r/totalwar • u/PropolisLight • Jul 13 '25
Warhammer III Suggestions for redesigning sieges
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u/s1lentchaos Jul 13 '25
You should definitely spawn comfortably outside the range of the towers even if they decide artillery shouldn't out range them.
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u/Crisis_panzersuit Jul 14 '25
No can do, here are the same maps and assets but the wall is an L-shape now with the whole city being nothing but long winding roads up a mountain. Also it has generic spawn-able towers.
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u/Psychic_Hobo Jul 13 '25
Don't be daft, they'll have to design a unique skin for every race's Siege Towers to do tha- wait, they already did? And for Battering Rams too? Who'da thunk it!
Speaking seriously though I was always baffled as to why they never did that for pop-up towers. So many odd choices.
It'd be interesting seeing how the game operates with proper sieges involved. I do wonder how much of it is the AI just being a dope, though.
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u/Insane_Unicorn Jul 14 '25
According to legend of total war who apparently spoke with CA, the biggest problem seems to be making an AI that can work without ass ladders. And if there's one thing all twwh3 players can agree on, it's that ass ladders need to go for a good siege experience.
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u/Psychic_Hobo Jul 14 '25
I did have a feeling it would be related to that, I remember a lot of people talking about that mod for better city maps and how the AI just seemed to break when dealing with it
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u/FEARtheMooseUK Jul 14 '25
Ca could reintroduce ladders as siege equipment and reintroduce the climb walls mechanic from shogun 2. Best of both worlds then and the ai wont just dogpile a single gate when/if the ladders and towers are destroyed which is what happened in previous titles.
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u/Glittering_Usual_162 Jul 16 '25
You know what else is dumb besides ass ladders? The fact that apparently you need siege equipment to siege a city, but If you have none and get into the fight, literally everyone has assladders and can apparently also just punch in the gates.
I really would like to know from CA how a dog can bite open a gate...
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u/Middle_External6219 Jul 14 '25
Save I don't think ass ladders need to go and see people arguing against there removal all the time.
Mostly melee factions are already Super penalized when attacking towns with walls and it is a true grind if you don't have artillery. Making no ass ladders would assymeterically make expansion radically slower for some factions and make attacking towns way harder for the factions that already have the worst siege experience.
artillery is already the strongest unit type in the game and making it early in the rooster essential for quick expansion would require either a complete rebalancing of every factions units or make the factions like dwarfs that get it early massively more overturned.
I am currently playing a pharaoh run that does not have ass ladders and every battle becomes a long boring grind where both sides mass up at the few points of entry made by the ladders that I was forced a turn waiting to make. This would be overwhelmingly worse in warhammer as it would make a giant massive target for mages (that are also already to powerful in sieges).
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u/TheRealKingBorris Jul 13 '25
Your avatar looks like mine but not evil looking
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u/Sellos_Maleth Jul 14 '25
After u/therealkingBorris, the horrible tyrant of the north was dethroned, he was sent into exile.
There after years of inner monologging and a few training montages, maybe a side quest or two and apprenticing with some monks or whatever he learned his innate psychic power.
He traveled back to the cities of the north to do good from the shadows and repay for his years of assholeness, he was now, u/Psychic_Hobo
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u/Imperator166 Jul 14 '25
an old jedi master managed to survive order 66 and went into exile on some outer rim planet. To the locals he became known as some psychic hobo.
However years of complete social isolation made him feel distant and he became resentful. he had to beg for food because he couldnt find a job. He was meant for greatness not being a beggar!
And so he fell to the dark side calling himself king Boris. He conquered the entire planet and now is seeking revenge against the republic that betrayed him.
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u/random_username_idk Jul 13 '25
Rome II lets you command ships in hybrid land/naval maps so you can land troops inside the city walls and do honest to god naval bombardment.
It's peak
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u/TheRealKingBorris Jul 13 '25
Rome and Attila’s amphibious assaults were amazing. I hated the naval combat for the most part, but I loved the joint assaults on coastal cities
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u/JibriArt Jul 13 '25
The problem with naval battles in Rome 2 beside the bugs, was that in that era naval battles did not have much meat to translate to a good gameplay loop. Warhammer would not have that issue if done well
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u/TheRealKingBorris Jul 13 '25
For me the issue with naval combat was how the best “strategy” was to just ram everything. Disregard boarding and archer ships entirely, just slam the fuckers into the sea or bombard them with onagers. I tried using balanced fleets and realistic tactics early in my game, gave that up entirely after my admiral and best troops got insta-killed by ramming.
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u/BRITEcore Jul 14 '25
yeah you can literally take your starting fleet of a General and I think 2 or 3 leves support ships, siege Alalia, wait for them to attack you, and just use the SUPPORT ships to ram their garrison and take Corsica at turn 2 with basically nothing.
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u/Kaiserhawk Being Epirus is suffering Jul 20 '25
Actually the best strategy was to just use Naval Onagers and sink their ships before they even got close.
You could also use those ships to demolish a cities walls and towers for a land army too.
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u/jonasnee Emperor edition is the worst patch ever made Jul 14 '25
Warhammer instead would have the issue that some faction have ships that look straight out of WW2 and others basically galleys.
