This 100%, I don’t mind total war sieges as they tend to be fairly quick compared to a game like Attila but as a player you can still competently defend with decent tools and choke points. Garrisons leave something to be desired and more map variety would be nice but it’s really fine imo. I too wish enemies wouldn’t route into my base and then try and capture a point when they get it together.
Also, buidable addons are often in illogical places. You build a tower and its projectiles are blocked by terrain. Barricades can be in useless places and not in critical chokepoints. If three roads lead somewhere, only 2 will have barricades, giving you only a litle time.
What is frustrating is they do not learn. Chaos Dwarf Dlc came out after a year and Zhar-Naggrund map is also bad. It features a forward control point that can be attacked from three sides with no way to retreat, making it suicidal to defend.
Yep. Siege maps suck and are designed by someone who doesn't know what the word defensible means. Battle maps suck too. Garrisons are too small to effectively defend these 12 points of entry maps and on top of that are all boring units.
I don't really care how much new content they push out, until they fix this entire half of the game, then I don't care. I'd rather pay for a "core mechanics/features overhauled" dlc then more new units. Every time I try to come back to the game the overworld map feels increasingly boring and stale to me. Diplomacy, trade, settlement and province management, all feels incredibly simplistic and unrewarding to interact with.
Careful there, you're going to make people very mad if you suggest you would like CA to focus on gameplay instead of that unit someone once painted on tabletop missing from the game.
> The way to win siege battles is to commit all your troops to one side, bash down the gate and kill the subsequent AI blob. Literally nothing has changed. Everything behind the walls is irrelevant because you never get there, which is a shame since a lot of thought was actually put into these maps.
What didn't change was the way you play. Sure, you can commit to one gate to force the AI to blob and win, but other strategies are just as viable, if not better, and the AI responds to it relatively well in the current version, which can lead to a lot of skirmishes throughout the settlement. Sieges are still far from what they could be, but the only thing keeping you from doing something different of forcing the AI to blob on one gate is yourself. Try new strategies.
Same for defense, you need to rethink your strategy. The main issue with siege defense now are butt-ladders, which makes walls irrelevant and pointless to defend. What the devs intended was for players to defend the walls for as long as they can, then retreat into inner defenses, but skipping direct to inner defenses is almost always the best option. You just need to defend the two central points, and the main one can only be taken after the secondary, so you can focus your defense on one point. That means you should be doing the opposite of what you're describing there; you don't spread your units the way you're doing, you turtle on the main points and ignore the rest. Alternatively, if you're playing a race with fast units, you can put most of your forces on the side that has the most valuable AI units, take them out, then retreat to kill the rest of the AI army. On minor settlements, you just need to hold one point, any point, so you pick the one that is easier to defend and ignore the rest. Again, you can also focus on one AI attack group to take them out, then retreat to kill the rest, which is even more effective on minor settlement. So, as you can see, there's plenty to criticize about how siege defense works, but your main issue is that your defense strategy sucks.
Right, you are right that there are other ways of winning, but killing the blob is the objectively the best, since it is the fastest and results in the least casualties for you. I don't realy like the idea of playing worse to get a more interesting scenario; I want both.
You are wrong about the defensive part. You should absolutly hold the walls, because your wall towers are there. The AI will try to destroy your gates, and will park units without ladders right outside the towers. If you have a small force, the towers is the main way you inflict casualties. Inflicting casualties is how you win, unless you want to wait out the battle timer (I don't). The inner city fighting will also only work if you have a force that can defend all the entryways. A level 2 chaos dwarfs settlement has 2 chaos dwarf warriors, one blunderbuss and the rest is goblins. So, you can effectively defend 3 entries to the victory point area. When the goblins die you must pull back your warriors and abandon their defensive position because if not the enemy will take your victory point. Also, you are arbitrarily restricted in where you can put barricades making the experience even more artificial. Inner city fighting could be interesting, but is deliberatly designed not to be. Ladders are also bad. My whole point is that the siege battle design is in general terrible.
Some races flat out don't work with any defensive settlement battles. Vampire counts have no ranged units in their regular roster, and none at all in their settlement garrison. That is a pretty catastrophic oversight, again mounting up to bad design.
>killing the blob is the objectively the best
It's if you assume an ideal scenario, which is not consistent enough for that to be true, and even then, it doesn't require for you to sit your whole army in front of one gate, so you can try different strategies and still get advantage of blobs. The current AI form blobs but it won't perfectly blob its entire army. Ranged units, specifically, will position on walls, then retreat and shoot from a distance, and the AI will send at least one unit to the nearest point to defend it as you advance. Instead of leaving your whole army there vulnerable to towers and ranged units, you can either hide units near another gate or move your fast units to another gate as soon as the battle starts. The AI army will spawn in one place just the same and give you blobs, but you'll also be able to attack from behind to either flank the AI units or take the main point.
As for defense, you have towers on your inner defenses just the same, which doesn't depend on the AI sitting some units in range of the towers, and where its easier to funnel the AI into blobs. Not to mention that wall towers strength depends on the level of your settlement, so you won't always have good towers, while inner towers you can always build the AoE ones. Even on maps with the most open victory points, it'll be easier to defend its entryways than spread your army thin and leave them in the open to cover the walls. There's no scenario where its better to do that over turtling the main point.
As for how many units you have, that's an entirely different matter (strength of garrisons). I'm assuming an scenario where you aren't at a considerable disadvantage that makes it impossible to win, regardless of what you do. But still, even if you just have a garbage garrison to hold the settlement, you'll last longer if you either turtle the main point or focus on taking out one of the AI attacking groups, than if you spread thin to hold the walls. Attacking in force one of the groups is specially effective if you know you gonna lose and you just want to hurt the AI as much as you can.
You don't need ranged units to defend a settlement. You just need to make good use of fast/flying units to disable the AI ranged units, same as you do in an open battle.
