Proposal for town siege delays (to address the roaming marauder problem)

I'm all for this. We've been discussing this and other options here and here.

I really think something like this needs to be done.  Capturing a city, especially a major one, should be an accomplishment.  It would also help address the AI issues that Brad mentions in this post from the first thread that Satrhan linked.  The game currently favours offense too much.  Increasing the power of defense a little will help with the pacing of wars, and also help the AI put up a better fight.  Not too much, of course, or you risk devolving into trench warfare, where offensives are futile.

I believe the Dominions 3 approach (when in doubt, borrow!) was something like this:

• Each city has an inherent fortification value.
• Each turn, the besieging army can lower that value by an amount proportional to their strength.
• Each turn, the defending army can restore that value by an amount proportional to their strength, up to the original value for the city.
• Only when the value reaches zero can the besieging army assault.

Ways to flesh this out further in the context of FE:

• Add city improvements that increase the fortification value.  Extra high/thick walls, moats, etc.
• Add a new trait, let's call it Breaching, which results in the unit being doubly effective in reducing defenses.  This could be a trait given to thinks like golems, as well as possibly new units like Sappers.  Give Sappers some funky combat ability too (throwing explosives?) so they're still interesting to bring along in fights.
• Make it so champions don't get factored into the calculation for depleting/restoring city defenses.  You need non-champion units to do this. There'll be no more capturing of cities by a lone champion.
• Add spells which reduce the defense of a city.  Earthquake, Cleave, Fist of <Insert-cool-sounding-name-here>, etc.
• Add city improvements and city enchantments which damage besieging armies every turn.  Defensive towers, etc.

This would also allow for the implementation of siege weapons.  Either as a means of reducing the fortification value such that the units in the city can be attacked (if an actual siege system is implemented, per se), or the construction of siege weapons used to assault the defenders (ie, it takes 3 turns to build siege weapons when attacking a city (once the appropriate research is completed)).

On a related note.  Another method of making attacking cities more difficult would be to simply alter the terrain such that the attacking army must attack through a bottleneck (such as a main gate or breach in the wall) whereby an attacking unit effectively must fight all of the defending units at once (just as an attacking army that can only send a column of people 8 abreast through a gate, must have their column face a mob of however many hundred people when they come out of the gate column).

Cities automatically having archer towers might not be something I would be opposed to either.

cheers,

-tid242

Yeah, I can't believe I left siege weapons off my list.  D'oh!

Not to nit pick, but while superior armies are critical to effectively concluding a siege, their increased size actually increases the time it takes to set them up - often a small army can work more effectively and quickly (of course if the defenders are few)... see what happened to Winterfell in GoT

I would keep siege timings distinct from army size (after all, army size has a direct counterpart to defender size) and limit it to things like city size, specific buildings, special troops like sappers (I love that idea!) or siege engines etc.

I like the kind of ideas that are being expressed in this thread.

Cauldyth, I love your proposed game mechanics!

One thing could be a little bit unbalanced, though: If the army inside the city could restore the defence in the proposed way, cities could literally never be taken, mayhap! Because:

1. Armies in cities can not be attacked by the sieging army without braking the defence. So, there is no possibiity to reduce their strength and the defender could sit in the city forever, if the restoration rate is high enough.

2. Armies in cities have no limit in army size. They may build up the defence way faster than the attacker will reduce it.

If you want to keep the "restoration mechanic" (which I like, in general), maybe tweak it in a way, that it is not possible to restore all city defence up to the original city fortification strength. Maybe there should be a certain and accumulating amount of damage persistent, as long as the siege lasts. Like this, even with the strongest defending army, the city defence will fall after a certain time, which is based on the original fortificaton value.

This should solve both problems: longer lasting sieges, but no impregnable cities.

I like the AOW and AOW:SM approch:  You have the whole city in the TC map. If it has walls then the defender is behind the walls and get a bonus to defense.  The attack either has to break through the walls and/or gates (gates have less HP than walls) or fly/Passwall/climb wall/dig though them or some how get the defender to leave the safty of the walls to attack the attacker. Made for really fun Tactical combat.  And of coarse there were spells to help in both offense and defense. Regenerate walls/gates was a very good spell. Ad the end of each round in TC the walls and gates would regenerate back to full health so you either had to break through in one turn or make the Wizard and heros  use up all his mana to the point where he can't cast that spell. The spell was expensive.

Yes, some sort of delay is needed, and a system that does not make siege weapons compulsory is probably better for the AI.

That's why I'm for something like the Total War system; when you besiege a city you start building siege weapons with your troops. The time it takes should depend on the attacking force's technology level, the besieged cities wall level, and traits that units and commanders on both sides have. Spells could also factor into this.

There is a problem with this which I think maybe you guys aren't realizing. If you have to siege a town for 1 or 2 turns it would be way too easy to repulse the enemies with certain spells. If you are a fire mage and have those fire spells that attack armies on the map, do you know how much damage you could do in 1 or 2 extra turns with those fire spells? I forgot what it is called but if you could hit them with it 2 or 3 times before they can attack your city, they are pretty much done for. You could hit them with the attack spells 1 or 2 times before they reach your city and then another 1 to 2 times sieging.

There is also an Earth spell which paralyzes an army, etc. How do you balance for these things?

