Rome 2 reduces siege battles. Really?

[SonOfCrusader76]

From what I can see, all they've done is remove walls from minor cities, so it's still not increased the amount of open field battles you get. The vast majority of my battles have been these 'minor city' battles; the few open field battles I've encountered were all ruined by the 'capture the flag' rubbish. I remember in Rome TW, there were loads of open field battles - from what I've seen so far, this has the least of them in the entire series.

Oh, and removing walls from minor cities just makes them look like a load of buildings dropped in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't make any sense at all!

[PROMETHEUS ts]

I had only two non siege battles and because were in desert , in europe the cities are so big that they almoust border each other and so you end almoust always with a siege without walls .

[SonOfCrusader76]

And as an added bonus, the 'minor city' battles always feel like the same battle over and over again. Thought we'd left that behind after Medieval TW...

[TheRomanRuler]

Played game 40+ hours, and never had one siege battle in campaign with strong enough enemy presence i should fight it on field... And i believe only 3 battles i had to fight myself instead of AI. Worrying... But game just got released, can`t judge yet.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

Its just a rush for the flag , basically I had a lot of cities lost to rebels because the garrison was too inefficent to stop the enemies without walls.

[Strattios]

Minor cities are too easy and way to common.

[SonOfCrusader76]

Minor cities are too easy and way to common.

Exactly and that's a major problem. Even if the game is patched, and good mods are released, nothing will be done about the fact that the minor cities are too common, too easy and are basically the same battle over and over again. I wonder if a mod can be released that encourages the enemy to come out and fight more often? After all, it's hardly beneficial to have the enemy at the gates; even if you win the battle, there's every chance of serious damage being done to the city especially if the enemy have artillery.

[Caledoni]

Another thing, i spent about 20 turns earlier trying to control the 2 eastern settlements of the Africa provincei held onemoved to attack other (more than one turn for me)AI army leaves 'other' and attacks one i have just left via seai now have a choice of what one to assault as i now own neitherthis cycle basically ended when i managed to move my armies from elsewhere over to helpthere may be less sieges but if u reduce the number of walled cities then that's a pretty obvious result, the fact that most of the battles then become assaults on unwalled settlements is hardly a bonus

[=Vastator=]

Here a similar thread (posted even before release date )
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t-are-the-same

[Caledoni]

is there something wrong with the formatting on the site? i tried to format my post nto paragraphs twice and it just appears as a wall of text? probably has something to do with how slow it has been for me since release

[Kraxis]

Sadly I have to agree.

I really liked the idea to reduce the boring sieges. Yay to that. So for that to become siegebattles without the walls is basically the worst of both worlds. You don't get the advantage and fun of fighting over walls and towers, but you still get the boredom of the same battle every time and all the issues that comes with cities... That's just not what I hoped it would be, it is in fact the direct opposite.

[Payai Dunai]

Didn't you people always cry for historical accuracy anyway? Most battles were sieges.

[SonOfCrusader76]

Didn't you people always cry for historical accuracy anyway? Most battles were sieges.

Ha! Not me, mate; when historical accuracy, or realism gets in the way of fun, it has to give way. And right now, that's what it's doing. If a way can be found to get the enemy to want to keep you away from cities if possible, it would massively improve the game. As long as a way is found to get rid of 'capture the flag' on open battlefields of course.

[Humble Warrior]

Didn't you people always cry for historical accuracy anyway? Most battles were sieges.

Rubbish. It`s far from historically accurate or realistic as it is. Remove those stupid flags from near cities and marches and 50% of those dumb battles would automatically be better because they`d be no Flags ruining it.

And THAT`S MORE REALISTIC!

Also if flaming spears are realistic, I`ll show you a real life santa clause! What is wrong with Creative Disassembly?? I never heard of spears that catch fire when thrown- how do men do such things?

This game is as far from realistic as you can get. It just pretends to be realistic in all the ads then gives you a kindergarten idiocy instead.

Only Mods can save this... CA games are turning into a barefaced lie, hiding the truth while advertising rubbish to get the fast cash and no refunds, sir.

[Eofor]

I never heard of spears that catch fire when thrown

Of course you haven't.
Now where's my real life Santa?

