Need help understanding sieges (or is it just horrible?)

[NouH]

I just bought this game, i played Medieval 2, Rome 2, Shogun 2 for a long time and its my first time with this game and my first experiences with siege in this game just HORRIBLE.

1 - The Towers will always set your ram on fire before you even reach the gates.

2 - FOR WHATEVER REASON, you cant climb to the F***king walls if you're inside the city or didn't use a ladder of siege tower (Or its just BUGGED), i sapped the walls and got inside, my Hastati wouldn't climb the walls to kill the peltasts up there and what happened? they just sit there in the middle of the street at the side of the wall (They're supposed to climb) getting shot in the face.

3 - The 154214554 Towers inside the city will continue shooting a thousand arrows per second even if there's no allied troop nearby (Which is ridiculous), who tf is shooting them.

4 - Don't even need to mention the pathfinding, so moving on...

So, am i just bad at this game or is sieges this bad, is there any MODS you people recommend that improves the game?

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Sounds like you're just bad, yes. It's pretty cancer they shot even when no enemies are near by, but, is easily exploted by having your troops capture all the towers and have them work for you!

[Uα | MSC1453]

Nah m8, ur just bad lol

[Xautos]

sieges are easy to understand. you need to build your equipment (those take turns on the map, usually within a few turns at most) and then use it on the walls, force march all your troops past the watch towers cone of attack, it is usually pretty wide on stone towers but you learn pretty quickly to find the blind spots to hide in and if needed adjust your unit formations so they don't get hit so frequently. send your units up by selecting anywhere on the walkway on top of the walls.

each type of siege equipment has a purpose. rams are only useful up to the last wooden palisade upgrade, after that the first stone walls come in and even if the ram makes it past the towers and isn't getting burned down? the hot oil at the gates will chuck a load and burn your men to death in any event. the ram itself if left will become a part of the defensive structure for your enemies.

after stone walls are equired by your enemies and their cities, your next best option is ladders and those remain useful but only when there isn't much opposition.

in the case of an overwhemling position for your enemies? for the small stone walls you will have a regular wooden siege tower which needs to be moved into position, now depending on how many archers the enemy has, they could potentially burn down one and maybe two towers, but if resistance is light enough, your towers will be fine.

for the biggest walls your only options are regular ranged siege weapons that throw big stones at walls to destroy them, sappers to undermine the surface of the wall which it is built on and let it crumble under its own weight or the armoured siege towers which are almost impossible to burn down in a hurry, an additional bonus is the weapon the tower uses to kill enemy troops on the walls and anything nearby in its cone that is foolish enough to want to be impaled. the armoured siege tower can load up and offload troops a lot better than the regular tower as well.

when you are on the walls, be careful of other towers. you have an option to go around the entire perimeter of the walls and capture all towers and gates, but that will take a while and make your travels far, far more safer and make it very difficult for your enemies as they are effectively pinned.

once you are inside enemy walls, select anywhere on the walls to send that unit up and they will find the nearest entry and exit point and vice versa. you can used your attack ability and they will go up like that anyway. one thing tobe aware of is that your entire unit needs to form up before they start going up. they won't just rush straight into it.

finally, strengths and weaknesses on a battlefield won't serve well on a wall, light ranged units can perform just as well as heavy infantry if you let em. i've seen it happen before, just when you thought it was in the bag, your units start getting decimated by skirmishers and iberian infantry.

almost forgot that spies play a role, if you get one inside an enemies walls before you siege, you can disable their gates and oil defenses, but the towers will remain active and you can also attack immediately. so if you want you can flood through one gate and massacre everything on the ground, but you will want a unit up on the walls as soon as to deal with the towers to capture them.

[NouH]

Originally posted by Xautos:

sieges are easy to understand. you need to build your equipment (those take turns on the map, usually within a few turns at most) and then use it on the walls, force march all your troops past the watch towers cone of attack, it is usually pretty wide on stone towers but you learn pretty quickly to find the blind spots to hide in and if needed adjust your unit formations so they don't get hit so frequently. send your units up by selecting anywhere on the walkway on top of the walls.

each type of siege equipment has a purpose. rams are only useful up to the last wooden palisade upgrade, after that the first stone walls come in and even if the ram makes it past the towers and isn't getting burned down? the hot oil at the gates will chuck a load and burn your men to death in any event. the ram itself if left will become a part of the defensive structure for your enemies.

after stone walls are equired by your enemies and their cities, your next best option is ladders and those remain useful but only when there isn't much opposition.

in the case of an overwhemling position for your enemies? for the small stone walls you will have a regular wooden siege tower which needs to be moved into position, now depending on how many archers the enemy has, they could potentially burn down one and maybe two towers, but if resistance is light enough, your towers will be fine.

for the biggest walls your only options are regular ranged siege weapons that throw big stones at walls to destroy them, sappers to undermine the surface of the wall which it is built on and let it crumble under its own weight or the armoured siege towers which are almost impossible to burn down in a hurry, an additional bonus is the weapon the tower uses to kill enemy troops on the walls and anything nearby in its cone that is foolish enough to want to be impaled. the armoured siege tower can load up and offload troops a lot better than the regular tower as well.