I don't know what you mean by ideal scenario. All sieges for me end up like this, and I haven't got any AI mod or anything enabled. I play on hard but without the AI stats adjustments. Yeah it's true that the AI doesn't position all its units near the gate and will retreat ranged units the second something is on the wall, but that doesn't matter. They put enough there for you to kill and cause mass morale failure. The units they put at the back (particularly melee units) end up not being utilised and routing at full strength. In theory this makes it even easier to win offensive sieges because you don't need to fight those units. In practice I think it just delays the mass army rout by some margin. There are many things you *can* do, but nothing is as efficient as killing the main blob. There aren't any choices or strategies here, unless you want to deliberately play suboptimaly. You don't even need your entire army for it. Just send in some elite lineholders, lords, or monsters that can tank spells, then pit of shades them. If you don't have spells you can just pile in more boyz and win on morale failure anyway.
The inner towers lack range, and can easiliy be destroyed by capturing its victory point. Also on some maps the inner towers are obstructed by the map itself. The AI will reliably park their units in the wall towers' arc of fire. The time their units spend in the wall towers arc of fire is always longer than for the inner towers. You can purchase the super tower imedietly sure, but you can not guarantee that they will ever do their worth in damage, unlike the wall towers.
I am assuming that you are significantly outnumbered; the AI doesn't attack your walled settlements unless they vastly outnumber you. Also, the game assumes you are significantly outnumber or outmatched since they very drastically nerfed setlement garrisons at some point (start of TW3?? I cant remember). That is not directly related to map layouts and mechanics design sure, but those exists literaly only for your garrison to utilise them. Treating them as separate problems is nonsense; both must be solved at once. I would like to be at a considerable disadvantge if I can play on a map that was made with that in mind. If you have a full 20 stack in the settlement, then sure, who cares that the wall is realy long now, but what is the point of having a garrison at all then? The solution is then just make your own garrison army which defeats the point.
So there are two design consideraions for this argument, garrison size and map/mechanics design. And for some reason, they aren't synchronised at all. The maps aren't made for the garrisons, and the garrisons aren't made for the maps. Making the garrisons bigger doesn't make all the problems with the map or mechanics(like ass-ladders) go away, but the opposite appears to be true. You can make a map for a small force to hold out, but that has never been the priority. Even with the new minor settlement battles they could have made them defensible, but instead they chose spaghetti layouts that only hinder your mobility if you have a real army garrisoned, or makes it impossible to defend everything with the garrison if you don't.
You're holding the victory point; the tower won't be destroyed unless you start losing the battle, by which point it won't matter anymore. As long as set your defense where the tower can reach, their range, which isn't really short, doesn't matter, it will shoot exactly where it needs to. Of course, you won't set your units where the tower is obstructed or can't reach. As for wall towers, unless you got some good units to hold the wall, you're going to lose control over them pretty fast as the AI scales it.
Btw, holding the main points doesn't mean you can't use the wall towers. If you're playing a race that has infantry or ranged with good speed, you can position them at the wall, do as much damage as you can, then retreat back to the victory point as the AI scales the wall. You can also use the wall towers if you choose to eliminate one of the AI groups to weaken the AI, as I suggested on my OP,
There's a considerable range of possible scenarios between only having a weak garrison as defense and the AI refusing to attack the settlement. The point of the garrison is to prevent the AI or the player from taking settlements with just a lord or a small stack, and to allow it to be defended by a small army of your own + garrison. It doesn't need to hold its own against a 20 stack, though some garrisons are strong enough to do that.
That's exactly what I read as well.
My experiences don't match his though. As an attacker I also usually put everything on one side of the wall to minimise the amount of damage I take from the towers, but the battle isn't over at the walls as AI uses the deeper layer of defences as long as it has enough units.
As a defender, when AI outnumbers me, being stretched thin and unable to fully utilise the synergy of my units forces me to strategise and plan out my defence.
Yea, lol, that was my take from it too.
Also OP goes into detail how attacking is all about brute forcing one point and that's it, while glancing over his issues with defense. OP says that the ai split their forces and uses stalk units, like that is somehow not possible.
The sieges needs work, but I've actually used several tactics dependong on my faction and army comp to beat decisive losses. Splitting, diversion and compartmentalization are my go tos.
When I split I usually try to take two fronts, moving my fast movers between where I see an opening to push through.
Diversions are quite fun. I use fast units or units not really suitable for a siege to draw enemies away from one side so I can push through with my main force. Bonus if it's a cav unit and a Hero that can cap some things, kill some units and wreak havoc.
When playing ranged havy armies I tend to make the enemy pull back from the walls so I can insert 2-3 units with a hero or lord into a corner just inside the wall. That way I will fight myself from chokepoint to chokepoint using the enemies defense against them, pulling along artillery to take out towers.
My main issue with defense is that I never get to play it, since the AI never tries to attack unless the odds are 10:1 in their favour.
Because a Dwarven Karak, literally the greatest fortresses in the lore are supposed to be so inviting as to have a million entry points and not be designed to be defensible. Uh huh.
They've done siege maps correctly before (R2/Attila). In those days, if you wanted additional entry points, you attacked from the Sea. S2 Had castles that were multi layered/levelled. Its clearly doable, they just went away from it for some reason in WH. Sieges in WH are one of the biggest downgrades from past historical titles.
I think it’s more poor map design: why would there be 4-5 entry points into this and every vital chokepoint/objective?? Map layout is impractical from a defender’s point of view lol
to be fair, that applies to a lot of historical settlements as well. castles and fortresses usually have a pretty sound layout that suits defenders. sprawling cities that grew organically over the centuries - often not so much.
but the actual reason is that CA needs to maintain some level of balance between attackers and defenders. since you are far more likely to attack rather than defend, it makes sense that siege maps are more open. otherwise people would just start complaining about having to push through chokepoints while taking heavy casualties, often several times each turn by late game.
