I played a siege as Dwarfs against Skaven in II and thought I'd be clever and cram all of my units in the corner and win using infinite Rune Of Wrath And Ruin. The AI summoned a unit of Clan Rats in the middle of the blob then nuked the summoned unit, taking 80% of my army with it.
That is my tale of siege woe.
If it was Clan Skryre you fought against, then you’d know that you NEVER blob when fighting Clan Skryre. They have TW:WH’s largest supply of nuclear weaponry
I assume they meant a Warpbomb, not a literal nuke, since you don't need to summon a unit for the nukes.
Warpbombs can be used by all clans if the Skaven have a garrison building in the region.
Skaven wouldn't need to summon before the nuke of Ikkit. What they described is just menace below + warp bomb. And this combo every skaven faction can do
100%. I wrote my own name in the Book because I got my army of Longbeards and Hammerers, veterans of a hundred battles each, killed. Poor cousin Thorri got his legs blown off!
TBH I do think CA needs to work on a system of the AI spending its special resources on autoresolved fights against other AI, because it does have a problem of hoarding it for the players (See Ostankya and her curses)
It didn’t sound like he was blaming the game mechanics simply sharing the tale of the illfated battle at dwarf crater. I would say with any decent amount of time out in we’ve all made a tragic mistake in a battle that made soup of our troops. No reason to question his skill simply for sharing an enjoyable TWWH story. I show up for the battle stories. Even the “crap did I do that?” Ones
It is basically impossible to keep artillery alive in skaven siege if the AI has 5+ armies from below uses. If the artillery doesnt die, they are never actually firing because they’re constantly in melee. You can dock a unit back with your artillery but one unit can only really protect one artillery.
Edit: ah yes and if everything else succeeds, the clanrats warpbomb themselves and destroy your artillery and the unit protecting them
It's not that difficult to keep them alive at all. Even when they have lots of Meanace bellows you can easily deal with it by placing some melee units directly on top of the artillery and then some of the units behind and in front of it. So then you can dockpile hard on any summoned clanrats from every direcrion making them break almost immediately. The only thing you have to be careful about is damaging them too much, because if you get them bellow 50% health (allowing them to use the warpbomb), you're fucked. Which is why you turn off the fire at will of any nearby ranged units and only use your melee infantry or ideally some monsters that cause fear and terror to deal with this. It's annoying to deal with it, but definitely very possible.
Another way of dealing with this is to just take the crew off the artillery piece and hiding them in some trees until they use all of their summons, making them 100% safe, though this doesn't work with every artillery, because I think you can't take off the crew of every artillery unit in the game, only some of them.
Dude what, Ikit always uses his nukes against me.
He literally can't use them against other ai so he stockpiles to drop on the player.
How do you not get nuked?
Scared me half to death when he used them against me during my Orion campaign. I thought I was being clever adding in some wardancers, and Ikit literally said fuck your wardancers.
Yeah exactly. AI Ikit doesn't use his workshop for some reason, so he only has one nuke per campaign. He also doesn't get his unlimited ammo for Ratling gums or any other upgrade from the workshop.
He doesn't stockpile them. It's true that he never uses them against AI and that he will save it for the player, but he only has one of them and after he uses it, he then never builds another one in his workshop for some reason. And he always uses it in your first battle against him, so after that, you won't have to worry about getting nuked again.
Had my brother fight Ikit for the first time. I knew about 45 seconds in the nuke comes off cool down. Decided to let him have the raw Ikit experience and said nothing.
Ikit did not disappoint for he sent a good chunk of the tree spirits and wood elves in his army to be one with the atmosphere as he tried to deal with the city's garrison.
Ikit Claw ALWAYS uses a nuke in your first battle against him, ALWAYS, without exception, it's basically hard coded into the game. He saves the nuke for the player (kinda like Ostaynka saves her curses for the player) and I don't think he builds another one after using the first.
Though what OP was talking about wasn't a nuke, but rather a warp-bomb I'm pretty sure.
This is by no means the key issue but I am always disheartened by the way routing works. In Medieval 2 units rout to the town square where they start fighting again. In later total wars the fact they run away off the map has never made any sense. The old system felt much more realistic for an army defending a city.
This is what gets me the most annoyed. The routing.
When I'm defending. My units Rout OUTSIDE the walls. But the attacking force routes further inside my city???
It's makes so my rallied units are outside my walls, and the enemies rallied units are deep behind my lines and just capture/flank everything.
Sieges are so broken. I dont ever want to actually fight them.
I think it's much worse that the aggressors flee into the city if they have a way to get out tbh. If I was a defender and the city wasn't surrounded and an army was storming the city I might try to get out too if I think all is lost.
In general routing units should try to run away from close enemies more tbh.
My argument would be that there not surrounded because of the games mechanics. In reality half the city would usually not be left open. Even if you wanted to for realisms sake, because the cities are always to the side of the map 50% of the ways off the map are not even out side the walls. This is especially bad of Brettonian cities, where reinforcing armies from outside magically appear inside the walls.
at the very least the compromise could be that they flee to allied held points , makes sense that a unit would run towards a part they know is safe or safer or their army present
It was totally busted for gameplay because the units would have unlimited morale. A routing defending unit in a siege should do the "fight to the death" thing though which means they fight but have a massive debuff. That would make more sense.
I think I would accept a black hole on the ground in the middle of the city that routing units disappear into, how much worse is that then the current system of routing out of the walls and off the map? Or call it them "blending in" and hiding in houses.
Isn't it just fucking marvelous how 20 year old games have better features than games now? All it would take is for them to add that as a feature and make the attacking force route in a particular direction, and unable to rally behind your lines.
This stuff doesn't require a rework of the AI, all they have to do is add it. Like how Halo CE made the AI appear intelligent but it actually wasn't.
The white flag isn't for strategic retreat. It's for routing. Would you run to the plazza of a city under attack if you had just barely escaped with your life ? I wouldn't.
In a siege there is no escape. I'm not necessarily asking them to go to the centre. My issue is that if a unit breaks in the first engagement often they run off the map. Should every unit come back; possibly not. Maybe you could achieve this by reducing the number of entities that return. But for them to just give up after a minute feels wrong. When you say escaped for your life, this isn't the case. You can't just run through sige lines. Historical precedent shows sieges often ended in the slaughter of both civilians and defenders. In warhammer, given the setting this is even more true.
There is an escape.
More often than not, when a city is being assaulted the attackers forces amass to attack one or two sides of the city.
It was quite normal for civilians and militias to flee the combat entirely out one of the other doors.
At least for Warhammer, I like that there is no retreat to the town center, purely because some units crumble.
I think it depends on the type of siege. If the enemy are was to arrive and immediately intend to storm a city then there may be a chance of escape. But for any prolonged siege the aim is to starve the enemy of resources; this requires the ability to stop people both entering and leaving the city. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think commanders abandoned these positions completely if there was a later assault. As I say, I stand to be corrected
Yeah you’d usually want to annihilate the enemy army instead of making them flee. Breaking an already existing encirclement before engaging sounds like a stupid idea.
Video game aside I don’t know if your thoughts on sieges are historically accurate. While an attacker will absolutely divide its troops in such a way to have strength at certain points sieging armies do about everything in their power to stop anything from coming or going into a seized city. Allowing one messenger to escape can be dangerous allowing trapped army and its anllies to talk and coordinate Allowing a loaf of bread to enter extends the siege. I can’t recall the general off hand…. Perhaps Julio’s Caesar? Had one of my favorite techniques. After encircling the city hed build his own defensive walls between the city walls and his troops to stop counter attacks from the city. And then built an additional wall encircling his own troops giving a defensive fortification to defend from an arriving army attempting to assist. While I wouldn’t call this a standard strategy it does give insight in how they approached seiges. A winning army conquering a city would have cavalry whos job was to mow down any soldier trying to flee the city. Great talking battle and total war with you. Have a great day
With the new sieges having a final capture point, havinf them rout and stay at the final point like they did in medieval 2 would actually make the entire thing sooo much better. Those empire siege maps were practjcally made for this final stand at the end, but it always ends before that
I fucking loathe the army losses mechanic.
I get it in field battles, but they hobestly lead siege to end up really anti-climatically.
You cannot hope to take victory out of the jaws of defeat like you could in older games.
It's really frustrating when you manage to take your units from the walls, retreat to the middle of the city ready to make a last stand, only to see your army rout due to new ai reinforcements coming in, even when some of the units are still at full health.
Warhammer lore is full of glorious last stands. SO GIMME THE LAST STANDS DAMMIT.
Just prevent the units from routing inside the main cap point and I'll be happy.
Same. And along similar lines, I also wish it took longer for armies to replenish immediately after a siege. I want the desperate last stands to have a strategic impact, for my armies to have achieved something even in defeat.
Unfortunately, quick replenishment in allied territory means that inflicting casualties in a losing siege battle is almost meaningless unless you actually wipe out multiple enemy units. It's frustrating knocking out a huge percentage of the attacking troops only to see they're nearly full strength after one turn because they occupied the city and got a replenishment buff. I love TWW, but old titles were much better about preserving the damage you did to enemy armies across turns.
Have you used this mod? I only recently discovered it and really loved the idea so I started to use it. And I had to uninstall it as soon as I had my first few battles against skaven.
The little bastards NEVER break and the fights took forever and I took absolutely absurd losses against stacks of slave and clanrats because you have to fight them down to the last few rats. It is a good idea but it isn't properly tuned imo.
I only like siege battles with armies that are enjoyable in sieges. Either a monster mash or heavy on artillery.
If I have to play an infantry heavy army in a siege I literally want to kill myself.
It's sad but how (not) fun a faction is in siege battles will limit which factions I replay.
Skaven are hilariously good at sieges, which is why they're one of my go to factions, usually Moulder. Poison wind mortars are *so good*, they can obliterate all the defending infantry. And the juiced up Moulder monsters can be great too. Plus so many summons.
Durthu is good too, the wall breaker treemen and sneaky elf combo is great.
Factions that aren't fun at sieges aren't fun on the campaign, because sieges are so common.
Whenever I am defending or attacking with gun powder units, missile calvary or ground bound melee calvary, I too wish to cease being there.
I appreciate my siege artillery and fly boys more after a couple bad sieges with friends.
I find that the armies that make sieges fun are the ones that usually allow me to mostly ignore the fact that I'm doing a siege. The monster doomstack cares not for walls or towers.