This right here is pretty much the only way I see Siege mechanics "fitting" in this game, and in fact, I would love to see them in this way.

At the very least, we need a Walls for Cities mechanic, and as indicated above.

Additional benefits include:

• Making the Earth and Air spheres of magic WAY sexier in that they would be more able to destroy or bypass the walls of cities.
• As above, adding piles more tactical spells in general.
• Improving the overall defensive capacity of each individual unit by forcing not only a diversification on attacker units (specialized city taking forces), but creating a choke point which would force the attacker to focus on one or two units before engaging the other units.

The ideas for making sieges have to set up and develop an offense before taking a city would only serve to slow the game down tremendously. Not that these things would not be fun things to have in a game, but the scale of this game would really make the number of city fights cumbersome if we had to sit there for several turns before fighting. Especially, as said above, people had turns upon turns to pile nasty spells on your head with impunity.

I agree that would be nice, but the dev´s have confirmed on several occasions it is never going to happen for FE. The engine is not capable of handling it, or the AI couldn't handle it, or both, I'm not sure. It might be looked at for an expansion, or more likely a sequel if it is ever made.

I disagree it would be cumbersome. It gives the AI an opportunity to put up a real fight. Taking a town would take more than just walking an army up to it and press auto-resolve. You'll either have to bring a second army to intercept potential reinforcements, break off part of the army for that duty and have them back before the battle, or risk facing stronger opposition. This decision alone would make the process more interesting and engaging.

And yes, you'll be vulnerable to nasty spells, as you should be. The solution lies in balancing the spells, either through mana costs, adjusting the effectiveness, or protection and counterspell abilities.

Just imagine; after a long and bloody war, you have finally gained the upper hand. Enemy forces have been removed from your country, and you've gathered an army to end this war once and for all. You send it off to take the enemy capital where your rival, a fire archmage, is holed up with a large part of his army. While you have a few skilled wizards serving you, the only one who can truly protect your army from the enemies firestorms is you, the sovereign. During the siege you are focused on maintaining the shield protecting your army. Your second in command is preparing your troops for the coming battle by casting blessings to protect them from fire. Two other heroes are send off with a small force, to keep enemy reinforcements from his other cities away.

That's just way more epic than sending in a few stacks, maybe have one of them hit with a fire strom, auto-resolve the first few battles, sacrificing a few stacks to grind down the enemy, and then finally send in your killer stack.

Good point, but I do think that the game lends itself and has the basic mechanics to handle this problem.  So I don't see the problem itself...being a problem.  The question is, like you said, how will it be balanced. 

Logically the defender would be using these spells to harass and send the attacker packing, but there needs to be some counter that a powerful end-game army can put up.  And on the flipside, there needs to be the option that the defender can crack the attacker's defense if they have more focus in doing so.  Need to test the extremes.  How would a 50+ unit army who is heavily gear focused (low mana/magic use) with only average hp hold up against a single strong mage from each of the magic schools.  Don't want the answer to always be an army of 5 high hit-point and regen tanks.  Also need to compare school to school, to make sure that there is no; "earth focused army with 5 earth shards and maxed spells can't beat the level 2 fire focused defenders who have 1 shard" scenarios.

But this isn't really doable until there is a better idea of how city battles will 'happen'

You could just as easily do this without a siege system though, and in fact that's exactly what a smart player would do if he saw a large enemy force coming straight at one of his cities. The only reason the AI doesn't do this to your armies already, without a siege system, is that it's not smart enough and good enough at identifying threats. The main point of having a siege system is to help the AI in this regard, to mark out certain  enemies as priority threats and force them to deal with them.

To be honest actually, the idea of sieges as action packed hotspots, with both factions piling on fire damage attacks, earthquakes, wards and counterspells actually strikes me as being really fun.

Indeed you could always cast freeze or tremor and then spam fire pillar. Not to mention all those end game army eating spells like firestorm.

Not exactly true.

When talking about spells that are limited to territory.  The current mechanics allow you to charge a city and avoid any of these spells, even more likely so since by the time these spells are available with a pool to cast them, armies are going to have 3x moves and access to roads to the city.  There would be no chance to cast them.

And other spells effectively have a limit of casts per turn.  Quite often this limit could only be available for one turn.  (for a bee-lineing army)

If you add siege time, this adds a huge opportunity to be the target of all and any spells and for far more turns than they normally would be subject to.  AND even more likely, since there is no doubt at that time what it is that army is "up to."

I find myself adding strategic outposts so that I can see the enemy coming and have time to react. I also can cast my zoc spells from there. mid/late game pioneers are pretty cheep to build for this purpose.

Definitely disagree. I already pummel the AI as it is with spells. I use outposts and such to make sure I know when they are coming.

If there are roads to your outposts, then the AI should be able to clear the outpost and remove your influence...at least that's what I've seen.  Plus you have to think of it both ways (both for the AI and the player).  I've yet to be the target of any of the influence-only spells, by the time the AI can cast these spells (without using all their mana) my units are fast enough to attack cities from outside their territory.

I guess I don't understand the disagreement.  If I have to spend more time in enemy influence, I would think it would be common sense that I'm more likely to be hit with those type of spells.  In fact it seemed like you originally brought it up.