What is wrong with Watchtower?

[Valagh'lyn]

I've been playing for a few hours... Taking cities with stone walls/towers are not a problem. But once I get against a city with wood walls and wood watchtowers, those watchtowers are everywhere AND have so much range that even at night they cover from one side wall to the other side wall, and they shoot so fast they kill my army before I can even capture the gate I'm coming by (or if I try just rushing their general in the back of the city, they melt my army before I even reach him...) Like I have 12 units army vs the 6 garrison, I lose with 80% of their kills being from watchtowers. Shooting them with fire arrows? 5 archer units shooting non-stop only at 1 tower, using ALL their arrows, only damage it by 78%. Like what am I even supposed to do to win this other than starving the city knowing even though I had double their army the game was only giving 60/50 chance to win..?

[Brother PaciFist]

It sounds like the Machinegun Watch tower situation in Attila. Deja vu i have been in this place before. In attila you put 3 archer units with flame arrows and loose formation on it to deal with them. Or you captured the watchtower with disposable units.

[Bevie]

You can avoid towers if you plan your sieges right. Certain paths during the battle avoid tower ranges.

Also.. invest in siege tech if it bothers you so much.

[DarkerCookie]

Originally posted by Bevie:

You can avoid towers if you plan your sieges right. Certain paths during the battle avoid tower ranges.

Also.. invest in siege tech if it bothers you so much.

How does investing in siege tech help you with watchtowers? The problem is they do way too much damage- they do more than the actual garrison. I just won a siege battle and lost 343 men. 139 came from the defenders. 204 dropped dead from the machine gun watchtowers.

Even in Attila the flaming arrows took care of watchtowers too slowly. Those three archers would lose about half the ammo and while you could catch buildings next to it on fire, I think that was only with minor settlement battles in Attila cause the watchtowers where positioned closer to buildings.

[mercurydawn]

As I pointed out in my Interior and Exterior Lines thread:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/712100/discussions/0/1727575977556435676/

The offensive capacity during siege is way too strong on this game, even when I have all my troops are the front gates and ramp playing purely defensive, I can't really do a whole lot in countering a attacking army.

As unrealistic as the watch towers are, being able to nail anyone pretty much in one shot from anywhere in range of the tower, that attrition of force is really, really needed.

In modern MOUT combat (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) you have a doorway (real or artificially made by the group about to penetrate) called a vortex. Everything is about stacking men so they bust through seamlessly without issue, using grenades (fragmenting or smoke) or distractions, and lines of fire are decided months or years in advance back at home for how men will move around in the room.

On this game, given the crap outer defenses and the outrageous offensive toolkit sieges get (catapults and siege engines, as well as the ability to do without and just run about hacking through gates elsewhere) I've found that vortex of entry is more of a damn circumference of immenant danger. Once they get in, they get in everywhere along a long front. Further, they still ram the gate, or hack it, and the two front guard towers don't last long, falling with mere proximity. Problem is, you gotta throw half your army in the gate way, which doesn't much hold the wall, or keep the towers from exploding, or on the walls, and if you favor the gate the walls are swarmed, or the walls gate gets busted through.... and you are attacked in the rear either case.

Basically, it is a terrible defensive design. A standard rule for a siege to be successful is to have a 3-1 advantage. Attrition is a expected must for a attacker with less, because you can't overwhelm them from all directions with less. On this game, a offensive can have less, and if the defender is playing correctly as a real competent commander would given the deposition, by having his men on the walls and at the gate..... he loses.

Now, Ive seen the silliness of the tactics gamers use on YouTube, they stretch their armies across the whole city, planning on being breached, with units coupled here and there on the map, using strong point attrition to kill off the human wave AI..... it really doesn't work that way in real life. Prior to projectile explosives and machine gun fighting positions impossible to counter (Stalingrad had a nasty Russian one in the basement of a house), you amassed your men precisely where they could operate and support one another the quickest. Close units reinforcing, greater mass at location than the enemy can muster through a bottle neck. Sieges were hard. This game doesn't freaken realize that at all, and if you use proper wise strategies meant for the era, you lose. Hence to your point. Towers are indeed over powered. They have to be. The attacker isn't going to slow down much hitting a few units at some barricade for long when he can simply flank, and if he is afraid of too much attrition, he'll sabotage the towers first, with artillery or disposable troops. Too many players think you gotta spread out across a map, and play that way, and as a result of YouTube, it seems CA long before ToB decided that was going to be how they designed their cities. It was a dumb thing to do, and reflects gameplay more than history.

You'll need a big siege of a big city before a commander is going to start spreading out his troops for a defence in depth, using strong points to defend..... like Joan of Arc in Paris. These walled villages in ToB don't count. Offensive players need more attrition, more obstacles outside the wall to prohibit siege engines, most of which shouldn't exist in this era, and more watch towers in the walls mailing guys. Higher attrition, not lower attrition.

You do not out two armies of the same size, one with a defensive advantage in holding walls, and have the defenders lost typically. They ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, it is more of a unrealistic gimmick you gotta use to win. I've responded by not even guarding the walls and moving deeper into the city, using towers with calvary beneath to cause attrition, they can fall back quicker. That's idiotic given the troop ratios.