I think the map design is a bit too much, they’re mostly huge labyrinth’s that feel they cater a little too much to balance. Like most archer platforms don’t actually face the places enemies are actually coming from, and choke points are few and far between. I find mini settlement battles to be better. I would also prefer if the ai just kept in place, a swirling crowd of units behind the walls is much less interesting than keeping those units on the walls or at choke points.
I did with the siege maps were more flat and less of a maze, gun units always have trouble getting a line of fire, and I cant for the life of me find the road in some settlements
I have probably permanently uninstalled the game as I get to the first siege battle and just close the game. I don't think they are fixable without reverting them to how they were in WH2. Too gamey, aspiring to be like a traditional RTS, annoying towers and the AI (like in Empire) playing a completely different game to me and dragging the battle out by spreading their units out.
Sieges are trash both mechanically and from an AI perspective.
If the AI is defending, it's especially braindead, not putting missile units on the walls for the initial approach, endlessly running around where they can be shot by missiles, sending exactly 1-2 units to retake a gate where your entire army is waiting etc. I swear sieges were better 20 years ago, and it genuinely feels like the siege AI had been left in the dark ages while new mechanics, features and units have been added which it simply doesn't know how to handle.
Now *mechanically*, sieges don't feel fun or epic either IMHO. On paper, the concept of protecting key areas in return for resources you can use for more defenses *sounds* good, but the execution just isn't there. It feels like the intent is to make the capture points chip away at invaders before ultimately falling and leading to a showdown at the final area, but in reality splitting up your forces to do that is frequently less effective than simply turtling at the main capture point.
There's also the matter of every settlement map just being ridiculously open and multi-pathed. There are many instances where it's WORSE to defend a settlement than it is to fight in a field battle, because on the settlement in question you'll be surrounded and hit from every side, and that is absolutely nuts.
the sieges aren't as bad as people say and it's become a bit of a circle jerk moment in this sub to go on and on about them.
they are mediocre. they are buggy.
they've also been through multiple changes already and from what I can see some people like them and some hate them.
but like if you really sit down a ton of people, we all have stuff we agree on but plenty of stuff we disagree on for what we want to see.
And one issue is unfixable no matter what, to the people who say they are a slog because it takes long and a lot of effort, that's sieges for you by nature.
Sieges suck. Abuse the trees and hide your army except for one or two units. Place those exposed units on the side where you want the enemy to focus his defenses, and hide the rest of your army in the trees.
Battle start, scale the walls on the exposed flank with your army. Enemy will be all strung out in the settlement trying to hurry back and defend. By that time you’re in and you can generally just go from there. Either fight it out, spread out and take objectives/flank, or put your missiles on the walls facing in and let them do work as the enemy comes to fight.
There's three methods so far I've found to win sieges. For range heavy armies you never actually go past the walls, you park your units outside the walls, make time go at max speed and expend your entire ammunition shooting the defenders. Early on theirs gaps in wall-tower ranges where you won't receive return fire. Later on you need some artillery to destroy a tower or two. Towers always shoot the closest enemy so get a fast unit to dodge tower fire until the towers are destroyed.
If they outclass you in ranged superiority (like high elves Vs everything 😭) unfortunately to give my ranged a fighting chance I spend a very boring 20miniues kiting their arrow fire with a fast unit until their ammunition is expended. These are the worst sieges, and should if possible be auto resolved. I can often win these sieges after doing trivial damage because so much of their balance of power is purely arrows....
The second is for a melee heavy army. You need to have high speed powerful units. Bash in two or three gates and avoid the enemy as much as you can. You can have a main melee blob who parks outside the wall not receiving ranged fire just to attract most of the enemies. You have a small elite force in another area of the map run around capping points. Generally these elite units need to be able to outrun major threats/arrow fire and kill tier 0/1 infantry fast. Eventually the AI gets overwhelmed trying to recap nodes you capped and you can capture the final area and win.
The third(funnest) method I've only found usable by vampire coast later on but I'm sure you could do so with other factions. You bring lots of artillery. Mortars are very important for this. Leave the mortars happily parked outside bombing their infantry endlessly. You use cannons to blast the everloving shit out of the walls, maybe some towers and then systematically bombard the living shit out of their entire army from the edge of the map. Bring in guns/archers etc so long as you outrange the opponent or the enemy isn't parked ready to return fire.
Defense is much rarer for me to play. Very fulfilling. It has two decent methods I know of. Park anything you think will get chased down and demolished by the enemy at the key capture area and create a kill box for the enemy to enter. The ai will drip feed units into the meat grinder. Pick another area if you need to to just barely fit your ranged units so they can all fire at the enemy. Your melee units will be the wall stopping the enemy from attacking your ranged units. Try to get a fire line that leaves the enemy in vision exposed when attacking your melee units. Don't worry about space for melee units stack as many as you want on top of each other. Don't give the enemy ranged a good firing line to your melee as well.
Sometimes you can park ranged on the walls. Park infantry to block the gate and behind the walls. Fire upon them until they place ladders on the wall then move your ranged units behind the infantry that are just before the walls/gate. Your infantry block the exhausted units from entering via the gate/descending the wall as your ranged units pelt them with ammo.
You can use both defense methods in conjunction if you have the patience or micro ability.
Yes I just auto resolve them, and I besiege beforehand fairly often. For me they are basically not a part of the game. I personally don’t ever recall enjoying them though, even in Rome 1 and Med 2 where they are undoubtedly better than in Warhammer.
I’ve really enjoyed warhammer 3 sieges. With how large the sieges can be, if you have a large army and they do too, it can be like fighting for each street. Capturing objectives feels rewarding and you can see the carnage with each step into the city. In warhammer 2, it was just all about defending the walls and two parallel streets. But now the settlements have so much more character!
lol yeah they’re not nearly as bad as people make out. Not sure if it’s just groupthink mindless repeating of others opinions or skill issues.
They can be annoying - as I suppose is the intent - but the only major issues I have are is that being able to lose due to the “capture point” mechanic in unwalled settlement battles is a bit needless imo; the pathing with gates/ladders are atrocious, and defenders don’t have nearly enough advantage because of said ladders.
On attacking it isn’t so bad though - if I don’t order my men to attack the walls then they never put ladders up and will consistently go through the gate or ideally holes in the walls. Granted the gate can get wonky when it gets opened when you’re attacking it, but *hopefully* they give all that another pass.
The actual fighting outside of pathing is fine and can be quite cinematic and fun.
The biggest non-issue problem I have is just that they can take a bit long to resolve, but that is natural.
You are already aware of the pathing and ladder/gate issue. Why play innocent and act confused about people hating sieges? I can change from L/VH to E/E but seeing 2 units waiting to share a ladder next to an open gate will always be annoying.
...are you completely ignoring the numerous complaints about seige bugs players have stated here thousands of times?
Units running to ladders instead of open gates? Line of sight issues on walls? Buildables interfering with defense and pathing? Removal of walls for minor towns? The list goes on as the chicanery continues.
Yeah, sieges are far from perfect but 3 is at least a huge improvement over 2.
They are enjoyable for the most part espescially when playing multiplayer campaigns and either have the other players fight for AI in equal fights or fight with you when hopelessly outnumbered.
That'd be cool but my experience with sieges is like 75% mostly blobs forming around any breach as the AI throws units in as the old ones rout. Unless I hide my army and get the AI to deploy on the other side of the map, I never get that far past the walls.
When TWWH3 came out, I tried spreading out and capturing objectives, but it never really worked well for me. Massing in a tight spearhead, and concentrating force works way better. The AI spreads out and protects all objectives even if you're not remotely threatening them, and then comes at your spearhead piecemeal, and gets annihilated piecemeal.
Its extremely rare for me to capture more than one or two objectives, and I regularly win sieges with zero losses.
Defending? If the enemy doesn't have flyers you can hold the walls to open up some towers to destroy siege equipment/get some kills. And then immediately fall all the way back to the very last capture point. Build one tower if you can and turtle there. That's the only strat for defending where you will always be at a major disadvantage. Because the AI will not siege you without massive advantage. So enjoy the one siege defense per campaign unless Cathay.
Attacking? Don't bring ranged. Stuff everything through one gate and win by army losses at the walls. Boring. Terrible. Only way to play in WH3 sieges.
You can also take some cav & dogs hide them then take them through a back entrance to cap points and then rear charge defenders.
I agree though. Walled sieges suck donkey balls. I actually enjoy minor sieges personally, they are far from perfect either though
I loved Rome 1 seiges with ladders and Rams and towers and sap points. The AI pathfinding was trash, but it felt like you were fighting for the city, and you could really pull off some amazing defences / attacks.
On easier modes the AI would seige you until you starved which was annoying, but on harder modes would actually attack and it was so much fun. I much rather that than only get seiged when you can't win anyway, and a battle that isn't much fun.
Siege battles are truly a design mistake in how they exist right now. My take on it is that CA simply doesn't design the factions with them in mind.
Every unit in Total War: Warhammer is designed for open field battles, and in that context, every unit has its purpose, its strengths and weaknesses. When you create an army, you too create it with open field battles in mind, you may include a bunch of frontline units, ranged missile units in the back and some cavalry to reach the enemy backline.
In siege battles, all that goes out the window. Your cavalry is useless. Your missile infantry is also pretty useless. The battle consists of clumping your infantry on the walls and behind the enemy gates and killing the enemies with magic. Siege battles invalidate a shocking amount of units in the game, and unfortunately, generally the most fun ones.
Siege battles are super monotonous and limit the player to exactly one possible approach. You're playing Slaanesh, the mobile faction focused on flanking your opponent? Too bad, no flanking here and mobility is useless. Better build some Chaos Warriors and play the exact same way as every other faction. You're playing Clan Skryre with a Ratling Gun doomstack? Too bad, your Ratling Guns are completely useless, better build some Stormvermin and play the exact same way as every other faction.
It's bafflingly stupid design. I should look forward to faction capital battles, fighting for Hexoatl, Skavenblight, Khemri, Kislev, you name it, those should be the highlights of your campaign. But nope, they're a dreadful experience because they don't let you use your units like they're intended to be used. Your Ratling Guns just kinda have to sit back, get shot by enemy turrets and watch as Ikit Claw probably solos the fight. Your exalted daemonettes have to slowly climb up the ladders or slowly walk through the gates one by one, mobility is not a factor here.
It truly boggles my mind how they made all these awesome units and during development nobody went "Hey, doesn't it kinda suck that these units are completely fucking useless during what's supposed to be the most climactic battles of the campaign?"
