a good game mechanic?

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I think giving some freedom to move to armies on the campaign map does a lot to reduce frustration of slightly impositioned units being an issue at that level of abstraction

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Similar to the range armies can join battles being extended

low lantern
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because both series are wargames with a turn-based strategic layer with a pre-modern combat theme? and yes, it sure is better than the besieging enemy somehow being kind enough to let you walk in and out of a place untouched when they are practically knocking at the gates

versed crystal
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How about an encirclement siege project?

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Historically the way they did this was actually to build palisade walls around the city that was being besieged

low lantern
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sounds like an absolute must-have that every single besieging army in-game should have free of resource cost and slots to begin with

versed crystal
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Why?

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It totally isn't a must have sieges are fine without it at present

low lantern
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it is practically a "why would you ever not take this" feature, making an absolute must-have eat up a siege project slot instead of being something every army automatically does once it's unlocked is like needing a research to unlock colonizers in Stellaris and Planetfall, and they eventually patched colonizers to be starting tech by default for a very good reason

versed crystal
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You haven't explained why this is that necessary though

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It might be nice to lock some armies in sometimes

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But it's not at all essential to the mechanic of sieging and I've given some reasons that it's useful for gameplay that armies can walk more freely most of the time

low lantern
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no automatic encirclement for sieges is cheap and makes less sense than literally needing 12 economy-draining stacks to body block the enemy force, and implies the besieger is too kind or fails at basic competence, what kind of besieging force worth their salt would not put in even some effort into blocking or hindering their enemy's movement in and out of a city or fortification, no matter the numbers

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I can see good guys being kind enough to let other neutral or good players freely in and out of the city, but I doubt that kind of courtesy would be extended by evil players, or even by neutral players to at least neutral or evil enemies

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and what usefulness could the attacker get from letting their enemies freely walk in and out of the target city

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if anything, it is nothing but a detriment for them

versed crystal
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I never said the attacker is helped by free movement

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The defence is certainly helped by it though

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Don't see how not having automatic encirclement is "cheap" what does that even mean here

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The reality of having this be automatic for any fort would be that siege battles would extremely rarely happen

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As you wouldn't be able to get your forces into your now besieged fort to have them fight

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So all battles would happen when your relief force was fighting a normal field battle outside

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Seems less diverse and less entertaining than being able to choose to fight at the walls, abandon, or break siege as the defender as we have now

lofty swan
versed crystal
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I brought it up as a counterpoint to the warhammer mention, I think they're equally relevant precedents here

low lantern
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Cheap = it feels unfair and nonsensical from the attacker's POV

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Knave already mentioned a compromise that could likely work to begin with by letting the defender build hidden passages to allow their armies in and out of the city

lofty swan
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And the hidden passage thing would work well.

  1. Your city gets besieged with a hero inside.
  2. If your hero has the skill or you bought the upgrade, you can escape.
  3. If you don't, you can either make a last stand or break the siege.
    With rule of fun it does hold up.
low lantern
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but as of right now, it seems ridiculous that every besieging force would be kind enough to put basically no effort into at least making it passively harder for enemies to get in and out of the city

lofty swan
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Even if it's a hp penalty for leaving.

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Which is recycling forced march

versed crystal
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I have been pointing out why it actually makes sense that you can leave. If you have 3 stacks and so does the enemy how exactly can they cover every gate in the numbers needed to contest you?

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Worse if it's just one hero besieging or similar

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If blocking defenders is relevant to the attacker I think the onus should be on the attacker to invest in the facility to encircle

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A defender building could trivialise it anyway if it was cheap

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This way the attack can guarantee that defenders can't leave, but it's a tradeoff with other tools they could use in the siege

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You should always be able to move more units in as the defender I think though, even if you can't move them out. So as not to decrease the already low number of proper siege battles in the game

lofty swan
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Again, you cannot apply this rule to AoW and even if you did encircle a city with 18 units instead of THREE TIMES AS MUCH (think about how rare is seeing that number in AoW) it would make sense that your troops harass those going out. A city has gates.
In fact, with what you describe, a secret door makes even more sense