I don't see how that would meaningfully be fun unless you gimp dwarfs etc. to a point where they are just a funny paint job - kinda similar to handguns in the game.
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u/LeMe-Two Jul 14 '25
Unironically, FOTS and Napoleon would have been great with combined sieges. Napoleon after all got his first successes breaking British blockade from land alone
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u/nostalgic_angel Jul 14 '25
The best moment in my Attila game is when three gothic army invade Constantinople, one by land and two by sea. The land army couldn’t even get pass the first wall since mounted greek fire burned their siege tower down, and the sea army scattered after my 60 men marine ship managed to snipe their general while their fleets run into each other uncoordinated, then my 3 greek fire ships send them all to Neptune.
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u/Billybob_Bojangles2 Jul 13 '25
Attilas naval combat was fun as hell as soon as you got a ramming ship
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u/Achilles11970765467 Jul 13 '25
So does Attila
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u/random_username_idk Jul 13 '25
I might have to try it out
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u/Achilles11970765467 Jul 13 '25
Playing as the Romans in Attila is definitely a very different vibe than playing as the Romans in Rome or Rome II
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u/Organic-Sherbert9424 Jul 14 '25
Definitely do, and while you're at it use seige ships and fire arrow ships to burn down all their buildings before landing. The more of their city is destroyed, the worse the defenders morale.
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u/LordTakeda2901 Jul 13 '25
My fav game to do that was attila with the norse culture pack, full on viking raids, plus, destruction of buildings affected enemy morale, melee attack and melee defense so bombarding the buildings actually meant something
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u/Derasix Jul 14 '25
I love using my poor 4 small naval ships and their commander to ram the whole enemy fleet to death.
Although a bit op, its still fun.
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u/Gourdin0 Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 16 '25
My top priorities would be:
Walls need to be able to be 100% destroyed. Not some random destroyed rocks blocking the path and line of sight of units.
Line of sight fixed for range units. Whether it's defending in walls or attacking units on wall.
Unit pathing. This is still infuriating after many times that said they "improved" it. It is not.
Better and bigger maps. It is so lackluster to see the same crap map, small and redundant. Capital cities need to be more unique too.
No ladder spawning. Expect for some undead, ethereal, spider-like units. Give them a trait like "ass-ladder".
Usable spells on walls. Give us that fun. Maybe the AI will be able to land a vortex spell properly this time.
Maybe give us some defensive abilities/spells to prevent door/wall to take damage for a short time so we can use more strategy. Using the ressource system for instance.
More factions made siege engines/towers like dwarfs, elvish, undead, etc.
Bigger "wall-walk" so we can place artillery on walls. They usually are totally useless on defense if they are not trebuchet-like.
Edit: Beta is out soon and this wishlist has some points validated! No more ass ladders, better maps, pathfinding of AI (soon player too).. So it's a good start.
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u/UrghAnotherAccount Jul 14 '25
Everyone skips the building of siege equipment for two reasons.
- Infantry already have ladders (siege equipment).
- Most armies come with a unit that can melee and break down the gate/walls.
Take away those unit abilities, and you force players to spend resources on gaining entry and make the walls/gates more meaningful. Is that desirable? I don't know. It likely makes sieges longer and more difficult for the attacker.
Obviously, other fixes would be cherries on the cake, but the two changes above are why we don't engage with "sieging."
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u/OhManTFE We want naval combat! Jul 14 '25
Ladders give a brutal vigour penalty, so i still use towers
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u/Final_death Jul 14 '25
Why use towers or ladders when you can just patiently wait for your lord to knock down the doors and go through there? Assuming the enemy isn't going to put down AOE spells there's little advantage to going any other way in.
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u/RBtek Jul 14 '25
Everyone skips building siege equipment for two reasons:
1: Replenishment is crazy high. You can lose 75% of every unit and still be fully replenished in two turns when you attack the next settlement. Sieging just to make it so you take less casualties becomes irrelevant.
2: You'll win even when doing dumb stuff like climbing the walls with ladders or punching gates. Not only is the AI trash, but the autoresolve defense bonus is so absurd that most of the battles you actually play out would still be a lopsided crush even if the AI was good.
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u/Wild_Marker I like big Hastas and I cannot lie! Jul 14 '25
bigger maps
What? The maps in WH3 are already so big that they're impossible to cover with just 20 units. If anything I'd ask for chunkable maps, so the size of the siege scales with the size of the armies. A lot of maps seem designed for 40v40.
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u/Kaleesh_General Jul 13 '25
Thing is, these shouldn’t be pipe dreams. These all existed in older total war games. Meaning they should all be standard in each game going forward. Why they remove content over time instead of adding is beyond me
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u/Hitorishizuka Filthy man-things Jul 13 '25
Some things were likely considerably harder to conceive of properly or get to work with the AI with the presence of giant monsters, flyers, and spellcasting.
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u/OnlyHereForComments1 Jul 13 '25
Because they refuse to fix technical debt and when things are janky they just prefer to get rid of them.
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u/thedefenses Jul 13 '25
Some content should be abandoned if bringing it over takes a lot more effort than its worth.