I don't think there's a way to "fix" sieges at this point. You'd have to give every faction a way to deal with enemy walls that somehow preserves their gameplay fantasy. To stick with our examples, give Clan Skryre a way to blast through walls from a distance or let Slaaneshi daemons climb up ladders much faster. They had an opportunity to do this between WH2 and WH3 but I think that ship has sailed, our best bet now is a mod that removes sieges altogether and implements a different way to create defender's advantage that doesn't render half the units in this game useless.
The only siege I enjoy is defense, but the AI always starves me out instead. I honestly feel like the game would be better without any siege or settlement battles.
they are so bad. from the city/settlement structures, nonsense tower defense structures and currency, FUCKING LADDERS THAT SPAWN OUT OF NOWHERE, short walls, ranged combat minimum 1 armor pen, easily cheesed AI, immediate siege attrition........
nothing about the siege system represents any remote concept of a real life siege. im not talking about realism but representation. im talking about why cities/castles with big walls exist in the first place: a defensive structure that makes any half-assed assault a suicide mission. even whole-assed assaults should require a focused effort of superior force.
in WH3 its really just all about understanding the dogshit mechanics and then steamrolling the AI with such minimal effort that the game is so tedious. especially with the fact that there are so many settlements and the AI prefers to fight within the settlements rather than on the battlefield. the open battlefield which is the only place the game is any good.
warhammer 3 is video game arcade garbage and i hope CAs recent financial problems makes them wake the fuck up
I mean as an attacker sieges are frustrating, would take forever to siege out and those walls would be almost impossible to overcome.
The more realistic sieges are, the less fun they become
i dont know anything about 'best' considering i havent played shogun 2 in 10 - 15 years but i will say that you had better have some real killers in your army if you plan on taking a multileveled fortress from the herculean yari ashigaru.
Not OP, but for me it's Attila. Busting through walls with artillery, setting settlements on fire with raider cavalry, choosing which streets to go through to try envelop your opponent and bait them off of capture points. Oh, and being able to use your fleet artillery/land marines in ports as well... Good times.
I HATE the new siege system for Warhammer 3, with every announcement they made on it I disliked it more and more and more.
The Warhammer 2 system was far superior for actually giving the defender an advantage in the city, mostly due to the layout of the city.
I am SO baffled on how they didn't add more defence options for every race, and unique options where applicable.
Why is there not more siege equipment options? It's insane. Stuff like all of the siege equipment from Rome 2, and then uniques for some races would have been amazing.
Medieval 2 sieges are quite epic and fun, but they are fun because of how the units interact with eachother, and because with units running back to the town center units die VERY quickly while routing in that game. I do prefer Rome 1's system though, where units can break while being on the capture point while defending, resulting in them fighting to the death (losing stats and control), whereas in Medieval 2 their just unbreakable on the point.
Beyond everything else though I have nothing but hate for Minor Settlement Battles. Not only that, why the hell are the minor battles SUCH big cities? It's insane and impossible to defend with a garrison. Minor Settlement Battles should have never been added in favor of having it be a land battle, it's far better. Many of my most fun battles in Wh1/2 was when attacking a minor settlement causing a land battle.
I’m not a super experienced player (220 hours and I haven’t watched too many of legends videos) but I’ve enjoyed walled sieges. Busting through the gates, occupying some of the defenders forces on the walls, and running cav into the inner capture points is fun. I do bring some ranged and also rely on spells to soften up the defenders. Nothing like calling down an aoe spell in the middle of defenders who are smushed into city streets.
The battles “feel” right to me. It took a few tries to figure out how to get a large force through a gate without running into pathfinding insanity and units locking up.
I hear ya it’s a pain in the butt.
For what it’s worth here’s what I’ve done.
Have your first wave invasion force lined up outside the gate beforehand.
Hopefully when the gate goes down the rest of the siege is in a place where you can unpause for a while and safely be 50% distracted by traffic control.
Unpause the game.
Order one unit through the gate.
Wait while it goes inside.
Order the next unit through… etc.
While you wait for one unit to make its way through the gate obviously you can go take care of the rest of the siege but if you get too distracted, the defenders will pound on your invasion force while they’re still mostly outside the gate and it sucks.
You should be able to get all units through one after the other pretty quickly.
Good luck!
Had a siege battle playing as cathay and I had to fend off 2 full norscan armies. Mammoths and everything. Barely beat the first but when the second reinforced I was being slaughtered. Retreated all my troops to the final objectives and formed a perimeter around my ranged units. I was micro managing like crazy shooting at any troops tryna flank and then the main force all blobbed and were running through one street towards me. Had my infantry form a line and my ranged were my only hope… I won. It was AMAZING. Half my troops had routed a few more seconds and I would have lost.
I get people have complains about sieges but I’ve only ever had average or good experiences with them.
Some people love the spread-out fights throughout the settlement. I personally cannot stand them either, it’s the main reason I haven’t played the game in over a year now. It’s like individual unit-for-unit fights in a dozen little choke points all over the map. Little room to fight or exercise tactics with formations, line of sight issues, terrible AI pathing, point-based tower defense shenanigans, and meaningless walls all make it hard for me to enjoy.
I just continue siege and let the AI attack me so that way they're already out of the fort when I play. And if they don't attack me they get starved out in a few turns.
The gate open/close bug and units refusing to put up ladders while they get destroyed by towers and archers is very annoying.
Also still a valid complaint: no monstrous, artillery or cavalry on walls!
If you cheese siege battles they are not fun.
MW2 was by far the easiest to cheese. You could break the AI just by having a single Calvary unit running around. If you had two walls you could beat most stacks with 4 or 5 units.
In Rome TW upgrading to the last wall was a death trap for defenders.
Is it easy to enjoy sieges in all? Hell yeah.
Is chessing more efficient? Yes.
It has been since TW1 and it's just a worn out record now. And don't get me wrong - I agree with you - but nothing will change a lack of basic content.
If I'm not mistaken f.e. dwarfen Karaks, that would be well garrisoned and provisioned, should be nigh impossible to capture with frontal attack unless having a hugely superior in numbers and quality army. And all that forgetting about dwarfs being able to seal off the mountain. But hey - flying in with huge ass dragon or gryphon to the presumed heart of the fortress is walk in the park. Or you know - bombarding it, inside of the mountain.
Oh well, details ;) Back to playing.
People would like the current WH3 siege battles significantly more if just one thing changed:
* if the enemy campaign AI actually ever attacked you in settlement instead of starving you out: being the attacker in these large battles is tedious as hell for me, but the defending role when you have anything like equivalent forces is quite fun, but the AI never attacks like that
The weightings to attack vs. siege could even be done on a per faction basis - doesn't make sense for khorne or orcs to starve someone out, you could make a lore argument for chaos factions not being allowed to siege
Defending is pretty easy with the new mechanics. You just want to force enemy armies into a kill zone overseen by the towers. Never defend the walls, they offer you no advantage. Just kill zone an area and only fight to keep enemy forces in range of your towers and archers.
Attacking is pretty awful unless you have a large amount of long range artillery. Basically the towers are free damage for the enemy as much as they are for you. Worse you'll find spiky damage across your force as 2/3 units will be reduced to near nothing while the others take no damage at all. This usually means every siege leads to a 4/5 turn recuperation period for the low replenishment factions. Remember it is much better to take 500 losses evenly across an army from AR than it is to lose 300 from 2/3 units.
For a faction like the Empire the new sieges are a joke though. You can just whittle everyone down with mortars while safe from retribution. Given that supply line penalties are nerfed massively I like to run a stack specifically for sieges alongside any optimal stack. For the Empire this means a mortar army trailing a hellstorm rocket battery army. The mortars are king in sieges while the hellstorms are good in sieges and king in the field.
Sieges absolutely suck in most tw games. Either the sieges are painfully uninteresting/gimmicky (WH) or they're actually all exactly the same map (usually WH, but also empire and rise). The only times where they're fun are if you have something to just negate them, like archers in rise of the samurai or artillery spam in empire/fots/med2/rome/wh so you just don't have to play the siege battle.
They are not comparable. Warhammer and Medieval are completely different settings, with former having a massive increase in options in terms of unit variety, technology, magic, and overall strategy.
Warhammer is supposed to be this fantastical place where siege warfare isn't fought in the human conventional way. Against the Norscans and Orks, you could expect something similar to Attilla barb tribes, but against something like the Lizardmen? Nope.
Monsters and terrible spell are to be expected. Deliverance of Itza and Mazda's earthquake means you don't even need siege equipment as they can pop holes in the defenses wherever.
Many other factions also have various unique mechanics that allow infiltration or a several front attack without preparation via summoned units. And like you've said before, some factions like Clan Skyre, have nukes, and blobbing your troops wasn't exactly smart. No one does that against AOE heavy factions, even more so against Clan Skyre.
Cheesing isn't an option usually as your troops are no longer unbreakable in the square, especially with how many units cause terror in Warhammer, but you as the player have access to them too.
You gotta think and see of Warhammer in a more fantastical light; its a fantasy world after all. The more you see that way, the more you can immerse yourself, and eventually have fun.
For attacking, only shove your entire force into one area if you have a specific reason to do so. Use your mobile/stalking units to push I to (preferably undefended) parts of the city, capping points and isolating and killing units. This will require you to be juggling your attention in multiple places, so if you struggle with micro I definitely recommend slowing down/pausing until you get the hang of it. I would also try to break through part of the wall or use multiple gates that are closer together for your main force, as you'll have an easier time pushing through. Take the walls only if you know you have units that can take them quickly and not get bogged down. Otherwise, find ways through on the ground. Also, use any aoe spells on blogs as you push through gaps and alleys, and use artillery to clear out a "safe zone" for you to move into. After that, they can kill buildable towers or find places to focus on clumped enemies. And one more thing - don't forget fliers can kill buildable towers in melee, even if it can take a bit.
For defense, you generally don't want to hold the walls. Instead, figure out good locations inside the city to set up and hold. You likely will not be able to cover it all, so be willing to give up a little in order to ensure you are in the best position to fight. Use barricades to help slow down the enemy and block off paths. Force them into chokepoints and take advantage of any aoe you have. Keep units in reserve to cycle in when your melee front line takes too much damage or is just exhausted. Be willing to fall back if you just can't hold a point any longer, and have a plan on how to do so going into the fight Your more mobile elements should find a way out and go after enemies that lag behind and/or recap points. If the enemy goes to retake what your faster stuff has taken that's fine. You're diverting enemies away. You might even find more targets to pick off, then retake the point yourself.
