The issue of minor settlement battles (screenshots included)

[Cope]

As we all know, one of Rome II's most noticeable weaknesses is its siege and settlement battle mechanics. Unfortunately, I've been informed that there is nothing that the modders can do with regards to the walled settlement battles at the moment - it seems we're just going to have to wait for CA to find a solution before any progress can be made. That being said, many of the issues that have plagued siege battles have carried over to the minor settlement battles aswell. The horrible pathing and the blobbing are the most patent problems, and it is quite obvious to most players that Rome II (as well as most of the other TW titles) are not naturally predisposed to such types of engagements. The manner in which units move and fight is indicative of a design which had open battles with lots of space for units to maneuver in mind - not small cramped areas.

Under normal circumstances I would just brush such issues under the carpet, however, because these types of battles seem to make up - rather unbelievably considering how awkward they are - the majority of the engagements in the game, I think that modders should do their best to try and reduce their occurrence. When I see the message 'the enemy has sallied out' I always breath a sigh of relief; I've been spared the less than satisfactory experience of thousands of men being packed into a uninspiring hamlet which not only appears to less living space than could support the number of troops battling over it but also the map of which I've seen innumerable times before.

Taking this into account, I should very much like this mod to vastly increase the probability of the AI sallying out of its minor settlements. Not only would this alleviate the problems associated with the mechanics, but it would also make the game less boring. What's more, most of the randomly generated maps we see when the enemy does sally out maintain the idea of fighting over a village type area (ironically they are usually bigger and look more important than the actual settlement battles) because building models are transposed onto the fighting area to reflect that the battle is indeed, for a settlement.

I would much rather see the sort of battles as depicted in the below screenshots, than the cluster battles of standard settlement fights. As you can see, it is still clearly a settlement battle, but there is space to move and many of the issues associated with standard settlement fights cease to exist.

Thoughts?

[rjacko10]

Most people will agree with you - I very much do. A submod was made by Santini to minimise siege battles. However this had it's own set of problems. See discussion here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ptional-submod

If patch 14 does not fix the siege AI issue then I don't believe it will ever be fixed. If that is the case then hopefully someone can do as you have suggested. Those 'sally out' battles are great and like you said, a lot more immersive.

Another idea for a submod could be to change the starting positions of the armies on a siege battle. There is usually enough space on the maps outside of the urban area to fight a full battle. Simply start both armies outside the town and remove the flag capture point.

[Cope]

Yeah I think that might be the best way of dealing with it; start both armies outside of the settlement and remove the capture point. That being said, that may not even be necessary, since the surroundings of the sally forth battles show a built up settlement anyway (check the above screenshots). In this instance, you get the scenery and feel of a settlement battle, without the idiocy of capture points, troop clusters and awful pathing. I know when the game first came out, a guy (I think called Yarkis) made a mini-mod to offer a percentile chance of the battle being in the open field instead of a settlement. You could have 25, 50 or 100% chances (depending on your choice) of the battle being open field. Sadly, he was unable to make it work for coastal minor settlement battles, and then felt his own work redundant when CA patched the game to make it possible for the enemy to sally out. He then stopped supporting his mini-mod.

Taking that into account, it would be great if someone could come up with a sub-mod for DeI which replicated Yarkis's work, because as I said, I'm sick of minor settlement battles. I understand that we cannot avoid full on sieges since they are a big (albeit broken) part of the game, but any efforts directed towards reducing minor settlement/siege battles would be appreciated by me. The strength of Total War has always been open field battles and I think that the game should be tailored to play to its strengths, not its weaknesses.

[AngryPolack]

Agreed these cramped settlement battles are getting very stale.

[Post Hoc]

I believe the chance of the enemy sallying forth is at 80%, you could always mod this yourself to whatever you choose. Would take less than a minute to do.

[Cope]

Agreed these cramped settlement battles are getting very stale.

