sieges are so broken its not even fun to play

[Angry marines]

the retarded ai just running in circles and awful unit commanding completely breaks it for me

[Ser Calenhad]

Well I'll be.. Just read the patch notes and thought improvements have been implemented..

[Ottbert]

For me the sieges are more broken with the newest update (Beta branch). Now no unit uses ladders or siege towers. They even abandon the ram after pushing it to the gate, only to run back and do nothing. So its just archers against archers... not fun nor playable atm.

[hatefull_art]

Sieges was never fun , because the AI plays alone vs other AI in a stupid way . Did one of you every did something in a siege ?

[Morkonan]

Siege AI is fine, more or less.

TLDR - Don't use siege towers. Don't count on breaches. Don't count on inner gates being broken. Build one Ram, hope it works, then rely on Ladders. Never use anything else unless you know you have to try it. Save before you begin a siege and reload if you're defeated by a bugged siege map/mechanics.

Siege maps/scenes, however, are horribly borked in terms of pathing, certain collision objects, siege machines like ladders/towers, "stage unlocks" like when an exterior gate is breached or even just breaches.

Each different culture has it's own assigned castle/town scene. With each one, at each Tier of Wall development, each has its own buggy crap going on with it. Most of the siege maps I have encountered qualify as "unfinished." And, that's being generous.

We will be getting customized castles/towns for most Siege Scenes, so we can only hope that the designer pays much more quality attention to navmesh/pathing/goals/switches with functional mechanics, etc, when they are working on these maps.

Some siege tactics are literally useless right now, depending on the culture one is attacking and how borked their particular map is. (Keep in mind Wall Tier and all the differences there, so each of the three possible scenes can have different bugs than the others.)

Many inner gates can't be attacked by the AI units. That makes Rams useless for those maps.

Breaches aren't seen as a possible path in certain siege scenes. That makes the bombardment during the opening Siege meaningless if one spends the time to create a breach.

Siege Tower connection points are wtfborkedstoopid. I can't believe anyone ever tested Siege Towers in any real siege scenes. They didn't. If they did and then think whatever they did as a result was a "fix" then they need... further education. Anyway, that not only makes building Siege Towers useless, but it can also cause a failed siege as the Ramp goal point will not turn the heck off and units end up trying to hump it all day, repeated.

"We need more Siege Tower Ramp Humpers! Send in the reinforcements to their ramp-humping doom! We must lose this battle, quickly!" <--- Seen it too many times. (Goal point never turning off, ramp can't be exited, ramp is actually longer than the battlement, z-axis issues, etc)

The only "AI" problem is when a new path is opened or attempting to navigate a path that can't be... navigated (Invalid, but the pathing AI doesn't recognize that.) The pathing AI, trying to reach one of several goal points, doesn't care if the path is actually on a navigatable mesh. And, when blocked, it doesn't care at all - Straight out of Warband.

(Keep in mind - There isn't one unit that can voluntarily "jump." One unconnected navmesh over another separate one above a certain threshold of z-axis differences means that unit can't move across it. Someone forgot about this, somewhere.)

More often than not, Siege Towers don't work properly, inner gates don't work properly, breaches don't work properly, AI goal points never turn off or pathing prevents the units from reaching them, etc...

It's the maps and their mechanics that interact with the AI, not necessarily the "AI" itself.

PS: I construct one Ram and then go, no matter the Wall Tier. Why? Siege Towers and their bugs can kill off your entire army. I "hope" the Inner gate can be breached, even though it's a coin-toss. At least ladders appear to work, more or less, so I focus my efforts there. I don't waste time very often in creating breaches because more often than not they only introduce pathing bugs and force units to "see" a new area that they can't possibly reach...

The only "reloads" I have ever done are due to the problems with the siege scenes. I accept more losses than I should have been due simply because of those bugs, but I won't accept total defeats because of them.

Note: The player can give orders, but only a few types are obeyed and which ones those are depend on where the player is on the map.

[Operation40]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

PS: I construct one Ram and then go, no matter the Wall Tier. Why? Siege Towers and their bugs can kill off your entire army. I "hope" the Inner gate can be breached, even though it's a coin-toss. .

same.. always go for the ram - it's the only thing I'll build. hit F1 then click the inner gate (looks like a gear icon), and everyone will attack it (always).

Once I get inside I hold in square form and let the enemy come to me. They descend the stairs 1-by-1 and trickle in to their death

I gotta agree, path-finding on the walls is very bad. so I don't mess with them.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Operation40:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

PS: I construct one Ram and then go, no matter the Wall Tier. Why? Siege Towers and their bugs can kill off your entire army. I "hope" the Inner gate can be breached, even though it's a coin-toss. .

same.. always go for the ram - it's the only thing I'll build. hit F1 then click the inner gate (looks like a gear icon), and everyone will attack it (always).

