Suggestion re: siege-induced spawns

[Pritzl]

I noticed EB was considering adding scripts to spawn defenders to besieged capitals. While at first I must say I didn't like the idea, I'm warming to it now. However, I do have a couple of suggestions that would add some plausibility to the process imo:

1. Special unit: Levied Peasants

I propose that the spawned units be a designated 'levied peasant' unit that has good morale, below-average but not pushover stats and poor discipline. This may be a completely new unit that is not normally trainable (or retrainable) with 0 upkeep. Alternatively, it could be a specific unit for each faction out of the faction roster but must correspond to a reasonable approximation of hurriedly trained recruits and feature the requisite good morale/low stats for plausibility. Each approach has its merit but the core principle is the same - you shouldn't get legionaires for free just because you are besieged.

PS: If you're wondering, the good morale is to simulate people defending their lives, freedom and possessions.

2. Equality

I know the ultimate aim is to give the AI a helping hand, but it strikes me as strange that only the AI should get this option. I know it can be argued that the human player hardly needs the assistance, but that merely means that it is highly unlikely the human player will lose with or without the help. At least this way you have one less conditional to check (whether the besieged city belongs to the human player or not) and maintain the immersion factor of your populace rising to defend their homes. Besides, how often have you as the human player had to defend 'homeland' provinces anyway?

3. Locale

I know it has been suggested that the extra troops only spawn at faction capitals but I would posit that any province with a 'homeland' type government should get the benefit of this assistance.

4. Progressive spawning

Instead of a variable number of units suddenly appearing, I propose that a set amount of troops appears per turn over the duration of the siege depending on the settlement size. e.g.:

- village: no spawners
- small town: 1 single unit
- large town: 1 unit/turn for a total of 3 units
- city: 1 unit/turn for as long as the siege holds
- huge city: 2 units/turn for the first 3 turns and then 1 unit/turn for the remainder of the siege

... or something like that. I fully expect the EB team to come up with an even better system than this one that is easily implementable with the scripting system. The point though is to encourage the player to attack earlier as opposed to waiting for the city to starve without making the situation absurd.

5. Unit count checks

I'm not sure if this is even possible, but I think it is imperative that any new spawned units not exceed the garrison's 20 unit limit resulting in the immersion-killing (and purpose-defeating) appearance of units outside the city walls. For one thing, we know the AI will do something stupid with these external units and try to counterattack precipitating a highly winnable defensive battle for the player.



Thanks for listening.

[Space Voyager]

I like the spawning idea. I don't know about the progressiveness though. If the turn takes half a year than I think everything possible to spawn would spawn in one or perhaps two turns.

Actually this spawning idea seems so good I'm surprised CA hasn't thought about it... IMO only lower-end units should spawn.

[Pritzl]

The turn takes 3 months actually and one can postulate that even equipping peasants to be anything other than fodder takes a bit of time. Besides, from a gameplay perspective it adds something else besides simply assisting the AI encouraging faster resolution of sieges.

[xman160036]

For capitals, you could say the palace guard joins the fight and add some elite units. Just for the AI though, humans know to keep good garrisons. I would really like to see it made so that a faction's capital is more important, more difficult to take, and worse effects for losing it.

[Revan The Great]

Let's say you're Rome and somebody attacks your city of Lilybaeum. Of course only low-tier militia type units spawn. But if Eternal Rome itself is beseiged, you can bet a Praetorian cohort or two would show up. Likewise Pella should make some Agryspadi (Sp?). Carthage would of course get some Sacred Band, or other elite units. This would make capitals actually a big deal to capture, instead of "Oh look! Another city!"

So in other words, I agree with the above poster.

[MRY6]

Let's say you're Rome and somebody attacks your city of Lilybaeum. Of course only low-tier militia type units spawn. But if Eternal Rome itself is beseiged, you can bet a Praetorian cohort or two would show up. Likewise Pella should make some Agryspadi (Sp?). Carthage would of course get some Sacred Band, or other elite units. This would make capitals actually a big deal to capture, instead of "Oh look! Another city!"

So in other words, I agree with the above poster.

Yeah u got it, that's the best way for this "capital importance" fix to play out.

[Pritzl]

I find the materialization of uber units out of thin air implausible. Yes, it's more challenging but so is playing the game blind-folded but how many of you are doing that?!

These spawned units should represent regular people - who normally don't fight - being armed with whatever is at hand to help the defending garrison. They are not meant to be war-winning troops, and even if they were it would take a lot longer than 3 months (1 turn) to train them.

You see the point is, we all know we can beat the AI regardless, so the objective of this addition is more about plausibile immersion than actual AI assistance imo. It adds atmosphere (and a bigger battle) to feel that the settlements residents are rising up for a last stand against the attacker. If implemented progressively it also adds a certain degree of urgency to sieges that was present irl but missing in the game. The edge gained by the defending AI is merely a bonus rather than the thrust of this addition imo.

[Pritzl]

OK, it's apparent there are two schools of thought here. It would be interesting to hear the team's views on this. Essentially, what takes precedence in EB? Immersion/atmosphere/gameplay or raising the level of challenge?

[MRY6]

Eh, it don't matter to me, i don't care how they do it but as long as they change it up so that the capitals are more important and better protected and valued by the AI.

[Revan The Great]

Think of how long it takes to beseige a "Huge City". Usually 2 turns at least for you to get all the proper seige equipment, assuming the city isn't just horribly under-garrisoned (as many A.I. frontline cities tend to be). Now look at how long it takes to train an elite unit. 2 turns. I take it you can see my point. R:TW doesn't reflect seiges very well. Starving somebody how takes a horribly long time, but it really lacks on the defenders. The defenders, in R:TW, pretty much just sit on their asses and wait for the other guy to attack. In reality, they'd be trying to train everyone they could get to fight. At least if we assume its you're capital or a heavily player-factionized city. They would also most likely be trying to build barricades, or other fortifications. That however is impossible to implement, so we should just settle for mass conscriptions with a few elite units added to a conscription to defend a capital or something.

[Spartan19]

Think of how long it takes to beseige a "Huge City". Usually 2 turns at least for you to get all the proper seige equipment, assuming the city isn't just horribly under-garrisoned (as many A.I. frontline cities tend to be). Now look at how long it takes to train an elite unit. 2 turns. I take it you can see my point. R:TW doesn't reflect seiges very well. Starving somebody how takes a horribly long time, but it really lacks on the defenders. The defenders, in R:TW, pretty much just sit on their asses and wait for the other guy to attack. In reality, they'd be trying to train everyone they could get to fight. At least if we assume its you're capital or a heavily player-factionized city. They would also most likely be trying to build barricades, or other fortifications. That however is impossible to implement, so we should just settle for mass conscriptions with a few elite units added to a conscription to defend a capital or something.

That is a good point. Even without the spawn stuff is there a way to make the sieges longer, like 2x as long, esp for big ones or capitals or is it hardcoded?

[Shigawire]

Thanks for your input. I'll send it to the proper channels, they probably haven't already read this.

[Pritzl]

Thanks Shigawire.

[Shigawire]

Right, turns out our man eadingas has already thought of stuff like this before.. but better safe than sorry.

[The Black Reaper]

the garrison script could be implemented if not already... so when your army is near a enemy city a huge army appears in the city filling all the slots... idk if you can control which units can be spawned with the garrison script

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We desperately need another talented scripter or two. You've gotta have coding or programming experience though - or be very precise and very reliable if you don't have that.

[jaklei]

I auctally came up with an similiar idea when RTW only was an buggy 1.0 game Its an great idea!