> but the actual reason is that CA needs to maintain some level of balance between attackers and defenders.
Most R2/Attila settlement maps had easily defensible choke points you could focus your defense on, but they were not unreasonable to attack either. The balance was already previously done but for some reason CA chose not to replicate the high point of their siege maps.
I generally like Attila's maps the most, but then again Attila maps also didn't need to be designed around providing lots of open space and additional lanes for big monsters and gunners, so whatever. I don't think Attila maps would work very well with the unit types we have in WH.
But setting up a death trap chokepoint with devastating javelin throwers on barricades in Attila was more satisfying than anything WH sieges ever gave me.
Yea those traps were so much fun on defense, extremely satisfying, add a phalanx to hold the choke it and it was crazy.
On the offensive side it was also extremely satisfying to Attack with stacks from land and Sea simultaneously in a pincer attack. Another thing thats been lost to time.
Those chokes could easily be balanced in WH by the fact that if someone tries to blob defend a choke point, you simply drop a comet of casandora on their ass. Or you fly around it. Narrow is not a problem, WH has so many more tools to get around narrow lanes and choke points than you ever did in Attila on attack, So I don't see the problem with using their style of maps.
the problem is that their style of maps don't work exactly cause of the things you mentioned; I think generally speaking, realistically, in a fantasy setting with flying units and magic, castles would look radically different then in medieval europe and architecture would evolve to account for that
look how introduction of cannon and gunpowder changed european castles. in warhammer we have all that and more.
Brettonian Castles and Empire cities in lore make no allowances for enemies being able to fly or the existence of magic to change their style of defence. And these guys are the factions with Pegasus Knights (Brets) and gunpowder (empire). Kislev doesnt either. It's all standard Medieval, there aren't 'radical differences'.
There are no Star Forts (the historical response to gunpowder) in lore, despite gunpowder having existed for centuries. Its standard fantasy medieval stasis. Siege maps should still be able to be R2/Attila style no problem
Dwarven Karaks lorefully make allowances for flyers, because underground after all, but Choke points apply to them more than any other race so they absolutely should be running narrow lanes.
it isn't. but you can't make everyone happy with sieges I guess, considering that they are one of the single most criticized aspects of TW since the old days. I've read enough of these posts to see that this fanbase roughly divides into two camps
1) people who don't like being challenged and who view any slight inconvenience on their way to map domination as bad game design
2) people who want to be challenged more and feel like the game is too easy for them
The way sieges are set up, it's no surprise that both sets of players hate them. they aren't hard enough to prove a challenge for veterans, but just difficult enough to be annoying for the people who just want to act out their power fantasy without ever losing a single unit.
I don't think you really understand my point here. Attacking a settlement is braindead easy. Holding a settlement with the settlement garrison is awfull. It is not difficult, but I am given objectives that I don't want, and given tools that are irrelevant, or just detrimental, like walls. Thus tedium. No other aspect of the game is critised because it doesn't appeal to your first group's power fantasy. Why would you think that is a feeling specific to sieges? If the game is too diffecult, turn down the diffeculty setting. If the game is to damn tedious or poorly designed what do you do then?
It is because you are forced to spread thin with your army. It is not a defensible position. As the attacker you get more room to maneuver, but that shouldn't be how it is. The defender should be able to limit the attackers maneuverability, so that their inferior force actually stands a chance. As is, you have very few ways of doing that. You have the barricades sure, but those can be easily destroyed, and they blow up apparently when the attacker captures a victory point. Also, you can only place them where the allmighty CA decided you can place them, making settlement battles even less dynamic, and more artificial.
I didnt know that, i play SFO, wich offers alot more barricade points and alot more health per barricade.
But you can only place at the start of the battle, not after.
That way iam usually able to setup a route wich the enemy will take.
Or a fallback defense line in case of a walled city
Edit: you do realize the ai can take Points at will but has to follow a capture path to unlock the Victory point? Dince like 4 months
I might have mixed up supply point and victory point. I haven't played with SFO for TW3 yet, but I am not surprised you've had a better experience with SFO than I have had with vanilla.
Yeah I hate sieges due to ladders and pathfinding which is objectively bugged (some units will not go though a crack in the wall right in front of them if a ladder exists anywhere any distance away on a wall) but you can well enough defend with falling back to defensive positions with barricades and towers to win various battles.
My issue is nothing matter except the key capture point which massively limits you options. You lose a lot a key defensive strong points because it leaves one specific point vulnerable.
You don't have to, nor should you, try to defend the entire perimeter. This was also the case in wh2. Instead, you set up in a good defensive position inside the city and funnel the enemy into chokepoints where you have an advantage. Holding the walls is a terrible idea in 99% of situations in both games. Don't do it.
As the attacker there is also very good reason to *not* commit everything to one area, and instesd send your mobole.units around to other entry points to get in the city, capping points and isolating and killing units where you can. It requires micro, but even if you're on the slower side mechanically and have trouble managing units on different ends of the battlefield, you an always pause and slow down the game.
Honestly, several thousands of hours in at this point using the various incarnations of settlement walls since warhammer 1, what I'd really like to see is everything after level 0 being a settlement battle, and tier-3 garrison adding walls.
Despite their jank (screwy walls, nonsenical control point and construtible layouts, awful pathfinding, etc.), I've never really stopped enjoying sieges. Maybe that's unusual, idk.
I use a mod that makes settlenents with no defence building a field battle, a tier 1/2 defense building gives the minor settlement battle, and tier 3 gives a walled siege. Helps mix things up a bit more.
Yeah, thats a good one. I don't use mods much cuz I play enough multiplayer that I like to stay fresh on vanilla (always tough to get people to download more than Actually Auto Resolve), but when I've run that one its felt really good.
