[Siege] Another long forgotten feature!

[Hetairos]

Amongst the thousands thread of mine about flawed, missing or forgotten features I forgot to tell everybody about sieges in Rome I.

As we all know routing is a completely broken and mindless feature in Rome II. Unfortunately, it does also affect one of the cool siege features in Rome I, that could have been implemented into Rome II, but somehow it wasn't. You all know we had the flags in cities that needed to be captured to run out the timer and win. That was an unfortunately poor design choice. Now let's compare how it works in Rome I.

PROACTIVITY:

Rome I: When you attack and shot at defenders they actually leave the city and attack you!
Rome II: When you attack and shot at defenders they sit their, shuffle around (which makes them even dying faster, because of exposed flanks).

POSITIONING:

Rome I: If you attack from different positions the AI will send units to meet you halfway and intercept your actions.
Rome II: If you attack from different positions the AI doesn't care. He just positions some archers to the direction of the most enemies and sits everybody else either shuffling around the gate or sitting at the center flag. You kill his archers, than the shufflers at the gates than kill his units in the center. No teamwork at all, interception is something that the AI has never heard of.

BREAKING UNITS:

Rome I: Broken units retreat into the city to reform, while other reinforcements will come and safe their back by intercepting the followers.
Rome II: Broken units try to flee outside the city, getting either slaughtered or run to another gate and flee even when 90% off their friends sit in the city centre ready to continue to fight.

NOW let's assume we had some intelligent and neat game designers at CA. What about improving this feature for Rome II (and not actually make it EVEN worse). Imagine instead of using a flag system using a area system. Each city has different "areas". Each area has a center ground. You can capture the center ground (similar to flags) once a center ground has captured a area is lost. This means that ALL defenders within this center retreat into the next area meeting with new reinforcements. Building a second defense wall. Once this is lost all defenders retreat into the MAIN center area which is pretty small and packed up, as the last refuge. Once enemy forces are able to breach into the center all areas are automatically lost and this is the sign for all defenders to come into the center and fight to death for their city. If they come to late the city surrenders. Further more of course the main goal for units is to defend their areas and especially the center ground (hence intercepting enemy actions like in Rome I)... Imagine what awesome siege experiences we would have?

Over and out!

[jamreal18]

Hope CA notices this thread...

You must post it in official forum...

[Octavius Vatco]

another exact pointing out of Rome 1 being better made than Rome II..

[Canaris]

NOW let's assume we had some intelligent and neat game designers at CA

That is one hell of an asumption bro ...

[CanOmer]

Because of BAI programmer left CA:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Why wasn't Bob Smith (aka R.T. Smith) designer of Rome II?



With a little research I found out Bob Smith was a designer of Rome Total War (and also STW, MTW and M2TW). After M2TW, and with new Warscape engine, we know more or less what happen to Total War games. Was he really what Total War franchise lost after M2TW and what we need now? In his website, he explains about true strategy game:

My Vision For Ntronium
By Founder Bob Smith


I started off my career in the 1980s as an independent developer writing strategy and wargames for people who really appreciated them. I then did various programming jobs, before getting involved with the Total War series, culminating in Medieval 2:Total War*. I'm proud of the work I did on these, especially bringing some hardcore wargaming concepts to the mass market. However; my new venture Ntronium Games is a return to my roots.


Its mission is to develop deep involving strategy/wargames for that discerning group of gamers who love them as much as I do. While everyone likes their work to be popular, Ntronium is definitely founded on the principle that it is better that some people love something, than that everyone merely likes it We'll be targeting the discerning minority of hardcore strategy fans , rather than the mass market.


Internet Distribution
The primary means of distribution, will be direct sales via the internet. This model ensures that more revenue comes to the developer, allowing us to produce quality products without requiring the huge sales needed for a viable retail product. With no need to appeal to the mass market, all development resources can be focused on the things that our discerning customers really care about.


Player Involvement
One of the key focuses at Ntronium is to nurture a dedicated fan base; to encourage people to participate in our forums; tell us what they and want, and suggest their ideas. While of course, we can’t implement everyone’s suggestions, we do believe that good ideas can come from anywhere.


Once the game is released, we want to get feedback from players so that we can continue to refine it.


Continuous Development
The real joy of strategy gaming, is you choose your own way of doing things, control your own destiny, and that every game is different. Which means that, however thoroughly we test, we can never test every possibility. Once thousands of people get their hands on the game, it’s inevitable that some imbalances will be found, the AI may sometimes act dumb, devious players will find exploits, and there may even be some bugs.


Even triple A titles with 100 man test teams suffer these problems, it’s pretty much inevitable with highly complex titles. So rather than pretend it ain’t so, we'll plan to carry on developing the title after launch, issuing patches to fix issues, polish the gameplay, ,add new features and generally try to make it as near perfect as it can reasonably be.


Not that we plan to launch buggy games though. One advantage of internet distribution is that, unlike retail products, we don’t have to decide a launch date months in advance. If a game’s not ready for release, we simply won’t release it.