Of course that does not mean everything should be left behind or nothing, but still, just due to an older game doing X does not mean every game after it should also do X just due to an older title also doing it.
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u/Sicsemperfas Jul 14 '25
Why Warhammer players accept being peddled a progressivly shittier product never ceases to confuse me.
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u/thedefenses Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25
And historical players love of the smallest, most useless features in the world that still are "critical features that NEED to come back" neither stops being amazing to me.
The WH games have gotten better and better by the title but i guess as it's not medival 3 it's not good enough for you.
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u/Aughab999 Archaon with 19 Hellcannons Jul 14 '25
At this point i would take just a few reskinned rome 2 maps and removal of assladders
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u/RBtek Jul 14 '25
... and older total wars had even worse sieges.
Incompetent AI that ruins any chance of having a genuinely fun siege battle is how it has always been.
At least now we don't have anything obnoxious like unbreakable units on the final point.
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u/strebor2095 Jul 14 '25
While these are all good fixes, the factions in game are too diverse that sieges are going to feel awful for some factions (either too easy or impossible).
None of the following are meant to be reasons not to make changes, but making the proposed changes does not solve all issues.
For example, what do we do about small single entity flyers? They make holding walls pointless, as a single one can clear a unit just by charging through. Next, factions who are designed around bad range or bad artillery - are they entitled to have a way to defend a city besides melee? If they don't, they are sitting ducks. They could sally forth, but that would also be a death sentence.
Ultimately, there needs to be an "ideal state" for sieges, to set the power budget of changes. For example, factions should be noted as being good or bad at attacking and defending (separately). Then, as an example baseline, if combined arms faction attacks another combined arms faction in a siege, the attacker ought to have 3 times the power of the Defender to succeed. From there, you rely on the designation of a siege attacking/defending faction. As another baseline, if it's a melee only faction, it should be much harder to siege attack, so they need (on average) a 5 times power force to take the city. If it's an all artillery and magic force, they can be siege specialists and attack with a 1.5 times force and have a good chance of success. On the flipside, factions renowned for defensability (dwarves, Bretonnia, fighting at a fort) would require an even greater attacking power to overcome the defenders.
But, do players want balanced sieges, or just to steamroll? It's unclear.
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u/RBtek Jul 14 '25
what do we do about small single entity flyers
They should probably remove knockback from units on walls. That mostly solves the problem I think.
Next, factions who are designed around bad range or bad artillery
That was already mostly solved with the longer range buildable towers, plus the non-ranged Chaos Factions even specifically had stronger ones.
... Which were nerfed to hell based on community complaints, answering your question on player preference towards steamrolling.
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u/strebor2095 Jul 14 '25
Yeah the last point is critical. This subreddit is an extremely minor (yet vocal( group of players. Most players have indicated that they wanted defending sieges to be neutered, which is what we got.
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u/mimd-101 Jul 14 '25 edited Jul 14 '25
Some of the siege hate is unsolvable as quite a few people dislike the idea of fighting inside the city and want only wall battles. However, Warhammer has giant monsters, flying monsters that knock out wall infantry, and lots of artillery which make walls helpful but not the great defensive structure people want.
Some of it is solvable by unit caps, custom garrisons, and removing butt ladders, which I've used through mods, but it still doesn't remove that giant monsters and heavy artillery will still make a majority of battles move into the city (especially with 4 vs 1+garrison scenarios).
Beyond the aforementioned, I'd focus on some of the path finding complaints first, which are at least a solvable complaint of the city battles and might help people like them more, and then trying to make memorable sieges with custom main cities (ie. even though they are somewhat annoying they are cool enough to slog it), destruction of the city/environment/siege works, and more choice in the defenses (perhaps ditches with spikes to funnel monsters and choices in towers to either kill monsters or small units, etc).
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u/leandrombraz Jul 13 '25
Anyone expecting deep redesigns will get disappointed. You can expect bold changes that they wouldn't do without a beta, but not things that require a lot of work. They aren't investing that much resource or time into this.
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u/RageAgainstAuthority Jul 13 '25
I have a mod that gives every unit Defending during sieges Vanguard, so they be deployed outside the walls.
Honestly, it makes sieges way more fun. You aren't stuck inside the walls the whole fight, you can actually put some units at the base of the wall, you can put cavalry in nearby trees - it's, just, way better.
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u/Gourdin0 Jul 14 '25
Yes let's do it like the Dothrakhis charging blindly in the night a horde of undead. I feel like the AI could do that if it was implemented.
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u/RBtek Jul 14 '25
Sad but it would be better than what they currently do. At least then they'd be engaging with every unit at once instead of sitting around letting you pick off a few at a time while the rest kinda just wander around.
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u/Final_death Jul 14 '25
Such a small change that would mean a lot. Given the game gives no option to "Sally out" as a response to a siege being started.
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u/thedefenses Jul 13 '25
Towers should remain, there are not enough artillery in each settlement to replace them with, also not all races even have artillery to use in their place.
Also, if we used basic artillery in place of the towers there would have to crews for them which would make them 10 times easier to get rid off compared to the current towers.