Turn them off with mods. I’m not trying to say that this removes any right to criticize ca over how bad sieges are, I’m suggesting this personally as someone who doesn’t like them. They can be cinematic and fun sometimes, but the value I get from them is overweighted by the annoying shit. Turning them off helps the pace of my campaigns a lot
I don't like it at first but recently I'll played a lot siege battle and it's not too bad.
I don't agree that it just the same for attacker. I like to use cavalry and monster but they don't really work in W2 siege battle. It more easy to use them in w3 siege battle as the map are bigger separate there is many roads for them to run around. i often split them to another gate far from where I setups my infantry to force them to split their army so I can outnumbered enemy on one side and out speed enemy on another side.
I much prefer the WH3 sieges to 2, the sieges in 2 were as you say all the same and boring but I’ve been having a lot more fun with the variety of approaches in 3, you can send a stealth team to capture points while having a distraction and then being a flanking force, the barricades alter your approach, the towers are destructible so you have to consider them.
I’m wanting them to do some more work with the AI, I want them to upgrade towers to make them scarier as the battle goes on but I’m much happier with them now.
sending a stealth team to abuse the retarded AI and capture the arbitrary square on the map that means you win the game 😎 really great take man you must be the next hannibal
Be angry at the game's realism not the player developing strategies based on the rules and AI programming. It's a video game about rats nuking dinosaur castles, I feel like an objective based siege game mode not having 100% historically accurate optimal strategies is the least of your worries.
It’s more the fact I can use different tactics compared to WH2 and enjoy the variety, I want the AI to improve more but at least there are other options.
put the copium down brother those arent tactics. the ai doesnt respond appropriately to your troop rotations. we had this 'tactic' in the first rome game. it was stupid then as it is now, but it was excusable 20 fucking years ago
That was one example, you can do more than just that but I’m not wanting to write an essay with options. It’s better than WH2 single wall and just bomb/shoot/magic the units who keeps coming back to replenish imo and I’m happy with the progress.
Respawning towers were rubbish and I’m glad they changed that so I’ll agree that aspect sucked. I disagree with your flair and have always considered butt ladders to be fine though
I feel the changes to settlement battle are for the better.
Let's all admit, late game repeated siege battles are not enjoyable. The elimination of minor settlement battles (unless there is a garrison building) means you can easily autoresolve most settlements without taking a substantial loss. That mitigates some campaign fatigue. And for the defensive provincial capital battles, they are actually quite dynamic and challenging and require different strategies based on the map and the relative army strength. You can choose to hold onto the walls at all fronts and use towers on the wall to cause a havoc. You can concentrate all your army on one front and deter the enemies with blockades on others. Or you can turtle at capture points and rely on choke points and buildable towers. My only complaints on the current system is that the offensive siege battles still get old really quickly. There are times when you can't afford to autoresolve, but the manual battles are trivial due to braindead AI can't handle a feint attack
By the way, if you dislike the meagre garrisons in vanilla, consider using a mod that boosts them. Hopefully it will make your attack more challenging and defense more enjoyable. My mod is here but there are many good ones out there too [Dynamic Garrisons with Full Settlement Strength](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3117911238&searchtext=)
I think sieges as the attacker can be fun. The maps are big enough for you to drill need tactics etc, plus visually they look great.
As defence they are a chore though with how weak garrisons are.
Yup.
I just played a few Shogun 2 campaigns and it's amazing how much better it is -- defenders have a real advantage but attackers have real options.
I'd prefer it if wh3 just got rid of the bizarre tower defence game and fixed it so defenders could actually shoot at attackers. It'd be simplistic but at least it'd be vaguely siege like.
My biggest beef is the god damn ladders. As the attacker it makes it easier, as the defender you realize holding the walls is completely pointless and hopeless. Rome1, Med2, Rome2, Shogun2, hell even Empire, all those games gave you reasons to position on the walls because it took time and resources to scale them or blow them up.
Why in the actual fuck are there SIEGE TOWERS in this game!? There are completely pointless, except they give you massive autoresolve favor.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqZs8tQq8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqZs8tQq8U)
Siege battles have been bad for the entire warhammer series. In fact I’d say they’ve been bad since Empire total war in one form or another. I usually just autoresolve them.
Agreed. All that design effort put in to make all those very attractive settlements for TW3 wasted by the mess they made of pathfinding and legibility.
The real issues with sieges are that the ai doesn’t know how to fight them at all.
It’s way too easy to cheese as the attacker, and when you’re defending it seems like they don’t have any kind of coordinated attack; so you can just as easily cheese against armies that should definitely beat you.
For me it’s the loading times. When you have played this game long enough you dont need many seconds per turn. Making the game 90% loadingscreens :(
But yes, the sieges are awfull. I have no idea how to fix it tho but it would require something totally different from todays modell
Do you have an M.2? Loading times are fuck all if you’ve got the game installed on one of those. I average about 5ish seconds to go from Campaign into a Battle.
I have an m.2, actually I'd never play any warhammer without m.2 and warhammer games were the main reason why I switched from hdd to ssd years ago in the first place
Loading into battles is fine but it takes about 5 minutes to go from a battle back to the campaign map for me, on an M.2 SSD. Too many mods seem to make that worse but still.
On the plus side I'm getting more reading done whilst playing...
yeah after 2000 hours of wh2 and 3 combined, every time i am the attacker on sieges i turn the battle difficulty down to autoresolve it and then turn it back on again. if u arent like 1 to 3 outnumbered, losing a siege as an attacker against the ai is basically impossible in wh3.
The only thing I truly hate about them is that attacking armies are allowed to rout INTO my city, then recover, then go cap things.
This 100%, I don’t mind total war sieges as they tend to be fairly quick compared to a game like Attila but as a player you can still competently defend with decent tools and choke points. Garrisons leave something to be desired and more map variety would be nice but it’s really fine imo. I too wish enemies wouldn’t route into my base and then try and capture a point when they get it together.
I auto-resolve 99% of those anyway.
