Bombarding cities

[Sealhuntah123]

An idea I had, it would be cool if when sieging a city with artillery support we could have the option to once every turn go into the battlemap as if we were assaulting the city but it would be called Assault:Bombard or something. This would basically mean that you got your army encamped around the city and you get to use up all your onager ammo against the city.

The defenders would probably have some units guarding the walls vulnerable to artillery fire while the rest of the units would seek shelter. Bonus points would be for civilians running around in panic :p

The point of the assault mode is that the goal is not to utterly defeat the enemy or capture the town, it is to wear down the city defenses and troops, just like you would do passively by having onagers in your sieging army, only now you get to experience it yourself in the battle map.

The attacker could then end the assault whenever he wanted, it would count as a succesful bombardment and the siege would continue. Ofcourse the attacker could not end the assault without losing if the defenders sally out and take the fight.

Some feedback on this?

[Aeratus]

You can already do this right now, by entering siege, taking down their walls using onager, and then withdraw from combat. As long as you withdraw and not get routed off the map, your army maintains siege.

But I wouldn't be in favor of expanding artillery in sieges. They are already unrealistically overpowered. A few hits can take down the Theodosian walls on Constantinople, whereas in reality, it could probably take hundreds of shots from onagers without incurring much damage.

[Butan]

As Aeratus said, you can do this by manually entering into combat, emptying your ranged units (onagers and others, as you wish) and retreating all your units from the battlefield.

But I will add one thing: this tactic is not properly represented in the game, and only the veteran knows how to use this. It would gain from being illustrated by the game, in any form, just to tell the player that "you can do this".

One way could be, like Sealhuntah said, to add a dedicated bombardment battle type, where you can not enter the settlement, only weaken its defense.
Other ways would be simply to educate the user in doing so, by hints or tips in-game, or UI help.

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

I used to do this in M2TW, but I didn't know it would still work in Attila. I thought if you retreated from a siege battle it would result in you breaking the siege!

Excellent. Now I will ruin cities.

[Butan]

I also though too, but it seems that as long as you withdraw from your own volition, it counts as a draw and you dont break the siege. The difference between draw-withdrawing and defeat-withdrawing is hard to point out though, I dont know how the game interpret manual and automatic (broken) retreat, especially if only a part of your army retreat manually.


Talking about bombarding: its especially useful with the preserved "settlement damage" condition, not only walls breaches etc...

Say that you have lots of artillery in your besieging army: enable battle, use only flaming/explosive round and aim for houses! When the fire spread nicely, withdraw in formation and next turn attack with the defenders having -10 morale/attack/defense

[Prof]

Just keep besieging the city. Siege escalation will damage the walls and the city itself. It is basically a bombardment and you don't even need siege engines for it to happen.