Siege Units

[Fate]

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

[Saber Cherry]

NTJedi said:

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

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

[NTJedi]

Saber Cherry said:
Siege weapons had no long-term value. Nobody carried battering rams and siege towers from city to city, at least in countries with trees. All I know indicates that they're universally constructed on the spot (though I'm not an expert on the subject).

That was true for simple siege equipment during the earliest uses, but further into medieval times the equipment was built and then moved. In the 4th century BC engineers in the armies of Philip of Macedon and of his son, Alexander the Great, built mobile siege towers which were taken on campaign.

Saber Cherry said: It might be interesting to add grappling-hook special forces, or wall-climbing ninja, who can attack inside a castle during a siege...

Would be interesting to watch units scale the walls... maybe Dominions_4.

Saber Cherry said: but mobile siege units is more "Warcraft" than "Dominions".

My last warcraft game was Warcraft_2 which was over 5 years ago. My point is in relation with history and the only time fortifications haven't seen siege equipment was around 2000BC and earlier. Since Dominions has 3 unique eras it seems only logical for siege equipment to exist within at least one of the eras. Siege units were part of history for many nations and since many aspects of Dominions is from history their existence seems only logical.

[Saber Cherry]

I can see siege weapons used defensively - immobile national units, somewhat like Watchers, except shooting stones and bolts... in addition to the free ones from the castle towers.

According to Wiki:

Used throughout antiquity in both the Far East and Europe, siege towers were of unwieldy dimensions and therefore mostly constructed on site of the siege.

[/quote]Catapults were usually assembled at the site of a siege, and an army carried few or no pieces of it with them because wood was easily available on site.

[/quote]

Most of the other articles don't say. Trebuchets were almost certainly immoble. Battering rams are so simple that they were almost certainly built on-site. But the article on ballistae seems to indicates that there were various types, some boat-mounted or even wagon-mounted. However, those aren't really siege artillery IMO, so much as anti-personnel artillery.

The stone projectiles themselves varied in size, and could cause immense damage to city walls in their way, while the arrows could kill several men at once.

I suspect that the mobile ones used arrows and the ones that used boulders were strictly immobile... but, I don't know for sure.

[Argitoth]

Duuuuuudz... well I am going to agree with Cherry, it is kinda unrealistic to carry catapaults around. At best, the movement of an army with a catapault should be 1 and cannot go past forests and mountains, swamps, etc. Only farms and plains. But I do like the idea of building catapaults on site.

I GOT AN IDEA!!!!1

Create a commander, name him something like: Head Catapault Engineer. Make it so the HCE has a leadership of like 5 (can only control 5 units) and if it's possible, make it so he can only command units called catapault engineers. The number of catapault engineers decides the number of.... omg this is not a good idea.

For 1 thing, each turn is a month. Another thing, it usually took 5 days to construct 1 catapault. Not sure if it's 5 days in a construction yard or out in the middle of a forest near a castle, or with 5 people or 50... not sure.

Or we can ignore history and say the number of catapault engineers commanded by a head engineer = the number of catapaults you will have during your next battle divided by 5. So every commander + 5 units = 1 catapault during your next battle. And the engineers don't fight in battles if they are the attacker. Only if they are the defender.

... ok... kinda messy, but whatever!

[Endoperez]

That sounds a tad too complicated. Maybe we should simplify it a bit.

1) If one commander can build a castle, normal workers are probably available anywhere.

2) Thus, the units that actually build the catapult are available everywhere.

3) We only need a commander. This commander could be named "Master Catapult Engineer" or "Siege Engineer".

4) Every Siege Engineer should give a bonus for breaking down castle walls. I think 25 would be a good value. Siege Engineers should be able to lead few units, which can emulate the warriors operating the catapult or just guarding it from enemy attacks against it (assassinations). If you really wanted to play around with the idea, I quess we could give the Siege Engineer no fighting equipment, but high resource cost, like 50 or so. And this is very, very Ulmish; they already have Sappers and Guardians and Lord Guardians and - oh, Siege Engineers already exist!

Isn't it nice when the developers are ahead of us?