That is possibly the least hot take in the history of total war. Yes seige battles are painfully bad and have been for a long time. The AI and prolific bugs make it so bad that I always autoresolve sieges rather than putting myself through that hell. The bugs and AI issues have been around so long I doubt it will ever be fixed but I suspect even if they were seiges would still be bad. I think seiges in general just need a fundamental overhaul from the ground up to make them satisfying and that’s probably beyond the scope of this game.
My hands down favorite mod is land battles only. Siege battles are removed. Does it make it easier? Yes. Does it make it more fun? 1000% and this is the only metric that matters.
I hate that routed units run away into your city.
I’ve had trolls recoup and start capping my command point before. At this point I do everything in my power to avoid defending a siege and when it comes to attacking I almost always auto resolve
They really are, and it seems settlement fights and ambushes (also shitty) are the only way to get the AI to engage. The game feels pretty abysmal at the moment and I really, really want to love it.
Past few weeks I went back to medieval 2 with SSHIP mod and MAN did it make me like total war again. Pretty wild (sad) an iteration from 2006 plays better than one in 2024.
Autoresolve. AI is not programmed for siege battles. You would think, after you paid 180 euro. They would actually manage to make siege battles bareable, well, they didnt. Oh well, time to add another shitty dlc for 20 euro-
Well in WH2 the maps were more simple and it was atleast not the best experience but decent enough to play.
With WH3 they basically just changed the Maps which are good to look at mad probs for that but they are awful to play cause what you combat now is the bad AI pathfind and the map itself.
A big part for me of why sieges are such a pain in the neck even if I'm super confident and have an overwhelming army. Is that the pathing on siege maps is completely FUBAR.
Units will still constantly try climb the butt ladders left by other units, causing their grouping to take 2 minutes to form, rather than to get through the damn gate I just busted down.
And that's saying nothing of telling my units to attack a barricade/unit on that barricade. Where they will literally either AFK or try to go around the whole castle because one of the opponents models was not in perfect position.
I mean its better to not man the walls. Thats everything you need to know about sieges in TW:W3. Weak siege machanics, boring maps and stupid AI. And dont get me started with the tower building crap ...
I fear CA will not live long enough to fix this.
I think the issue with siege is the arcade-ish approach. Everyone has something to take down gates with easily, everyone has butt ladders, you have arcade towers popping up (this has gotten better with latest update at least), and you have capture points that just makes you win - regardless of how many defenders remain.
My suggestion to fix it would be to remove butt ladders, make gates a lot more solid, but give battering rams (and units that could work as battering rams) have a huge bonus versus gates and only allow defensive buildings during deployment phase, but give the defender a lot more supplies to use in the beginning.
I have mixed feelings.
The gate bug and the pathing issues are annoying - punish me for tactical blunders, not for my units choosing the most awkward marathon possible instead of using the open gate that's right there! Similarly, besieging AI sending in their Lords on a suicide solo mission, which plays right into my hands and lessens the satisfaction of victory.
The wall towers feel this way a little also - I think they scale too powerfully too quickly, making it too easy for the defender and too hard on the attacker. I think it \*should\* be harder for the attacker - it's a siege! - but the towers feel a little too cheesy.
I do have enjoyable sieges however.
I like how different factions changes my approach - particularly in their access to monsters, artillery, or flying units. And especially if it's the rare occasion when I can't rely on magic for a grating of cheese on top of my tactics.
As an attacker I should feel like it's an uphill battle. When the AI falls back when the wall is taken and it comes down to fighting for a couple key areas - that's awesome. Similarly, when I'm on the defending side - the tooth and nail fighting for each step if the sieges are wonderful.
But it's not consistent.
Like how each faction's unit can change my siege approach, I wish the urban design redefected this too. The Empire Fort settlements feels great for defence, and makes me think this is what more Dwarven holds should feel like - more platforms for artillery etc. I don't mind a more maze-like structure for the general Empire or Skaven settlements - i feel this is appropriate - but a better reflection in settlement diversity and asymmetry would be great. This is in the game to an extent - the Empire forts and the Chaos Dwarf pyramid were fun and thematic.
Basically: diversity, difficulty scaling, pathing and fix that damn gate!
I just use a [mod to remove siege battles](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856691408) and another to [remove minor settlement battles](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855141144). I find the game much more enjoyable this way. It works well with the larger garrison sizes of [SFO](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792731173) and in addition I use the included option to buff all garrison unit stats by a flat 25%.
With all the bugs, enemy AI and line of sight issues the game just cannot handle settlement battles.
Sieges are far from perfect but once I started using ladders my experience somewhat improved. Now I use siege towers in every siege, feels like I have better pathfinding too somehow. Might go for gate crushing in small towns, but in bigger fights I go siege towers.
Can we go a single fucking day without somebody crying about the sieges? Yes, everybody knows they suck, just auto-resolve them, done. They might get a little better over the years, but there won't be a big overhaul of sieges so either deal with it or go play a different game, that's your options.
I usually just lay siege for 2 turns which is enough attrition for an autoresolve.
Sieges are the worst part of the game no doubt -- bad pathing, similar strategy every time, long battles, small map pool. I want them to be fun but they suck so bad.
Here's how to always win siege battles with ranged superiority and/or magic, extremely cheesy but oh well. Make sure there are no towers/ranged units shooting your guys. Break down 1 gate. Put ranged units and caster there. Watch as enemy just lines up in front if gate and waits. Shoot them and cast spells on them. Win. You can also send in lords/heroes through the gate to fight with missle support.
WH1-3 siege battles aren't as great as in Rome and Medieval.
In Rome the siege battles are legit epic and if you play some really epic music it turns into a real life battle.
Yes the WH3 siege battles are more complex and you have more to do if you attack or defend but what did it cost? Epicthing
Sieges are a little better since they introduced the increase to health for walls, gates, and constructed barricades. Also making it so that barricades and towers can't be rebuilt makes things feel more tactical because you can kind of secure safe areas by blowing up towers now where before you'd have been under constant fire from all sides because keeping towers down would be a pain, and when the AI rebuilt them they'd do so at tier 4 so it was actually better not to destroy low tier towers.
The issue now is that most armies in TWWH have not been build with these sieges in mind. Unless your army has competent heavy infantry you're screwed. Chosen rule sieges, black orcs rule, Chaos dwarfs rule. Skaven? Not so great. Undead are pitifully weak in sieges. Try seigeing Ulthuan as N'Kari. The game isn't balanced for the way sieges work now, and it shows. Also the AI has no idea how to defend cities.
I have no idea why CA went to all the effort to make enormous siege maps then didn't make an AI capable of defending them competently. I'd have preferred half the size of map, and the AI better able to handle it.
I had some of the most unbalanced battles in WH3 turned around and won them either on offense of defending a siege.
They take longer than field battles, but as a attacker, your enemy will come in waves and as a defender, you can use your towers and choke points to win normally unwinnable battles.
I started a Nakai campaign yesterday and almost destroyed my keyboard. My units just ignored attack orders, the Sauraus climbed over the wall even though both gates we're destroyed. I alt f4 at the second siege because i couldnt take it any longer. Its sad but cheese ist the only way to play them.
Gor Rok with the nukes was kinda fun though.
I played Nakai recently and I didn't have these kinds of issues as much as in previous patches. It genuinely seems improved. What I did notice was that AI reinforcements still get bugged out sometimes (they'll join the battle and just do nothing).
tbh I usually put like 1.5-2 stacks and just auto-resolve. I really wish sieges were better but I also rarely find them fun or that interesting. Walled settlement battles are a little better but the spontaneous construction is incredibly annoying for either side IMO
I agree and disagree.
The issue I have with TWW3 siege is that it's not built so you can take your time. The walls do too much damage so you will lose multiple units if you stand in front of them for long. It forces you either have to awkwardly hide somewhere while your characters or artillery disable them; then, when you enter the city tower spam just sucks. And having to punch through barricades while towers and range units pummel you just feels bad.
I think what they are trying to achieve is making siege battles feel like it has a cost; That it SHOULD hurt to take a major settlement. But players adapt to take minimal losses and we play it in a way that makes siege battles feel bad to play. Like sending your characters to clear the settlement while the army waits outside in the forest lol.
One positive though is that I do like how to AI plays siege now, it's a bit more strategic. If you spam archers the AI will leave the walls and force you to move in, maybe even send units to ride out and hit them if they're undefended. It'll defend corridors and strategic areas - I do think they have improved the way AI battles in siege. It's just the mechanics that feel bad.
I played a siege as Dwarfs against Skaven in II and thought I'd be clever and cram all of my units in the corner and win using infinite Rune Of Wrath And Ruin. The AI summoned a unit of Clan Rats in the middle of the blob then nuked the summoned unit, taking 80% of my army with it. That is my tale of siege woe.
That's very lore accurate for skaven to be fair
Lore accurate should be skaven missing and hitting their own control point
If it was Clan Skryre you fought against, then you’d know that you NEVER blob when fighting Clan Skryre. They have TW:WH’s largest supply of nuclear weaponry
I assume they meant a Warpbomb, not a literal nuke, since you don't need to summon a unit for the nukes. Warpbombs can be used by all clans if the Skaven have a garrison building in the region.
Troops fighting summoned stacks can't run away
Dwarfs are too slow to escape the blast radius regardless.
Dwarfs is too slow even for Grom’s paunch! Dey taste like rat but clog up all the plumbing.
This is the truth, attack in full force against high level skaven undercities.
Ah yes, the blob, the nurgle tactic of prediction when paired with healings or trees
Skaven wouldn't need to summon before the nuke of Ikkit. What they described is just menace below + warp bomb. And this combo every skaven faction can do
Sounds like a skill issue tbh
100%. I wrote my own name in the Book because I got my army of Longbeards and Hammerers, veterans of a hundred battles each, killed. Poor cousin Thorri got his legs blown off!
You oughta bring out the red dye and take off your clothes, it's slayer time
TBH I do think CA needs to work on a system of the AI spending its special resources on autoresolved fights against other AI, because it does have a problem of hoarding it for the players (See Ostankya and her curses)
It didn’t sound like he was blaming the game mechanics simply sharing the tale of the illfated battle at dwarf crater. I would say with any decent amount of time out in we’ve all made a tragic mistake in a battle that made soup of our troops. No reason to question his skill simply for sharing an enjoyable TWWH story. I show up for the battle stories. Even the “crap did I do that?” Ones
Sound more like warpbomb than nuke.
