Napoleon Total War Sieges Ideas

In Empire Total War, sieges were so bad, I couldn't enjoy them, seiges justed to be one of the highlights of the Total Wars, but the other day, I was attacking London (in ETW of course, not real life) and the battle map was a siege, but the worst part was that ETW represented London as a fort with 4 buildings in it, London, with only four buildings! Now in the Napoleonic times, sieges were big cities with a star shaped fort wall around them with more the 4 corners. Now the sieges in RTW and even more so MTW2 where awesome! Nice big cities that I used to pause the battle to have a look around Paris in 1305 or in RTW, I used to look at the Collosium, the forums, etc... In ETW, there are four crap little buildings. I want sieges in NTW to be big, and most towns of the time where situated on rivers or lakes or the sea too. We just want full cities surounded in walls like below:

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or

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Something must be done!

You already posted a topic on Sieges.

If you look farther beyond the fort map, there's a massive city in the background. When you siege a city, you attack a fort, not the actual city, though I do agree, there should be revamped sieges. The trailer hinted at this actually: it showed French troops firing into a Russian fort, and there were several tall, burning buildings behind the wall.

Originally Posted by RuleBritannia

If you look farther beyond the fort map, there's a massive city in the background. When you siege a city, you attack a fort, not the actual city, though I do agree, there should be revamped sieges. The trailer hinted at this actually: it showed French troops firing into a Russian fort, and there were several tall, burning buildings behind the wall.

A shadow of a city in the background! That makes it ok then.

If you look at the run up screen shots of Empire, they had been working on proper cities. If you`d ever played MTW2 and RTW you would be VERY impressed at how authentic the cities are.

Originally you were meant to have the ability to attack cities as well as Forts, but CA screwed up and deleted cities and just plonked a few boxes instead. the shadow in the background is a `whoops we blew it!` band aid, that is all.

@Marshal Beale:

I have looked careful on the NTW info and so far I have seen nothing to show that sieges in NTW are going to be any better than ETW. Nothing. just like with ETW. I have the feeling that many NTW purchasers are going to be very disappointed with sieges.

Well firstly, I don't remember posting this before, must be age Secondly, I think that if you attack a city, you should accually attack the city! Not a fort!

CA have said buildingss/fighting has been improved. I hope so, the buildings in RTW were better than in ETW, and in MTWII they were very good. Right now ETW's buildings and their lay out is an embarrasment. When CA said things have been improved, the article gave no details. Me i'd like more occupiable buildings, proper village/city lay out representations, and better detailed buildings to boot!
Does anyone know why the buildings themselves look so awful compared to MTWII's? Surely if it was a PC performance issue, then the detail on them could have been scalable?

We all have different issues with ETW, for me I think v1.5 is pretty good, I don't even have much of a problem fighting the sieges, I had my best full stack in a large city fortress(India), and was attacked twice(first turn I took city, and 3rd turn after) by 4 armies of different strengths, they came in through 3 gates, it was a decent fight, but all the same the lay out and buildings are poor!

Really, I want sieges that I can look around, pause and take a look at the fort, I want forts with more then 4 corners, really only up to MTW2 standard, but maybe with some river behind the fort or the sea. They were great in MTW2. Thats the level I want them up to, but with Napoleonic style fort walls and buildings, and maybe roads this time in towns.

I hope all buildings can be garrisoned or at least streets of buildings garrisoned by 1-2 units. Also the correct limit of men in a building unlike empire. Also pathfinding in sieges and towns needs to improve a lot.

My question is, how many cities in Europe were actually walled-off and star-fortified?

I'd imagine only a select number, and I'd be genuinely surprised if large cities (like Paris for example) had a complete uninterrupted wall around it.

I think for relatively small cities having more buildings within a larger star fort can be a good idea, but those fortifications will be massive. People already complain about how star forts now are already "too big to defend" as it is. While I think that's a load of rubbish (and it means they don't know how to play the game, IMHO), won't including even larger forts with a town inside make these people scream bloody murder?

A better solution, I think, would be to have a town-in-a-star-fort for small cities, but a two-fight solution for larger cities. I see nothing wrong with battles for a city taking place at a fort on the outskirts, that's historically plausible. However, I think the player and the AI should have the option to "double-garrison" a city. That is, you can garrison forces at the fort, but you can also garrison forces within the city itself. So, if you lose the fort fight, you still control the city and the enemy has to go in and do some bloody house-to-house fighting. That's when we get to see the city in all its true glory

On the other hand, garrisoning troops in a city is never popular, what with people having to let soldiers live in their houses and all. So I think above a certain number of non-dragoon troops--say, five units--you get penalties to happiness. If you put in a whole stack of LI, the city might go into revolt until you send in your dragoons! That'll prevent nigh-impregnable cities that have a full stack in the city and a full stack in the fort.

Of course, I doubt this'll happen...but if it did, it would make sieges 10x more awesome.

The main problem of sieges and village combat right now is that units other than militia and skirmishers and forced to stay in a perfect line formation. If one single man out of 150 troops is out of formation, they can't fire, and they can't go where they can't be in a line. Hopefully N:TW will allow units to spread out a bit.

It is true sieges right now are laughably embarassing, but still, N:TW previews seem to make cities look much better. Even then, if the new physics system is implemented, I won't mind poor siege maps as long I can see ragdolls flying off of/hanging over the walls.

Another thing I hope they implement is giving cities and villages some life. In a siege, you can't just evacuate 5,000 citizens on such short notice, especially if the enemy has your city surrounded, but right now, villages and towns are completely abandoned. Some farm animals or even the occasional fleeing peasant would be interesting.