In honesty, they've been stale since day one. Why CA decided to make them such a major part of the game is totally beyond me, since they act only to compromise the very limited number of positives within the game. My theory on it is that CA knew how broken siege mechanics were and so decided to throw in minor settlements to reduce the number of walled settlement engagements whilst still giving the impression that some sort of significant urban area was being fought over. As I have already pointed out, this effort failed. In many ways it's like when they added torches to circumvent the inability of the AI to interact with siege equipment. In this instance however, they just added non-up-gradable, wall-less settlements to act as another siege avoidance mechanism.

What annoys me most is that CA did really very well in the open maps for this game (since they are randomly generated they are very diverse) and yet by forcing these village battles on us, all of that diversity is lost since there are only a certain number of maps available for minor settlement battles. I'm obviously not alone in being forced to fight over the same identical village time and time again.

[Cope]

I believe the chance of the enemy sallying forth is at 80%, you could always mod this yourself to whatever you choose. Would take less than a minute to do.

If the chance of the enemy sallying forth is indeed at 80%, then it clearly does not apply to coastal provinces, since they never seem to sally forth from coastal provinces. I know that modders have had trouble with making the AI attack from coastal provinces, and its obviously still an ongoing problem. Since a large percentage - overly large if you ask me - of provinces are indeed coastal (including loads which were not actually coastal IRL, such as Antioch) the total number of minor settlements engagements is not, unfortunately, reduced by 80%.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

I agree, siege battles are very broken and need to be fixed. Historically how were unwalled settlements fought over? Also I would prefer for sieges to be fixed rather than avoided, but that is unlikely with the current system.

[Cope]

I agree, siege battles are very broken and need to be fixed. Historically how were unwalled settlements fought over? Also I would prefer for sieges to be fixed rather than avoided, but that is unlikely with the current system.

Just to clarify, I don't want to avoid siege battles (I agree they should be fixed rather than avoided), its just minor settlement battles that I want to be shot of.

[Phil2]

I'm obviously not alone in being forced to fight over the same identical village time and time again.

Yes, and was very surprised at first playing RTW2. I thought there was more village battle map diversity.
I suppose it would be hard for modders, to create some more?

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Just to clarify, I don't want to avoid siege battles (I agree they should be fixed rather than avoided), its just minor settlement battles that I want to be shot of.

Sorry, by sieges I ment all settlement battles in general. Sallying is a quick fix, but in ancient times would troops barricade an unwalled town? Would they even try to hold it? Or perhaps they did sally?

[zonks40]

I would have thought that historically, when a settlement was under threat, the garrison would have marched out to meet the enemy rather than fight the enemy in the streets of the very place they are trying to protect.

[Cope]

I would have thought that historically, when a settlement was under threat, the garrison would have marched out to meet the enemy rather than fight the enemy in the streets of the very place they are trying to protect.

I'm not even sure that unwalled settlements would have had garrisons if I'm honest. In a Roman context, I think any settlement of importance would have had walls and a garrison. In a barbarian context, I'm sure many settlements did not have walls, but the entire population could be mobilized to fight in case of need. As you say, I doubt highly that in real life people would have city/settlement camped like they do in TW for a whole bunch of reasons which I will briefly list.

- Massive risk of being surrounded and destroyed (by starvation/disease etc).
- Attracts the enemy to your material possessions - why would you want to do that?
- Attracts the enemy to your vulnerable population - again, why would you want to do that?
- Not ideal territory for fighting, unless you are massively outnumbered and have walls to protect you.
- Not a good idea to have thousands of soldiers (for your own side) residing in one of your settlements. We all know soldiers can get when drunk etc.

A gripe I made a while ago was the idea of the AI city camping with full army stacks. By all means, give them a decent garrison, but when they city camp with armies, its just annoying. The point of walls is to enable a small number of men to fend off much larger foes, not to support an entire army. IRL, I imagine almost all of the time, a defender, if he had an army, would not have city camped and let the enemy ravage his entire country whilst his sat in his city.

[rjacko10]

A gripe I made a while ago was the idea of the AI city camping with full army stacks. By all means, give them a decent garrison, but when they city camp with armies, its just annoying. The point of walls is to enable a small number of men to fend off much larger foes, not to support an entire army. IRL, I imagine almost all of the time, a defender, if he had an army, would not have city camped and let the enemy ravage his entire country whilst his sat in his city.