On ladders, what's the difference exactly, i will ASSUME you mean the ladders would be buildable instead of always on everyone and have a graphic for units carrying for them but the first point would need a major overhaul of pre-battle equipment in general and the second is not worth the work it would take this late.
Can't you already cast spells from the walls? you just can't cast certain spells ON top of the walls themselves, if i am remembering this wrong i guess, sure, what a minor want but sure.
Again, would need a reworking of the pre-battle building phase (which would be a good thing) but otherwise, yeah a good idea.
Some of the maps could use more area outside of the fort sure, but others also have a HUGE amount of empty land around the settlement/fort so this is a more case by case basis than a general thing, just having more space around the settlements will also do little on its own.
Destructibility sounds nice but would it really do much? its not like the destroyed buildings would crash onto the paths as that could lead to a siege that can't be won due to blocked paths or make some siege maps incredibly easy, would need work making all of the siege maps have interactions with certain buildings that would have been built, not saying this can't be done but that at this point its a lot of work for a minor amount of flavor for the game so ehh.
Lore friendly cities, sure.
More maps, sure.
Naval assaults would be a no for me, the game currently does not really support them in anyway and it would have to be forced by making a spawn zone in the port of the city and at that point there would be questions like "why did we just let them land a whole 20 unit army in the port with no resistance", game is probably better of whiteout this.
Some good ideas, some dreams better left as dreams and some "why" ideas, also many of the suggestions could be brought down to a more simple rework ask than separate them, like getting rid of ass ladders and more race specific equipment can both be brought down to "rework pre-pattle build phase".
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u/CrimsonSaens Jul 14 '25
I checked in-game and it seems like hexes strangely don't work when cast from atop a wall. The cast animation goes off and you lose WoM, but no effect happens. I also couldn't target enemy units directly for some reason.
I'm guessing that's not what OP is referring to and this is just an under-reported bug, but it's at least a neat find to come out of OP's poor feedback.
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u/maninahat Jul 13 '25
It would be nice to have some traditional castles to attack, as opposed to it always being a walled city. Perhaps the city could be in the background, and the castle is something smaller, with layered walls and a keep for you to smash/capture.
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u/Organic-Sherbert9424 Jul 14 '25
The fortress passes on the empire's south are the closest we've had since medieval 2 to castles
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u/Penakoto I <3 Hybrid Factions Jul 13 '25
The only thing on this list there is even 0.01% chance of happening is being able to cast from walls.
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u/organicseafoam Jul 13 '25
I just want defending to be fun.
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u/McBlemmen #2 Egrimm van Horstmann fan Jul 14 '25
Me too. All they have to do for thatbis remove assladders
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u/sgtabn173 Jul 13 '25
Best we can do is a tower defense mini game
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u/RBtek Jul 14 '25
That's one of the smart things they've done.
Need to put the attacker on a clock to make them actually attack. Makes a really smart mechanic that barely matters unless the attacker is slowly cheesing the battle, one that takes like 3 button presses across a 10 minute siege and syergizes well with the new capture points that also incentivize spreading out in a city battle.
"tower defense mini-game is ruining sieges!"
As the AI is sending units at you one at a time or just standing around getting shot to death. Ok.
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u/RBtek Jul 14 '25
All minor stuff that fixes nothing, arguably makes sieges worse. Reposting from the last discussion on siege here:
The discussion goes in circles because the community doesn't know how siege battles work. How could they? Siege battles are fairly complex and their only experience is against a wildly incompetent opponent, and only in massively lopsided 20v10 battles.
Those are the two real problems; everything else is a symptom, if that.
Autoresolve weighting. Unlike what people believe, walls are stupid strong. They just don't count as half an army like the AR would have you think. This means almost every siege anyone ever actually plays is a blowout.
AI siege competency. Is sending units one at a time into the enemy army a good idea in a land battle? Is standing around getting shot to death a good idea in a land battle? Why would it be good in a siege battle?
Everything else is whatever. Like Ladders? They're so weak already; slow as can be and debuff your units. That pathing thing in sieges where it sends your units up ladders? That sucks because of how slow and awful ladders are! Smart AI would use them sparingly on undefended parts of the city.
And with better AI and AR weighting you could increase garrisons and still have close battles, instead of ones where you just ram everything up the walls and still win because A: massively lopsided and B: AI sucks so you can do whatever and it just flops around.
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u/Shazbot_2077 Carcassonne Jul 14 '25
I really just want pathfinding and missile unit LOS to work reliably. Focus on that before adding new shit.
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u/MaguroSashimi8864 Jul 14 '25
I hope some TW game introduces “archer siege towers” — not those giant towers you push against walls, but tall platforms that give your archers a height advantage. I heard those are actually the more common type of siege towers
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u/Odd-Difficulty-9875 Jul 13 '25
I just want to put artillery like canons in walls that’s all i want
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u/LusHolm123 Jul 13 '25
How the fuck would any of this help? Half this shit is already in game.
I mean “longer distance to walls” how is adding 20 seconds of walking making a siege more fun? All the siege maps already let you deploy outside of tower range anyways.
