Siege defense in 2.3

[Smikis]

as im playing as milan , didnt played lots , so i dont have late period troops
but defending with milan spear militia , and genoe crossbowmen ( or how its called ) is way too easy

i play at vh/vh ,
and problem is , when you get attacked by 800 units army ( playing on normal unit scale 72 at most )
and defending with 350~
wining heroic victory and loosing only 21~ is kinda strange..

those italian militias now are surely too strong , even if you dont have crossbowmens in defense , and while battles last longer towers still 1 shot everyone , thus having greater impact .

and morale. i dont know if it was changed, but i never had so many enemy routs in 1.1 or 2.1 ltc ( didnt play 2.2 with unoficial )
after around 20-50% units die even before breaking down gates .
and another 10% dies in melee combat at gates.. everyone go rout and its gg .. in that time you loose 20~ units and kill 750~

i won like this in each siege defense

there is few things that should be nerfed/fixed
its tower power , and fire arrow bug fix ? or was that made to help ai

seems each time i make siege on enemy , my first ram will burn 95%
and enemy ram will never burn :O

anyway , gates hp needs nerf , if you have 5~ genoe xbowmens party , and manage to setup that around 80% of them shoot ,
by the time gates go down 50% of army will be dead

[Klink]

Italian militias are strong, that's their main selling point. And Genoese crossbowmen are some of the best in the game. Choose a different faction if you don't like it. I suggest the French, their militia units are utterly rotten.

[Smikis]

Italian militias are strong, that's their main selling point. And Genoese crossbowmen are some of the best in the game. Choose a different faction if you don't like it. I suggest the French, their militia units are utterly rotten.

well i tryed portugals which seems imposible on vh/vh
as they have no money at all.. they have 2 towns.. one who generates decent money another is fort who makes 500 ? and units they have is crap..., hardly can beat rebels..


as on other sidenotes. i defend mostly against venice which have same italian militia and xbowmens .

but loosing 20 troops in defense with almost full siege by ai is joke ..

[thecactusman17]

I have always used archers as my primary small defensive force in M2TW, but this is just ridiculous. Archers are simply too powerful thnks to the new rebalancing, especially against cavalry units and to a lesser extent any sort of light infantry as is common through the opening of te game. Large stacks of primarily archers can get by with less than 1/3rd of high-defense infantry guarding the gate in anything short of an actual tower approach, thanks mostly to the vastly improved accuracy. My English Longbowmen have gone from being merely effective to outright frightening, capable of repelling forces well over their size and strength. Even with fire arrows on, the accuracy at longer ranges is downright devestating.

I would actuall say that thanks to this ultra-buff and the total nerfing of Cavalry (which I cannot for the life of me coerce into surviving more than a few seconds against almost anything, including archers and peasants--on MeDIUM DIFFICULTY) has actually unbalanced the game completely in favor of archer/heavy infantry armies. I can't imagine that Egypt or Poland would fare well in the campaign.

[Ma'ahes]

The only beef I have with siege battles (and none of these come w/ LTC, it's all vanilla) is that the AI is utterly retarded when it comes to using reinforcements (if they use any...most of the time three armies take turns attacking, unless they have cata's or treb's), and the ballista towers seem overpowered. No, not in the sense of a cannon tower's ability to take down 20% of the army by the time it reaches the gate; more like the uncanny ability for it to take down at least two rams. This wouldn't be bad except for the habit of the AI to send everything it has with one ram....so, the entire army just stands there as it sends guys back to grab another ram. Yes, this is on very hard battle difficulty, lol. Makes me sad, since I never get massive sieges until Mongols, and even then it's not very challenging....

[Foreign Fruitcake]

I think calling Italian Militia infantry, militia is something of a misnomer. I am certain a knowledgable Italian fan of the game came can come up with something that is authentic and separates them from the "militia" concept of other western powers.

[Lusted]

which I cannot for the life of me coerce into surviving more than a few seconds against almost anything, including archers and peasants--on MeDIUM DIFFICULTY)

Difficulty has nothing to do with how long units survive, just don't frontally charge units, cav in LTC 2.3 are meant for flank and rear charging, or for frontal charges if the enemy is close to breaking.

[thecactusman17]

Which I do, often against porly protected forces. they make their way through, but then the besieged units do massive damage before I can run them back out.

BTW, I'm not trying to sound angry or whiney, I actually like most of the changes you made. Just think that maybe you went a little too far in one or two rebalancing decisions.

[Lusted]

Cav are only going to have very limited use in sieges in 2.3, you should be using heavy inf for your siege assaults. And yes archers are more powerful, but so are the ais as well, i've lost quite a few units when i've failed to deal with the ai missile units.

[Klink]

Well, those who don't like the unit changes for 2.3 can do like me and use the unit and projectile values from 2.2. Just remember to change the unit and hp sizes for bodyguards, it appears the game doesn't like the bigger bodyguards or something. If you only want to reduce missile potency, you can go to descr_projectile.txt and remove the accuracy values for the various arrows there.

That's the beauty of LTC, it's the moddable mod above all other.

[rdbrady]

Poland has a lot of missile cavalry, yes? They shouldn't be affected too much, except by the change in cavalry unit size. Besides, if you time things right, you can always use the superior mobility of cavalry to flank a unit.

[DrJambo]

Yeah, there's still a few nice tweaks CA could do to AI siege assaults, like for instance holding back their cavalry while bringing the ram to the gate. It's strange because they sometimes do leave their cavalry back... I just can't work out what the deciding factor is yet ... it might be when they've also built siege towers...

One thing though, if the AI didn't protect the ram, an opportunistic human would just send out some cavalry to destroy the unit carrying the ram as it approached the gate.

Regarding cavalry I don't follow the theory that all cavalry should be solely used for flank and rear attacks. The heavy cavalry with lances should be more than able to frontally charge units that aren't spearmen, and even if they are spearmen, the spearmen should still take some losses from the charge. Otherwise, what's then the counter for dismounted knights?

[Silent Assassin]

Genoses crossbowmen are the best you can have from cities early in the game great in melee and missle they are a very good unit except that if a cavalery charge them right they will route fast

[Queen Annes Revenge]

Otherwise, what's then the counter for dismounted knights?

Archers. Lots of them.

[DrJambo]

Archers. Lots of them.

I wouldn't have exactly classed archers as counters to units that can have heavy mail or better armour and large shields! Unless of course you are solely referring to the dismounted knights that have 2-handed weapons!

[Jopo]

After playing a couple of siege battles, the AI does bunch up at the gate while the ram is well..., ramming. I am no modder, but it seems to me if the rate of fire was reduced by 1/3 or so then the casualties would not be so high. Making it a better fight.

The amount of damage done by my Archers is enough for me. I want to fight it out, not watch them get slaughtered before they even enter.

Is it possible to reduce or even turn off the towers?

[Queen Annes Revenge]

i agree that archers at the walls are absolutely devastating. the cpu caught me off guard once when it sieged a wooden castle, and all i had were four units of peasant archers and one spear militia. but after repelling their ladder attack with my spears, i was able to continually shoot everyone who was carrying the battering ram. thus they had to keep replacing men at the ram, hardly having time to get a shot in at my gates. i ended up torching the ram and winning.

it's looking to me that a good amount of archers defending a settlement can easily cause so much damage to the attackers that they won't be able to win when they break through.