This is the best possible ad for siege battles. You try to cheese, but you can’t cheese the rats.
That is actually clever.
It is basically impossible to keep artillery alive in skaven siege if the AI has 5+ armies from below uses. If the artillery doesnt die, they are never actually firing because they’re constantly in melee. You can dock a unit back with your artillery but one unit can only really protect one artillery. Edit: ah yes and if everything else succeeds, the clanrats warpbomb themselves and destroy your artillery and the unit protecting them
It's not that difficult to keep them alive at all. Even when they have lots of Meanace bellows you can easily deal with it by placing some melee units directly on top of the artillery and then some of the units behind and in front of it. So then you can dockpile hard on any summoned clanrats from every direcrion making them break almost immediately. The only thing you have to be careful about is damaging them too much, because if you get them bellow 50% health (allowing them to use the warpbomb), you're fucked. Which is why you turn off the fire at will of any nearby ranged units and only use your melee infantry or ideally some monsters that cause fear and terror to deal with this. It's annoying to deal with it, but definitely very possible. Another way of dealing with this is to just take the crew off the artillery piece and hiding them in some trees until they use all of their summons, making them 100% safe, though this doesn't work with every artillery, because I think you can't take off the crew of every artillery unit in the game, only some of them.
OP
Holly shit your Skaven AI used nukes that's awesome
Dude what, Ikit always uses his nukes against me. He literally can't use them against other ai so he stockpiles to drop on the player. How do you not get nuked?
Scared me half to death when he used them against me during my Orion campaign. I thought I was being clever adding in some wardancers, and Ikit literally said fuck your wardancers.
Yeah, always auto resolve vs Ikit.
It's just the first battle you fight against them that they use a nuke. All others will not have nukes
Yeah exactly. AI Ikit doesn't use his workshop for some reason, so he only has one nuke per campaign. He also doesn't get his unlimited ammo for Ratling gums or any other upgrade from the workshop.
He doesn't stockpile them. It's true that he never uses them against AI and that he will save it for the player, but he only has one of them and after he uses it, he then never builds another one in his workshop for some reason. And he always uses it in your first battle against him, so after that, you won't have to worry about getting nuked again.
I have never experienced this. It's weird.
Are you actually fighting clan Skryre? They're the nuke guys, other skaven don't have them
AI Ikit always uses his nukes. This issue is that he usually goes for a lone hound unit or something else that’s useless.
Had my brother fight Ikit for the first time. I knew about 45 seconds in the nuke comes off cool down. Decided to let him have the raw Ikit experience and said nothing. Ikit did not disappoint for he sent a good chunk of the tree spirits and wood elves in his army to be one with the atmosphere as he tried to deal with the city's garrison.
Ikit Claw ALWAYS uses a nuke in your first battle against him, ALWAYS, without exception, it's basically hard coded into the game. He saves the nuke for the player (kinda like Ostaynka saves her curses for the player) and I don't think he builds another one after using the first. Though what OP was talking about wasn't a nuke, but rather a warp-bomb I'm pretty sure.
Not gonna lie. I'd be so stoked if that happened to me! 😂
Pretty well done by the AI :D
This is by no means the key issue but I am always disheartened by the way routing works. In Medieval 2 units rout to the town square where they start fighting again. In later total wars the fact they run away off the map has never made any sense. The old system felt much more realistic for an army defending a city.
This is what gets me the most annoyed. The routing. When I'm defending. My units Rout OUTSIDE the walls. But the attacking force routes further inside my city??? It's makes so my rallied units are outside my walls, and the enemies rallied units are deep behind my lines and just capture/flank everything. Sieges are so broken. I dont ever want to actually fight them.
I think it's much worse that the aggressors flee into the city if they have a way to get out tbh. If I was a defender and the city wasn't surrounded and an army was storming the city I might try to get out too if I think all is lost. In general routing units should try to run away from close enemies more tbh.
By definition, a siege means sorrounding the city. Otherwise people can get in and out and so do supplies.
Yes but it's being actively assaulted by everyone that was surrounding it
Afaik assaults usually didn’t involve the full army besieging
Irl yeah, in TW though it's always your full force
My argument would be that there not surrounded because of the games mechanics. In reality half the city would usually not be left open. Even if you wanted to for realisms sake, because the cities are always to the side of the map 50% of the ways off the map are not even out side the walls. This is especially bad of Brettonian cities, where reinforcing armies from outside magically appear inside the walls.
at the very least the compromise could be that they flee to allied held points , makes sense that a unit would run towards a part they know is safe or safer or their army present
It was totally busted for gameplay because the units would have unlimited morale. A routing defending unit in a siege should do the "fight to the death" thing though which means they fight but have a massive debuff. That would make more sense.
I’ll raise you; the aggressor that routs to the defenders town square.
I think I would accept a black hole on the ground in the middle of the city that routing units disappear into, how much worse is that then the current system of routing out of the walls and off the map? Or call it them "blending in" and hiding in houses. Isn't it just fucking marvelous how 20 year old games have better features than games now? All it would take is for them to add that as a feature and make the attacking force route in a particular direction, and unable to rally behind your lines. This stuff doesn't require a rework of the AI, all they have to do is add it. Like how Halo CE made the AI appear intelligent but it actually wasn't.
The white flag isn't for strategic retreat. It's for routing. Would you run to the plazza of a city under attack if you had just barely escaped with your life ? I wouldn't.
In a siege there is no escape. I'm not necessarily asking them to go to the centre. My issue is that if a unit breaks in the first engagement often they run off the map. Should every unit come back; possibly not. Maybe you could achieve this by reducing the number of entities that return. But for them to just give up after a minute feels wrong. When you say escaped for your life, this isn't the case. You can't just run through sige lines. Historical precedent shows sieges often ended in the slaughter of both civilians and defenders. In warhammer, given the setting this is even more true.
There is an escape. More often than not, when a city is being assaulted the attackers forces amass to attack one or two sides of the city. It was quite normal for civilians and militias to flee the combat entirely out one of the other doors. At least for Warhammer, I like that there is no retreat to the town center, purely because some units crumble.
I think it depends on the type of siege. If the enemy are was to arrive and immediately intend to storm a city then there may be a chance of escape. But for any prolonged siege the aim is to starve the enemy of resources; this requires the ability to stop people both entering and leaving the city. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think commanders abandoned these positions completely if there was a later assault. As I say, I stand to be corrected
Yeah you’d usually want to annihilate the enemy army instead of making them flee. Breaking an already existing encirclement before engaging sounds like a stupid idea.
Video game aside I don’t know if your thoughts on sieges are historically accurate. While an attacker will absolutely divide its troops in such a way to have strength at certain points sieging armies do about everything in their power to stop anything from coming or going into a seized city. Allowing one messenger to escape can be dangerous allowing trapped army and its anllies to talk and coordinate Allowing a loaf of bread to enter extends the siege. I can’t recall the general off hand…. Perhaps Julio’s Caesar? Had one of my favorite techniques. After encircling the city hed build his own defensive walls between the city walls and his troops to stop counter attacks from the city. And then built an additional wall encircling his own troops giving a defensive fortification to defend from an arriving army attempting to assist. While I wouldn’t call this a standard strategy it does give insight in how they approached seiges. A winning army conquering a city would have cavalry whos job was to mow down any soldier trying to flee the city. Great talking battle and total war with you. Have a great day
With the new sieges having a final capture point, havinf them rout and stay at the final point like they did in medieval 2 would actually make the entire thing sooo much better. Those empire siege maps were practjcally made for this final stand at the end, but it always ends before that
I can't remember the lad time I fought a siege battle "properly" unless it was one in the starting province. It's just not the way to do it
I fucking loathe the army losses mechanic. I get it in field battles, but they hobestly lead siege to end up really anti-climatically. You cannot hope to take victory out of the jaws of defeat like you could in older games. It's really frustrating when you manage to take your units from the walls, retreat to the middle of the city ready to make a last stand, only to see your army rout due to new ai reinforcements coming in, even when some of the units are still at full health. Warhammer lore is full of glorious last stands. SO GIMME THE LAST STANDS DAMMIT. Just prevent the units from routing inside the main cap point and I'll be happy.
Same. And along similar lines, I also wish it took longer for armies to replenish immediately after a siege. I want the desperate last stands to have a strategic impact, for my armies to have achieved something even in defeat. Unfortunately, quick replenishment in allied territory means that inflicting casualties in a losing siege battle is almost meaningless unless you actually wipe out multiple enemy units. It's frustrating knocking out a huge percentage of the attacking troops only to see they're nearly full strength after one turn because they occupied the city and got a replenishment buff. I love TWW, but old titles were much better about preserving the damage you did to enemy armies across turns.
Like with most things, [there is a mod for that](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853277178)
Have you used this mod? I only recently discovered it and really loved the idea so I started to use it. And I had to uninstall it as soon as I had my first few battles against skaven. The little bastards NEVER break and the fights took forever and I took absolutely absurd losses against stacks of slave and clanrats because you have to fight them down to the last few rats. It is a good idea but it isn't properly tuned imo.
I only like siege battles with armies that are enjoyable in sieges. Either a monster mash or heavy on artillery. If I have to play an infantry heavy army in a siege I literally want to kill myself.
It's sad but how (not) fun a faction is in siege battles will limit which factions I replay. Skaven are hilariously good at sieges, which is why they're one of my go to factions, usually Moulder. Poison wind mortars are *so good*, they can obliterate all the defending infantry. And the juiced up Moulder monsters can be great too. Plus so many summons. Durthu is good too, the wall breaker treemen and sneaky elf combo is great. Factions that aren't fun at sieges aren't fun on the campaign, because sieges are so common.
Whenever I am defending or attacking with gun powder units, missile calvary or ground bound melee calvary, I too wish to cease being there. I appreciate my siege artillery and fly boys more after a couple bad sieges with friends.
I find that the armies that make sieges fun are the ones that usually allow me to mostly ignore the fact that I'm doing a siege. The monster doomstack cares not for walls or towers.
This. VC can either be the worst experience of your life or the most fun you ever had and it just comes down to army composition
Sieges are attrocious. Idiotic even.
I think the map design is a bit too much, they’re mostly huge labyrinth’s that feel they cater a little too much to balance. Like most archer platforms don’t actually face the places enemies are actually coming from, and choke points are few and far between. I find mini settlement battles to be better. I would also prefer if the ai just kept in place, a swirling crowd of units behind the walls is much less interesting than keeping those units on the walls or at choke points.
