Cure for the siege warfare ills idea; and historical basis for it
I think I am amongst classics majors here so there will be some agreements on how these ancient wars worked.
1. Cities were much harder not easier to defend as they got larger. Epic sieges like Carthage and Alesia were not common; more common was obtaining a cities surrender after a major battle had happened.
2. Cities that actually did put up a great fight were often designed exactly for that and sometimes started as mere forts.
3. The Emperor Aurelian building a new set of walls that covered every inch of the city is again rare for this (and every) period.
4. Marching Camps and lower quality forts were often decisive; remember how easily Cicero's son could have died had he left his fort during the Gallic Wars?
5. Besieged cities meant the farmlands and other income sources would be cut off not just the harbor.
6. A besieging force suffered horrible attrition. Even Romans couldn't besiege anything indefinitely.
7. Ports seem to offer no bonuses or penalties for sieges although they played an extremely dynamic role in them; just ask both Scipios.
My cure for the total war engines over representation of how many cities had to be besieged, under representation of forts, under representation of decisive battles, over representation of how easy a siege was on both sides etc?
1. Revert to Rome Total War in terms of upgrading government buildings instead of walls for expanded cities.
2. Cities are no longer completely protected by walls; there will be very important parts of the city to defend containing things like water supply, extra granary, or even just large numbers of civilians. The attacker may attack those extras with nearly the entire army while you only have a small part of your defense in them. This better represents the layers and numbers of battles that went into each siege. When you lose a water supply or granary the number of turns before automatic surrender is dramatically decreased and losing just the civilians will be a big morale hit for your army. How much of your army you could chose to deploy in the extra sections of the city depends on generals traits; if you have only a captain prepare for a 1-2 unit defense against virtually all the enemy army.
3. Eliminate ports instead it is part of the city and you or your enemy could combine naval with ground assaults.
4. Both defender and attacker take a massive hit to their numbers each turn of siege. In addition to that plague possibility in both besieger and defender increases each turn, and if the attacker fails to build a network of defense for a supply route from the nearest friendly city before besieging his army will suffer even more and have an even higher chance of plague.
5. Armies will take significantly longer to recruit because the unit numbers will be dramatically increased and you can't recruit unviable units anymore you must recruit an entire army at once and you may decide to split it up later but it is an all or nothing. Romans didn't raise a single cohort they raised legions. This should get the battles were your army or the ai army is destroyed to matter.
6. The absurd sieges were there were virtually no defenders yet you were held up besieging a city gone; at some point there will be an auto-surrender.
7. Forts will start as about the wooden walls medieval total war 2 level, cost upkeep and block land routes. They block enemy supplies and protect yours but because siege conditions are bad for both armies and because losing a fort means losing your supplies and so your army you will have to actually take your army to fight a decisive battle against a besieging army. Defensive forts meant to block enemies from coming will need an infrastructure to stay; and will evolve similar to Roman Forts historic success. as a fort grows it may upgrade to a settlement but every civilian who moves to it is subtracted from the nearby cities. This could help your economy and make large provinces more manageable or act as a leech on your cities or both; settlement was never entirely successful just ask Grachus how Carthage went for him. This gives both a motive and demotivation for using permanent stone forts, and a good reason to use wooden forts, but remember unless you want a dramatic decline in your developed cities to demolish permanent forts before it's too late as you need large cities to ever recruit an army that won't be laughed at.
8. More wall options with leaving parts of the city not covered by the main defense and sometimes not even covered at all will be available and full Emperor Aurelian style total wallage only available in a few cities.
9. How many cities do you have? Say you have ten cities and one is under siege? That will be 1/10th of your income so even if you could cut off the besiegers supplies it could be a better idea to engage in a decisive battle.
10. To represent that the Romans were nutjobs who historically actually won wars where they lost the biggest battles instead of negotiating when they lost there could be unique research for each civilization and a nationalist tech could be available to Rome that allows fast city militia recruitment when an enemy army is near the city but it will be up to the ai or player to decide if roman society went down it's historic rode in uniquely refusing surrender after they lost an army.
Sorry for the wall of text
TLDR version
forts needed to keep armies from dying of attrition, cities much easier to take with more depth to the siege, naval assaults making navies matter, penalties for besieger and besieged.
In Rome and Medieval 2 it felt like it was great news for my cities and castles to be besieged; this idea would change that dramatically.
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Originally Posted by xccam
Assuming the game start somewhere in the middle of the 3rd century BC, the hellenistic factions and Carthage would pretty much be the only ones able to construct big siege machines and stuff like that at the start. Other factions should be able to unlock it through their tech tree, some of them should maybe not be able to at all.
