Siege Units

[NTJedi]

Not sure if Dominions_3 will have siege units or not... but I believe it will be possible to make at least some siege units via modding.
Siege units such as a Battering Ram or Siege Tower which allow for storming more quickly, catapults which can be used on the battlefield for long distance area attacks during a battle, and even design some siege units which can be used as counters to target and more easily destroy siege type units.
I believe most siege units should exist on the battlefield where opponents have an opportunity to destroy them.

Would love to hear ideas
.................. especially developer ideas.

[b]
EDIT: Just wanted to add I don't know the overall opinion about the mass-castle strategy currently in Dominions, but if designed correctly siege units might address this issue where gamers focus on building of castles more strategically instead of everywhere.

[Endoperez]

Battering ram - useless on battlefield, needed to burst the gate in. What do you think the besiegers are doing? Siege towers would be really strange, as for some reason units can only attack through the gate.

Catapults are probably trivial to mod in, after all, Boulders already exist. They can fly as far as you want, as long as you increase the catapult's strength. The stronger it is, the better it is at breaking castles.

I woudln't except siege engines in Dom3. Sappers, Siege Engineers, Golden Era down-to-earth engineer/philosophers (whatever they are called), and on the other hand, Guardians, Ghoul Guardians, Man's Tower Guards, C'tissian City Guards etc have been enough for both Dom:PPP and DomII.

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:
Battering ram - useless on battlefield, needed to burst the gate in. What do you think the besiegers are doing? Siege towers would be really strange, as for some reason units can only attack through the gate.

Yes of course they'd be useless on the battlefield... their whole purpose is to storm the castle more quickly. The reason for their appearance on the battlefield is so that people trying to break the siege can destroy siege units.

Endoperez said:
Catapults are probably trivial to mod in, after all, Boulders already exist. They can fly as far as you want, as long as you increase the catapult's strength. The stronger it is, the better it is at breaking castles.

Not just boulders perhaps flaming boulders as well or perhaps it can toss an animal which spreads disease. Different catapults for different nations as well.

Endoperez said:
Sappers, Siege Engineers, Golden Era down-to-earth engineer/philosophers (whatever they are called), and on the other hand, Guardians, Ghoul Guardians, Man's Tower Guards, C'tissian City Guards etc have been enough for both Dom:PPP and DomII.

Yes but those are all units with two feet also siege units such as battering rams, catapults, and siege towers were used on castles in history... I see no reason they can't be used on castles within Dominions which takes many units from history.

[Endoperez]

NTJedi said:
Yes of course [siege engines]äd be useless on the battlefield... their whole purpose is to storm the castle more quickly. The reason for their appearance on the battlefield is so that people trying to break the siege can destroy siege units.

Not just boulders perhaps flaming boulders as well or perhaps it can toss an animal which spreads disease. Different catapults for different nations as well.

Yes but those are all units with two feet also siege units such as battering rams, catapults, and siege towers were used on castles in history... I see no reason they can't be used on castles within Dominions which takes many units from history.

It is quite hard to be able to destroy siege engines on the battlefield, without new commands that would be added in. Killing specialized commanders is easier, with assassination already in the game.

Flaming boulders (burning stone? ) would be directed to the defenders, as the disease-corpses. That wouldn't work well, unless you actually wanted to be able to slowly kill the defenders without actual battle.

And, do you really except the Siege Engineers personally walk next to the castle, and pound the wall to dust? I think the actual engineering part is hidden, but I don't mind that, personally.

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:
It is quite hard to be able to destroy siege engines on the battlefield, without new commands that would be added in. Killing specialized commanders is easier, with assassination already in the game.

Of course it should be hard otherwise these uncommon units wouldn't have much long term value. The only units which should get unique commands for attacking siege units would be anti-siege units as mentioned earlier.

Endoperez said:
Flaming boulders (burning stone? ) would be directed to the defenders, as the disease-corpses. That wouldn't work well, unless you actually wanted to be able to slowly kill the defenders without actual battle.

Burning stone... yes... it is a magical realm and types of oil and fuel can also make this work. Some units might be so strong that you're main interest may be to try giving them a disease or crushing them with a boulder. Different catapults can have different sized boulders as well... I wonder what size boulder the Jotuns would use?

Endoperez said:
And, do you really except the Siege Engineers personally walk next to the castle, and pound the wall to dust? I think the actual engineering part is hidden, but I don't mind that, personally.

