Siege Engines in BOR

[Erik Springelkamp]

I just played the Pyrrhic War as Romans against the AI.

I took the Etruskan objective cities and beat their army first, while Pyrrhus conquered the South.

Then, with all the legions, including those of the Dictator I beat Pyrrhus' army a couple of times and re-conquered the lost cities in the South.

All of that took about one year, but then I had to take Tarras/Taranto.

I spend the next three years laying siege with my whole army. A few times they made one breach, but that was invariably repaired by the defenders. Meanwhile the enemy fleet was bringing in supplies for the garrison.

(I have had a similar siege experience of Taranto in the Samnites War).

My legions didn't spawn siege engines in this siege (they did on one other siege in this war).

Question: does it make sense to lift the siege when there are no siege engines after two turns, and return to hope for the creation of siege engines this time? Or are they finished in one way or another anyway?

Thirty turns of shuttling wagons to keep up a hopeless siege and crawl to a minor victory

[Ebbingford]

There is an option to use a siege engine supplied by Hiero IIRC..

[Franciscus]

I just played the Pyrrhic War as Romans against the AI.

I took the Etruskan objective cities and beat their army first, while Pyrrhus conquered the South.

Then, with all the legions, including those of the Dictator I beat Pyrrhus' army a couple of times and re-conquered the lost cities in the South.

All of that took about one year, but then I had to take Tarras/Taranto.

I spend the next three years laying siege with my whole army. A few times they made one breach, but that was invariably repaired by the defenders. Meanwhile the enemy fleet was bringing in supplies for the garrison.

(I have had a similar siege experience of Taranto in the Samnites War).

My legions didn't spawn siege engines in this siege (they did on one other siege in this war).

Question: does it make sense to lift the siege when there are no siege engines after two turns, and return to hope for the creation of siege engines this time? Or are they finished in one way or another anyway?

Thirty turns of shuttling wagons to keep up a hopeless siege and crawl to a minor victory

The probability of siege engine spawning by Roman legions in BOR is indeed very low - according to the designers, reflecting historical facts. This Is moddable, though...

This probability is, IIRC, checked each siege turn, so will not increase if you lift the siege to Return later...

Regards

[Erik Springelkamp]

The probability of siege engine spawning by Roman legions in BOR is indeed very low - according to the designers, reflecting historical facts. This Is moddable, though...

This probability is, IIRC, checked each siege turn, so will not increase if you lift the siege to Return later...

Regards

If the chance if fixed per turn, but it doesn't happen in 30 turns, there must be some factor in the equation that makes it impossible here, because I have seen this twice by now.

I had 6 real legions there, plus another 6 ala.

And even with such a heavy siege force, the probability of repairing a breach was evidently larger than that of making one. I got a breach about every 10 turns, which lasted for 1 turn in 2 cases, and for 2 turns in 1 case.

I am not complaining - there were historical sieges that took years - but I feel that I am missing some logic here.

Maybe the AI was constantly rotating fresh troops in and out of the city? Does that help? I saw a lot of naval activity, and the number of bullets went up and down. I wasted the full Roman navy two times to try to block them, but was beaten both times at sea without any chance.

[EagleKing]

I just got the game and have played through a couple scenarios. As the Romans, I find that the spawning of siege engines seems to occur pretty regularly.

If I recall my history, a case could be made for disallowing siege engines to Rome at all (at least in BOR). I think they were significantly behind the Greeks in the conduct of siege warfare. Remember the Siege of Agrigentum (Acragas) in the First Punic War? They surrounded the city and tried to starve it into submission (which took 7 months) and were only able to accomplish that because Syracuse kept them supplied.

[Ebbingford]

In BoR the chance of spawning a siege engine is greatly reduced from the original AJE to reflect this.

[Franciscus]

The probabilty of Siege weapons spawning for Roman legions in BOR is 15%. For AJE-time legions is 75%. It is not dependent on any extraneous factor, AFAIK

This was extensively discussed during beta, indeed a proposal was made for no siege weapons at all (IMHO turning the game very boring... ) versus a probability of 25-50%. It ended in 15%, but this is easily moddable - go to GameData\Abilities, and find 120-abiSiegeWeapons_SPQ. Open it with Notepad and change Param1 to whatever is the probability you prefer (currently, 15 if you put 0, they will never appear). Of course, potential for cheating, here...

Regarding Erik's post, remember that a besieged city can also simply surrender; but a city with a port will be very difficult to besiege succesfully if the port is not blocked...

Regards

[Erik Springelkamp]

15% chance per turn. (or is that per legion per turn?)

30 turns not spawning: (0.85)^30 = 0.0076 = 1/131 is a chance of one in 131.
I don't believe I am that unlucky

[PJJ]

If it's per legion per turn, you must be most unlucky person on the planet.

[EagleKing]

This was extensively discussed during beta, indeed a proposal was made for no siege weapons at all (IMHO turning the game very boring... ) versus a probability of 25-50%. It ended in 15%, but this is easily moddable - go to GameData\Abilities, and find 120-abiSiegeWeapons_SPQ.

Thanks, Franciscus. I appreciate how difficult it must be to decide between absolute historicity vs playability. Making it moddable seems to be a good way to go. I might just try that. Thanks!