Siege

[Pillager]

KGB,

I find myself agreeing with you. Adding a retreat option does seem out of place in warlords.

What if (in addition to blocking vectoring and sealing the city) each besieging stack got a free plink attack at a city's defenders. This could be a fairly weak attack...maybe strength 1, 2 or 3. The defenders would fight as normal, gaining stack bonuses and so forth. So, if I had three 'siege tower' stacks surrounding a city, I would get 3 free 'plink' attacks. This might only be meaningful if production was also blocked though.

[Moonknight]

I like the idea of somehow being able to stop/prevent vectoring to a specific city, but everything mentioned so far seems too complex.

We'll be able to build towers in beta4 right? Maybe if you build x amount of towers around an opponents city it would stop vectoring to it...

[KGB]

Moonknight,

Towers will be expensive. Too expensive to waste building multiple of them to prevent vectoring to 1 city.

Pillager,

How many free attacks are you thinking about? Once per turn or only once? I honestly don't like that mechanic either.

I was thinking some more while watching football that instead of 8 men, it should require at least 12 (one for every square around a city) men to complete the siege. That means 2 stacks and you could make them 8 and 4 or 6 and 6 or 8 and 8 (if you had 16 men) etc.

You march your stack up next to the city then select 'siege' from from the Order menu at the top (where you currently select Fight Order and Disband).

As you've mentioned, the stack gets a special graphic to indicate it's starting a siege. Once there are 12 men in place it would be cool if the city itself could have a ring graphic drawn on every square around the city to indicate the siege was underway. That would be a nice visual indication to players and at that moment the vectoring stops and defenders would need to break out by attacking (or another stack would need to arrive to help break the siege) and killing one of the sieging stacks. That seems very straight forward and simple enough.

Now how about 1 additional effect for the siege is that all production takes 1 extra turn. So a 1 turn unit takes 2 turns, a 2 turn unit takes 3 turns and so on. That fits well enough theme wise with a siege denying resources.

I could endorse that.

KGB

[Pillager]

Moonknight,

I agree that any siege mechanic needs to be simple and intuitive.

KGB,

I was thinking of having the plink hits happen at the start of every besieger turn. The idea is that sieging should help the attacker actually take the city in some way. It shouldn't be a large bonus, but it should slowly weaken the defense over time. Perhaps reducing the city wall level by 1 per turn (so 8 to 7) would be better.

I like the ' ring around the city' idea. A ring of palisades and trenches would show that the city is sealed off in a way that players could easily grasp. No palisades could be built on water or mountains, so these could remain as routes in and out of a besieged city, only available to flyers and ships (if the city had a port).

12 units does make sense (1 per square) but it is a large number of units. Would you bother to siege if it took that many? 12 is also a less obvious number than 8 (in a game that revolves around 8 stacks).

It might work well to have a 'siege ring' act like a city...in that all besieging units would defend any square of the ring. In that case, the defender (and other players) would be able to move out of the city, but any area they did move into would initiate a battle vs all besiegers.

Using that mechanic, units inside a city could choose any terrain around the city as the battleground for their breakout attempt, and there would be no need to tweak terrain bonuses.

[KGB]

Pillager,

I wouldn't bother to siege unless I really needed to stop vectoring to a city. There is no other reason I'd use this mechanic because when I move toward a city I'm planning to attack it. If I don't think I can capture it I don't move toward it. But stopping vectoring into a post city in my territory is something I'd do frequently.

Reducing city walls is too good. That's because it costs gold to upgrade them again and the only way they should be permanently reduced is when the city is captured. Otherwise why bring a siege unit. Just siege, wait 1-2 turn and most cities will drop to L2 walls and have no city wall bonus.

I still think having the siege add +1 turns to all production and stopping vectoring is quite powerful. The city would be hard pressed to ever improve its defenses with this in place so any attack would weaken it quite fast since it would take 2 turns to make even 1 man so as long as your attack stacks killed a few defenders it wouldn't take long to capture the city. If a city has 32 defenders it should legitimately take 48-64 men to defeat it (a 1.5-2x loss ratio assuming equal units).