I don't want to be a metagamer exploiting weaknesses in AI and statistics of units, I want more realistic gameplay. Beautiful cities, more advanced AI, but something is clearly wrong. If anything, as the medieval era goes on, defense is supposed to radically improve to the point just a handful of men can hold a castle from a attacking army, dealing high attrition on the sieging army. So it is a clear issue. The defensive structures of this era are rare, but when they exist, they should be effective and not a mere hurdle to jump over and flank a dedicated enemy with due to bizarre design flaws. More must be done to cause attrition in attackers. Don't nerf the watch towers till this is done.

[mercurydawn]

I'll give you a good example of one of the few ways Med 2 was more realistic on siege than ToB, in showing how ToB is overpowered for offense.

In Medieval 2, you had a tech called ladders..... A unit carried multiple ladders, as in several. Like, 4, 5 or 6. Roughly the same size unit as the units in ToB pushing.... Giant siege towers.

The attacking units with just one or two ladders within that siege tower in ToB you can scale up a wall as fast (I think faster, haven't timed it side by side yet, if someone on YouTube can do a split screen timed event that be awesome, I no longer have Med 2) as all those men climbing multiple ladders in Med 2.

That is bizarre. Shouldn't happen like that. Plus, those men pushing a siege tower should be winded.

Instead what you get as a defender is 2-3 siege towers landing on your wall close together, synchronized, with full units being pumped out at the speed of light. Faster than the largest elevator in the world in Japan can lift guys up.... It can move 90 men up at once..... Your wall defensive troops are instantly overwhelmed, in a era that didn't use siege towers, cause there was no reason for it.

And you want the watch towers to shoot less? Damn it, they need to put 50 cals in the towers to compensate against that insanity. Units in the dark ages shouldn't be able to storm a heavily defended wall like that quicker than the allies could storm Omaha Beach with Naval Support.

Cause how the gate is positioned, to the easy to land walls.... Your walls get more attention, your gate troops are plowed through, then your wall guys are flanked in the rear, or vice versa. If your lucky enough to have the siege later in the game with a few really good units, you can put them down in the gate pit and have guys up on the walls.

You shouldn't be able to send one stacked up army against a city with both a army stack and a garrison and hope to win. Too often I can do this on auto resolve. Worst, just being near the siege towers as the attacker even when guys are mere pixels outside the circle fighting, you can lose your towers. Those towers need really over powered, like.... put in some Nod Oblisks, laser cut guys down.

Ladders make more sense in that men in this era would never ever build a siege tower for attacking places like this, you can have a bunch, getting men up fast, but they are vulnerable and can be more realistically picked off as they come up, and the ladder knocked backwards. I also included a video from the old black and white movie by Griffith called Intolerance of siege towers being knocked over/away from walls with big sticks. Did the English do this in this era? No.... because they didn't face off against siege towers. If you are going to have them, at least provide a realistic means of defeating them, and nerf their power a bit.

Rams do belong, they see common sense, used around history..... but who used rams on doors you can hack though? Your implying no iron or heavy wood is bracing these walls.... so basically all any army would need for siege equipment is a few axes or a few ladders. Instead, I'm facing the Goths attacking Rome with the works.... and they get over very quickly.

And don't tell me fire arrows, because you shouldn't be able to burn anything as big as fast using fire arrows, if at all, and all you do is waste arrows on stuff that shouldn't be in game, instead of shooting at the men. Honesty..... day you successfully burned all three siege towers and both rams.... what do they do? They hack through your gates, and your out of ammo.

So put some heavy machine guns in those watch towers. A few grenades too can go along way.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by DarkerCookie:

Originally posted by Bevie:

You can avoid towers if you plan your sieges right. Certain paths during the battle avoid tower ranges.

Also.. invest in siege tech if it bothers you so much.

How does investing in siege tech help you with watchtowers? The problem is they do way too much damage- they do more than the actual garrison. I just won a siege battle and lost 343 men. 139 came from the defenders. 204 dropped dead from the machine gun watchtowers.

Even in Attila the flaming arrows took care of watchtowers too slowly. Those three archers would lose about half the ammo and while you could catch buildings next to it on fire, I think that was only with minor settlement battles in Attila cause the watchtowers where positioned closer to buildings.

Investing in the tech gives you heavier siege engines which aren't as easy to set on fire.

If you invest in siegecraft for your generals, you can reduce the holdout time by a couple turns.

As Mercury said, the general rule of thumb is you want at least 3:1 numbers advantage to storm a place.

Storming is supposed to be costly, and as many historical leaders found out, storming is the most wasteful option. Sun Tzu lists the storming of walled towns as the absolute last option, the worst option, in war strategy.

The best way to take a fortified place in Thrones is to not storm it at all, but to siege the place with superior numbers, until it either capitulates, or they sally out, giving you a field battle with very lopsided odds in your favor.

To do this, you need to have generals that have traits and experience that give them superior supply ability and siegecraft, so that 1) besieged holdout is shorter to start off with, and 2) your army can safely stay in the region long enough to besiege the place till at least the defender's supplies run out, so that even if you do have to attack, the numbers are no challenge (ex: you start with 4:1 advantage, enemy suffers attrition for one season, now you have 8:1 advantage), and then it doesn't really matter if towers are shooting your guys up.

Also, investing in your generals' supply-type traits improves replenishment, so even if you take losses from arrow towers, the next turn your numbers are mostly all replenished.