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Building that building would take time and money, and sometimes you just have other priorities, especially if it's not your first city

low lantern
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and I have been pointing out why it actually makes no sense that you can freely leave scot-free. Having 12 stacks to surround one city is a gameplay impracticality that only really happens when your victory over the particular player your attacking is fully ensured, and even if your three stacks cannot fully prevent movement into and out of the city, again, unless you are a good-aligned ruler, why would your troops be so kind as to always let enemies in and out without penalties until you actually order them to attack.

versed crystal
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I don't think any of this addresses the issue that this proposed mechanic will reduce the number of big siege battles in the game

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And I think that is an absolutely critical thing to not reduce, as they're cool and different from regular fights

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Being able to lock units out of or inside settlements is basically a way to vastly reduce those sorts of fights

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Since the number of them that are easy autoresolve due to 3 units vs 18 is going to go way up

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And like, why do we want that?

lofty swan
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Let's just agree to disagree then. It's not that one is more right than the other at this point, but that we like different options.

low lantern
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maybe automatically blocking movement is too extreme and lead to that scenario, but if your troops at the very least automatically harassed and put some kind of penalty on the enemy for going in and out of the city, that could still allow for a decent amount of siege battles

versed crystal
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Yeah I'd not be opposed to units taking a bit of damage to move in or out, as long as it's not crazy high

proper plover
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I wonder if a scaling modifier would work, the more units you have besieging a city, the more damage/attrition defending units would take for leaving the city.
This would prevent situations of 'having a single unit siege a city' thing while also giving both the attacking and defending players more strategic options.
For example, does the attacker want to split their armies up to raze improvements or start heading towards the next city? Does the defender want to risk the damage for leaving the city to reinforce else where?

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This could also work with the hidden path idea, maybe the hidden path could reduce the damage taken for leaving the city

livid crypt
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There is never a reason for it being that way.

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You don't have to have a stronger force in order to keep the enemy within, just do it as the romans did and build a wall, a possible way to do it.

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Else you could argue with it being a fantasy game: Magic exists.

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Or we go with the brutal force way, your 3 stack army should be able to at least damage the retreating enemies, or see them leaving so you could simply enter the besieged city for free and without having to siege an empty city for 4 turns.

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There are so many ways to make it feel better, but there NEVER is a reason for any army being able to leave a besieged city without getting any punishment.

proper plover
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Despite being empty...

livid crypt
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That should be implied through you sieging the city

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There's no way a 3 stack army, 18 units (in total if we go the way you do and imagine it being real probably about 1 to 2 million fighting individuals) should be able to surround a city and not hide all in one camp.

livid crypt
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But if you don't see an army leaving I can kind of understand it, you can't know 100% that no one's there so going without breaking the battlement is a risk.

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Tho you should be able to simply run in if you see the whole enemy army leaving.

versed crystal
livid crypt
versed crystal
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You didn't talk about it in your post, I cannot read what isn't there

livid crypt
versed crystal
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Yes

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None of that talks about the benefits for strategic gameplay that come from allowing units defending to enter besieged forts. Nor does it address my point that balanced 3 on 3 stack siege fights would basically never happen if units are too strongly penalised for entering and leaving forts

livid crypt
versed crystal
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To defend it???

livid crypt
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The benefit would be that the enemy armies couldn't leave the city, so the enemy has to either be there in time or looses his army. Atm you can just leave it if you can't win the fight and be happy.

livid crypt
versed crystal
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Meaning you don't have a siege battle

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At present the defender can choose whether to break out and assail the attacker or defend the walls, and I think that's nice

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Leaving does lose you the city, which is normally a big deal

livid crypt
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Also, let's think.
I personally don't think you could enter a besieged city without fightint the troops that are between you and the enemy.

versed crystal
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As far as I can tell the crux of your argument is

  1. That you subjectively find it annoying
  2. That it "doesn't make sense"
livid crypt
versed crystal
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It's fine for the attackers to be disadvantaged in this case though

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They ultimately decide if they want to continue the siege or not

livid crypt
lofty swan
livid crypt
dreamy bloom
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This has always seemed silly to me that armies can just leave a besieged city. Games like the total war series and Dominions don't allow this kind of behaviour.