This has irked me for ages too. Hiding behind walls should be the last option. A large army hiding will quickly find themselves suffering severe attrition and health problems. A small army/garrison will fair better at lasting longer, and may actually fair better than the army doing the sieging. These mechanics should be built into Rome 2. It would make the whole siege dynamic a lot more interesting.

I think R2TR mod has addressed this issue somewhat by giving negative public order to armies in settlements - the opposite of the current situation. And to balance it they have given larger army replenishment when in the city. Which gives the user an interesting tactical choice.. however I'm sure if they've changed the attrition rates depending on army size.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Specifically the Athenians camped behind their walls during the Peloponnesian war. But I do agree that minor settlements were probably not worth fighting over. However Rome makes the majority of settlements "minor," but strategically in the game they are by no means minor. To counteract the siege problem in general, I think raiding should be buffed a bit to really force the defender to come out and fight. And if the defender is severely outnumbered they can fall back to their walls. However walls need to aid the defender more and force the besieged to have a massive numerical advantage in order to assault. In fact most assaults on cities were accomplished through betrayal on the defenders part. Very rarely did were walled settlements easily taken. So if the defender has equivalent numbers relative to the attacker he will be inclined to defend the countryside. If he is badly outnumbered or loses the field battle he can fall back within the city. There he will lose the countryside to devastation but stands a very good chance had holding the city until reinforcements arrive.

[Cope]

This has irked me for ages too. Hiding behind walls should be the last option. A large army hiding will quickly find themselves suffering severe attrition and health problems. A small army/garrison will fair better at lasting longer, and may actually fair better than the army doing the sieging. These mechanics should be built into Rome 2. It would make the whole siege dynamic a lot more interesting.

I think R2TR mod has addressed this issue somewhat by giving negative public order to armies in settlements - the opposite of the current situation. And to balance it they have given larger army replenishment when in the city. Which gives the user an interesting tactical choice.. however I'm sure if they've changed the attrition rates depending on army size.

Yeah, a while back I posed the suggestion of adding negative public order for having an army stationed in a city, and I'm glad someone is experimenting with it. I'm not sure what the obstacles to such a mechanic would be (though I'm sure they are many).

Specifically the Athenians camped behind their walls during the Peloponnesian war. But I do agree that minor settlements were probably not worth fighting over. However Rome makes the majority of settlements "minor," but strategically in the game they are by no means minor. To counteract the siege problem in general, I think raiding should be buffed a bit to really force the defender to come out and fight. And if the defender is severely outnumbered they can fall back to their walls. However walls need to aid the defender more and force the besieged to have a massive numerical advantage in order to assault. In fact most assaults on cities were accomplished through betrayal on the defenders part. Very rarely did were walled settlements easily taken. So if the defender has equivalent numbers relative to the attacker he will be inclined to defend the countryside. If he is badly outnumbered or loses the field battle he can fall back within the city. There he will lose the countryside to devastation but stands a very good chance had holding the city until reinforcements arrive.

As to the point about the Athenians camping behind their walls, I can only assume that they were either vastly outnumbered or felt their forces to be inferior to those of the enemy. They must have, ergo, believed that their best chance of victory was to hide inside a walled settlement. That being said, allowing a giant army to be besieged was never really a great idea unless you had no other option. As has been pointed out already, having small garrison's defending walled settlements worked well (especially in the medieval period) because they were able to reduce the supply and disease problems whilst still holding off a much larger enemy force, often for extended periods of time.

The point you raised about the raiding feature certainly has some merit to it in my view, and it was something I was pushing for previously. However, due to the AI coding which more or less disallows it from attacking a superior force, even in instances where the public order in its settlement is down to -100 due to raiding, it still refuses to leave the safety of its city. The AI calculates that it cannot win the battle and so decides that its best option is to city camp. Perhaps another solution would be to reduce the besieging turn time and remove attrition from the offensive army, so the AI is forced to come out sooner when under attack in a city. In Medieval II, I think that whole mechanic worked better, because the attackers did not take attrition so the defender was the one feeling the strain of the siege. In its current state, the attacker acquires zero advantage from besieging since both sides lose men at the same rate unless technology alters the variables. This leads many players into besieging with a single general unit with a large stack right behind reinforcing so that the main army suffers no attrition.

