Raiders, and dumb, lazy defenders. Sigh.

[Daliena]

I'm gonna give up on my save for now.. Every friggin' time it's the same. The raiders attack in massive force, and my defenders will do one of two things.

Either form up at the gates a mile away from where the attackers are coming from, or veeerrryyyyy slooooowwwllyyyyyy meander over to the platforms and towers at the area that's actually being attacked.

The result: The early defenders are butchered thanks to being outnumbered 5 to 1, and reinforcements will waddle over with all the speed of arthritic, narcoleptic amputees to be killed piecemeal, resulting in even more horrible casualties.

[Shampoo+3]

Here are a few tips: Since defenders that are not in towers or on platforms will gather up at the gates closest to the raiders, have several gates in different directions. Keep ALL platforms and towers disabled until raiders attack. When they do, just activate the ones necessary for defence and not the ones on the opposite side. Have platforms between your towers and the walls. Raiders mostly target the towers first, so the people on the platforms are somewhat safe. This way you can concentrate more ranged defenders at one spot and platforms are very cheap.

[Shampoo+3]

A few more things: I wouldn't bother with gates and walls until you have most of the towers and platforms done. You can build platforms without walls, by canceling the construction of walls. When there are no gates, defenders will gather at herths, so make sure you have a few. Also I never build pallisades because they are just too weak.

[Shampoo+3]

Here's a screenshot of my defence if it helps:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1990875723

I would recommend not to go too crazy on towers aft first though, or you'll quickly run out of leather. Platforms are realy a good investment.

[Daliena]

I don't really have quite such a compact village, alas..

So the problem is, gates or no, when raiders attack, a good half to 3/4 of my villagers are in that slowly shamble status usually which means there isn't a chance in hell they'll arrive in time.

I usually play on the twisted forest river map, and land isn't that plentiful there (especially -flat- land) so some travel time is to be expected as my folks have to wind their way through the mountain passes to reach the mines, or across the river to work the fields.

I really feel that things would be better if 1) when you set the call to arms, people stopped shambling around at zombie speeds 2) walls could be built to properly seal away mountain approaches and rivers. As it stands, all raiders are Hannibal crossing the Alps, and walls don't extend properly against rivers.

[Shampoo+3]

Yeah keeping it compact reduces distances. Also when your people are constantly in a baad mood they'll walk very slow, so keeping workload lower and giving them enough time to satisfy their needs helps alot.

[buds]

It’s hard to defend against high raiders numbers if your settlement is very huge. Also if your villagers are tired or far from the frontline they will be like Zombie once their stamina runs out.

A compact defense system works well for now, like what shampoo does.

[Peyhah]

The settlement I built in my first game was 4x the size of the settlements I build nowadays. Functionality>Aesthetics.

Four corners, two gates on each corner, 2 rows x 4 towers for each half-corner (but usually 5 per corner before Bronze). 0 casualties nearly always, except when I've just aged up: steel weapons vs watchtowers. For miners/woodcutters returning from far away, micro them away until the attack is over so they don't get stuck outside closed gates.

[Shampoo+3]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1991269107

Thats my basic setup. It works fine on ancient warriors hardcore. The next steps will be 1. adding tripple gates on each side 2. adding double stone walls 3. replacing the wooden platforms with reinforced ones 4. replacing the watchtowers with guard towers 5. filling the rest with guard towers.

[Himelin]

All these systems work well, and even very well (I use them too). But that makes me think that they are not very realistic. This game wants to get as close as possible to realism, and it seems to me that for battles (fortifications), there are a lot of things to review ...

The alignments of the defense towers (very effective) are not realistic and aesthetic. A construction distance should be defined to limit the number of defense towers, but increase their attack and defense power, and increase their defense if they are next to a palisade or a wall. A new tower, without roof (weaker defense power), could be put in place, but for further shots.

The thickness of the walls and palisades should be a maximum of two, but the defense power of the exterior elements should be added with the interior elements (reinforcement). Earth walls could appear, to reinforce (add their strength) to the palisades and stone walls (for a total thickness of three maximum). For example: an earth wall and two stone walls, or two earth walls and a palisade

The construction of moats or obstacles (sharp piles, barricades, ...) should be possible in front of the fortifications (with a distance, a number, and a maximum alignment) to slow down the raiders.

A fortified door with a covered walkway should exist (with stock of stone, and stone throw on the attackers). A postern (small door) for exits during raider attacks (raiders could not enter it). And the distance between the doors (or the number of doors that are close) should be reconsidered ...

And the raiders should only use a battering ram (tree trunk) to be able to destroy the palisades and stone walls ... and fire could also appear (destroyed buildings) ...

Have a good day !

[Oriflame]

Originally posted by Himelin:

All these systems work well, and even very well (I use them too). But that makes me think that they are not very realistic. This game wants to get as close as possible to realism, and it seems to me that for battles (fortifications), there are a lot of things to review ...

The alignments of the defense towers (very effective) are not realistic and aesthetic. A construction distance should be defined to limit the number of defense towers, but increase their attack and defense power, and increase their defense if they are next to a palisade or a wall. A new tower, without roof (weaker defense power), could be put in place, but for further shots.

The thickness of the walls and palisades should be a maximum of two, but the defense power of the exterior elements should be added with the interior elements (reinforcement). Earth walls could appear, to reinforce (add their strength) to the palisades and stone walls (for a total thickness of three maximum). For example: an earth wall and two stone walls, or two earth walls and a palisade

The construction of moats or obstacles (sharp piles, barricades, ...) should be possible in front of the fortifications (with a distance, a number, and a maximum alignment) to slow down the raiders.

A fortified door with a covered walkway should exist (with stock of stone, and stone throw on the attackers). A postern (small door) for exits during raider attacks (raiders could not enter it). And the distance between the doors (or the number of doors that are close) should be reconsidered ...

And the raiders should only use a battering ram (tree trunk) to be able to destroy the palisades and stone walls ... and fire could also appear (destroyed buildings) ...

Have a good day ! :coffeeTLD:

Really wish what you're saying was actually implemented; it's just so unrealistic in it's current form.....and stone walls don't fall to swords.

[korac]

I do agree that Madruga Works could have saved themselves a lot of player grumbles over the years if they had spent just a little more time on raider-associated graphics and animations: against a palisade, tower or gates, flaming torches should have lit up and a fiery inferno destroy the offending obstacle (with the added fun of burning plebs leaping to their doom from engulfed towers, simply because I enjoy a grisly touch!); against stone walls, a stout log should have been employed to make short work of it (since few in Europe managed to actually build a decent stone wall until the Romans came along).

All that said, it doesn't change the simple fact that a raid is intended to be a dangerous challenge to survive - preferably with minimum losses - especially later in the game or when playing in Hardcore mode. Having even stronger walls would simply mean even larger, stronger raider bands, to maintain that level of challenge. There was never the intention of ever making things easy for the player, so the only real security would come from massively over-fortifying to the extent that you will only ever suffer little if any harm from a 50-strong band of Iron Age raiders. Until you manage that, it was intended to hurt you, otherwise there would be no challenge to overcome and recover from.

Unfortunately they opted for minimal raider numbers, cardboard walls and suicidal raider AI. Hopefully DoM 2 will give a little more thought to this side of things while still maintaining the challenge intended, if only to reduce the unnecessary grumbles.