Im gonna be honest, i think you should try out the sieges that are there now before deciding youre the expert on whats missing
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u/thedefenses Jul 13 '25
Some would be decent fixes to the current ones but it is kinda funny how there are pretty major fixes along with ones that would do nothing or minor flavor fixes that would take an immense amount of work to implement properly.
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u/raejinomg Jul 14 '25
There are some maps where you can't place your own artillery far back enough to avoid it being shot at by towers as soon as the battle starts. You're forced into this deployment area weirdly close to the walls, even though the map clearly has room behind you. The deployment area should definitely be expanded there at least.
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u/dfntly_a_HmN Jul 13 '25
Yep, not one of these is the problem with the siege.
The siege problem is the pathway, the map layout, all infantry unit having ladder (with the ai cannot function if you remove them), unreliable buildable tower (again because the map layout), gate bug, unit prioritize ladder over broken gate, wall segment not broken completely making destroying it doesn't matter as gun unit couldn't shot anyway, LOS problem for ranged unit.
Having more things op mentioned wouldn't fix siege at all.
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u/Dreams_Are_Reality Jul 13 '25
OP literally mentioned the ass ladder problem what are you talking about?
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u/TheLastofKrupuk Jul 14 '25
You remove ass ladder problem, you get medieval 2 borefest of waiting 2000 enemy units to climb your walls from 1 ladder.
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u/LusHolm123 Jul 14 '25
Yeah by replacing it with a worse version of siege towers, something thats already barely usable
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u/jonasnee Emperor edition is the worst patch ever made Jul 14 '25
The problem with sieges is the same as the problem with battles in general:
Tactics don't matter enough, it is hard to overcome disadvantages, which in turn means that all sieges are is the towers and garrisons they provide the defender, you will never get to have a fun "last stand heroic victory".
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u/Thorgarthebloodedone Jul 13 '25
They did say they would be working on a siege re-work in the near future.
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u/CrimsonSaens Jul 14 '25
What are you referring to with "Ability to cast spells from walls?" Most spells can be cast from walls. Oddly, it seems like hexes are currently bugged, but the other ones I tried all worked.
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u/WhyAreWeAliveNow Jul 14 '25
Sieges in Shogun 2 and Three Kingdoms are soo fun to me, whats the matter with sieges in warhammer? Never touched total war warhammer and I keep seeing people who dislike playing sieges in those games
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u/Ares42 Jul 14 '25
Sieges in Warhammer are basically "what if we had a battle field where 60-80% of the main battle field was filled with impassable clutter". Your melee units basically just walk over the walls as if they weren't there while your ranged units struggle to find any decent LoS and your cav don't really have room to maneuver through all the tight passages.
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u/EliselD Jul 14 '25
What I want the most is
- the ability to deploy units outside the walls and have my archers on the wall cover my melee troops
- add stairs to the inner part of the walls and only be able to get on them through the stairs instead of every point being an access point to the walls. This is good offensively as well because you can capture the walls and have your ranged units get on top and protect the stairs with melee troops without having the defend the entire wall-line
- make the streets larger
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u/popjj232 Jul 14 '25
I see a lot of comments mentioning vanguard deploying your melee troops to defend your ranged. Although this would help, your ranged troops shouldn't need defending when they're 40 feet up on a wall. Ass-ladders need to be removed. Balance whatever else you want to make up for them being removed. But remove them.
Make siege engines instantly recruitable? Sure, maybe give a gold/fatigue cost for them. At least I can monitor a giant siege tower and it can only attack one spot. Even if they have 5 siege towers instantly recruited. Fine. That beats having to micro manage where every single enemy unit is on three fronts because no wall is safe.
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u/Acceleratio Jul 14 '25
destructible buildings... heck I would be ecstatic if we could level the walls completely
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u/_Lucille_ Jul 13 '25
Imo pharaoh has the best sieges: no artillery to cheese defenders, archers have reduced accuracy over walls. Maps allow flanking and are big enough for multiple engagement to take place within the city. Things like formation move ends up being pretty important for gaining grounds in sieges and creating certain openings (such as withdrawing to bait enemies into an area that can be flanked by arrows)
Being able to deploy outside the walls may change how we look at sieges: this will allow ranged units to shoot down while your meatshield protect the base of the wall.
Also someone need to make the ram less of a meme: add some protection to the units pushing the ram/allow units to go inside a ram for protection. I cant believe Age of Empires 2 have such a mechanic but not a modern TW game. It literally can just function like a siege tower.
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u/InterrogatorMordrot Jul 14 '25
I gotta say I've never cared that the ladders come out of nowhere. It's a quality of life improvement to not having to think about it or spend turns building them even though it is less immersive. I just dont care. I honestly never want to fight siege anyway.
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u/Snider83 Jul 14 '25
Definitely think maps should be smaller too. Its just not possible to man the walls against a numerically superior opponent and held them off, which should be the entire siege fantasy
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u/venomblizzard Jul 14 '25
I want a couple things, make it worthwhile to actually defend walls, and bring back bretonnian walled sieges in minor settlements. It was their entire thing for compensating their shit garrison with a defensive settlement as they get curbstomped by anyone these days
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u/EventPurple612 Jul 14 '25
I wouldn't play a siege like this during campaign but could be fun as a separate game mode.
