4 new videos,new gameplay footage about vampires and Empire! campaign, siege,battle

They've state that units using the "magic ladders" get debuffs and are not that effective at getting men on the walls during a fight and that it should be used as a last resort/used to attack an weaker/undefended portion of the wall.

AI will still use them en masse and so will the player, since EVERY SINGLE unit of attacking side is in range of cannons from start and they stop fireing only at units that are behind the walls so it will be unwise not to send every single unit on top of the walls. What I am afraid the most is that AI will never wait to lay a siege, since it will see that attack city button is avaliable so it will not wait to build siege equipment.

I noticed the towers stopped firing when the units were close to the wall, within ladder range it looked like, and started firing at the ones further back. So you don't need the ladders you should still be using siege equipment like towers and just get those to the walls since the units don't get the debuff from ladders, again ladders from what most people said are for lightly protected/unprotected parts or if you really need more men right away. The only time the AI hasn't built way more siege equipment than it needed was when it had onagers. Did they mention you can attack walled cities with just ladders? Every video they've shown they had either siege equipment or a Varghulf, could be the Varghulf is like an onager in older games and allows auto attacks

I'm a bit disappointed but happy at the same time that CA is going back to the classic one seconder un-synced striking animations. Although 1v1 animation fights brought finesse and variation in the warscape games, but such mechanic just didn't work well with ancient/medieval battles for me. It tends to be clunky at times and group fighting doesn't feel that much authentic(mass pushing just doesn't occur).

But like I said, It's a bit of a let down that 1v1 animations will no longer be in it. 1v1 animations are actually a good variation as long as it's restricted only on execution animations similar to medieval 2. The franchise already took that next step, so scrapping the animations entirely is quite a vague decision from CA there.

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Originally Posted by badbomb

They've state that units using the "magic ladders" get debuffs and are not that effective at getting men on the walls during a fight and that it should be used as a last resort/used to attack an weaker/undefended portion of the wall.

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I'm not against ropes and hooks catapulting heavily loaded soldiers up the walls or magical ladders per se, it's the "immediate attack from the march" feature that is coupled with it which I despise in a turn-based game. I'm also against immediate attack even if you or the AI had lots of heavy siege artillery in the stack. A siege took some time (in the Vauban era you could even exactly calculate the time after which the fortress would fall) wether you had artillery or had to build them at the location (as done with wooden siegecraft). There should be a one to two turn delay in any case for player and AI before an attack could be launched. Time to react and that was one reason for the heavy use of castles and fortresses (it was ridiculously wrong when CA suggested in ETW that the 18th c. was a time of field battles mostly and fortresses were not as important as before).

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Originally Posted by geala

(it was ridiculously wrong when CA suggested in ETW that the 18th c. was a time of field battles mostly and fortresses were not as important as before).

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It was a historically authentic decision, though. Fortresses ceased to play any significant role in European warfare, after the French engineers invented the "toile d'araignée" technique, which made even the widest and tallest wall obsolete:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toile_d'araignée

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Originally Posted by geala

I'm not against ropes and hooks catapulting heavily loaded soldiers up the walls or magical ladders per se, it's the "immediate attack from the march" feature that is coupled with it which I despise in a turn-based game. I'm also against immediate attack even if you or the AI had lots of heavy siege artillery in the stack. A siege took some time (in the Vauban era you could even exactly calculate the time after which the fortress would fall) wether you had artillery or had to build them at the location (as done with wooden siegecraft). There should be a one to two turn delay in any case for player and AI before an attack could be launched. Time to react and that was one reason for the heavy use of castles and fortresses (it was ridiculously wrong when CA suggested in ETW that the 18th c. was a time of field battles mostly and fortresses were not as important as before).

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I agree that a siege should require more turns but if you/they only have 1 onager, rare in AI armies i know, you could only really get 1 wall or the gate and maybe a tower or two if your lucky before your out of shots without any siege escalation. but even when there was magic torches in the game you still had to build siege equipment or have an onager before you can assault a walled city i don't see why magic ladders would be any different.

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Originally Posted by Abdülmecid I

It was a historically authentic decision, though. Fortresses ceased to play any significant role in European warfare, after the French engineers invented the "toile d'araignée" technique, which made even the widest and tallest wall obsolete:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toile_d'araignée

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I already had the highest esteem for the French art of fortification and siege tech (and of course the fantastic food), but this important fact unknown to me tops it all. I stand corrected.

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Originally Posted by badbomb

I agree that a siege should require more turns but if you/they only have 1 onager, rare in AI armies i know, you could only really get 1 wall or the gate and maybe a tower or two if your lucky before your out of shots without any siege escalation. but even when there was magic torches in the game you still had to build siege equipment or have an onager before you can assault a walled city i don't see why magic ladders would be any different.

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AI didn't wait, it assaulted with torches. You seem to miss our point.

Except you can't assault with only torches. You need an onager or siege equipment to even attempt to use those magic torches.

Only in Attila and that is why it was better, in Rome 2 you could assault right on or at least AI would do it. In Warhammer they are back to Rome 2 system where AI will just attack with ladders as it will not wait to build enginges.

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Originally Posted by KAM 2150

Only in Attila and that is why it was better, in Rome 2 you could assault right on or at least AI would do it. In Warhammer they are back to Rome 2 system where AI will just attack with ladders as it will not wait to build enginges.

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We assume that it'll be that way with the AI ONLY assaulting with ladders, because I haven't heard thats exclusively what they'll do.

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Originally Posted by KAM 2150

Only in Attila and that is why it was better, in Rome 2 you could assault right on or at least AI would do it. In Warhammer they are back to Rome 2 system where AI will just attack with ladders as it will not wait to build enginges.

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Yeah sorry don't believe you. The AI has NEVER ONCE attacked without siege equipment in well over 300 hours of gameplay for rome 2 and i never saw an icon to attack without onagers or equipment. Unless you're talking about launch rome 2 and then never tried the game again.

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Originally Posted by badbomb

Yeah sorry don't believe you. The AI has NEVER ONCE attacked without siege equipment in well over 300 hours of gameplay for rome 2 and i never saw an icon to attack without onagers or equipment. Unless you're talking about launch rome 2 and then never tried the game again.

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I especially turned on Rome 2 vanilla (ughhh) just to check it and like I like I said, AI attacked right of the bat without any siege equipment except ladders that now it gets per default but still tried to torch down my gate...Why you defend horrible design choices? I never once saw AI build any towers or rams and I have a bit more hours put into Rome 2 (since you brought it up).