I don't expect battering rams or siege towers to do anything on the battlefield or very very little. Their purpose is to allow storming to occur more quickly... when they are on the battlefield it provides players a chance to destroy siege equipment.


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These can be units on the battlefield which their main purpose is off the battlefield... except for maybe the catapult.

[Morkilus]

I'd love to have include siege weaponry in a mod, it's just that I'm completely inexperienced with graphics... maybe Illwinter will chime in on whether or not the gfx are in there already so Wish_4_blood_slaves doesn't have to start

There's already some sort of machine in the UlmPunk mod, I don't remember what it does, though. Giving a unit a "spell" as a special ability is possible in mods, isn't it? Some sort of machine that casts Flying Shards or Blade Wind would be sweet...

[Argitoth]

Siege units seem like a good idea to me. The only thing is that some of us don't care to use our imagination to see how it might work. The only problem I see would be the huge balance issues. On a further note: Bog Beast is a siege unit.

But one thing I'm concered about is the graphical side. There's three ways I can think of making the graphics work for a standard catapault.

1. Graphics act like arrows. They fly, fall, hit the ground, and that's it. Disadvantage: It ignores the fact that boulders roll.

2. Graphics act like a 1-round summon spell. Catapault shoots, boulder appears ontop of a square of units, boulder rolls (moves) one or two squears. Disadvantage: You don't get to see the boulders fly.

3. A combination of the two where the boulder acts like it has cast a targeting spell, but when it hits a target, a boulder appears as a 1-round summon spell. Disadvantage: Is it even possible? And then since it's treated as a spell, if you have 5 catapaults, won't battles take way longer?

[Saber Cherry]

NTJedi said:

Of course it should be hard otherwise these uncommon units wouldn't have much long term value. The only units which should get unique commands for attacking siege units would be anti-siege units as mentioned earlier.

Siege weapons had no long-term value. Nobody carried battering rams and siege towers from city to city, at least in countries with trees. All I know indicates that they're universally constructed on the spot (though I'm not an expert on the subject). It might be interesting to add grappling-hook special forces, or wall-climbing ninja, who can attack inside a castle during a siege... but mobile siege units is more "Warcraft" than "Dominions".

[Graeme Dice]

NTJedi said:
Yes of course they'd be useless on the battlefield... their whole purpose is to storm the castle more quickly. The reason for their appearance on the battlefield is so that people trying to break the siege can destroy siege units.

Then create a unit with whatever strength and siege bonuses you want, give it an attack that does 0 damage without adding strength, and whatever other stats you want. Then you can pick an image that looks like what you want. All of this can be currently done in Dom2.

Yes but those are all units with two feet also siege units such as battering rams, catapults, and siege towers were used on castles in history... I see no reason they can't be used on castles within Dominions which takes many units from history.

There's absolutely no reason they couldn't be used, except that nobody has bothered to mod them.

[Chazar]

So why not mod a unit that has 1 strat move, 0 battlefield move, no meele attack, a huge siege bonus and a powerful ranged attack with just one ammo, is vulnerable to fire, a mindless construct, immune to poison, a little resistant to cold, has decent hitpoints but no armor? You can have all this in Dom2 if I am not mistaken.

I do not worry about history too much, but I worry about fun. So where is the fun of gameplay in this siege engine proposal? It was fun in the WarlordsII & III to move siege engines around that provided a nice bonus to your overall army, but which was crap when it stood on the frontline. Since they were slow, one would move a siege engine by its own ahead to the next target, so your enemy could sent fast units to intercept it. That was fun. However I cannot see how this would carry over to Domininos: the scale is much larger, and intercepting armies doesnt work in Dom2. (Hopefully there is a command in Dom3, which gives fast units a chance to defend one or two neighboring provinces to allow some limited interception.)

However, I do see a problem with sieges in Dom2, too: Where is the point for besieged troops to try and break the siege? If they wait they have their towers firing as a helper. The only reason might be starvation, but this is hardly an issue thanks to lab-teleportation of wineskins into sieged castles. Recovering tax and gem-resources? Hmm, not that urgent, is it?

So maybe every break siege attempt may recover some castle defense points and thus prolong the siege, thus modelling that the sortie of the defenders interrupted the enemies siege. Should be based on the summedup strength of the troops that try to break the siege and the number of battle turns that they manage to survive, so that continually breaking sieges with a single scout won't have any effect at all. But then again it should be good enough to set off the loss of the troops for the next few siege rounds, too. Hmm...