In any event, as I pointed out during my OP, this is not really supposed to be about walled siege battles. I think we should just wait and see if CA decide to fix those battles before making requests into how they could be improved. At the moment I just want this mod to try and implement some system which reduces the number of minor settlement battles which occur.

[Marcus Marcellus]

I second this motion, finding a way to "force" the AI to sally out would make it much better in my opinion.

On the note that it never happens to coastal settlements, could someone please explain to me in "apprentice" terms why that is, more due to curiosity than actuall modding skills

[Cope]

I second this motion, finding a way to "force" the AI to sally out would make it much better in my opinion.

On the note that it never happens to coastal settlements, could someone please explain to me in "apprentice" terms why that is, more due to curiosity than actuall modding skills

The reason is explained in this thread here: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ptional-submod

[rjacko10]

Well I am very supportive of all that has been said in this post. It's all common sense and if implemented their will be an added layer of complexity as well as removing a rather tiresome part of the game.

I trust these fantastic DEI modders will address the issue/s if CA don't. They fix everything else

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Yeah, a while back I posed the suggestion of adding negative public order for having an army stationed in a city, and I'm glad someone is experimenting with it. I'm not sure what the obstacles to such a mechanic would be (though I'm sure they are many).

[/COLOR]

As to the point about the Athenians camping behind their walls, I can only assume that they were either vastly outnumbered or felt their forces to be inferior to those of the enemy. They must have, ergo, believed that their best chance of victory was to hide inside a walled settlement. That being said, allowing a giant army to be besieged was never really a great idea unless you had no other option. As has been pointed out already, having small garrison's defending walled settlements worked well (especially in the medieval period) because they were able to reduce the supply and disease problems whilst still holding off a much larger enemy force, often for extended periods of time.

The point you raised about the raiding feature certainly has some merit to it in my view, and it was something I was pushing for previously. However, due to the AI coding which more or less disallows it from attacking a superior force, even in instances where the public order in its settlement is down to -100 due to raiding, it still refuses to leave the safety of its city. The AI calculates that it cannot win the battle and so decides that its best option is to city camp. Perhaps another solution would be to reduce the besieging turn time and remove attrition from the offensive army, so the AI is forced to come out sooner when under attack in a city. In Medieval II, I think that whole mechanic worked better, because the attackers did not take attrition so the defender was the one feeling the strain of the siege. In its current state, the attacker acquires zero advantage from besieging since both sides lose men at the same rate unless technology alters the variables. This leads many players into besieging with a single general unit with a large stack right behind reinforcing so that the main army suffers no attrition.

In any event, as I pointed out during my OP, this is not really supposed to be about walled siege battles. I think we should just wait and see if CA decide to fix those battles before making requests into how they could be improved. At the moment I just want this mod to try and implement some system which reduces the number of minor settlement battles which occur.

Well if the AI believes in cannot win then why would it venture from its city? Many ancient field battles were commenced because each side believed they could win. If they did not think they could win then they would retire to high ground or a fortified positron. The other army would likely avoid conflict as the terrain advantage would be too great an obstacle to overcome.

Regarding siege times, ancient siege mechanics were very poor. Not many armies were effective in blockading settlements especially port settlements. For this reason Athens could camp behind its walls. This is also the reason that the attacker could really only hope for betrayal or another significant advantage. Attrition would be determined by supply and climate. Looking at the siege of Masada the besiegers received extremely high amounts of attrition.

Back to the main topic, minor settlement battles. If historically armies would not fight in unwalled settlements then giving AI 100% chance of sallying and forcing the player to sally would fix this problem. This sort of destroys the usefulness of minor settlements and in all honesty, any settlement that is large of enough to be portrayed on the map should be walled. Of course that brings us to the problem that walled siege battles are very broken.