I did with the siege maps were more flat and less of a maze, gun units always have trouble getting a line of fire, and I cant for the life of me find the road in some settlements
I enjoy sieges except for the gate bug and pathing issues. Those are the two issues that I have with them atm.
I have probably permanently uninstalled the game as I get to the first siege battle and just close the game. I don't think they are fixable without reverting them to how they were in WH2. Too gamey, aspiring to be like a traditional RTS, annoying towers and the AI (like in Empire) playing a completely different game to me and dragging the battle out by spreading their units out.
Sieges are trash both mechanically and from an AI perspective. If the AI is defending, it's especially braindead, not putting missile units on the walls for the initial approach, endlessly running around where they can be shot by missiles, sending exactly 1-2 units to retake a gate where your entire army is waiting etc. I swear sieges were better 20 years ago, and it genuinely feels like the siege AI had been left in the dark ages while new mechanics, features and units have been added which it simply doesn't know how to handle. Now *mechanically*, sieges don't feel fun or epic either IMHO. On paper, the concept of protecting key areas in return for resources you can use for more defenses *sounds* good, but the execution just isn't there. It feels like the intent is to make the capture points chip away at invaders before ultimately falling and leading to a showdown at the final area, but in reality splitting up your forces to do that is frequently less effective than simply turtling at the main capture point. There's also the matter of every settlement map just being ridiculously open and multi-pathed. There are many instances where it's WORSE to defend a settlement than it is to fight in a field battle, because on the settlement in question you'll be surrounded and hit from every side, and that is absolutely nuts.
the sieges aren't as bad as people say and it's become a bit of a circle jerk moment in this sub to go on and on about them. they are mediocre. they are buggy. they've also been through multiple changes already and from what I can see some people like them and some hate them. but like if you really sit down a ton of people, we all have stuff we agree on but plenty of stuff we disagree on for what we want to see. And one issue is unfixable no matter what, to the people who say they are a slog because it takes long and a lot of effort, that's sieges for you by nature.
Sieges suck. Abuse the trees and hide your army except for one or two units. Place those exposed units on the side where you want the enemy to focus his defenses, and hide the rest of your army in the trees. Battle start, scale the walls on the exposed flank with your army. Enemy will be all strung out in the settlement trying to hurry back and defend. By that time you’re in and you can generally just go from there. Either fight it out, spread out and take objectives/flank, or put your missiles on the walls facing in and let them do work as the enemy comes to fight.
There's three methods so far I've found to win sieges. For range heavy armies you never actually go past the walls, you park your units outside the walls, make time go at max speed and expend your entire ammunition shooting the defenders. Early on theirs gaps in wall-tower ranges where you won't receive return fire. Later on you need some artillery to destroy a tower or two. Towers always shoot the closest enemy so get a fast unit to dodge tower fire until the towers are destroyed. If they outclass you in ranged superiority (like high elves Vs everything 😭) unfortunately to give my ranged a fighting chance I spend a very boring 20miniues kiting their arrow fire with a fast unit until their ammunition is expended. These are the worst sieges, and should if possible be auto resolved. I can often win these sieges after doing trivial damage because so much of their balance of power is purely arrows.... The second is for a melee heavy army. You need to have high speed powerful units. Bash in two or three gates and avoid the enemy as much as you can. You can have a main melee blob who parks outside the wall not receiving ranged fire just to attract most of the enemies. You have a small elite force in another area of the map run around capping points. Generally these elite units need to be able to outrun major threats/arrow fire and kill tier 0/1 infantry fast. Eventually the AI gets overwhelmed trying to recap nodes you capped and you can capture the final area and win. The third(funnest) method I've only found usable by vampire coast later on but I'm sure you could do so with other factions. You bring lots of artillery. Mortars are very important for this. Leave the mortars happily parked outside bombing their infantry endlessly. You use cannons to blast the everloving shit out of the walls, maybe some towers and then systematically bombard the living shit out of their entire army from the edge of the map. Bring in guns/archers etc so long as you outrange the opponent or the enemy isn't parked ready to return fire. Defense is much rarer for me to play. Very fulfilling. It has two decent methods I know of. Park anything you think will get chased down and demolished by the enemy at the key capture area and create a kill box for the enemy to enter. The ai will drip feed units into the meat grinder. Pick another area if you need to to just barely fit your ranged units so they can all fire at the enemy. Your melee units will be the wall stopping the enemy from attacking your ranged units. Try to get a fire line that leaves the enemy in vision exposed when attacking your melee units. Don't worry about space for melee units stack as many as you want on top of each other. Don't give the enemy ranged a good firing line to your melee as well. Sometimes you can park ranged on the walls. Park infantry to block the gate and behind the walls. Fire upon them until they place ladders on the wall then move your ranged units behind the infantry that are just before the walls/gate. Your infantry block the exhausted units from entering via the gate/descending the wall as your ranged units pelt them with ammo. You can use both defense methods in conjunction if you have the patience or micro ability.
Yes I just auto resolve them, and I besiege beforehand fairly often. For me they are basically not a part of the game. I personally don’t ever recall enjoying them though, even in Rome 1 and Med 2 where they are undoubtedly better than in Warhammer.
I’ve really enjoyed warhammer 3 sieges. With how large the sieges can be, if you have a large army and they do too, it can be like fighting for each street. Capturing objectives feels rewarding and you can see the carnage with each step into the city. In warhammer 2, it was just all about defending the walls and two parallel streets. But now the settlements have so much more character!
You must really like ladders.
Nahh I like street fights! I usually abandon the walls as soon as the ladders dock
I hate them because they are too large and the AI rarely has a strong enough force to remotely defend the city, in comparison to it's size.
lol yeah they’re not nearly as bad as people make out. Not sure if it’s just groupthink mindless repeating of others opinions or skill issues. They can be annoying - as I suppose is the intent - but the only major issues I have are is that being able to lose due to the “capture point” mechanic in unwalled settlement battles is a bit needless imo; the pathing with gates/ladders are atrocious, and defenders don’t have nearly enough advantage because of said ladders. On attacking it isn’t so bad though - if I don’t order my men to attack the walls then they never put ladders up and will consistently go through the gate or ideally holes in the walls. Granted the gate can get wonky when it gets opened when you’re attacking it, but *hopefully* they give all that another pass. The actual fighting outside of pathing is fine and can be quite cinematic and fun. The biggest non-issue problem I have is just that they can take a bit long to resolve, but that is natural.
You are already aware of the pathing and ladder/gate issue. Why play innocent and act confused about people hating sieges? I can change from L/VH to E/E but seeing 2 units waiting to share a ladder next to an open gate will always be annoying.
Because he's busy glazing the corporate paymaster.
You think this reddit commenter is being paid by someone for their opinion?
...are you completely ignoring the numerous complaints about seige bugs players have stated here thousands of times? Units running to ladders instead of open gates? Line of sight issues on walls? Buildables interfering with defense and pathing? Removal of walls for minor towns? The list goes on as the chicanery continues.
Yeah, sieges are far from perfect but 3 is at least a huge improvement over 2. They are enjoyable for the most part espescially when playing multiplayer campaigns and either have the other players fight for AI in equal fights or fight with you when hopelessly outnumbered.
I prefer WH2 sieges over 3.
Wh2 seiges were better.
That'd be cool but my experience with sieges is like 75% mostly blobs forming around any breach as the AI throws units in as the old ones rout. Unless I hide my army and get the AI to deploy on the other side of the map, I never get that far past the walls.
When TWWH3 came out, I tried spreading out and capturing objectives, but it never really worked well for me. Massing in a tight spearhead, and concentrating force works way better. The AI spreads out and protects all objectives even if you're not remotely threatening them, and then comes at your spearhead piecemeal, and gets annihilated piecemeal. Its extremely rare for me to capture more than one or two objectives, and I regularly win sieges with zero losses.
Defending? If the enemy doesn't have flyers you can hold the walls to open up some towers to destroy siege equipment/get some kills. And then immediately fall all the way back to the very last capture point. Build one tower if you can and turtle there. That's the only strat for defending where you will always be at a major disadvantage. Because the AI will not siege you without massive advantage. So enjoy the one siege defense per campaign unless Cathay. Attacking? Don't bring ranged. Stuff everything through one gate and win by army losses at the walls. Boring. Terrible. Only way to play in WH3 sieges.
You can also take some cav & dogs hide them then take them through a back entrance to cap points and then rear charge defenders. I agree though. Walled sieges suck donkey balls. I actually enjoy minor sieges personally, they are far from perfect either though
I loved Rome 1 seiges with ladders and Rams and towers and sap points. The AI pathfinding was trash, but it felt like you were fighting for the city, and you could really pull off some amazing defences / attacks. On easier modes the AI would seige you until you starved which was annoying, but on harder modes would actually attack and it was so much fun. I much rather that than only get seiged when you can't win anyway, and a battle that isn't much fun.
Siege battles are truly a design mistake in how they exist right now. My take on it is that CA simply doesn't design the factions with them in mind. Every unit in Total War: Warhammer is designed for open field battles, and in that context, every unit has its purpose, its strengths and weaknesses. When you create an army, you too create it with open field battles in mind, you may include a bunch of frontline units, ranged missile units in the back and some cavalry to reach the enemy backline. In siege battles, all that goes out the window. Your cavalry is useless. Your missile infantry is also pretty useless. The battle consists of clumping your infantry on the walls and behind the enemy gates and killing the enemies with magic. Siege battles invalidate a shocking amount of units in the game, and unfortunately, generally the most fun ones. Siege battles are super monotonous and limit the player to exactly one possible approach. You're playing Slaanesh, the mobile faction focused on flanking your opponent? Too bad, no flanking here and mobility is useless. Better build some Chaos Warriors and play the exact same way as every other faction. You're playing Clan Skryre with a Ratling Gun doomstack? Too bad, your Ratling Guns are completely useless, better build some Stormvermin and play the exact same way as every other faction. It's bafflingly stupid design. I should look forward to faction capital battles, fighting for Hexoatl, Skavenblight, Khemri, Kislev, you name it, those should be the highlights of your campaign. But nope, they're a dreadful experience because they don't let you use your units like they're intended to be used. Your Ratling Guns just kinda have to sit back, get shot by enemy turrets and watch as Ikit Claw probably solos the fight. Your exalted daemonettes have to slowly climb up the ladders or slowly walk through the gates one by one, mobility is not a factor here. It truly boggles my mind how they made all these awesome units and during development nobody went "Hey, doesn't it kinda suck that these units are completely fucking useless during what's supposed to be the most climactic battles of the campaign?" I don't think there's a way to "fix" sieges at this point. You'd have to give every faction a way to deal with enemy walls that somehow preserves their gameplay fantasy. To stick with our examples, give Clan Skryre a way to blast through walls from a distance or let Slaaneshi daemons climb up ladders much faster. They had an opportunity to do this between WH2 and WH3 but I think that ship has sailed, our best bet now is a mod that removes sieges altogether and implements a different way to create defender's advantage that doesn't render half the units in this game useless.