The siege ring graphic allowing the defenders to pick any square to break out on works for me. However, it would also mean you'd only be able to use 1 stack (8 units) for the siege which is I guess what you want. Because otherwise you could end up with the besiegers having 16 or 24 men and then how would you know which stack to let the sallying defenders attack. So 1 stack is designated as the besiegers and that's the stack that has to be beaten.

KGB

[Pillager]

KGB,

So, sieging would:
block vectoring,
slow production,
and force units, exiting/entering the city, to fight the besieging stack.

That actually sounds pretty good to me. I'd like to see how this would play out in an actual game.

It would be good to make which stack is actually besieging the city quite visually obvious...perhaps by giving them a little fort attached to the palisade.

When a defending stack tries to break out, they would need to fight any units actually occupying the square they are attacking, plus the besieging stack...so they could be up against 16 units.

[KGB]

Pillager,

That actually sounds pretty good to me. I'd like to see how this would play out in an actual game.

Me too. I think the vectoring part is the part I'm most interested in because it prevents a city from being a vector point into your lands when you lose one. That ability to block is important. The others less so but can still be useful.

It would be good to make which stack is actually besieging the city quite visually obvious...perhaps by giving them a little fort attached to the palisade.

Agreed. The besieging stack needs to be clearly indicated as well as having the ring around the city.

When a defending stack tries to break out, they would need to fight any units actually occupying the square they are attacking, plus the besieging stack...so they could be up against 16 units.

Agreed again. But who would be foolish enough to do that when there are 11 other squares to chose where you only flight 8 units

One other thing: Any relief armies should also be able to attack the besiegers on any of the 12 squares too. That's because say on a map with a narrow strip of land (due to mountains/water) it might end up that a besieger is on one side of the city while the relief armies are on the other and have no way to attack the besieger except by passing through the city (which they can't do). So they'd need to be able to use any of the 12 squares to force battle.

KGB

[piranha]

This is pretty interesting stuff. I have brought up the siege concept with snotling a couple of times and we said, ok as soon as we are done with what we set out to do we will work on new interesting features like siege.

I think the idea to prevent units to enter the city is interesting. Didn't think about that before. I was into the idea of having food that would deplete and units would start dying.

But the idea you have there seems good and quite simple. So any 8 units could lay siege to a city? I didn't follow completly how you meant that the sieger could have more than 8 units?
If he has units on the palisade and the attacker attack the palisade units should he face the units in the fort and those that stand on the square he attacked? There are 12 squares around a city so you would need to place units on every square to get even 9 units?

[KGB]

Piranha,

Yes, you need 8 units to begin a siege. The stack would to move next to a city, stay there and then on their next turn they begin the siege (if they live).

The stack would change to a special icon to indicate it's performing a siege. A ring would be drawn around the city on all land squares to indicate to players that a siege is underway. There is no need to place units on each of the 12 squares.

The effects are what was mentioned above (no vectoring, no units can enter/exit city, all production takes 1 extra turn).

Now if defenders in the city or another stack moving up wants to relieve the siege they can do so by attacking on *any* of 12 squares around the city. That way you can pick the best terrain to attack on. All 8 units in the besieging stack then defend as normal using that terrain. So far that's simple.

Now if you are the besieger and you have more units than your initial 8 stack, you can spread those around on the other 11 squares to strengthen the siege. So suppose you have 11 more units (19 total) and put 1 per square. Then if someone tries to break the siege they face the initial stack of 8 plus the single unit added to the square for a total of 9 units. I think that's what you wrote.

KGB

[Pillager]

Yes, this idea has certainly evolved over the course of the thread.

I think you get it Piranha. Any stack of 8 units could move next to an enemy city and choose to besiege it. A palisade would encircle the city (to show that it is under siege), and the besieging stack would get a little fort (or something) to distinguish them from other stacks that might be hanging around the city.

A city could not be besieged if there were enemy units on squares surrounding the city (where the palisade needs to be). So , these would need to be defeated first.

An army (not belonging to the besieging player) entering any palisade square would have to fight the units in that square and the besieging stack. If the army wins, the siege is broken, if the besiegers win...the siege continues. So, any units inside the city would have to fight to get out.

During a 'break the siege' battle...the attackers would (almost) always have the option to attack the besieging stack itself (which would only have 8 units). So, the besieger could never be guaranteed to have 9 units in the battle.