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Or if they do, bam, city should be instantly breached, you abandoned the city.

lament yoke
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Imo this should be changed. At the time of besieging, any army in the city shouldn't be able to just move away. In Total War it works similarly, and you must either sacrifice your units or try to reinforce your defending stack(s). Perhaps a special province improvement or city building as others have mentioned could circumvent that

oblique jacinth
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Originally I liked this feature but in play it just feels weird. I agree that it should be more restricted

snow whale
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I think a besieged army could not leave the town. It is one of the purposes of a siege !

I also think that if the army could leave, then city defenses should be immediately suppressed, making the city immediately taken even if the besiege time is not finished.

City defense points could be active only if there is at least one unit on it... you can build a wall but if you have no unit to put on it, the wall seems not very useful.

versed crystal
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I don't think needing to have 1 unit standing around in every fort for the walls to work is a great gameplay feature

oblique jacinth
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Agreed...that sentiment is why they changed sieges after all

teal fjord
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I feel like adding restrictions just wouldn't be fun to deal with

livid crypt
teal fjord
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I understand that, but I have never had a problem with it. Restricting movement just causes problems. Adding a mechanic to stop people from leaving a city makes sense but I fell it would just add unnessesary complexity

livid crypt
teal fjord
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If they leave the city, you kill their army

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and if your close enougth to the improvements you can send one of your seiging armies over there

livid crypt
teal fjord
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Then attack improvements futher away

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Also, can you please stop pinging me

livid crypt
livid crypt
teal fjord
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yes

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I've always ran around the city and pillaged the provences around it

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If I was pillaging

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Excluding a spelljammer because razing that is important

livid crypt
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I mean, you can do that...
It still doesn't feel right to not be able to do that with my scouts just because they die doing so. It's not a thing of I really need that, it's more a thing of else it just doesn't feel right, or it just feels weird that way.

snow whale
dim stump
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How Total War handles it feels natural and well made to me

livid crypt
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yeah

nova stratus
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Couple of thought after reading this. In a war game, it’s a given that a siege is an abstraction. A “realism” argument therefore doesn’t hold. There is a production penalty for being besieged, which is thematically appropriate. It seems to me you could make a loose movement rule based on battle score to account for “ability to cover the exits.” Maybe if you exceed score by 2x you’re not immobilized, for example. You could also have spells, racials, or hero abilities that allow for guerilla tactics and mobility. The default though should be immobilized unless you come out of the walls to fight. Your fortifications hold besieging armies there (at least the hero’s). Defenders get a time advantage for reinforcements to arrive. They shouldn’t get carte blanche when attackers are locked in.

rancid sphinx
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Not sure if I jive with the "siege is an abstraction" thing. Abstraction doesn't mean all rules go out the window. I would prefer if a siege pinned an army in place. Or, at least, imposed severe global morale and stability penalties for abandoning a city in such a way.

On the other hand, though, the game is already super snowbally. A single decisive battle is often enough for a faction to just fold in a sequential cascade of failures thereafter.

While I think the way sieges behave is a little goofy, I would rather see the snowballing nature of the game be fixed first. Kind of boring when every battle is basically Age of Operation: Bagration.

slender needle
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if you don't want them to leave the city, block the exits...
which if you seige with just 3 stacks, you aren't doing, you are just besieging a single gate out of many...

livid crypt
slender needle
livid crypt
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I think that'd be still enough.

slender needle
livid crypt
slender needle
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i am arguing with the game in both cases....
in all cases you don't have enough units for a proper encirclement unless you block all hexes around the city...
also the battlefield is just 1 to 3 city gates so clearly only part of the city...

livid crypt
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Also you can't tell me 18 giants are not enough to block a city's entrancces

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or 108 good trained soldiers

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and you can't tell me I should ever use 6 stacks just to be able to siege a city

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since my troops ain't good enough to simply besiege a city

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that does nothing good to the game apart from simply lengthen the game and being hella annoying

rancid sphinx
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You can make all the raised brow reaction faces you want. The fact of the matter is that the game itself says that the city is under siege. If the enemy can just walk out, then there's a conflict with the logic being used.