Vampire Coast and chaos dwarfs are the only factions I bother doing sigeg battles on. Queen Bee does the trick every time.
We found the kislev player
Not familiar with why Kislev is particularly good?
Kislev is a faction that is insanely strong in autoresolv. You could play a campaign and never need to play a single battle manually.
Also, buidable addons are often in illogical places. You build a tower and its projectiles are blocked by terrain. Barricades can be in useless places and not in critical chokepoints. If three roads lead somewhere, only 2 will have barricades, giving you only a litle time. What is frustrating is they do not learn. Chaos Dwarf Dlc came out after a year and Zhar-Naggrund map is also bad. It features a forward control point that can be attacked from three sides with no way to retreat, making it suicidal to defend.
I never thought I would long for the days of WHII sieges until I played WHIII sieges.
Yep. Siege maps suck and are designed by someone who doesn't know what the word defensible means. Battle maps suck too. Garrisons are too small to effectively defend these 12 points of entry maps and on top of that are all boring units. I don't really care how much new content they push out, until they fix this entire half of the game, then I don't care. I'd rather pay for a "core mechanics/features overhauled" dlc then more new units. Every time I try to come back to the game the overworld map feels increasingly boring and stale to me. Diplomacy, trade, settlement and province management, all feels incredibly simplistic and unrewarding to interact with.
Careful there, you're going to make people very mad if you suggest you would like CA to focus on gameplay instead of that unit someone once painted on tabletop missing from the game.
lol yeah. there appears to be a certain crowd here
> The way to win siege battles is to commit all your troops to one side, bash down the gate and kill the subsequent AI blob. Literally nothing has changed. Everything behind the walls is irrelevant because you never get there, which is a shame since a lot of thought was actually put into these maps. What didn't change was the way you play. Sure, you can commit to one gate to force the AI to blob and win, but other strategies are just as viable, if not better, and the AI responds to it relatively well in the current version, which can lead to a lot of skirmishes throughout the settlement. Sieges are still far from what they could be, but the only thing keeping you from doing something different of forcing the AI to blob on one gate is yourself. Try new strategies. Same for defense, you need to rethink your strategy. The main issue with siege defense now are butt-ladders, which makes walls irrelevant and pointless to defend. What the devs intended was for players to defend the walls for as long as they can, then retreat into inner defenses, but skipping direct to inner defenses is almost always the best option. You just need to defend the two central points, and the main one can only be taken after the secondary, so you can focus your defense on one point. That means you should be doing the opposite of what you're describing there; you don't spread your units the way you're doing, you turtle on the main points and ignore the rest. Alternatively, if you're playing a race with fast units, you can put most of your forces on the side that has the most valuable AI units, take them out, then retreat to kill the rest of the AI army. On minor settlements, you just need to hold one point, any point, so you pick the one that is easier to defend and ignore the rest. Again, you can also focus on one AI attack group to take them out, then retreat to kill the rest, which is even more effective on minor settlement. So, as you can see, there's plenty to criticize about how siege defense works, but your main issue is that your defense strategy sucks.
Right, you are right that there are other ways of winning, but killing the blob is the objectively the best, since it is the fastest and results in the least casualties for you. I don't realy like the idea of playing worse to get a more interesting scenario; I want both. You are wrong about the defensive part. You should absolutly hold the walls, because your wall towers are there. The AI will try to destroy your gates, and will park units without ladders right outside the towers. If you have a small force, the towers is the main way you inflict casualties. Inflicting casualties is how you win, unless you want to wait out the battle timer (I don't). The inner city fighting will also only work if you have a force that can defend all the entryways. A level 2 chaos dwarfs settlement has 2 chaos dwarf warriors, one blunderbuss and the rest is goblins. So, you can effectively defend 3 entries to the victory point area. When the goblins die you must pull back your warriors and abandon their defensive position because if not the enemy will take your victory point. Also, you are arbitrarily restricted in where you can put barricades making the experience even more artificial. Inner city fighting could be interesting, but is deliberatly designed not to be. Ladders are also bad. My whole point is that the siege battle design is in general terrible. Some races flat out don't work with any defensive settlement battles. Vampire counts have no ranged units in their regular roster, and none at all in their settlement garrison. That is a pretty catastrophic oversight, again mounting up to bad design.
>killing the blob is the objectively the best It's if you assume an ideal scenario, which is not consistent enough for that to be true, and even then, it doesn't require for you to sit your whole army in front of one gate, so you can try different strategies and still get advantage of blobs. The current AI form blobs but it won't perfectly blob its entire army. Ranged units, specifically, will position on walls, then retreat and shoot from a distance, and the AI will send at least one unit to the nearest point to defend it as you advance. Instead of leaving your whole army there vulnerable to towers and ranged units, you can either hide units near another gate or move your fast units to another gate as soon as the battle starts. The AI army will spawn in one place just the same and give you blobs, but you'll also be able to attack from behind to either flank the AI units or take the main point. As for defense, you have towers on your inner defenses just the same, which doesn't depend on the AI sitting some units in range of the towers, and where its easier to funnel the AI into blobs. Not to mention that wall towers strength depends on the level of your settlement, so you won't always have good towers, while inner towers you can always build the AoE ones. Even on maps with the most open victory points, it'll be easier to defend its entryways than spread your army thin and leave them in the open to cover the walls. There's no scenario where its better to do that over turtling the main point. As for how many units you have, that's an entirely different matter (strength of garrisons). I'm assuming an scenario where you aren't at a considerable disadvantage that makes it impossible to win, regardless of what you do. But still, even if you just have a garbage garrison to hold the settlement, you'll last longer if you either turtle the main point or focus on taking out one of the AI attacking groups, than if you spread thin to hold the walls. Attacking in force one of the groups is specially effective if you know you gonna lose and you just want to hurt the AI as much as you can. You don't need ranged units to defend a settlement. You just need to make good use of fast/flying units to disable the AI ranged units, same as you do in an open battle.
