Should 'stakes' be allowed in game...?

[philipjd]

In my opinion the usage of 'stakes' is far more open to abuse during seiges than is worth having the ability in field combats - this is due to the 'exploit' of placing stakes just inside the gates of a besieged settlement/forttress by a player (never the AI) and also the AI's inability to use them in the field. Hence, should the ability to removed from the unit rosters?

Hence the two part poll - is it an exploit and should it be removed?

[SoulBlade]

Stakes are useful. The AI uses them... and sends his own cav into them. Quite ironic hah.

But really... I never use them. I think it's possible to disable them during siege. A script or something.

[RollingWave]

yeah, a stake archer + some decent infantry = inpenetrable fortress

[MonkeyChief]

Well it's only an issue if the entire enemy army is made up of cavalry...

[Gorrrrrn]

the AI can deploy stakes after a battle starts - so that evens the problem up ?

[Gogolometro]

Yes, remove them!
I use them a lot at gates. I deploy them like best defence of a city.
That before I played turks. I beat mongols, many stacks, in a small castle like Tbilisi. Without stakes. So remove them!

[robbo]

Yes, remove them!
I use them a lot at gates. I deploy them like best defence of a city.
That before I played turks. I beat mongols, many stacks, in a small castle like Tbilisi. Without stakes. So remove them!

Surely the better solution would be to simply choose not to deploy them in front of gates rather than remove them from the game?

I can understand wanting them removed for multiplayer battles but I don't get the point in singleplayer. Nobody is forcing anyone to plant stakes in front of the gate. If you feel it's removing the challenge and making the game too easy, don't place them there. Simples.

[juvenus]

Surely the better solution would be to simply choose not to deploy them in front of gates rather than remove them from the game?

I can understand wanting them removed for multiplayer battles but I don't get the point in singleplayer. Nobody is forcing anyone to plant stakes in front of the gate. If you feel it's removing the challenge and making the game too easy, don't place them there. Simples.

i can only second this....yes, don't cheat by placing stakes in front of the gate instead of asking for their removal....they were historically attested "equipment" so they should remain in the game.

[Gogolometro]

Ideea is stakes are useless on battlefield. No joke. The AI is smart enough to never charge in stake. In fact that force you to be carefull and maneover away from that area. Make battle simplistic.
I always laugh like mad when I saw that thing, horses jumping with knight too.
But when play HRE, or a italian faction away from Ragusa or mourtadoi source, or better french, spaniards, muslims, you dont have the ocasion.
For me turks was an oportunity, without that fail safe thing.
I was all time afraid of mongols. Not afraid, terrorised. Only when you see stack after stack coming to your city will understand the futility. Anyone tried mongols in open field, without pikes/halebardiers and musketeers?
Imagine Tbilisi for example. A simple castle, not developed, and is late campaign, and you know in 20 turns first mongol army come to. What you can do? I just pumped turkish archers. When I was byzantine inever recruit them. Why to get these bad looking units without STAKES, when we have murtadoi?
So 10-12 turkish archers, 1-2 catapults, 1-2 turkish javelins, Fari and 1 spahi lancer, plus spear militia. I almost imagined I will lose miserably and let autocalc to do the stuff. And I play. I won, and I play next siege. And next. After 3-4 sieges they get it, with less than half of stack. Than like stupid go with all army to Kutaisi and let a full dread general garison. The stack get it from Dyabakyr, Mosul, Adana and Cesarea, again most of them turkish archers retake the castle.
And again I start to win versus stacks of mongols. Only advantage I have it, they come never more than 2 stacks and I have oportunity to fix some losses. Is like fighting with borgs.
But all that battles, my fights like french on Pamplona fortress, the HRE campaigns, make me to understand how stupid I am if I use them.
That why I not play english. Give you a fake sense of security.

[Byg]

i can only second this....yes, don't cheat by placing stakes in front of the gate instead of asking for their removal....they were historically attested "equipment" so they should remain in the game.

Well surely historically speaking stakes were visible and were thus avoided by cavalry. As the ai does not always see stakes, whilst being always visible to one faction i.e your own, and as people are stating here that the ai does die on stakes to the extent of changing the outcome of a battle then stakes are not working historically. Thus keeping stakes in this game is not historically accurate, but worse than that, they are detrimental to gameplay and remove a significant quantity of challenge from battles.

I suppose stakes are about as fair as giving the human player steel swords and giving the ai rubber bendy ones.

[princeps.omnis]

Yes, remove them!
I use them a lot at gates. I deploy them like best defence of a city.
That before I played turks. I beat mongols, many stacks, in a small castle like Tbilisi. Without stakes. So remove them!

Well, I beat lots and lots of stacks using only peasants. So we should remove everything except peasants.

[GeneralG]

Well, I beat lots and lots of stacks using only peasants. So we should remove everything except peasants.

Yea but wouldn't that make the game a bit repetative.

[withfriend2]

Well, I beat lots and lots of stacks using only peasants. So we should remove everything except peasants.

lol good logic

[SirRobin]

As somebody else point out - nobody is forcing you to exploit the game's flaws. Staking gates is not the only exploit in this game..

[GeneralG]

I may sound quite stupid but how do you deploy stakes?

[recentiy03]

I never thought to put stakes just inside a siege...in fact I never really
use them...are there any Portuguese units that can deploy stakes?

[krolyn]

I vote for keeping stakes.
If they were used in battle, why not include it? the challenge is to make the AI use it correctly!
Also, if someone doesn't like it, he's free not to use them.

I've been thinking a bit about it and I think that even its use on a siege is acceptable.
In real life, any defending commander would deploy stakes at the gate if he knew the enemy would charge through it. The reason why they were not deploy like that is simply because in real siege battles cavalry was almost never used. Even when the gate was breached there was a lot of obstacles (apart from your the attacking troops going through the gate) for a clear cavalry charge.
If in real life a cavalry did charge through the gate I think it would end up killing mostly friendly troops.
In fact there are several games that ignore cavalry strength when simulating a siege (eg. EU).

Bottom point is: maybe the best would be to script the AI to not recruit cavalry units when attacking a city.
This is probably not possible, but maybe scripting an automatic mounted-to-unmounted unit conversion. This way it would be more realistic (mounted troops would unmount for the siege) and probably more challenging (since you'd have more units on the walls).

[Ponti]

Remove stakes from castles att he field of battle they are useful. At castles it is some kind of cheating.We are humans and much more inteligent than stupid AI.Stakes are not necessary to be a great general and playing Medieval Total War well.

In SS we have much more better situation than with TATW.That is the reason why I'm not playing TATW.When I begin to speak about stakes I not expect such reaction - TATW users just wants to kill me for this.

Everyone are exiting about Mordor units if the battles begins just simple Gondroian archer unit is enough to kill Witchking and other Nazgul at horses

Owned!

[WarlordZ]

Stakes should stay in the game...just don't use them in a siege

[Pietrak]

Stakes should be removed. They ruin siege battles.