Wow, sieges suck so much in this one

[UkrainianDoomer]

I've been playing Total War since like forever (first Rome), including Warhammer 1 and 2 and sieges in those two were ok. Not as great and dramatic as pre-Empire TW, but still. I enjoyed them once in a while.

But in Warhammer 3? Instead of defending or attacking the city - it's all about whoever gets to the capture-the-flag point first. There's like no strategy anymore. In one battle I set a perfect defense, I smashed 90% of an enemy force with about 30% of mine still intact and all the enemy had is a pair of stacks of lizards - which were simply faster than my units so they captured two positions and won even though I had 3 to 1 advantage over them and would absolutely crush them - but I just didn't get to those points in time.

So later I just decided to try and exploit the thing on my own. It's literally start the siege, punch a few holes in the walls and a gate - then just rush the fastest units to capture points, while the rest just kites and aggroes the enemy army. And what do you know - I win. Zero strategy, I just was faster.

How could you mess this up so badly?

[Fryskar]

Lots of words that are sort of correct, yet not the complete truth.

It doesn't matter who is first, since only the attacker can win by holding, not only by taking the points.

Having a 3:1 adventage in bodies says pretty much nothing. 3 skaven slaves vs 1 chosen?

So even despite beeing outnumbered and outmatched, you couldn't drive them off in the ~2 minutes you got?

Maybe the troops lost hope seeing that their tactics as well as their general have failed?

[Lamp]

Yep, they're pretty bad. They turned the structures of deployment phase and the control points (that used to be just for towers + a victory point in other TW's) into a whole unwanted minigame.

Don't know how much you've played, but even when you get past the lame systems they tacked on the settlements are like 90% identical. So you just fight the same battle, over and over and over on a horribly pathed map.

Should have made them significantly more simple/manageable, like 3K sieges. Maybe have them be slightly 'modular,' any variation at all really would be nice.

Lot of bad maps in general, too. Like ambushes that are just useless, fights where the whole map is on a weird bumpy curve, etc.

[Craymar]

Maybe the troops lost hope..... lol

[capybaras are cool]

massive swathes of the fanbase, maybe even the majority (certainly me) agrees with you op. the devs know we all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate it but things are the same because the person with decision making authority and the person with good game design sense are not the same people on their team.

[Basarab Laiota]

it is what it is, either mod it or move on

[sentry]

I don't get this. Your complaint is that because lizardmen (one of the slowest and least mobile factions in the game) ran past your units in a siege battle to capture points vs blobbing up and dying to crude tactics sieges must be bad? Elaborate on which faction you have been playing to not be able to chase down the lizards before they took all your points?

Literally, the AI did what many complained it wasn't doing enough which was focus on objectives vs being attrition'd by the player in blobs. Sieges had and continue to have a lot of problems in this game, but this is a complaint about a solution to one of many problems.

Agree with the first response. A lot of words strung together that don't really convince the reader you actually play this game in a sufficient capacity to criticize it.

[RadCon One]

This sounds like it is functioning as it should, you didn't bother defending your objectives and are now mad that it cost you the match.

[FizzyElf]

While I fully acknowledge that the sieges ever since empire have been awful in some form or fashion (I really like Shogun 2 sieges but I haven't met anyone who enjoyed them so they join the pile of trash sieges) I would say that the warhammer sieges are more enjoyable than the others even with the capture the flag system as you can easily abuse the walls to create a meat grinder using unkillable units (such as the undead Black Orks or using the infinite regen zombies for the vampire counts in warhammer 3) AND what I like to do which is completely ignore the walls, sit a half dozen units just out of tower range, make the AI protect as much of the city as possible (spread them out) and then just fly over the wall and wipe the enemy out one unit at a time while taking little to no damage. The tutorial faction, demons of chaos, is insanely good at this as your legendary hero can be customized to preform this task effectively against any enemy, my late game general, Talos, literally couldn't even take damage in most siege battles due to weapons and armor I gave him which allowed him to both hero and unit snipe super effectively so if the enemy defended a castle in this game it was an automatic decisive victory as you can count the number of hero's who could damage him (and I mean ~2% of his healthbar) on one hand and unless the enemy had unbreakable units there would be no other threat on the map to worry about as the AI is too dumb to focus on single units or flying units in general. With this^ in mind the capture the flags minigame is something I completely ignore, I play warhammer 3 just like 1 and 2 and unless CA makes better sieges and more importantly fixes the AI then there is no reason to change strategies between the games.

[Enelith]

Originally posted by FizzyElf:

... (I really like Shogun 2 sieges but I haven't met anyone who enjoyed them so they join the pile of trash sieges) ...

Pls take it out of the trash. At least you found one person (Shogun 2 will always be a masterpiece imo !).

@OP, sieges in TWWH3 could be worse : there could barely be any siege at all. Oh wait a sec...

[UkrainianDoomer]

Originally posted by Fryskar:

Having a 3:1 adventage in bodies says pretty much nothing. 3 skaven slaves vs 1 chosen?