Your argument, to the effect that three stacks don't adequately cover all entrances, mandates that you produce in-universe schematics for all in-game walled cities. Otherwise, we can only go by what the game actually says.

dim stump
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I do not think that argument of "in reality xx troops can not lock down every entrance" is not quite valid

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If no troops are in the city, it should be super easy for the attacker to breach it in reality.
Just something to crack one little weak spott or a few ladders would do it

slender needle
dim stump
slender needle
dim stump
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To does not make sense and feels stupid

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At least to me and some others as well

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I would be fine with it, if one stack blocks its adjacent hexes as well, so you do not need to bring 6 stacks

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To me the Total War siege makes much more sense

slender needle
# dim stump To does not make sense and feels stupid

so what is your suggestion, the suggestion of op is that a single tier 1 spider summon is enough to make a surround...
total war logic makes no sense and is stupid enough to let a single peasant spearman block in an army of 20+ great dragons...

as it works makes perfect sense, and if you really want to have a way to disallow amies inside from leaving there was a great suggestion of a siege project to do so, at to cost of longer siege time...

livid crypt
livid crypt
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and if you don't have enough units to hold all entrances you build a small palisade so the enemy can't just walk out there

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done

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enemy can't leave the besieged city

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there are so many ways to explain that

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but none to explain how an enemy could ever leave a besieged city

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cause if he can the city ain't besieged

slender needle
livid crypt
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what?

rancid sphinx
slender needle
# livid crypt what?

and if you don't have enough units to hold all entrances you build a small palisade so the enemy can't just walk out there
this could easily be a siege project and have everything work as it currently does....

i even suggested it, (and someone else also did far up the thread....)

there was a great suggestion of a siege project to do so, at to cost of longer siege time...

slender needle
livid crypt
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the siege'd take way to long in late game if you remove one siege project slot

slender needle
livid crypt
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and it's something every army always does, either put lots of campfires aroung the city so you can see the enemy leaving and catch them or build a palisade wall around the city

rancid sphinx
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Show evidence that this logically should be the case. Post the graphics showing all the numerous gatehouses.

livid crypt
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every siege has always been done that way

slender needle
livid crypt
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for some reason I don't have that in my games... either that's a mod or photoshopped

slender needle
rancid sphinx
slender needle
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this is a standard high? culture city with stone walls...

livid crypt
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oh so that's the thing

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I've never built stone walls before

rancid sphinx
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Either way.

slender needle
rancid sphinx
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The game calls it a siege, and abstracts the limit of battles to three stacks per side. If the units can walk out, it isn't a siege.

livid crypt
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ok

slender needle
livid crypt
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still no reason for not being able to siege a city

rancid sphinx
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If there were a building called Secret Tunnels or something that enabled the ability, sure. But I'd rather there be severe morale and stability consequences involved with abandoning populations to the fate of an enemy

livid crypt
slender needle
# livid crypt still no reason for not being able to siege a city

you can easily "siege" a city just like the crusaders at antioch. the enemy can simply leave if you cant do a proper encirclement...
if you want to do some caesar things, and build a wall around the city then that is a siege project just like building bolt repeaters for the siege is a siege project....

slender needle
livid crypt
slender needle
slender needle
livid crypt
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Dunno what you're talking about right there.

livid crypt
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lol

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where's the issue?

livid crypt
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at least not for free

dim stump
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I would not argue about historical matters, but what does make the most sense gameplay wise

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And people just walking in and out of a besieged city does not make any sense to me