Gate Battles

[Arkham51]

Why can't I build siege equipment when attacking any of the Gates of Ulthuan? This just seems like a dumb mechanic to make the battle harder on the attacker without any reason.

[Δ*Alpha.]

was going to make a post about this, figure I'll just ress this one.

It takes 14 turns to starve a gate. The gates defenders are units I can't even build yet. Exactly why can I not build siege units? I find the best part about it is that it directly says "siege units can only be built when attacking walled settlements", so I just attacked it and lo and behold, there's a massive wall that I'm not allowed to build siege units to assault.

[Matayus22]

Lore wise the gates of ulthuan are nearly impossible to take since their defences are so massive. The mechanic that you can't build siege weapons reflect that in game.

It might be not the most elegant way but yeah. Its kinda cool they tried to reflect the imprenetable gates.

[Chthonic Guardian]

They are supposed to be so tall that it would take years to build a tower high enough...

OR this:

Originally posted by Matayus22:

Lore wise the gates of ulthuan are nearly impossible to take since their defences are so massive. The mechanic that you can't build siege weapons reflect that in game.

It might be not the most elegant way but yeah. Its kinda cool they tried to reflect the imprenetable gates.

[Δ*Alpha.]

Originally posted by Chthonic Guardian:

They are supposed to be so tall that it would take years to build a tower high enough...

OR this:

Originally posted by Matayus22:

Lore wise the gates of ulthuan are nearly impossible to take since their defences are so massive. The mechanic that you can't build siege weapons reflect that in game.

It might be not the most elegant way but yeah. Its kinda cool they tried to reflect the imprenetable gates.

So make it take twice as long to build siege equipment. I feel that would be a fair tradeoff.
I mean, my men a bringing ladders to climb up anyway, not being allowed to construct siege equipment is a bit annoying.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by *Alpha.:

So make it take twice as long to build siege equipment. I feel that would be a fair tradeoff.
I mean, my men a bringing ladders to climb up anyway, not being allowed to construct siege equipment is a bit annoying.

Well, I feel that being able to bring the ladders (as opposed to needing artillery/monsters) is a decent compromise. Really, ladders and towers shouldn't be an option, nor should starving out the garrison. Those aren't economic settlements. They are huge walls blocking mountain passes. They exist ONLY to make it harder for enemies of the HE to get to the interior. Lore-wise, they've survived sieges that lasted for years. So yeah, they should be pretty darn good at their jobs. And you want it to be easier/more generic? We'll have to agree to disagree on that. . .

[Sir uP]

I wish they included map packs with DLC...

Hopefully game 3 expands on maps once they have all the units in there.

[zefyris]

It should be far worse than that.
- You shouldn't be able to do any form of atrition on those. Those gates have proven to be able to endure 20 + years of siege without taking a dent, because they have the ability to receive support from the other side anyway. so except if you have an army on both side, it shouldn't even take any form of attrition whatsoever.
- your monsters/Artillery shouldn't be able to break the walls/gates like that. Dark elves once had several lines of massive artillery pieces firing day and night for years at the griffon gate's wall, and it didn't fall.
- your units shouldn't be able to use ladder to reach the top of the wall like that, walls are far too high for this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to happen.

But because it's a game and you have to be able to do something about those gates, they allowed at least that, just removing the ability to build siege equipement.

Not building siege equipment is , once again, lore friendly.
The walls are not just twice the size of a normal fortress, but far higher than that. Let's suppose that you spend 10 turns building ONE gigantic tower. How are your troups going to push that tower to the wall? Even if that fortress was located on a plain ground, that would still require a ridiculous amount of soldiers and horses to move it from one single meter, but you have to move it in a mountain? no way.

Same problem with the battering ram, you would need an absolutely ridiculous sized battering ram and there's no way you would be able to push it in the mountain the Gates stand in.

Those gates are 6,000 years old, have seen more than 1,000 years of full scale war between the high elves and dark elves, and been sieged for who knows how many hundred of years in total (as sieging them is one of the automatic thing that happen whenever there's a dark elves invasion), and they have no problem still standing.

Bottom line is, if there's one day a mod that want to make those gates lore friendly, you could siege them for 100 turns with 10 armies on a side and they wouldn't even fall.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Originally posted by *Alpha.:

So make it take twice as long to build siege equipment. I feel that would be a fair tradeoff.
I mean, my men a bringing ladders to climb up anyway, not being allowed to construct siege equipment is a bit annoying.

Well, I feel that being able to bring the ladders (as opposed to needing artillery/monsters) is a decent compromise. Really, ladders and towers shouldn't be an option, nor should starving out the garrison. Those aren't economic settlements. They are huge walls blocking mountain passes. They exist ONLY to make it harder for enemies of the HE to get to the interior. Lore-wise, they've survived sieges that lasted for years. So yeah, they should be pretty darn good at their jobs. And you want it to be easier/more generic? We'll have to agree to disagree on that. . .

I agree. That is why I bowed out of the discussion once I realised it wasn't based on reason, just on "make it easier!".

Those gates are supposed to be virtually inpenetrable. Ladders shouldn't be allow either, and no shooting holes in the walls with artillary. You either smash the gate and come in through the choke point of death, or you fly over the wall.

[Δ*Alpha.]

I get what you guys are saying, but the information on the garrison should be changed to indicate that it actually has walls or is a special type of settlement. I wasn't familiar with the lore behind those gates, so I went (stupidly I suppose) not expecting a massive wall.
And when the bolt throwers opened up on my bunched up units on the section of the wall I held...
It was horrible.

[Gamefever]

In Warhammer there is Lore and there is the Game.

A lot of Players have a very hard time making that distinction in just about every game I have played. I can remember gamers going on about how it should be impossible for my Orc Army to kill Spaaace Marines cause insert lore reasons. So it often went like this, do you even want to play a game with me or would you prefer me to go find someone else to run a game with.
Found them all the time every kind of game, dont get me started on the "rules lawyers" of paper and pencil gaming.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by *Alpha.:

I get what you guys are saying, but the information on the garrison should be changed to indicate that it actually has walls or is a special type of settlement.

That's true, CA did drop the ball there, and editing the tooltips is unlikely to be one of their more complicated tasks.

Originally posted by Gamefever:

In Warhammer there is Lore and there is the Game.

A lot of Players have a very hard time making that distinction in just about every game I have played. I can remember gamers going on about how it should be impossible for my Orc Army to kill Spaaace Marines cause insert lore reasons. So it often went like this, do you even want to play a game with me or would you prefer me to go find someone else to run a game with.
Found them all the time every kind of game, dont get me started on the "rules lawyers" of paper and pencil gaming.

Games based on IPs with significant lore should respect said material while also making adjustments in order to be mechanically sound. It's a compromise, which is exactly what CA has done with the Gates. They are harder to lay siege to than a regular settlement, yet they are still far more vulnerable than the lore would suggest. I don't think any of us that mentioned the lore side of things actually expect the Gates to perfectly match the lore for them; we're just pointing out that there's a good reason for them to present more of a challenge than the average major settlement.