Ah but it doesn't matter (equal tiers really). The city is still being defended by a non-routed force that didn't give up - meaning it's still contested. That's how it was before. Sure central square was still a capture point, but you could build a multi-tiered defense around it. Like it was a challenge to get there.

Now you have capture points all over the city and sometimes you can even have a reinforcement location inside the city too. I once had my reinforcements simply start at the central square. As an attacker.

And just rag pulling the victory out of defender's reach simply because two enemy halberder stacks stood in some square for a minute is very unfair.

[UkrainianDoomer]

Originally posted by RadCon One:

This sounds like it is functioning as it should, you didn't bother defending your objectives and are now mad that it cost you the match.

shouldn't I be defending a city instead? Cities don't fall because somebody stood in some street for a few minutes, controlling about 1% of that city.
Furthermore it also strips the ability of the defender to retake districts that were lost because there's no time. You can't make a "come back" anymore, like you could in earlier TW games, which was very enjoyable and tense if you pulled it off.

If it's fun for you - I'm glad for you. But to me sieges in Total War were about taking the city or defending the city. Creating chokepoints where I wanted to choke the enemy. And gradually series stripped that away.

I don't mind losing sieges when I don't lose them due to BS reasons.

[Jukelo]

Originally posted by Mr. Bro:

Originally posted by RadCon One:

This sounds like it is functioning as it should, you didn't bother defending your objectives and are now mad that it cost you the match.

shouldn't I be defending a city instead? Cities don't fall because somebody stood in some street for a few minutes, controlling about 1% of that city.
Furthermore it also strips the ability of the defender to retake districts that were lost because there's no time. You can't make a "come back" anymore, like you could in earlier TW games, which was very enjoyable and tense if you pulled it off.

If it's fun for you - I'm glad for you. But to me sieges in Total War were about taking the city or defending the city. Creating chokepoints where I wanted to choke the enemy. And gradually series stripped that away.

I don't mind losing sieges when I don't lose them due to BS reasons.

You didn't lose the siege due to a BS reason. You lost the siege because you failed to play the game. The game is to capture or defend the victory point in the middle of the city. Everything else gravitates around that. It's hardly a new concept, games, video or otherwise, have used it for... a long time.

As for defending the rest of the city, that's also part of sieges. There are satellite capture points which generate supplies for the defender, used to create towers and barricades to help in the defense. The attacker can take these points (weighing the cost of doing so vs just going for the central cap) to deny resources to the defender.

[dulany67]

Sieges have a lot of problems in vanilla, but this isn't one of them.

[RadCon One]

Originally posted by Mr. Bro:

Originally posted by RadCon One:

This sounds like it is functioning as it should, you didn't bother defending your objectives and are now mad that it cost you the match.

shouldn't I be defending a city instead? Cities don't fall because somebody stood in some street for a few minutes, controlling about 1% of that city.
Furthermore it also strips the ability of the defender to retake districts that were lost because there's no time. You can't make a "come back" anymore, like you could in earlier TW games, which was very enjoyable and tense if you pulled it off.

If it's fun for you - I'm glad for you. But to me sieges in Total War were about taking the city or defending the city. Creating chokepoints where I wanted to choke the enemy. And gradually series stripped that away.

I don't mind losing sieges when I don't lose them due to BS reasons.

Except you DIDN'T defend the city, parking all your remaining guys at one dude's house while the enemy ransacks or bunkers down in your town's center of government, and other important locations is most certainly losing the city. If the enemy controls most of your town then it isn't your town anymore, and now they are the defenders and you are the attacker... which is what the game models by letting them take the city and booting you out.

It isn't exactly hard to defend the points either. You really only need to defend 1-2 of the points depending on what map you are on, while all the other grant supplies and so are valuable, but not overwhelming to lose.

[Fryskar]

Originally posted by Mr. Bro:

Originally posted by Fryskar:

Having a 3:1 adventage in bodies says pretty much nothing. 3 skaven slaves vs 1 chosen?

Ah but it doesn't matter (equal tiers really). The city is still being defended by a non-routed force that didn't give up - meaning it's still contested. That's how it was before. Sure central square was still a capture point, but you could build a multi-tiered defense around it. Like it was a challenge to get there.

Now you have capture points all over the city and sometimes you can even have a reinforcement location inside the city too. I once had my reinforcements simply start at the central square. As an attacker.

And just rag pulling the victory out of defender's reach simply because two enemy halberder stacks stood in some square for a minute is very unfair.

Since your rant didn't mention tiers or anything giving any context its fairly pointless to state raw numbers. Hence you might have 3 units of skavenslaves for 1 unit of chosen.

Imagine it like this.
You failed to protect the heart of your town and even the second most important places.
Your govenor/king/lord got killed, your armory got plundered, your foodstores are taken, your treasury got looted, they took your ammo reserves and all your attempt at retaking have failed.
Thats why your soldiers run.