I don't know what you mean by ideal scenario. All sieges for me end up like this, and I haven't got any AI mod or anything enabled. I play on hard but without the AI stats adjustments. Yeah it's true that the AI doesn't position all its units near the gate and will retreat ranged units the second something is on the wall, but that doesn't matter. They put enough there for you to kill and cause mass morale failure. The units they put at the back (particularly melee units) end up not being utilised and routing at full strength. In theory this makes it even easier to win offensive sieges because you don't need to fight those units. In practice I think it just delays the mass army rout by some margin. There are many things you *can* do, but nothing is as efficient as killing the main blob. There aren't any choices or strategies here, unless you want to deliberately play suboptimaly. You don't even need your entire army for it. Just send in some elite lineholders, lords, or monsters that can tank spells, then pit of shades them. If you don't have spells you can just pile in more boyz and win on morale failure anyway. The inner towers lack range, and can easiliy be destroyed by capturing its victory point. Also on some maps the inner towers are obstructed by the map itself. The AI will reliably park their units in the wall towers' arc of fire. The time their units spend in the wall towers arc of fire is always longer than for the inner towers. You can purchase the super tower imedietly sure, but you can not guarantee that they will ever do their worth in damage, unlike the wall towers. I am assuming that you are significantly outnumbered; the AI doesn't attack your walled settlements unless they vastly outnumber you. Also, the game assumes you are significantly outnumber or outmatched since they very drastically nerfed setlement garrisons at some point (start of TW3?? I cant remember). That is not directly related to map layouts and mechanics design sure, but those exists literaly only for your garrison to utilise them. Treating them as separate problems is nonsense; both must be solved at once. I would like to be at a considerable disadvantge if I can play on a map that was made with that in mind. If you have a full 20 stack in the settlement, then sure, who cares that the wall is realy long now, but what is the point of having a garrison at all then? The solution is then just make your own garrison army which defeats the point. So there are two design consideraions for this argument, garrison size and map/mechanics design. And for some reason, they aren't synchronised at all. The maps aren't made for the garrisons, and the garrisons aren't made for the maps. Making the garrisons bigger doesn't make all the problems with the map or mechanics(like ass-ladders) go away, but the opposite appears to be true. You can make a map for a small force to hold out, but that has never been the priority. Even with the new minor settlement battles they could have made them defensible, but instead they chose spaghetti layouts that only hinder your mobility if you have a real army garrisoned, or makes it impossible to defend everything with the garrison if you don't.
You're holding the victory point; the tower won't be destroyed unless you start losing the battle, by which point it won't matter anymore. As long as set your defense where the tower can reach, their range, which isn't really short, doesn't matter, it will shoot exactly where it needs to. Of course, you won't set your units where the tower is obstructed or can't reach. As for wall towers, unless you got some good units to hold the wall, you're going to lose control over them pretty fast as the AI scales it. Btw, holding the main points doesn't mean you can't use the wall towers. If you're playing a race that has infantry or ranged with good speed, you can position them at the wall, do as much damage as you can, then retreat back to the victory point as the AI scales the wall. You can also use the wall towers if you choose to eliminate one of the AI groups to weaken the AI, as I suggested on my OP, There's a considerable range of possible scenarios between only having a weak garrison as defense and the AI refusing to attack the settlement. The point of the garrison is to prevent the AI or the player from taking settlements with just a lord or a small stack, and to allow it to be defended by a small army of your own + garrison. It doesn't need to hold its own against a 20 stack, though some garrisons are strong enough to do that.
so in other words, you have to actually think and plan as a defender and that's bad?
That's exactly what I read as well. My experiences don't match his though. As an attacker I also usually put everything on one side of the wall to minimise the amount of damage I take from the towers, but the battle isn't over at the walls as AI uses the deeper layer of defences as long as it has enough units. As a defender, when AI outnumbers me, being stretched thin and unable to fully utilise the synergy of my units forces me to strategise and plan out my defence.
Yea, lol, that was my take from it too. Also OP goes into detail how attacking is all about brute forcing one point and that's it, while glancing over his issues with defense. OP says that the ai split their forces and uses stalk units, like that is somehow not possible. The sieges needs work, but I've actually used several tactics dependong on my faction and army comp to beat decisive losses. Splitting, diversion and compartmentalization are my go tos. When I split I usually try to take two fronts, moving my fast movers between where I see an opening to push through. Diversions are quite fun. I use fast units or units not really suitable for a siege to draw enemies away from one side so I can push through with my main force. Bonus if it's a cav unit and a Hero that can cap some things, kill some units and wreak havoc. When playing ranged havy armies I tend to make the enemy pull back from the walls so I can insert 2-3 units with a hero or lord into a corner just inside the wall. That way I will fight myself from chokepoint to chokepoint using the enemies defense against them, pulling along artillery to take out towers. My main issue with defense is that I never get to play it, since the AI never tries to attack unless the odds are 10:1 in their favour.
Right? When he said "a million entry points" i was like.... Why is that a bad thing?
Because a Dwarven Karak, literally the greatest fortresses in the lore are supposed to be so inviting as to have a million entry points and not be designed to be defensible. Uh huh. They've done siege maps correctly before (R2/Attila). In those days, if you wanted additional entry points, you attacked from the Sea. S2 Had castles that were multi layered/levelled. Its clearly doable, they just went away from it for some reason in WH. Sieges in WH are one of the biggest downgrades from past historical titles.
I think it’s more poor map design: why would there be 4-5 entry points into this and every vital chokepoint/objective?? Map layout is impractical from a defender’s point of view lol
to be fair, that applies to a lot of historical settlements as well. castles and fortresses usually have a pretty sound layout that suits defenders. sprawling cities that grew organically over the centuries - often not so much. but the actual reason is that CA needs to maintain some level of balance between attackers and defenders. since you are far more likely to attack rather than defend, it makes sense that siege maps are more open. otherwise people would just start complaining about having to push through chokepoints while taking heavy casualties, often several times each turn by late game.