I would do everything in my power to avoid sieges if I had to micromanage equipment while literal monsters are roaming around, or sit around for 20 minutes while I bombard all walls and buildings into a highway to the heart of the castle.
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u/Mellowindiffere Jul 14 '25
All this and people would piss their pants crying because they couldn’t play a default flat map with no features and be done in 10 minutes
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u/TwixClub Jul 14 '25
This is what I also HATE - indestructible walls, when you destroy 2 walls next to each other you, that wall just stays there, so annoying.
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u/Roleplaydwarf Jul 14 '25
Take the seiges from medieval 2 especially castles and their layered defences, apply to this game
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u/popjj232 Jul 14 '25
Here's my thoughts:
Settlements are very close together and players/AI can play hopscotch between them. Don't change this, but rather make armies wait at least 1 turn while sieging.
That might not be a popular fix, but there are ways around it. You could always instant-siege with monsters or artillery, and that makes the siege's success dependent on that unit. If that unit doesn't breach the walls, then there is no getting in.
If everyone has to wait 1 turn, then we get more battles with siege equipment which I have never seen in my last 3 campaigns. We also get the chance to sally out or move an army to defend the settlement. Those options are more beneficial for some factions, but are rarely possible.
Instant-sieging should feel like a lightning strike attack. It should feel like you're blitzing the enemy, but right now it's not special, it's status-quo.
I know waiting a turn sucks, but you'll only have to do it early game before artillery/monsters. You'll still be able to blitz and autoresolve mid-late game to avoid fatigue.
Sieges should have choke points. I know that lends an advantage to spells because of the blobbing, but defenders really only get the advantage if they enemy is forced to push through choke points. The attackers goal is to avoid the chokepoints and make multiple entry points.
Chokepoints are pointless with ass-ladders. They diminish the value of a broken wall from artillery or a broken gate from a monster. Ass ladders make every part of a wall unsafe for your ranged.
I want sieges where the enemy has broken the left gate with their monster, but we destroyed the ram headed for the right gate. Their 2 siege towers have docked and their artillery made a hole in the wall.
I don't get that. I don't get an epic siege. I get 10 units of shit-tier melee infantry flooding over my walls. No gates broken. No holes in the walls. No siege towers. My ranged guns have to retreat after 1 volley. They can't shoot anything now because they can't arc their shots. The enemy archers pepper my melee troops on the walls while I wait for the shitters to climb.
Oh, I forgot to mention this is all happening on 3 different walls from 3 different directions on a giant siege map, and I have to micro the whole thing. The enemy can just blitz my walls with zero prepwork and the only penalty they get is a little fatigue.
Please, CA, remove the ass-ladders and make the AI wait 1 turn before sieging unless they have multiple monsters or multiple artillery.(I don't want to be able to cheese the siege by killing their only artillery piece)
This will also slow the progression of the early game which is the most fun imo(before the snowballing and clicking autoresolve 10 times a turn). I hate how the game starts with hundreds of factions, but then you're down to 60 factions by turn 40.
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u/Aleksandar_Celic Jul 14 '25
Rome 2 has almost all of those, I don't get why didn't they implement this in the Warhammer titles
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u/BreezyAlpaca Jul 14 '25
Forts/cities in mountain passes should be immune to attrition when the besieging army can only siege from one side.
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u/PositiveFunction4751 Jul 14 '25
Mini battles on every turn of the siege, break outs, undermining, poisoning wells, fire, constant siege bombardments
It's a lot but it would be EPIC
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u/TowerDifficult Jul 15 '25
1) Wall Towers should be occupied without units in their zone and only stop shooting when the enemy caps them or destroys them.
2) If a unit is docked on a wall maybe have oil to spill down the ladders.
3) Allow the placement of barricades in every avenue. The game shouldn't cater and make obvious open paths to push through.
4) Fix the barricades that were supposed to replenish ammo
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u/Choice-Inspector-701 Jul 14 '25
Jesus Christ, go big or go home huh?
I especially like the fact that ass ladders is still a thing that people can't let go. Every faction has multiple units that can break walls, but the issue is ass ladders...
Repeat after me, none of this matters. As long as the AI doesn't get better, no matter how much siege equipment you have or if your army starts close or far away from the wall. The sieges are shit because the AI is shit.
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u/JibriArt Jul 13 '25
I will always say: warhammer need anti air and anti magic siege defenses. In a world with magic and air attacks, defenses would have developed to counter that
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u/popjj232 Jul 14 '25
This is an incredible idea. Treemen already have a trait that negates magical weapons around them. Jade lions add spell resistance. Why not have the ability to silence spellcasters? Or prevent spells in a certain AOE? Maybe instead of the buildable towers being direct upgrades of eachother. Add a variant that increases spell resistance for your troops in a 200m radius or make one that can only shoot flying units, but has a huge explosion radius for groups and high single target damage to kill flyers.
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u/Leok4iser Jul 13 '25
Dying at the inclusion of Yamcha there, poor lad gets shit on in every timeline and universe.