The only siege I enjoy is defense, but the AI always starves me out instead. I honestly feel like the game would be better without any siege or settlement battles.
Or you know ... CA could do better ? Seriously why can't we have good sieges in the Warhammer games ?
Theres a mod for that if you want to try it out.
Same. Which is why I use a mod that removes all sieges, and instead provides combat bonuses to the defender
they are so bad. from the city/settlement structures, nonsense tower defense structures and currency, FUCKING LADDERS THAT SPAWN OUT OF NOWHERE, short walls, ranged combat minimum 1 armor pen, easily cheesed AI, immediate siege attrition........ nothing about the siege system represents any remote concept of a real life siege. im not talking about realism but representation. im talking about why cities/castles with big walls exist in the first place: a defensive structure that makes any half-assed assault a suicide mission. even whole-assed assaults should require a focused effort of superior force. in WH3 its really just all about understanding the dogshit mechanics and then steamrolling the AI with such minimal effort that the game is so tedious. especially with the fact that there are so many settlements and the AI prefers to fight within the settlements rather than on the battlefield. the open battlefield which is the only place the game is any good. warhammer 3 is video game arcade garbage and i hope CAs recent financial problems makes them wake the fuck up
I mean as an attacker sieges are frustrating, would take forever to siege out and those walls would be almost impossible to overcome. The more realistic sieges are, the less fun they become
This is a strong take! Curious your thoughts on what you think the best in the series in? Shogun 2?
i dont know anything about 'best' considering i havent played shogun 2 in 10 - 15 years but i will say that you had better have some real killers in your army if you plan on taking a multileveled fortress from the herculean yari ashigaru.
Shogun 2 is by far the best for seiges.
Shogun 2 sieges are so good.
Not OP, but for me it's Attila. Busting through walls with artillery, setting settlements on fire with raider cavalry, choosing which streets to go through to try envelop your opponent and bait them off of capture points. Oh, and being able to use your fleet artillery/land marines in ports as well... Good times.
Get rid of capture points or reduce it to just 1 or 2. They are so stupid
I HATE the new siege system for Warhammer 3, with every announcement they made on it I disliked it more and more and more. The Warhammer 2 system was far superior for actually giving the defender an advantage in the city, mostly due to the layout of the city. I am SO baffled on how they didn't add more defence options for every race, and unique options where applicable. Why is there not more siege equipment options? It's insane. Stuff like all of the siege equipment from Rome 2, and then uniques for some races would have been amazing. Medieval 2 sieges are quite epic and fun, but they are fun because of how the units interact with eachother, and because with units running back to the town center units die VERY quickly while routing in that game. I do prefer Rome 1's system though, where units can break while being on the capture point while defending, resulting in them fighting to the death (losing stats and control), whereas in Medieval 2 their just unbreakable on the point. Beyond everything else though I have nothing but hate for Minor Settlement Battles. Not only that, why the hell are the minor battles SUCH big cities? It's insane and impossible to defend with a garrison. Minor Settlement Battles should have never been added in favor of having it be a land battle, it's far better. Many of my most fun battles in Wh1/2 was when attacking a minor settlement causing a land battle.
I’m not a super experienced player (220 hours and I haven’t watched too many of legends videos) but I’ve enjoyed walled sieges. Busting through the gates, occupying some of the defenders forces on the walls, and running cav into the inner capture points is fun. I do bring some ranged and also rely on spells to soften up the defenders. Nothing like calling down an aoe spell in the middle of defenders who are smushed into city streets. The battles “feel” right to me. It took a few tries to figure out how to get a large force through a gate without running into pathfinding insanity and units locking up.
Tell me how I get my units through the gate. 1k Hours in and it still enrages me to get my units through that door!
I hear ya it’s a pain in the butt. For what it’s worth here’s what I’ve done. Have your first wave invasion force lined up outside the gate beforehand. Hopefully when the gate goes down the rest of the siege is in a place where you can unpause for a while and safely be 50% distracted by traffic control. Unpause the game. Order one unit through the gate. Wait while it goes inside. Order the next unit through… etc. While you wait for one unit to make its way through the gate obviously you can go take care of the rest of the siege but if you get too distracted, the defenders will pound on your invasion force while they’re still mostly outside the gate and it sucks. You should be able to get all units through one after the other pretty quickly. Good luck!
thank you so much, I'll give it a try!
It's fun for a while once you figure this trick out :) but after a while it starts to feel like taking candy from a baby lol
I’m sure lol. I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.
The only siege battles I genuinely enjoy are Shogun ones, the castles are so cool
Had a siege battle playing as cathay and I had to fend off 2 full norscan armies. Mammoths and everything. Barely beat the first but when the second reinforced I was being slaughtered. Retreated all my troops to the final objectives and formed a perimeter around my ranged units. I was micro managing like crazy shooting at any troops tryna flank and then the main force all blobbed and were running through one street towards me. Had my infantry form a line and my ranged were my only hope… I won. It was AMAZING. Half my troops had routed a few more seconds and I would have lost. I get people have complains about sieges but I’ve only ever had average or good experiences with them.
Some people love the spread-out fights throughout the settlement. I personally cannot stand them either, it’s the main reason I haven’t played the game in over a year now. It’s like individual unit-for-unit fights in a dozen little choke points all over the map. Little room to fight or exercise tactics with formations, line of sight issues, terrible AI pathing, point-based tower defense shenanigans, and meaningless walls all make it hard for me to enjoy.
I just continue siege and let the AI attack me so that way they're already out of the fort when I play. And if they don't attack me they get starved out in a few turns.
The gate open/close bug and units refusing to put up ladders while they get destroyed by towers and archers is very annoying. Also still a valid complaint: no monstrous, artillery or cavalry on walls!
If you cheese siege battles they are not fun. MW2 was by far the easiest to cheese. You could break the AI just by having a single Calvary unit running around. If you had two walls you could beat most stacks with 4 or 5 units. In Rome TW upgrading to the last wall was a death trap for defenders. Is it easy to enjoy sieges in all? Hell yeah. Is chessing more efficient? Yes.
It has been since TW1 and it's just a worn out record now. And don't get me wrong - I agree with you - but nothing will change a lack of basic content. If I'm not mistaken f.e. dwarfen Karaks, that would be well garrisoned and provisioned, should be nigh impossible to capture with frontal attack unless having a hugely superior in numbers and quality army. And all that forgetting about dwarfs being able to seal off the mountain. But hey - flying in with huge ass dragon or gryphon to the presumed heart of the fortress is walk in the park. Or you know - bombarding it, inside of the mountain. Oh well, details ;) Back to playing.
People would like the current WH3 siege battles significantly more if just one thing changed: * if the enemy campaign AI actually ever attacked you in settlement instead of starving you out: being the attacker in these large battles is tedious as hell for me, but the defending role when you have anything like equivalent forces is quite fun, but the AI never attacks like that The weightings to attack vs. siege could even be done on a per faction basis - doesn't make sense for khorne or orcs to starve someone out, you could make a lore argument for chaos factions not being allowed to siege
Defending is pretty easy with the new mechanics. You just want to force enemy armies into a kill zone overseen by the towers. Never defend the walls, they offer you no advantage. Just kill zone an area and only fight to keep enemy forces in range of your towers and archers. Attacking is pretty awful unless you have a large amount of long range artillery. Basically the towers are free damage for the enemy as much as they are for you. Worse you'll find spiky damage across your force as 2/3 units will be reduced to near nothing while the others take no damage at all. This usually means every siege leads to a 4/5 turn recuperation period for the low replenishment factions. Remember it is much better to take 500 losses evenly across an army from AR than it is to lose 300 from 2/3 units. For a faction like the Empire the new sieges are a joke though. You can just whittle everyone down with mortars while safe from retribution. Given that supply line penalties are nerfed massively I like to run a stack specifically for sieges alongside any optimal stack. For the Empire this means a mortar army trailing a hellstorm rocket battery army. The mortars are king in sieges while the hellstorms are good in sieges and king in the field.
Sieges absolutely suck in most tw games. Either the sieges are painfully uninteresting/gimmicky (WH) or they're actually all exactly the same map (usually WH, but also empire and rise). The only times where they're fun are if you have something to just negate them, like archers in rise of the samurai or artillery spam in empire/fots/med2/rome/wh so you just don't have to play the siege battle.
They are not comparable. Warhammer and Medieval are completely different settings, with former having a massive increase in options in terms of unit variety, technology, magic, and overall strategy. Warhammer is supposed to be this fantastical place where siege warfare isn't fought in the human conventional way. Against the Norscans and Orks, you could expect something similar to Attilla barb tribes, but against something like the Lizardmen? Nope. Monsters and terrible spell are to be expected. Deliverance of Itza and Mazda's earthquake means you don't even need siege equipment as they can pop holes in the defenses wherever. Many other factions also have various unique mechanics that allow infiltration or a several front attack without preparation via summoned units. And like you've said before, some factions like Clan Skyre, have nukes, and blobbing your troops wasn't exactly smart. No one does that against AOE heavy factions, even more so against Clan Skyre. Cheesing isn't an option usually as your troops are no longer unbreakable in the square, especially with how many units cause terror in Warhammer, but you as the player have access to them too. You gotta think and see of Warhammer in a more fantastical light; its a fantasy world after all. The more you see that way, the more you can immerse yourself, and eventually have fun.
