Siege Battles

[Burge117]

Does anyone else actually prefer the old style siege battles?

I was really looking forward to the revamped versions...but I just cannot get on with them.

I used to be able to bat off a superior force...easily. Now though, it is a slog and I find myself losing them more often than not when defending!

Am I doing something wrong, or am I just bad haha!

[Dave_El_Jefe]

You mean Attacking or defending?

[StDrake]

I seem to be doing better at defending sieges than before. Or course attacking is just the opposite

[Burge117]

For me, I suck at defending. Though in WH2 I was pretty good at it.

Attacking I am fine with.

[FlameWar]

Eh, IMO they are fine, but to prevalent. There's to few field battles i nthe game nowadays, since even a freshly colonised tier 1 side settlement is a 'siege' now.
Also, whiel the maps are nice to look at, there is to much Line of Sight blocking in the cities now, and the layout tends to manage to suck for bot hattacking and defending at the same time. It's just so cramped you can't really make full use of normal tactics and troops, and there are no city-fighting oriented troops in the game currently.

Also, the defensive turrets should have significantly reduced firepower, but no friendly fire instead. For example the Ogres are massively screwed in defense right now because the turrets tend to do mroe friendly fire than dmaage to the enemies because the Ogres are so big of a target to get aorund for the turrets. And there are layouts of osme of the cities that are just never well defendable because there's barely a single turret in a good position.

[Imnuktam]

Originally posted by Burge117:

Does anyone else actually prefer the old style siege battles?

I was really looking forward to the revamped versions...but I just cannot get on with them.

I used to be able to bat off a superior force...easily. Now though, it is a slog and I find myself losing them more often than not when defending!

Am I doing something wrong, or am I just bad haha!

You should theoretically be doing much better when defending. I would suggest not trying to defend every entrance. Concentrate your force to make them slow march through whole settlement eating tower rounds while you take out half of their army and then focus on second half. Turtle up and drag the battle out and you should win most of them. Faction probably makes a big difference too, if you are a ranged faction that should make them much easier than if you are playing a faction with little to no ranged weapons.

[FlameWar]

Originally posted by Imnuktam:

if you are a ranged faction that should make them much easier than if you are playing a faction with little to no ranged weapons.

Eh, I foudn the exact opposite to be true to be honest, except for a few lucky maps with good layouts. Mostly the defensive city maps are so cramped and have so little Line of Sight that your rnaged stuff can barely do anything, especialy when it's direct-fire gunpowder units.
Comapred to that if oyu play a non-ogre faction that can motly benefit form the towers melee centered factions are great for defending, as you have a ton of melee garrison troops oyu can use to bottleneck enemeis in place while a tower or two shoots them i nthe back and decimates them.

[Yard]

The sieges improved a lot I would say 8/10, it really becomes a challenge to be able to defend, it is no longer much use to put all the troops in the main square and defend with a much smaller force and win, I like it and I look forward to the mods that increase the garrison or the armies to 40, since the siege map gives for that and more

[BirdDinosaur]

I lose way too many troops when I fight on attack so I usually just auto resolve (yes, the only time auto resolve does better than me). On defend I'm a beast, unless enemy has significantly larger army. I should probably stop auto resolving so I get better at attacking though

[SnugglyPuffs]

Originally posted by Burge117:

Does anyone else actually prefer the old style siege battles?

I was really looking forward to the revamped versions...but I just cannot get on with them.

I used to be able to bat off a superior force...easily. Now though, it is a slog and I find myself losing them more often than not when defending!

Am I doing something wrong, or am I just bad haha!

Defending is more difficult since you can't just abandon the walls and defend one choke point anymore. I find defending significantly more challenging but still feasible thanks to tower and barricade spamming. Route your enemies carefully, use the magic towers and strategic choke points, reposition when necessary to cover flanks.

It's a lot more involved than simply piling my dudes in a choke point and shooting 2000 enemies to death but I find it significantly more fun and engaging.

[Donut Steel]

What people wanted(but many still don't realise):

https://youtu.be/82rOkZ2SdYw?t=222
https://youtu.be/DYsOAqey2Rc

This includes Warhammer game director Ian Roxburgh, who in his PC Gamer interview describes the design goal for 'survival battles' as basically delivering what older TW games did naturally. Loads of gimmicks have to be used in modern Total War to do even a fraction of this and the 're-worked' siege battles are simply survival battles with fewer steps.

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/battle-in-total-war-warhammer-3-isnt-just-about-winning-or-losing-its-a-fight-for-survival/

He also gets it wrong when he says 'traditional Total War battles' aren't capable of it, to justify all the gimmicks. He has to exclude most Total War games for this to be true. These are the 'traditional Total War battles' he's actually talking about:

https://youtu.be/KW6H-98ogyo
https://youtu.be/zFjwvDWQpB8?t=552

[Burge117]

Thanks for the tips all, I will attempt to focus on one entrance instead of covering so much of each settlement when defending.

[FlameWar]

Originally posted by Burge117:

Thanks for the tips all, I will attempt to focus on one entrance instead of covering so much of each settlement when defending.

Just one important point of note if you don't defend everything:
You don't actually need to defend any single supply point, you don't get it's benefit when captured but you don't loose. YOu will loose however when you loose the last point you hold.

[Burge117]

Oh sweet, I thought I had to try and hold a majority1

[tinywars]

I much prefer the old siege battles. Those were actual siege battles. What we've got now is ridiculous and boring.