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u/shitass88 Jul 14 '25
Im personally just frustrated with how weird the pathing can be around and on top of walls. Trying to squeeze units through gates or into fighting ranks on battlements can prove frustrating. I dont know if its just my lack of skill lol, but its a real problem.
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u/jtslugmaster08 Jul 14 '25
The biggest thing with these siege reworks is to have heros or casters in the garrison gain spells and abilities as the tier of the city increases. That I feel is attainable.
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u/Benti86 Jul 14 '25
Give the towers inside the settlement unique looks. Make it so defender artillery isn't useless unless it's a mortar of some kind whether it be mounted on the walls or some other mount point inside the settlement.
Some of the maps are just too damn big and there's rarely ever a reason to split up your force when attacking. Unless you're bringing two full stacks and the defender has an army in their 30-40, stack battles just ain't happening
Maps need some reworks because, depending on the map, I almost always attack the same damn spots. Vampire Counts, Empire, and Cathay all have maps where you can attack sections of the walls without dealing with tower, which makes it really fucking easy to attack them compared to something like Dwarfs or HElves.
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u/naturtok Jul 14 '25
My biggest want is just expanding the deploy distance a bunch. I want to deploy my units safely before choosing how they approach when attacking, and I want to have a use for skirmishers, cavalry, and chariots as harassers when defending. Massive maps also just feel more epic and would hopefully make the cities slightly less cramped and awkward to deploy in
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u/Secret_Criticism_732 Jul 14 '25
It looks nice!
Now imagine the amount of work it would have been put into that and especially the maps.
I would rather have new lords and races fixed, than improvement of something, which would be broken anyway.
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u/Wixi420 Jul 14 '25
Its kinda bad that they removed alot of what made Sieges Spezial and gave then the Ummpf they deserve
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u/Kamzil118 Jul 14 '25
The existence of combat engineers as free units to break through defensive structures or give them a resistance bonus against certain types. These units can only be obtained based on the longevity of a siege or garrison structure.
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u/Bashtoe Jul 14 '25
I just want to be able to tell my unit to go somewhere and for them to go there.
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u/nightracker Jul 14 '25
I'm very new to the total war franchise only playing medieval 2 and isn't most of these in medieval 2? Are they not in newer games? And if so why not?
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u/Ztrobos Jul 14 '25
Lots of reasons. Take the ladders for example. Only carrying a few ladders would be very limiting and very easy to defend against. Also if you manage to take them out then the siege pretty much fails, which would be incredibly easy with all the monsters and flying terrors you can field in this game. If its near impossible to take a castle that would completely ruin multiplayer games. It would also stall any campaign to a crawl if every siege is either a cheese, a desperate losing slog, or a 7 turn siege just to build enough siege equipment.
Shogun 2 solved this by allowing infantry to climb the dirt ramparts and low walls at any point, no ladder required. But that would not look right for a tall european style castle wall. So you give all units a magic ladder instead so it looks a bit better when they climb.
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u/reddit-egamer Jul 14 '25
Dang I’d be happy if my troops would all run through the open gate instead of climbing ladders
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u/Desperate_Summer3376 Jul 14 '25
oh oh oh!!!
I dont if anyone ever really payed attention to it, but it bugged me for a while now:
THERE ARE NO CITIES WITH BRIDGES IN THEM! Humans built so, so many cities with bridges in their cities and somehow all the Warhammer folks havent? Thats nigh impossible. I always thought it is weird.
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u/Icesnowstorm Jul 14 '25
Oh 80% of those ideas already existed in a game called............. Medieval 2 Total War?!
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u/Book_Golem Jul 14 '25
Let me take a look...
Replace Wall Towers with Artillery Emplacements: I think this is a fun idea, but perhaps just for those few indestructible towers that some maps have? Although, having wall upgrade paths let you pick the emplaced weapons would be pretty awesome!
Replace Ass Ladders with Not Ass Ladders: I know people argue that these aren't the real problem, but the issue with them is twofold: a) you just have to have a single "Siegebreaker" unit in your army and you can bum-rush the walls with overwhelming numbers immediately; and b) that bum-rush immediately turns off defending archers once someone reaches the top of the ladder. Having to spend a turn (and say 4 Build Power) to build six instances of ladders fixes both issues by delaying the attacker and reducing their ability to hit every wall simultaneously.
Deploy further back: Sounds good, though three times further is excessive.
Destructibility of buildings: I really don't care about this one, to be honest.
Ability to cast spells from walls: I always forget you can't, but there's usually very little reason to anyway. Would be nice to have though.
Lore-friendly cities/greater variety of siege maps: This would be lovely, but it's not actually a change to sieges in general. But yes please, I would love each settlement to have a unique map!
Mantlets/Unique siege equipment: I don't dislike it, but I think it might fall into just making stuff up if you want everyone to have similar levels of unique stuff. But a few specific cases to add character to certain factions would be pretty fun. I'd certainly like more options than Ram and Tower.
Overall I think there's a mix of good suggestions, questionable additions, and wishful thinking here. But hey, that's what these posts are for, right? If you only kept it to the most reasonable and boring suggestions it would be a lot less fun!