Design Philosophy
Everyone has their own ideas about what are the design elements in a great game. Here are some of my key concepts that I hope will become hallmarks of Ntronium games.


True strategy games. Players set their own strategy; creating their own story, rather than following along with one the designer wrote.
Mechanisms will be elegant and simple, but (to quote Einstein) no simpler than they need to be. The games will be detailed in key areas, but not require too much micro-management.
Historically themed games will feature lots of accurate history, and mechanisms that try to model reality. Sci-Fi and fantasy games will try to be plausible.
Strong emphasis on multiplayer and on-line play. Mechanisms designed to work well for multi-player.
Strong AI
Epic games, but still playable in a reasonable amount of time. Good replay value.
Strong help and advisor features to help players get to grips with game. No point having features if no-one knows about them, most people would rather play than read a manual.
Attractive presentation, but graphics will never take precedence of gameplay.

I tried to underline the most important part I can say all of it has top importance.


Now, he makes a turn based space strategy game which is very similar to Rome Total War.





He should have been working on Rome 2.

[Rittsy]

Because of BAI programmer left CA:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not to knock him, but that game [Armada 2526 Supernova] he was working on had similar complaints that Rome II had; lack of polish, issues with the AI, stability problems and problems with the combat mechanics.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/armada-2526

Granted, the user score is higher, but not significantly so.

[Lord Baratheon]

Because of BAI programmer left CA:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That explains a lot. I have always felt M2TW had the best battle AI of all the Total War games.

Heck, even the Shogun 2 guy would have been a lot better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbMuQI0ErXQ

[Phier]

The funny thing is sieges were not that great in Rome I or MTW2. Units would get stuck on ladders at times, you had to sort of force them to charge off the walls, that sort of thing.

Its just that they were 1000% better than rome II. I still remember those battles where you had an army 1/4th the side of the attacker and you had to try to hold your own, hoping your flaming arrows would take out a siege tower or the ram before they got to the walls, and then trying to hold the gate vrs all odds while rapidly running your archers into the best firing position.

They were flawed but fun.

[Earl Dibbles Jr]

The funny thing is sieges were not that great in Rome I or MTW2. Units would get stuck on ladders at times, you had to sort of force them to charge off the walls, that sort of thing.

Its just that they were 1000% better. I still remember those battles where you had an army 1/4th the side of the attacker and you had to try to hold your own, open your flaming arrows would take out a siege tower or the ram before they got to the walls, and then trying to hold the gate vrs all odds while rapidly running your archers into the best firing position.

They were flawed but fun.

As much as I hated Medieval 2's inability to place units in certain places during sieges, Rome 2's sieges are a yawn/lag fest.

[Durnaug]

Because of BAI programmer left CA:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nice find. Le rep.

[TheCenturion24]

Ironically, in comparison to Rome II sieges, Rome I sieges are perfect. Brilliant even. I went back to vanilla Rome I the other day, and played a few hours as the Macedonians. There's one thing that Rome II just doesn't hit, that becomes intermediately apparent when playing the original; units in Rome II feel like identical soldiers with different props, while each soldier type in Rome I feels like a very different dude.

Case in point: using phalanx in the well designed city maps in the first game is a very different game to defending as Romans. As Romans I can rely on the Guard button to hold rigid formations in the streets, while phalanx means I'm attempting to keep units at back at range. It just seems to work better.

To top it off, the AI is quite easily capable of playing properly. It retreats when it looses its siege equipment, it sallies forth when it needs to, it attacks without issue, and it can defend intelligently.

I'm not so much putting down Rome II here, but rather the Warscape engine. The siege scripting/mechanics haven't worked properly from the get go.

[Mithridates VI]

I agree that sieges (both walled or unwalled) were better in Rome 1. I really enjoyed play those siege battles. And I mean vanilla Rome 1 because Rome 2 is only Total war game where I have used mods.

[PointOfViewGun]

Rome: Total War? I had a much different experience with that one.

[baptistus]

Rome: Total War? I had a much different experience with that one.

we are talking about SIEGE ok ? not about the bronze egyptians and this kind of stuffs.
Siege AI in rome: total war (even if it is not a perfect siege ai) is far better than the one in Rome 2. And I can make tons of videos to prove it.
But It will be a waste of time for sure.

[PointOfViewGun]

we are talking about SIEGE ok ? not about the bronze egyptians and this kind of stuffs.
Siege AI in rome: total war (even if it is not a perfect siege ai) is far better than the one in Rome 2. And I can make tons of videos to prove it.
But It will be a waste of time for sure.

I'm talking about siege too.

[baptistus]

I'm talking about siege too

-In rome 1, if the AI have more than one rams the AI manage two different attacks at the same time in two different locations. In rome 2 the ai don't know how two make two attacks and don't know how to use two battle rams at the same time
-In rome 1, the AI reuse the towers/ladders. In rome 2 the AI don't reuse the towers/ladders
-In rome 1, the archers help the attackers by providing covering fire during the assault. In rome 2 the archers doesn't help the attackers during the assault and wait for a breach.

