Siege Units

[NTJedi]

Chazar said:
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.

Of course it can be done in Dominions_2, but I thought of the idea about the same time I posted the topic. Someone can do this right now if they wish. I'm not going to start since Dominions_3 is right around the corner... perhaps the developers already added these type of units.

Chazar said:
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? ..... However I cannot see how this would carry over to Domininos: the scale is much larger, and intercepting armies doesnt work in Dom2.

I see great fun in watching a bleeding cow fly a long distance across the battlefield and then giving disease to some archers or even cavalry still on hold with the hold&attack setting.
I see great fun imagining what the Jotun giants boulder will do, or the flaming boulder from Abysia, or a boulder from Ermor doing possibly fear... the different types of heavy long range attacks can really be interesting.
Even some siege tower might be able to be made more interesting to match the different types in history. I believe Dominions can have these type of units... the units just need to be setup with game balance in mind.

Chazar said:
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?

The point of deciding when or if to break a siege is a tough choice. The player must decide if forces elsewhere can rescue and if the troops inside are strong enough to do worthy damage. I believe gem income is maintained for the owners of the castle. We'll see what's happened in the demo before much can really be commented on castle defense.

Chazar said:
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...

Some interesting points... we'll have to see once the demo or the game arrives.

[NTJedi]

Morkilus said:
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

Yes I would also like to know whether or not the gfx for siege engines already exist. Knowing whether or not to start the gfx would be great information.

Chazar said:
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...

Yes many new possibilities exist with spells taken into consideration as an option as well. I'm eager to see what Dominions3 will have to offer.

[NTJedi]

Argitoth said:
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.

Very true... I know that for sure. The key is game balance and using the options available to make the units interesting and worthy for sieges against fortifications.

Argitoth said:
The only problem I see would be the huge balance issues.

Yes the cost of the unit, its siege bonus and battlefield damage all must be taken into consideration. We don't want these units to be too powerful or too weak. If myself or someone else releases a Siege MOD adjustments can be made as time passes. If siege units are one of the easter egg features in Dominions3 then balance can be seen via patches.

Argitoth said:
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?

Well we'll have to see what options will exist within DOM_3... it may provide a 4th or 5th option. Based on the three listed above I would probably use option_1 or option_3. I'll give it more thought after I see what options Dominions_3 offers.

[Saber Cherry]

If the modding tools are sufficiently powerful, it should be possible for a high-cost Engineer unit to gain the "Summon Allies" command, that summons an immobile siege weapon. Sounds to me like a good compromise between abstract and concrete. The seige weapons should have enough upkeep to model several soldiers manning them and many noncombattants maintaining them. Hopefully Doms III will allow disbanding, but if not, the ranged ones would still be good on the defensive.

[DominionsFan]

I think the mod tools will be powerful enough to add siege type units for sure. The Doms2 modding ability was very good imo, and it will be even more powerful in Doms3 as we all know.

[NTJedi]

Saber Cherry said:
If the modding tools are sufficiently powerful, it should be possible for a high-cost Engineer unit to gain the "Summon Allies" command, that summons an immobile siege weapon. Sounds to me like a good compromise between abstract and concrete.

Yes that's one option. Since we're not getting a demo until after the game is released perhaps the developers could give a pre-copy of the modding documentation.

Saber Cherry said:
The seige weapons should have enough upkeep to model several soldiers manning them and many noncombattants maintaining them. Hopefully Doms III will allow disbanding, but if not, the ranged ones would still be good on the defensive.

I agree their upkeep will have to model several soldiers manning the siege engines. I ponder what the Modding and MapEdit documentation for DOM_3 will include that's new. It will be interesting to see how fortification types have been improved as well.

[Fate]

Obviously, a seige bonus has already been implemented, but what about the other effects of seige weapons? They were also used to kill defenders. Maybe some modelling of that could be included in-game? (maybe as a scalable ability, which does x damage to a random, possibly non-commader unit, every turn. Or acts like a certain # of arrows fired at a random unit).

[Endoperez]

I don't know if I'd like that. It would be possible, of course. Say, Flames from the Sky-like effect, 8 non-resistable armor-piercing damage to at max 50% of the defenders, defense allowed.

However, that would kill all mages, who shouldn't be on the walls. It'd be nice, if it was implemented properly, but having a poor implementation wouldn't be fun at all.

[Fate]

I think it might be fair if it didn't hit commanders (though then it would just make normal troops worse than they already are... Hmmm....)

[NTJedi]

Fate said:
Obviously, a seige bonus has already been implemented, but what about the other effects of seige weapons? They were also used to kill defenders. Maybe some modelling of that could be included in-game? (maybe as a scalable ability, which does x damage to a random, possibly non-commader unit, every turn. Or acts like a certain # of arrows fired at a random unit).

Depends on what's available via modding in DOM_3. Ideally I hope Dominions_3 will have or allow via modding the ability to create unique siege engines for each nation.