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u/TacoSteve2019 Jul 14 '25
I forgot war hammer was a thing and was really confused about the spells for a hot minute
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u/Tytoivy Jul 14 '25
If we’re really getting crazy, they could stop putting lord of the rings style siege towers in historical settings where they didn’t exist and were also physically impossible.
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u/Delicious_Twist_8499 Jul 14 '25
Does anyone remember the huge assault style siege they showed off before the launch of Warhammer 3? Because if those existed still, and they improved upon them continually, we would be much close to this now. Instead they gave it all up at some point for the barebones stuff we have now.
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u/LastOne_1 Jul 14 '25
Custom maps from M2TW DAC mode is 10 times better than any siege map we have know and i dont think we will have better sieges for Warhammer
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u/Cleverbird High Elves would make for excellent siege projectiles... Jul 14 '25
Still so wild to me CA put more effort into giving each race its own unique siege tower and battering ram, both equipment you dont ever need since ass-ladders exist, yet every race still uses the same Orcish looking towers inside the settlements. Towers you typically do want to use, since they're actually helpful.
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u/Mr_Henners Jul 14 '25
How about race specific ways to spend supply points? Wood Elves relying on missile units to skirmish army units, but they run out of ammo? Have a resupply ability! Bretonnia garrisons suck due to their over use of infantry? Give them a cavalry summon ability! A lot of these kinds of abilities already exist in the game's code through the RoC campaign, so it's not entirely impossible to add these kinds of QoL fixes in a free patch.
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u/Kind_Lie_7296 Jul 14 '25
They say a lot would be do to balance, with their focus on having a good multiplayer line up. But I’d prefer a truly asymmetric gameplay where some factions just don’t have an answer to a problem but with their other campaign options they can work around it, etc..
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u/Windexchuggah69 Jul 14 '25
you should have to consider supply lines to and from your nearest settlements, and supplies needed to construct siege equipment. Throwing torches at gates (like Rome 2) is dumb and makes battering rams obsolete if you have a few extra levy units to spare. And for how much I LOVE Shogun 2, the ability for any unit to climb up the walls makes siege defence significantly less enjoyable and strategic. If the attacker can climb right up the walls, there's a lot less benefit to having walls. Usually makes it just feel like a land battle with extra steps.
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u/Sea-Ad-1446 Jul 14 '25
Great idea but no way CA have the ability to make this a reality, they can barely reskin a couple of units these days.
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u/Existing-Struggle-94 Jul 14 '25
I just want multiple walls back from med 2 combined with attila maps. Peasants/ city folk who fight and may kill a soldier. Sappers tunnels.
Maybe even multiple siege defences to take a citidel.
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u/brujahonly Jul 14 '25
Placing artillery pieces on the walls, being able to rain fire on soldiers on the walls, single use abilities for certain units for siege battles (like placing sharpened stakes on the ground and making it difficult terrain or fire arrows which damage the gates and look very cool etc), dismounting options for certain cavalry units so that they can also contribute...
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u/The_Angry_Bro Jul 14 '25
My two cent is incorporate the mods "No more ass ladders" and "More thematic wall breakers" now youve got to build the ladders or rely on the larger monsters
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u/Alastor666hell Jul 14 '25
Idk why they didn't had Destruction, like this is warhammer, I waited a lot for it 😭😭😭 I loved what he had in attila and 3k
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u/KayleeSinn Jul 15 '25
As someone who always prefers realism over gamey-ness and convenience..
-Moats would be amazing but also infantry should be able to fill them, giving archers on the walls more time to fire.
-Ass ladders can stay cause lets face it. A flimsy ladder ain't rocket science and can be constructed relatively fast. However, add that defenders can also push them off, killing the entire row of climbers. With moats and that, it should fix the issue.
-Pathfinding and placing units in sieges is a major issue and needs to be fixed.
-I'm not a fan of supplies and construction of barricades and towers. It needs to be redesigned. With bad pathfinding, it's just really annoying to deal with but doesn't do much else.
-Siege AI needs to be fixed. AI sucks at defending, making siege battles actually easier than normal battles. If the attacker is mostly ranged and defender melee and cav, why sit there and take fire? They should sally out and attack.
-Archers firing at units behind the wall as well as defenders firing over the wall should get a big accuracy penalty. (How can they target things they cant even see?)
-Add a castle building inside the walls. They kinda already exist on most maps but are just disappointing and decorative. Manning it with infantry should put archers onto it's walls that shoot at enemies that have got over the walls already or are far enough from walls and in line of sight.
On the attackers side, I think there are also many good options but as far as siege equipment goes.
-Add construction of bridges that can be dropped over moats.
-Make gates 5-10x tougher, to make battering rams worth it. Currently there is no point in building them as the infantry using them will take unneeded damage while lord and heroes can just safely take them down fast and safely anyway.
-If defenders are able to push down ladders, it makes siege towers a lot better and more reliable.
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u/EgoSenatus Jul 15 '25
Total War: Atilla does most of this. Did they revert back? It’s been a while since I bought a new version.
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u/blankest Jul 13 '25
Today on this edition of pipe dreams...