[zhiphius]

Yup, had ALOT of siege battles so far. Add that the AI loves to totally ignore your armies (yea so much for stances ) and run straight for random cities it turns into a chicken chase before the battle itself >.< Thankfully only in somewhat open citystates/provinces. In my current campaign (as parthia i believe, the eastern most faction) im fighting a faction holding jerusalem and another province, he got 5 full stacks + 2 1/4 filled stacks and he sent them straight to random cities, marching through the desert getting attrition. Not to mentioin he marched through neutral parties (guess he had military access but neutral factions wander through my provinces now and then too without military access). The campaign AI seem smart doing this, but this behaviour contradicts anything a proper army -should- behave like, and the rushing through provinces to grab random provinces deeper in my territory disregarding everything else is just geh? i send an army to take his provinces, build armies wtih mercs to bolster the garr. forces and send a few units back to wipe the remnants out after their suicidal charge -> dead suicidal faction. I like that they seem "smarter" but not suicidal so

[DogSoldierSPQR]

@Payai Dunai: That's not the point. The point is that CA had taken away walks because of there being too many sieges but we still have way more sieges than field battles so it's pointless taking the walls away.

I've never had a field battle yet and out of all my campaigns I've probably racked up more than 300 turns. It's actually hard to get a field battle in the first place. Most enemies are either near their settlements or in them, others are just on the ocean. This was one of the most pointless features to have ever been put into a TW game. There were more field battles in Rome 1. Sieges are boring now because they don't have walls. Walls give the attacker options, not just the defenders. Besides, most minor settlement maps are the same anyway.

Like Prom said, the cities are literally bordering each other. That's why a lot of people barely get any field battles.

[TheRomanRuler]

Situation is really hard: These issues are fixable by making campaign map bigger, giving AI more stacks and placing walls on every settlement. Bigger map causes even more lag, and it takes long to do it. AI stack spam has always been issue, but making them more aggressive cuickly leads to people complaining about suecidal AI. But placing walls on every settlement works.

[Choki]

Wen the AI siege me, they dont even make catapults or rams.They Just go to burn the gate losing many men. is stupid

[Octopus]

Haha, yea I am surprised that CA didn't give slingers the flaming rock ability like all other ranged units.

On topic, this feature is just and utter fail. They got rid of walls to reduce the amount of siege battles and city jumping across the map. Instead we have exactly the same amount of siege battles but 75% of these battles don't have walls. It is still just capture the flag for the BAI.

I thought I remember reading pre-release that these minor settlements battles would be open field battles with the city in the background. While, not ideal that would even be preferable to what they are now. Instead the whole battle centers around the flag at the center of the town. Even if you try to force these battles to be in the open by deploying your troops outside of the town the BAI just runs blindly for the flag and refuses to fight. Such .

So, the problem that CA tried to fix (too many siege battles and not enough open battles) was not fixed at all and in fact made worse. How does this get released?

Ok, so I am pissed, but let me try and be constructive. I don't see many easy fixes to this situation, however let me list some changes that I think would help to get the desired effect of less siege battles and more open battles.

1) Remove flags from all battles except walled cities.
2) Fix the BAI to not prioritize the capturing the flags before fighting your army. This needs to be done right away even, if CA doesn't decide to remove flags from non-siege battles.
3) Reduce the size of cities on the campaign map and/or the distance that armies can move on the campaign map. This gives armies the time and space to meet in between cities/towns.
4) no burning down the gate with flaming sticks. Why bother with sieges and seige equipment at all?

Personally I think the campaign map, while stunningly beautiful, is lifeless. Just vast empty boring land and some giant cities. I think it was a bad choice to centralize all the life of the region into the city. The problem with S2TW was small little armies would just run around attacking farms and other buildings outside the city, but in TWR2 this wouldn't be a problem since army numbers are so limited. If the CAI or player wants to use their limited armies to damage and raid buildings outside the city then I would think that would be a viable strategy for luring out an army. Unfortunately CA missed this opportunity and made raiding just a stance where you loiter in the region doing nothing.

There doesn't seem to be any one fix all solution and I think many different mechanics and features need to be synergistically changed to improve this. I don't know how much of the game CA plans on changing in upcoming patches but to me it seems like most of the game mechanics are flawed from their foundations up and need to be reworked from scratch in order to achieve what they set out to do, less siege battles and more open battles.

I really hope CA and patch up a working game out of this mess...