You can already watch my video to see the sieges ai of rome 2 with the last beta patch:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ts-and-reviews
I can make a video which proof the ai in rome 1 don't have these problems. But I guess you will say "I didn't noticed it".....
Siege in rome 1 is not perfect at all, but the siege AI in rome 1 is still better than the siege AI in rome 2 without any possible doubt.

[riskymonk]

There's a gap in the market. All good things come to an end. It's now time to start looking at other strategy games. I'd do one based on a small scale, on an island that's in the midst of civil war and various groups, cults and gangs are fighting over very different reasons. The unit sizes would be 10-30, fighting will be done down alleys and streets and there will be no guns just melee weapons.

[AnthoniusII]

Amongst the thousands thread of mine about flawed, missing or forgotten features I forgot to tell everybody about sieges in Rome I.

As we all know routing is a completely broken and mindless feature in Rome II. Unfortunately, it does also affect one of the cool siege features in Rome I, that could have been implemented into Rome II, but somehow it wasn't. You all know we had the flags in cities that needed to be captured to run out the timer and win. That was an unfortunately poor design choice. Now let's compare how it works in Rome I.

PROACTIVITY:

Rome I: When you attack and shot at defenders they actually leave the city and attack you!
Rome II: When you attack and shot at defenders they sit their, shuffle around (which makes them even dying faster, because of exposed flanks).

POSITIONING:

Rome I: If you attack from different positions the AI will send units to meet you halfway and intercept your actions.
Rome II: If you attack from different positions the AI doesn't care. He just positions some archers to the direction of the most enemies and sits everybody else either shuffling around the gate or sitting at the center flag. You kill his archers, than the shufflers at the gates than kill his units in the center. No teamwork at all, interception is something that the AI has never heard of.

BREAKING UNITS:

Rome I: Broken units retreat into the city to reform, while other reinforcements will come and safe their back by intercepting the followers.
Rome II: Broken units try to flee outside the city, getting either slaughtered or run to another gate and flee even when 90% off their friends sit in the city centre ready to continue to fight.

NOW let's assume we had some intelligent and neat game designers at CA. What about improving this feature for Rome II (and not actually make it EVEN worse). Imagine instead of using a flag system using a area system. Each city has different "areas". Each area has a center ground. You can capture the center ground (similar to flags) once a center ground has captured a area is lost. This means that ALL defenders within this center retreat into the next area meeting with new reinforcements. Building a second defense wall. Once this is lost all defenders retreat into the MAIN center area which is pretty small and packed up, as the last refuge. Once enemy forces are able to breach into the center all areas are automatically lost and this is the sign for all defenders to come into the center and fight to death for their city. If they come to late the city surrenders. Further more of course the main goal for units is to defend their areas and especially the center ground (hence intercepting enemy actions like in Rome I)... Imagine what awesome siege experiences we would have?

Over and out!

I was telling exactly the same from the start...Unforthunatly CA has an entirely view of how a siege is done!
I posted two pictures from a siege in the last official patch (11) and allow me to re-post them:

Patch 11 AI for siege:
Defence forrces:
Guarisson of 10 units
A general with 2 archers and 2 javelimen.
Attacking forces.
2 armies
1st with 12 units
2nd with 20 units.
1st army deploys 4 ladders.
General sallies out and elliminate all soldiers that have the ladders when ladders advance ONLY 1 at the time.
The rest of the army does not get near ladders to continue the assault nore they go to fire up the gates!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

2nd army arrives but still no other move to the ladders or to the gate!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That is what i call "smart AI"!

Some people insisted that Rome II is actually better and "smarter" than RomeI.
Compare these photos and description with that of mine describing R1 siege:

Lets remember some sieges fromm Rome I.
Defender: Player with 20 units army.
Attacker : AI player with 1 or 2 armies.
Attacker waits 1-3 turns before attack the city...
Each army of the attacker has atleast 4 ladders, 2 rams, 1-2 tunnels and 1-2 siege towers no matter if any of the attacking army has artilery units or not.
Attacker armies chose different sides to attack and spread out their siege equipment in the maximum places they can fit on...(wall places).
Defender has to man the walls in atleast two sides and have reserves in case walls will be lost in a point.
Tunnels and artilery pieces destroy walls and make new assault paths.

Which of these ellements exist in Rome II AI ?

In RI these besiegers in the pic would massacre my small guarrison in no time!!!!!!!
Not to mention the lack of tunnels and other features of siege warfare of R1.

[Ishan]

2 posts deleted, few edited. If it's not clear to some people then here Rome I = Rome: Total War & Rome II = Total War: Rome 2. And people in this thread are talking about Rome 2 siege AI's drawbacks and compare it with RTW's siege AI over 3 specific points:
1) Pro-activity
2) Positioning
3) Breaking Units

Read the OP again. PM me if anyone has a problem understanding this.

[Ano2]

The siege air was even better in mtw2, it could not only attack different points, it could also breach it's way through 3 layered walls. I remember my shock when I first saw the ai bring it's artillery into the citadel to breach the inner walls. It could also go back to the first gate, pick up the ram and then successfully navigate the streets to take down the inner gates.

The siege AI programming has devolved a lot since then. Shame.