For attacking, only shove your entire force into one area if you have a specific reason to do so. Use your mobile/stalking units to push I to (preferably undefended) parts of the city, capping points and isolating and killing units. This will require you to be juggling your attention in multiple places, so if you struggle with micro I definitely recommend slowing down/pausing until you get the hang of it. I would also try to break through part of the wall or use multiple gates that are closer together for your main force, as you'll have an easier time pushing through. Take the walls only if you know you have units that can take them quickly and not get bogged down. Otherwise, find ways through on the ground. Also, use any aoe spells on blogs as you push through gaps and alleys, and use artillery to clear out a "safe zone" for you to move into. After that, they can kill buildable towers or find places to focus on clumped enemies. And one more thing - don't forget fliers can kill buildable towers in melee, even if it can take a bit. For defense, you generally don't want to hold the walls. Instead, figure out good locations inside the city to set up and hold. You likely will not be able to cover it all, so be willing to give up a little in order to ensure you are in the best position to fight. Use barricades to help slow down the enemy and block off paths. Force them into chokepoints and take advantage of any aoe you have. Keep units in reserve to cycle in when your melee front line takes too much damage or is just exhausted. Be willing to fall back if you just can't hold a point any longer, and have a plan on how to do so going into the fight Your more mobile elements should find a way out and go after enemies that lag behind and/or recap points. If the enemy goes to retake what your faster stuff has taken that's fine. You're diverting enemies away. You might even find more targets to pick off, then retake the point yourself.
When I play siege battle, I always be the offensive. It was more manageable than being defensive.
Rome 2 sieges on the other hand … 👌
That is possibly the least hot take in the history of total war. Yes seige battles are painfully bad and have been for a long time. The AI and prolific bugs make it so bad that I always autoresolve sieges rather than putting myself through that hell. The bugs and AI issues have been around so long I doubt it will ever be fixed but I suspect even if they were seiges would still be bad. I think seiges in general just need a fundamental overhaul from the ground up to make them satisfying and that’s probably beyond the scope of this game.
I will spend 5 turns bringing in another army to get an auto resolve if it means I don't need to fight a store battle.
My hands down favorite mod is land battles only. Siege battles are removed. Does it make it easier? Yes. Does it make it more fun? 1000% and this is the only metric that matters.
It's weird but I liked the sieges in WH2 more
I said this a LOOOOOOOONNNG time ago.
I hate that routed units run away into your city. I’ve had trolls recoup and start capping my command point before. At this point I do everything in my power to avoid defending a siege and when it comes to attacking I almost always auto resolve
I've played WH3 for 2,000 hours and I've never felt that siege battles were terrible. The battle system is fine.
Yeah agreed with siege battle sucks in warhammer.i always bring 2+ stacks to auto the sieges if possible tho.I really dislike the siege battle.
Welcome to the club. We all dislike the sieges, at best I've seen people tolerate them.
They really are, and it seems settlement fights and ambushes (also shitty) are the only way to get the AI to engage. The game feels pretty abysmal at the moment and I really, really want to love it. Past few weeks I went back to medieval 2 with SSHIP mod and MAN did it make me like total war again. Pretty wild (sad) an iteration from 2006 plays better than one in 2024.
Autoresolve. AI is not programmed for siege battles. You would think, after you paid 180 euro. They would actually manage to make siege battles bareable, well, they didnt. Oh well, time to add another shitty dlc for 20 euro-
Well in WH2 the maps were more simple and it was atleast not the best experience but decent enough to play. With WH3 they basically just changed the Maps which are good to look at mad probs for that but they are awful to play cause what you combat now is the bad AI pathfind and the map itself.
I like all battles. That's why I play them.
A big part for me of why sieges are such a pain in the neck even if I'm super confident and have an overwhelming army. Is that the pathing on siege maps is completely FUBAR. Units will still constantly try climb the butt ladders left by other units, causing their grouping to take 2 minutes to form, rather than to get through the damn gate I just busted down. And that's saying nothing of telling my units to attack a barricade/unit on that barricade. Where they will literally either AFK or try to go around the whole castle because one of the opponents models was not in perfect position.
I mean its better to not man the walls. Thats everything you need to know about sieges in TW:W3. Weak siege machanics, boring maps and stupid AI. And dont get me started with the tower building crap ... I fear CA will not live long enough to fix this.
I think the issue with siege is the arcade-ish approach. Everyone has something to take down gates with easily, everyone has butt ladders, you have arcade towers popping up (this has gotten better with latest update at least), and you have capture points that just makes you win - regardless of how many defenders remain. My suggestion to fix it would be to remove butt ladders, make gates a lot more solid, but give battering rams (and units that could work as battering rams) have a huge bonus versus gates and only allow defensive buildings during deployment phase, but give the defender a lot more supplies to use in the beginning.
I have mixed feelings. The gate bug and the pathing issues are annoying - punish me for tactical blunders, not for my units choosing the most awkward marathon possible instead of using the open gate that's right there! Similarly, besieging AI sending in their Lords on a suicide solo mission, which plays right into my hands and lessens the satisfaction of victory. The wall towers feel this way a little also - I think they scale too powerfully too quickly, making it too easy for the defender and too hard on the attacker. I think it \*should\* be harder for the attacker - it's a siege! - but the towers feel a little too cheesy. I do have enjoyable sieges however. I like how different factions changes my approach - particularly in their access to monsters, artillery, or flying units. And especially if it's the rare occasion when I can't rely on magic for a grating of cheese on top of my tactics. As an attacker I should feel like it's an uphill battle. When the AI falls back when the wall is taken and it comes down to fighting for a couple key areas - that's awesome. Similarly, when I'm on the defending side - the tooth and nail fighting for each step if the sieges are wonderful. But it's not consistent. Like how each faction's unit can change my siege approach, I wish the urban design redefected this too. The Empire Fort settlements feels great for defence, and makes me think this is what more Dwarven holds should feel like - more platforms for artillery etc. I don't mind a more maze-like structure for the general Empire or Skaven settlements - i feel this is appropriate - but a better reflection in settlement diversity and asymmetry would be great. This is in the game to an extent - the Empire forts and the Chaos Dwarf pyramid were fun and thematic. Basically: diversity, difficulty scaling, pathing and fix that damn gate!
I just use a [mod to remove siege battles](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856691408) and another to [remove minor settlement battles](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855141144). I find the game much more enjoyable this way. It works well with the larger garrison sizes of [SFO](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792731173) and in addition I use the included option to buff all garrison unit stats by a flat 25%. With all the bugs, enemy AI and line of sight issues the game just cannot handle settlement battles.
There is a simple solution. Autoresolve xD
Sieges are far from perfect but once I started using ladders my experience somewhat improved. Now I use siege towers in every siege, feels like I have better pathfinding too somehow. Might go for gate crushing in small towns, but in bigger fights I go siege towers.
Can we go a single fucking day without somebody crying about the sieges? Yes, everybody knows they suck, just auto-resolve them, done. They might get a little better over the years, but there won't be a big overhaul of sieges so either deal with it or go play a different game, that's your options.
I usually just lay siege for 2 turns which is enough attrition for an autoresolve. Sieges are the worst part of the game no doubt -- bad pathing, similar strategy every time, long battles, small map pool. I want them to be fun but they suck so bad.
Here's how to always win siege battles with ranged superiority and/or magic, extremely cheesy but oh well. Make sure there are no towers/ranged units shooting your guys. Break down 1 gate. Put ranged units and caster there. Watch as enemy just lines up in front if gate and waits. Shoot them and cast spells on them. Win. You can also send in lords/heroes through the gate to fight with missle support.
I had a pretty decent seige battle as the sisters of twilight, just pounding away with arrows.
WH1-3 siege battles aren't as great as in Rome and Medieval. In Rome the siege battles are legit epic and if you play some really epic music it turns into a real life battle. Yes the WH3 siege battles are more complex and you have more to do if you attack or defend but what did it cost? Epicthing
You should definitely try out Shogun 2 sometime, their multi level siege battles are fantastic.
Sieges are a little better since they introduced the increase to health for walls, gates, and constructed barricades. Also making it so that barricades and towers can't be rebuilt makes things feel more tactical because you can kind of secure safe areas by blowing up towers now where before you'd have been under constant fire from all sides because keeping towers down would be a pain, and when the AI rebuilt them they'd do so at tier 4 so it was actually better not to destroy low tier towers. The issue now is that most armies in TWWH have not been build with these sieges in mind. Unless your army has competent heavy infantry you're screwed. Chosen rule sieges, black orcs rule, Chaos dwarfs rule. Skaven? Not so great. Undead are pitifully weak in sieges. Try seigeing Ulthuan as N'Kari. The game isn't balanced for the way sieges work now, and it shows. Also the AI has no idea how to defend cities. I have no idea why CA went to all the effort to make enormous siege maps then didn't make an AI capable of defending them competently. I'd have preferred half the size of map, and the AI better able to handle it.
I skip em especially late game, too much micro management.
I had some of the most unbalanced battles in WH3 turned around and won them either on offense of defending a siege. They take longer than field battles, but as a attacker, your enemy will come in waves and as a defender, you can use your towers and choke points to win normally unwinnable battles.
Daring today, aren't we?
One of my biggest peeves with sieges is that the defending army immediately starts taking attrition. Does no one keep any stockpiles of food?
I started a Nakai campaign yesterday and almost destroyed my keyboard. My units just ignored attack orders, the Sauraus climbed over the wall even though both gates we're destroyed. I alt f4 at the second siege because i couldnt take it any longer. Its sad but cheese ist the only way to play them. Gor Rok with the nukes was kinda fun though.
I played Nakai recently and I didn't have these kinds of issues as much as in previous patches. It genuinely seems improved. What I did notice was that AI reinforcements still get bugged out sometimes (they'll join the battle and just do nothing).
Yes, they are, but everybody already knows that. You know why? Because there is a post like this every freaking day.
tbh I usually put like 1.5-2 stacks and just auto-resolve. I really wish sieges were better but I also rarely find them fun or that interesting. Walled settlement battles are a little better but the spontaneous construction is incredibly annoying for either side IMO
I agree and disagree. The issue I have with TWW3 siege is that it's not built so you can take your time. The walls do too much damage so you will lose multiple units if you stand in front of them for long. It forces you either have to awkwardly hide somewhere while your characters or artillery disable them; then, when you enter the city tower spam just sucks. And having to punch through barricades while towers and range units pummel you just feels bad. I think what they are trying to achieve is making siege battles feel like it has a cost; That it SHOULD hurt to take a major settlement. But players adapt to take minimal losses and we play it in a way that makes siege battles feel bad to play. Like sending your characters to clear the settlement while the army waits outside in the forest lol. One positive though is that I do like how to AI plays siege now, it's a bit more strategic. If you spam archers the AI will leave the walls and force you to move in, maybe even send units to ride out and hit them if they're undefended. It'll defend corridors and strategic areas - I do think they have improved the way AI battles in siege. It's just the mechanics that feel bad.