I got the impression that seiges were outside the scope of what was being attempted with FE, as the focus seems to be on Units and Champions as opposed to massed Armies.  I'm more than happy to be wrong, as this is really something I loved from Rome: Total War.

Seiges, to me, would simply add another vital element needed in these types of games that makes the Warfare feel like Warfare, and add depth to the whole proceedings.  I'm the kind of guy who has imaginary stories in his head while he plays.  Seiges work wonders for that.  Though I enjoyed WoM, it was flawed in this regard in several key ways.  I understand FE is aiming to improve upon it in basically every way - I'm getting it for free, so frankly I'm happy to sit back and see what's delivered - however, it's something Civ4 nailed, and MoM managed to do almost effortlessly.  Fingers crossed.

I will say this: if it's not in the release version, the ability for modders to put it in without months of dedicated work had better be.  I don't mind modding my games to get them the way I like them

I agree as well.

Furthermore, I do not see a conflict between implementing a form of traditional walls/siege mechanics AND implementing strategic mechanics mentioned above (Kenata I believe); these ideas are not disjunctive. Siege is fun, and this game could use some.

One caveat, however: Karma should not be given to those who drastically misspell "siege". [/blatant and hopefully amusing irony]

I support this thread.

Sieges would be nice, if they can find a way to do them better than the status quo without diverting too many resources or attention from the basic stuff.

I’d also advocate a “laying siege” mechanic where an army surrounds a settlement without actually going in for the kill. Armies should not be able to move to a city and attack the inhabitants in the same turn unless they have the means to do so (ie catapults). The attacking army should have to wait a number of turns before attacking, based on their amount of siege equipment and the quality of the defences (ie, walls). Right now it is too easy to sneak attack cities in one turn, and the increase in basic movement will only make this worse. Imposing a turn delay would give the controlling faction time to come to the town’s defence. Otherwise you get a situation where no one ever attacks a city unless they know they will win, making the battles non-events.

It’s not the only mechanic that should be stolen from the Total War games. It’s probably not a possibility until a sequel, but I’d advocate that total war style battles are simply the best way to represent engagements in a video game. I know there are people on here opposed to anything real time on principle, and normally I’d agree, but this is different. Those people have clearly never played a total war battle. I’m not talking about warcraft style, base building, drawing boxes around mobs of spearmen, hotkey madness. They’re nothing like a real battle. Total War battles are gently paced, thoughtfull, and look great. More importantly, they could represent everything that elemental is trying to do and produce more accurate, fun and satisfying results.

More than anything there’s a huge and lucrative gap in the market there. Total War is the biggest brand in strategy because people love that kind of game, but no one has ever combined it with fantasy. What’s a regiment of samurai when you could have DRAGONS? It might require a leap in graphics ambition from Elemental, but not necessarily a huge one. Medieval 2 total war still looks great and it came out in 2006.

Why have a system that models battles when you could have a system that GIVES you battles?

This would be, simply put, awesome, but WAY out of the scope of elemental in it's current form.

For now I'd settle for tile based tactical battles that introduced meaningful terrain (including walls and sieges) meaningful reasons for maneuvering (such as flanking, damage types and defense types, unit counters like spears vs horsemen, etc), and some sort of line of sight/high ground mechanic. Implement these things along with some cool tactical spells and abilities and throw them on tiled maps that are laid our in interesting ways (my dog throws up things that are more interesting than the tactical maps we have now) and I'd be a happy man.

Sadly, I think we're pretty far away from getting into even that level of tactical combat.

Also support the idea of laying siege to a city. This is possibly the easiest idea to implement that's on this thread. Force (or allow) an attacking army to wait a few turns prior to assaulting. Meanwhile the defenders become weaker, catapults get built, but the defender can marshal reinforcements. A fantasy game isn't a fantasy game if it doesn't allow for a situation like the Charge of the Rohirrim on the Pelennor Fields.

I want a Trojan Horse (Rabbit... um...If we built a giant Badger?) event to randomly occur if you have a particularly doltish sovereign or hero stationed in the city.  Another reason to boost the intelligence stat...

On a more karmically serious note, I agree with all of the points above... there was no greater satisfaction than defeating a stronger besieging force in AoW:SM with frantic hand to hand battles in the city after they had breached the city walls.  The immediate enhancement of your troops due to leveling up during the actual battle was really fun, too.  Especially a dragon hatchling... heh heh heh...

Helm's Deep FTW!

That last post was painful. *Ow*

EDIT: It's all good now. Good post.

That's a pretty old school way to embed an image there.

Or if you wanted to blow some mana you could get past the walls too. A squad of Chaos Lords with Flight cast on them was a rather terrifying sight for a city. Also the walls weren't just higher, they also counted as a partial obstruction and ranged units on the ground were penalized to try to shoot through them. That also worked for the defenders if there was a tree to hide behind (Catapults weren't affected by that, but Ballistae and Cannons were).

The idea of a strategic map level siege would make a good backup idea though, if the reason they can't do tactical map sieges is because the engine doesn't support tactical combat barriers/Line of Sight. Not being able to attack the city at all until you siege it for a few turns on the strategic map and open a hole in the defenses would be a lot better then the WoM system of where it's exactly like any other combat except the defenders get a HP boost.

Yes seiges/Walls/gats etc are a MUST. For tactical combat. Also Terrain features that give penalties/bonuses should be in TC

  There won't be siege battles like these in Fallen Enchantress.

  We met on sieges early on and came up with a design we liked, ran it through implementation estimations, compared it to other features and it didn't make the cut for FE.  We looked at partial/smaller scope implementations, but the big thing is blocking tiles (ie: tiles that you cant ranged attack through, or tiles that can only be moved through from one direction).  How much time it takes to implement line of site?  Or more importantly, how much time it takes to teach the AI to use it effectively (although it doesn't seem hard to get the ai to do any specific situation we imagine, its effectively reacting in all the situations we dont imagine that makes it tough)?  When should the AI hide behind a wall, when should they charge forward?  When should they step out and cast a spell, and when should they stay back and buff allies?  How does the AI know that stepping out in one direction is safer than stepping out in another?

  There are a lot of possible implementations.  Don't block line of sight (ie: you cant hide from attacks), just give bonuses from certain positions.  Don't allow tiles to be moved through from only certain directions, just mark surrounding tiles as impassable (which looks weird in tiles as large as ours).  Just bottleneck attackers and apply a counter so that attackers have to win in x amount of time or the attack is bounced.  There are lots of others.

  I know its not a new or unsolvable problem, and I know some games with tactical combat have done it.  As it is FE tactical combat is about bringing the right army to the battle, and about using the right ability at the right time.  It is not about breaking through fortifications, or hiding from fire.  We are intentionally designing tactical combat to be fast.  Though I will say that I would like major sieges to be an exception to that, larger battles didn't make the cut for FE.

  Right now the feature is on the post-implementation list (ie: the list of stuff we would like to do but don't have time scheduled for).  That is not a good place to be.  The good news is that it will go through review again for expansion 2.  So its not that its dead, or will never happen, only that it doesn't look good for FE.

  We do have buildings that provide free defenders in FE.  So cities that have invested in defensive structures could have anything from free archers or catapults to demons or giant statues or that come alive to defend your cities.  That does differentiate attacking cities from other battles, but it isn't siege combat as discussed in this thread.

Well, if we can't have sieges I'm hoping the terrain will be more interesting than E:wom still in tactical battles. Upcoming dev journal on combat?