Hmm... I'll have to try that. I have never been able to get units to attack the inner gate once they'vs shown they won't attack it on their own, though. (Admittedly, I haven't used what may be a "move to attack" command like that. That's not something TW bothered explaining... nor is anything else in the game. :)

Once I get inside I hold in square form and let the enemy come to me. They descend the stairs 1-by-1 and trickle in to their death

I gotta agree, path-finding on the walls is very bad. so I don't mess with them.

I have broken through the gates many times and watched, dumbfounded, as my own units stream past the "shield wall" formation of the gate defenders just so every single soldier in my army could go hump the Siege Tower ramps...

Once "inside" defenses, the player can use a number of Commands. Outside of that, though, it's very "iffy." For instance, one can order "Follow me" commands, but only reliably when near the Walls or inside the gatehouse. "Move to" is ignored unless in the gatehouse or inside the defenses. etc.

But, some things like breaches completely bork up the pathing AI. A "move to" order placed near a breach could literally result with all the units fighting at the breach to leave, move outside of the castle walls, run to the opposite side of the castle, climb ladders, fight their way down to gate defenders, kill them, then finally "move to" that defending group at the breach... I have seen this happen and, while being hilarious to see the first time, it's pretty darn annoying witnessing it repeatedly. :)

[Operation40]

so.. I do a few things which maybe is avoiding issues with commands. cause I don't have any issues getting them to follow my orders (as long as I command those troops)

I hit "0" alot to select all the trops when issuing orders because.. it seems at the start of battle they are not all selected, even if it appears they are.

also.. looks like only a limited number of troops are allowed on the field at one time and new ones will spawn in, and they don't automatically follow commands and are not selected by default when you issue new commands. so I am constantly reissuing commands and hitting "0" to select all troops, example: F1, 0, F2 (follow me)...

[Go0lden_Archer]

Yeah. Totally broken unless you take command of units yourself. Every time I have a siege battle, I just control every movement of troops. And thats in attack, I never tried defending so no idea about that part.

[Operation40]

when defending I just hold the main gate..
again, F1, 0, F2.. everyone comes down off the walls, then F3, F5 (square).. screw the walls.

enemies coming up the walls have to descend the stairs to fight you, or get picked off by my archers below. who are in a tightly packed death square.

enemies coming in the main gate are bottlenecked by the gatehouse.

it is kind of boring just staring at the gate though, waiting for them to come though. is there a way to just open it?

[Slate]

From my understanding the game uses ai meshes like in Warband, if those meshes aren't perfect the ai sh!ts the bed. I wish they could figure out a way to make the ai use all ladders constantly in sieges instead of one ladder on the siege tower. The middle ladder is being used and the rest of the troops are finger popping their butt holes waiting in line when two other ladders are readily available. yes I feel your pain.

[Angry marines]

so the beta patch breaks ladders. u cant use any mechanics just go for ram luck and savescum until its not broked. i also noticed its impossible to use engineer skill i can have 400 army 250pts engineering and i build one cataputs as 50 defenders build 4 and just shoots it down.
shouldnt the ram be able to break inner gate too

[Angry marines]

literally no one in this discussion seem to understand the problem sieging is broken. u cant just say do x ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cheese thing it takes away from the siege experience. tiger knights the chinese port of warband does greater siege gameplay

[Operation40]

it's natural to try to problem solve.. but yeah..

tldr: walls are broken

but i'm saying you can still have some fun at the main gate :)

[:bestgamerchina#1最好的中國]

Just dont command the AI in sieges as everything in siege phase is scripted af. You can start to command when they break the main gate.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by alexmannen91:

literally no one in this discussion seem to understand the problem sieging is broken. u cant just say do x ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cheese thing it takes away from the siege experience. tiger knights the chinese port of warband does greater siege gameplay

"no one in this discussion seem to understand" - I think everyone understands. Don't be so melodramatic. We get it - Sieges have a lot of bugs and broken features. But, they're playable, so they are not "broken."

However, many things about sieges are very, very, buggy. In some cases, individual siege elements in siege scenes are, indeed, broken.

In my experience, the most reliable method of besieging a castle or town effectively, while minimizing the chance of buggy or broken features appearing, is to just construct a Ram. IF the castle/town has a full compliment of catapults, one may wish to construct several Trebuchets to solve that problem. If there's a fatal issue/bug in the scene, like it being impossible to storm a castle/town with Tier 3 Walls because the Ram process doesn't work and the troops are crowding your ladders, reload and try Breaches.

IOW - What I'm saying is that sieges are not "broken." They can be done. Most of the time, using just the Ram, one can go through a siege of any type successfully. It's when the glitches/bugs/broken scene mechanics introduce themselves that one has to try to compensate for that.