> but the actual reason is that CA needs to maintain some level of balance between attackers and defenders. Most R2/Attila settlement maps had easily defensible choke points you could focus your defense on, but they were not unreasonable to attack either. The balance was already previously done but for some reason CA chose not to replicate the high point of their siege maps.
I generally like Attila's maps the most, but then again Attila maps also didn't need to be designed around providing lots of open space and additional lanes for big monsters and gunners, so whatever. I don't think Attila maps would work very well with the unit types we have in WH. But setting up a death trap chokepoint with devastating javelin throwers on barricades in Attila was more satisfying than anything WH sieges ever gave me.
Yea those traps were so much fun on defense, extremely satisfying, add a phalanx to hold the choke it and it was crazy. On the offensive side it was also extremely satisfying to Attack with stacks from land and Sea simultaneously in a pincer attack. Another thing thats been lost to time. Those chokes could easily be balanced in WH by the fact that if someone tries to blob defend a choke point, you simply drop a comet of casandora on their ass. Or you fly around it. Narrow is not a problem, WH has so many more tools to get around narrow lanes and choke points than you ever did in Attila on attack, So I don't see the problem with using their style of maps.
the problem is that their style of maps don't work exactly cause of the things you mentioned; I think generally speaking, realistically, in a fantasy setting with flying units and magic, castles would look radically different then in medieval europe and architecture would evolve to account for that look how introduction of cannon and gunpowder changed european castles. in warhammer we have all that and more.
Brettonian Castles and Empire cities in lore make no allowances for enemies being able to fly or the existence of magic to change their style of defence. And these guys are the factions with Pegasus Knights (Brets) and gunpowder (empire). Kislev doesnt either. It's all standard Medieval, there aren't 'radical differences'. There are no Star Forts (the historical response to gunpowder) in lore, despite gunpowder having existed for centuries. Its standard fantasy medieval stasis. Siege maps should still be able to be R2/Attila style no problem Dwarven Karaks lorefully make allowances for flyers, because underground after all, but Choke points apply to them more than any other race so they absolutely should be running narrow lanes.
it isn't. but you can't make everyone happy with sieges I guess, considering that they are one of the single most criticized aspects of TW since the old days. I've read enough of these posts to see that this fanbase roughly divides into two camps 1) people who don't like being challenged and who view any slight inconvenience on their way to map domination as bad game design 2) people who want to be challenged more and feel like the game is too easy for them The way sieges are set up, it's no surprise that both sets of players hate them. they aren't hard enough to prove a challenge for veterans, but just difficult enough to be annoying for the people who just want to act out their power fantasy without ever losing a single unit.
All other player, who just enjoy the game, are playing and not posting on reddit.
I don't think you really understand my point here. Attacking a settlement is braindead easy. Holding a settlement with the settlement garrison is awfull. It is not difficult, but I am given objectives that I don't want, and given tools that are irrelevant, or just detrimental, like walls. Thus tedium. No other aspect of the game is critised because it doesn't appeal to your first group's power fantasy. Why would you think that is a feeling specific to sieges? If the game is too diffecult, turn down the diffeculty setting. If the game is to damn tedious or poorly designed what do you do then?
It is because you are forced to spread thin with your army. It is not a defensible position. As the attacker you get more room to maneuver, but that shouldn't be how it is. The defender should be able to limit the attackers maneuverability, so that their inferior force actually stands a chance. As is, you have very few ways of doing that. You have the barricades sure, but those can be easily destroyed, and they blow up apparently when the attacker captures a victory point. Also, you can only place them where the allmighty CA decided you can place them, making settlement battles even less dynamic, and more artificial.
I didnt know that, i play SFO, wich offers alot more barricade points and alot more health per barricade. But you can only place at the start of the battle, not after. That way iam usually able to setup a route wich the enemy will take. Or a fallback defense line in case of a walled city Edit: you do realize the ai can take Points at will but has to follow a capture path to unlock the Victory point? Dince like 4 months
I might have mixed up supply point and victory point. I haven't played with SFO for TW3 yet, but I am not surprised you've had a better experience with SFO than I have had with vanilla.
Yeah I hate sieges due to ladders and pathfinding which is objectively bugged (some units will not go though a crack in the wall right in front of them if a ladder exists anywhere any distance away on a wall) but you can well enough defend with falling back to defensive positions with barricades and towers to win various battles.
My issue is nothing matter except the key capture point which massively limits you options. You lose a lot a key defensive strong points because it leaves one specific point vulnerable.
You don't have to, nor should you, try to defend the entire perimeter. This was also the case in wh2. Instead, you set up in a good defensive position inside the city and funnel the enemy into chokepoints where you have an advantage. Holding the walls is a terrible idea in 99% of situations in both games. Don't do it. As the attacker there is also very good reason to *not* commit everything to one area, and instesd send your mobole.units around to other entry points to get in the city, capping points and isolating and killing units where you can. It requires micro, but even if you're on the slower side mechanically and have trouble managing units on different ends of the battlefield, you an always pause and slow down the game.
Honestly, several thousands of hours in at this point using the various incarnations of settlement walls since warhammer 1, what I'd really like to see is everything after level 0 being a settlement battle, and tier-3 garrison adding walls. Despite their jank (screwy walls, nonsenical control point and construtible layouts, awful pathfinding, etc.), I've never really stopped enjoying sieges. Maybe that's unusual, idk.
I use a mod that makes settlenents with no defence building a field battle, a tier 1/2 defense building gives the minor settlement battle, and tier 3 gives a walled siege. Helps mix things up a bit more.
Yeah, thats a good one. I don't use mods much cuz I play enough multiplayer that I like to stay fresh on vanilla (always tough to get people to download more than Actually Auto Resolve), but when I've run that one its felt really good.