when you are on the walls, be careful of other towers. you have an option to go around the entire perimeter of the walls and capture all towers and gates, but that will take a while and make your travels far, far more safer and make it very difficult for your enemies as they are effectively pinned.

once you are inside enemy walls, select anywhere on the walls to send that unit up and they will find the nearest entry and exit point and vice versa. you can used your attack ability and they will go up like that anyway. one thing tobe aware of is that your entire unit needs to form up before they start going up. they won't just rush straight into it.

finally, strengths and weaknesses on a battlefield won't serve well on a wall, light ranged units can perform just as well as heavy infantry if you let em. i've seen it happen before, just when you thought it was in the bag, your units start getting decimated by skirmishers and iberian infantry.

almost forgot that spies play a role, if you get one inside an enemies walls before you siege, you can disable their gates and oil defenses, but the towers will remain active and you can also attack immediately. so if you want you can flood through one gate and massacre everything on the ground, but you will want a unit up on the walls as soon as to deal with the towers to capture them.

Thanks a lot for the detailed answer.

I had only 55 minutes of gameplay before i made this post, my bad luck was that i started as the scipii and had to siege a stone wall straight away (first thing i did in the game), i started another campaign as the julii and the game seems to be just fine (Like any other total war) i just had to understand how the sieges worked in this game, thx a lot.

[{COR}Lucian{K-IV}]

i always just do saps . seems to cost the least amount of troops. and they dont catch on fire.

[Xautos]

Originally posted by }--{Lucain:

i always just do saps . seems to cost the least amount of troops. and they dont catch on fire.

there is a big draw back doing it that way, you need to repair the walls after capturing the town and if your enemy has another army in range, you'd be hard pressed to cover that gap in a hurry, more so if the hole in the wall is more or less in a dead zone where your ranged units are not going to be that effective.

you must be careful when sapping. on smaller stone walls it can be covered in a few turns, but bigger stone walls are going to take longer to repair and the risk is if you are attacked again and your captured towns walls are getting hit again, there is a good chance the entire wall will be torn down due to overwhelming damage which means even more time needed to build a new one.

i tend to attack from multiple directions, it splits defensive troop numbers and makes it easier getting to a wall with ladders or siege towers. i wouldn't use sappers unless i have little other choice.

[CastleXIII]

1. Bring More Rams or dont bring any... better yet use spies..... lots of spies.
2. never tried but don't think you can climb inside walls. Use the doors at the towers then run around outside of walls to capture them and the other gate houses.
3. traitors loyal to whoever penetrates them so see 2. and keep running that perimeter.
4. wait til parthia.... lol

Not bad, just not used to it yet. Too soon to call really....

Huge walls need ranged siege equipment if trying to be efficient with troop loses.

Small wood walls always have a gap in the tower defense for an efficient attack but the gate is always safe. If you don't have any heavy troops or cav, an open gate alone won't be enough to break a stron defense.

Also general rule run down all cowards so they do not regroup in the town center where they never Fffffing break. Have Fun!

[NouH]

Originally posted by CastleXIII:

1. Bring More Rams or dont bring any... better yet use spies..... lots of spies.
2. never tried but don't think you can climb inside walls. Use the doors at the towers then run around outside of walls to capture them and the other gate houses.
3. traitors loyal to whoever penetrates them so see 2. and keep running that perimeter.
4. wait til parthia.... lol

Not bad, just not used to it yet. Too soon to call really....

Huge walls need ranged siege equipment if trying to be efficient with troop loses.

Small wood walls always have a gap in the tower defense for an efficient attack but the gate is always safe. If you don't have any heavy troops or cav, an open gate alone won't be enough to break a stron defense.

Also general rule run down all cowards so they do not regroup in the town center where they never Fffffing break. Have Fun!

Thanks a lot, i'm getting the hang of how the game works now, its very fun, my only complaint is that the AI don't seem to put much of a resistance, at least the barbarians don't, the greeks and macedonians seems to be doing well tho, i'm playing on Hard-Normal, maybe its because of that, it was suggested so i tried it, some people said that battle difficulty is too artificial and not really a ''difficulty'' factor and normal has no bonus for you or the AI.

[CastleXIII]

Happy to help, Barbarian early warbands break rather easily with the exception of German spearmen. I do not understand the actual effects of difficulty changes. I'd just go with normal until you get the hang of managing town growth and balancing army upkeep. In my experiance, Very Hard is less forgiving and has more agressive computers on the world map. Julii is the easiest to play but cut gaul some slack. They have very hungry nieghbors on all sides and have a rebel town that seperates thier italian provances from all the others. I'd advise to take advantage of thier disfunction now because if you wait....... welll you'd wait for the military reforms and walk over their dead bodies but it would take more time. Briton usually ends up being the main issue for the Julii any how. Best of Luck!