Better seige battles!!

[Jean=A=Luc]

Originally Posted by KonstantinF

We hope to bring Rolling logs and some other very "interesting" wall-mounted defences for Elfs and Orcs.

And about that video - it looks like we won`t be posting a siege video for another 3 weeks. Sorry to get your hopes up guys.

Don't worry, waiting 'till summer for DoF hurts so much that I don't feel the pain of having to wait another 3 weeks for the video at all.

[Jean=A=Luc]

Speaking of siege battles,

How effective will ranged siege engines (catapults and such) be at destroying stronghold walls and other such static defenses? I'm asking because in my experience there is a very thin line between useless/ineffective and overpowered siege engines. For example in BfME1, Gondor were often able to nullify the enemy army's siege capacity by using their wall mounted trebuchets while in games like Age of Empires 2 or some of the Total War games a couple of trebuchets practically take away any point in having a fortified position.

Another problem is that weapons like that tend to make all other, more close up, siege weapons (ladders, battering rams, siege towers) obsolete/needless. I once played a match of AoE2 where my friend and I agreed not to use trebuchets, only catapults (arrows can reach them) and rams, it was a very different game, believe me.

One way, imo, to "solve" this is to make the range of "shooting" siege weapons such that they can be reached by the castle defenses but to also make them "not-so-easy-to-destroy" (make 'em resistant to arrows for example) so that they are able to do good damage while not leaving the defenders helpless against it.

Another way would be to impose special pop caps on siege weapons. For example, a player can have 10 ladders, 5 siege towers and 3 catapults. This will "entice" (read, 'leave him without any choice') the player to use all the siege weapons in his arsenal and not just the "easy" ranged ones.

I was speaking in general terms of course, I do realize that not all races will have access to the same siege weapons/wall defenses.

[The Witch King of Angmar]

I would use that in campaign mode maybe but not online.

[SPARROW94]

For seige make it so that your main objective is to get to the reach the wall Like medievel total war 2 that was great seige experiance

[The Witch King of Angmar]

Originally Posted by SPARROW94

For seige make it so that your main objective is to get to the reach the wall Like medievel total war 2 that was great seige experiance

Good point. That adds more of a realistic feel to sieging.

[SPARROW94]

Finaly some one who agree's

[frankein_fish]

Witch king is not the only one to agree, i think all the Total war has great siege battles

[Konstantin Fomenko]

One thing I didn’t like about Total War sieges - their Strongholds were too plain - just a wall, and couple of towers there. And it always came down to assaulting the same part of a wall battle after battle. We hope to keep the same gameplay and epic feeling but add more complexity, for example - I am attaching two screenshot of Human Strongholds. Approach to defense, and assault on these two Strongholds is completely different.


In Dawn of Fantasy simple strategy of building 20 rams, and task them on the gate; or getting whole bunch of Trebuchets to bombard the walls won`t get you very far. We are keeping defenses over-powered in range, while giving assaulting units quite a good bonus assaulting enemy walls.
So the working Strategy is:
-using siege towers and ladders to assault the walls, no way around this. Otherwise defenders will just build all archers and hold the walls.
-Use blockading tactics - as defenders will have limited resources in-come.
-Use heavy armored infantry to shield your archers/trebuchets against defenders ranged attacks
-Take out enemy archers in the towers using infantry - as archers are mostly useless against infantry units on the walls
-Use ranged siege to take out defender’s ranged siege, archers and infantry on walls (instead of attacking the walls)
-Use rams, with the cover of heavy infantry, and archers.

I think if this discussion keeps on going I’ll have to post another screenshot of the siege weapons and explain how things work.

Itching to release that video - I wish I could *sigh*

[Jean=A=Luc]

Originally Posted by KonstantinF

I think if this discussion keeps on going I’ll have to post another screenshot of the siege weapons and explain how things work.

*Keeps the discussion going*

[Darvin]

I agree with your siege mechanics. It should definitely be more than planting a bunch of catapults in firing range of the enemy base. I love that siege towers/ladders and storming the castle will finally play key importance to taking a castle.

However, I do have one concern. In the event that a player's castle is completely cut off, and their resources are severely impacted, the game may already be over, even though a major siege battle has yet to be fought. These last stands can be some of the most challenging and fun battles, but unfortunately they can be depressing and anti-climatic, since no matter how well or how badly either player performs (within reason), the end result cannot be changed. The player with full map control just has too much of a resource advantage. Any victory for the defender will be made moot because the attacker has such a resource infrastructure as to replace his army virtually immediately, and the defender doesn't have enough infrastructure to capitalize on a victory.

This is really a variant of the "steamroller" or "slippery slope" that is so common in RTS; once a player starts winning, the momentum of their past victories really carries them through to the final victory, even though it's not actually over yet. I think there's a balancing act that few games have even attempted to tackle here; trying to make comebacks viable and possible without taking it too far (think Mario-Cart, where being in first place is like having a kick-me sign on your back. That's a game which has taken comebacks too far, although it's certainly still fun)