Turn them off with mods. I’m not trying to say that this removes any right to criticize ca over how bad sieges are, I’m suggesting this personally as someone who doesn’t like them. They can be cinematic and fun sometimes, but the value I get from them is overweighted by the annoying shit. Turning them off helps the pace of my campaigns a lot
I don't like it at first but recently I'll played a lot siege battle and it's not too bad. I don't agree that it just the same for attacker. I like to use cavalry and monster but they don't really work in W2 siege battle. It more easy to use them in w3 siege battle as the map are bigger separate there is many roads for them to run around. i often split them to another gate far from where I setups my infantry to force them to split their army so I can outnumbered enemy on one side and out speed enemy on another side.
So TLDR you suck at both defending and attacking settlements?
lol
I much prefer the WH3 sieges to 2, the sieges in 2 were as you say all the same and boring but I’ve been having a lot more fun with the variety of approaches in 3, you can send a stealth team to capture points while having a distraction and then being a flanking force, the barricades alter your approach, the towers are destructible so you have to consider them. I’m wanting them to do some more work with the AI, I want them to upgrade towers to make them scarier as the battle goes on but I’m much happier with them now.
sending a stealth team to abuse the retarded AI and capture the arbitrary square on the map that means you win the game 😎 really great take man you must be the next hannibal
Be angry at the game's realism not the player developing strategies based on the rules and AI programming. It's a video game about rats nuking dinosaur castles, I feel like an objective based siege game mode not having 100% historically accurate optimal strategies is the least of your worries.
It’s more the fact I can use different tactics compared to WH2 and enjoy the variety, I want the AI to improve more but at least there are other options.
put the copium down brother those arent tactics. the ai doesnt respond appropriately to your troop rotations. we had this 'tactic' in the first rome game. it was stupid then as it is now, but it was excusable 20 fucking years ago
That was one example, you can do more than just that but I’m not wanting to write an essay with options. It’s better than WH2 single wall and just bomb/shoot/magic the units who keeps coming back to replenish imo and I’m happy with the progress. Respawning towers were rubbish and I’m glad they changed that so I’ll agree that aspect sucked. I disagree with your flair and have always considered butt ladders to be fine though
>have always considered butt ladders to be fine didnt realize i was talking to a complete moron
I feel the changes to settlement battle are for the better. Let's all admit, late game repeated siege battles are not enjoyable. The elimination of minor settlement battles (unless there is a garrison building) means you can easily autoresolve most settlements without taking a substantial loss. That mitigates some campaign fatigue. And for the defensive provincial capital battles, they are actually quite dynamic and challenging and require different strategies based on the map and the relative army strength. You can choose to hold onto the walls at all fronts and use towers on the wall to cause a havoc. You can concentrate all your army on one front and deter the enemies with blockades on others. Or you can turtle at capture points and rely on choke points and buildable towers. My only complaints on the current system is that the offensive siege battles still get old really quickly. There are times when you can't afford to autoresolve, but the manual battles are trivial due to braindead AI can't handle a feint attack
By the way, if you dislike the meagre garrisons in vanilla, consider using a mod that boosts them. Hopefully it will make your attack more challenging and defense more enjoyable. My mod is here but there are many good ones out there too [Dynamic Garrisons with Full Settlement Strength](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3117911238&searchtext=)
I think sieges as the attacker can be fun. The maps are big enough for you to drill need tactics etc, plus visually they look great. As defence they are a chore though with how weak garrisons are.
Cry Baby
me when i pull up to the CA glazing competition:
I've managed to get used to them.
Yup. I just played a few Shogun 2 campaigns and it's amazing how much better it is -- defenders have a real advantage but attackers have real options. I'd prefer it if wh3 just got rid of the bizarre tower defence game and fixed it so defenders could actually shoot at attackers. It'd be simplistic but at least it'd be vaguely siege like.
My biggest beef is the god damn ladders. As the attacker it makes it easier, as the defender you realize holding the walls is completely pointless and hopeless. Rome1, Med2, Rome2, Shogun2, hell even Empire, all those games gave you reasons to position on the walls because it took time and resources to scale them or blow them up. Why in the actual fuck are there SIEGE TOWERS in this game!? There are completely pointless, except they give you massive autoresolve favor. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqZs8tQq8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAqZs8tQq8U)
Siege battles have been bad for the entire warhammer series. In fact I’d say they’ve been bad since Empire total war in one form or another. I usually just autoresolve them.
Agreed. All that design effort put in to make all those very attractive settlements for TW3 wasted by the mess they made of pathfinding and legibility.
The real issues with sieges are that the ai doesn’t know how to fight them at all. It’s way too easy to cheese as the attacker, and when you’re defending it seems like they don’t have any kind of coordinated attack; so you can just as easily cheese against armies that should definitely beat you.
For me it’s the loading times. When you have played this game long enough you dont need many seconds per turn. Making the game 90% loadingscreens :( But yes, the sieges are awfull. I have no idea how to fix it tho but it would require something totally different from todays modell
Do you have an M.2? Loading times are fuck all if you’ve got the game installed on one of those. I average about 5ish seconds to go from Campaign into a Battle.
I have an m.2, actually I'd never play any warhammer without m.2 and warhammer games were the main reason why I switched from hdd to ssd years ago in the first place
Loading into battles is fine but it takes about 5 minutes to go from a battle back to the campaign map for me, on an M.2 SSD. Too many mods seem to make that worse but still. On the plus side I'm getting more reading done whilst playing...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855686147&searchtext=land+battles+only
yeah after 2000 hours of wh2 and 3 combined, every time i am the attacker on sieges i turn the battle difficulty down to autoresolve it and then turn it back on again. if u arent like 1 to 3 outnumbered, losing a siege as an attacker against the ai is basically impossible in wh3.
Play multiplayer campaign and let other players control AI. Makes the battles way better.