Castle walls?

[Rainbow]

Keep sieges are quite a bit more complex than just tearing down a wall and rushing in through the gap. In Dominions, we always have then attackers filing in through an open gate, where the defenders are waiting for them in the courtyard. This is a pretty crude picture, which doesn't give our imagination much to work with, but this is because the focus of Dominions is not on the keep sieges.

To imagine how a real keep siege could happen, it could involved many varied strategies. Breaking down the main gate, ladder storming walls, tearing down walls, starving out the defenders, tunneling under walls to make them collapse,. these would just be a few strategies that could be combined in various ways, depending on the layout of the keep and the immediately surrounding area.

Add the many fantasy elements of Dominions two, like flying attackers, magic horns that can bLast down walls, towers and gates, magic that can do pretty much anything, the tactics involved in winning a siege become very complex and varied indeed.

The strength of the attackers and defenders could reflect their ability to chop down and transport lumber to construct siege engines. It is easy to imagine how much more useful a Jotunheim giant would be in a siege on either side of the wall, compared to a puny human. The Jotun are known for hurling spears the size of treetrunks at their enemies. Compared to firing longbow arrows at the uncoming gate ram, a few giant tossed boulders would probably produce vastly better results.

In the case of city guards or similar units that get a defence bonus, think 'people who are trained specifically for defending a castle'.

I think keep sieges work very well in Dominions. There is no micromanagement at all, and we still have the major important elements, like the defence value of the fortification, the relative sizes of the besieging and besieged forces, attrition from lack of supplies, opportunity for relief forces to arrive, the ability to make sorties out of the fortification (break siege and retreat back inside), etc.

/Rainbow

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Merry Jolkar:
What is the formula to determine how much damage is done to a castle wall in a siege? Some forts seem impentetrable.
Thanks much, Merry

Bring 4 siege golems with your army... and you will be storming the castle very soon.

The spell crumble also works great.

[ June 24, 2004, 18:13: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

[Ragnarok-X]

Even one golem will give a big advantage.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
Are the attackers going to take hammers or pound at a wall with their fists until it breaks down?

If you're a Siege Golem, yeah, that's actually how you do it.

[PvK]

It's not crap, it's abstract.

And, there are historical cases where a very small number of men held a castle for a very long time against a large army.

The formula is obviously a fairly simple abstraction, but I don't think it's unreasonable, or that it gives undo advantage to either side.

Yes breaking things tends to be easier than building them, but seiges greatly favor the defender if the fort is well-designed and competently garrisoned. A defender isn't necessarily rebuilding a wall as it gets damaged, but he might be keeping people from getting near the wall with dropped objects, boiling oil, etc.

PvK

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
That formula seems like crap to me. Destroying things is much easier than repairing it. Can you think of a situation where ten guys on the outside take a catapult to the wall and launch rocks at it, which is how most people would try to break down a wall. Each time a rock from the catapult hits a wall, a dent is created and bricks are knocked from the wall, which is what I think catapult rocks tend to do to walls. When the defenders see a dent, say there's a hundred of them, they all swarm out to that place (and keep in mind that catapult rocks tend to hit the outside of the wall instead of the inside surface) and with bricks and mortar, repair it until it's good as new. The ten men outside can hurl as many rocks as they want, but the hundred in the castle will keep coming out and repairing the wall forever.

What if there was no siege engine involved, which I assume is the case because siege power is dependent on strength. Are the attackers going to take hammers or pound at a wall with their fists until it breaks down?

What exactly is the siege simulation simulating?

[HotNifeThruButr]

PvK, some "forts" may just be watchtowers or mausoleums. But I guess it works, it's just that darned message that says "The fort is being repaired faster than our men can breach it" or something to that effect.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Ragnarok-X:
Even one golem will give a big advantage.

I'm sieging one of the castles owned by C'Tis (AI controlled) and I have 3 ArchDevils(SC), 2 demonlords, 6 siege golems, 40 various troop types plus 50 fiends of darkness. The Last message I got was the fortress remains unharmed.

Thats one of the reasons I love the XL maps... guarantees huge battles!

[JDScherrey]

I think this is very realistic when you really look back on history. Two vast armies fighting it out. One army lined up with a sea of mighty war machines and the other hunkered up in a castle.

Each side having a ball throwing boulders and flaming oil on each other until someone cries 'timeout!'

Then one side builds more war machines while the other repairs the castle. It happened all the time! I swear! Really....really....

And of course those being seiged may not have food or water...but they have tons of construction materials. That is a given...duh!

-Christopher

[PvK]

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
PvK, some "forts" may just be watchtowers or mausoleums. But I guess it works, it's just that darned message that says "The fort is being repaired faster than our men can breach it" or something to that effect.

Yes, the description is worded in a way that is easy to take literally, which ends up not making sense in all cases. It's just not meant to be taken literally in all cases. It could say something like "the enemy have fortified the mausoleum, and our attempts to break in and force a battle have been repeatedly thwarted by the defenders" or or something, but that would be a bunch of work to no effect. I just use my imagination, if necessary.

I have yet to see anyone do a satisfying detailed tactical treatment of seige warfare in a computer game. Even games that focus on castles and seiges get all sorts of things terribly wrong, from the point of view of someone who knows the subject and is being critical. Here it's really not the focus, and I don't mind the abstraction. I'm glad that it actually seems to be a very appropriate abstraction which has some interesting elements and tricks, and has pretty realistic net results (forts can be either easy or hard to take, and storming a good well-defended castle can be extremely deadly, but units that need to eat can be starved out, etc.).

PvK