Being a fan of siege, I love we have siege towers in the game. But today they are very randomly seen compared to trebs and rams, surely because of the lack of usability they have. I would recommend a couple minor changes to improve them:
- Have them capable of making units jump two-tiles.
- Garrisoned archers (or units in general) should allow them to fire arrows.
- Units should “understand” when a siege tower is in place, so the player doesn’t have to click on the infantry unit, then on the tower to have if go through. The infantry units should be able to “understand” that the siege tower by itself is a free pass.
- Make it have the same armor and HP than a ram.
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Nice ideas. I too would like to see them changed to be a bit more useful.
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On Release in Forgotten Empires they had the ability to shoot arrows - shooting them volley-like, like Longboats
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They sometimes can be good on Arena for a surprise attack if a player was booming, who thinks he was safe behind his walls. Granted, houses can counter this by being placed behind the walls to prevent the siege tower from dropping off troops.
They mostly meme units for the most part though.
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interesting, i didn’t know that. That would make them quite useful, but if they can should without archers inside, that would be OP, not to mention they run fast when garrisoned too.
PS: ok, so I looked at the game file again. Apparently, the siege tower you mentioned is still in the game and can be activated at any time. It has very slow reload time of 4
You can’t really judge it without knowing the stats. I think it had low attack of 5 pierce or so too. Also back then they couldn’t auto-attack because Forgotten Empires would have needed to change the code, which they couldn’t - now they can make it auto-attack if they wanted.
Also they are way more expensive now - initially, they were fairly cheap. I don’t know why they made them soo expensive
I think one of the issues of siege tower usefulness is that late game people seldom have complete walls that you need to jump over. There’s usually a hole somewhere and hussar raids are just less effort and more effective than jumping inf/archers over a wall.
I agree units should treat a siege tower on a wall as just an open hole rather than needing to be clicked. It’s too finicky even in situations where you want to use them (early surprise arena raid).
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220 hp
0.6 speed (0.2 slower)
Attack stats:
6 pierce attack
6 ranged
1 minimum range (same as castle)
90% accuracy
4 reload time
plus 6 vs All buildings (except port)
Defense stats:
minus 2 melee armor
100 pierce armor
minus 5 siege weapon armor (new)
6 Garrison capacity (compared to 10)
Other stats:
slightly Smaller hit box
same train time
cost 220 wood 120 gold (compared to 200/160)
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Given they are more useless than rams, they should cost less and allow more garrison.
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STs firing arrows sounds cool, but I am sure there are very serious (balancing) issues with this idea, otherwise we would have that already.
I definitely do not think that STs should have same HP and armor as ram. STs are strong enough for the jobs they are supposed to do. Massive damage soaking is the rams job. If the ram loses that job, it will just become the next useless unit.
Hopping two tiles sounds good. It would also add another strategic component in whether to build second layer adjacent or with a gap.
However, my most favored buff would be just to make STs cheaper
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i think the two main issues with seige towers are that unlike rams they dont block castle and tower arrows. also i dont like how they run away whenever then are hit with arrows. i would also love if petards could garrison inside siege towers to give them a use to take down castles in castle age.
4 Likes
Three changes:
A) Siege towers can go over 2 tiles, including house walls.
B) SIege towers can be moved from the opposite side of the wall, so infinete jumps are possible
C) They act as if the walls/houses bridged would just be open land for non-siege, non-cavalry units.
That’s what it needs, otherwise they will always be terrible.
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i dont agree with those changes. i think siege towers should be more of an armored transport then a wall hopper as wall hopping is so niche and can and should be easily countered by multiple layers of walls. i think all infantry sized units should be able to garrison in siege towers. this should include monks villagers kings and espetialy petards. also i think siege towers need an ungarisson hotkey and not just an unload hotkey. lowering the cost/ increasing melee armor on them would also be greatly welcome
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In order to make siege towers good, first they have to rework walls and a lot of game balance, to make people invest time and resources into proper, full wall defense.
More often than not people don’t care, stop on palisades and strategic placement of castles and towers.
It’s like asking to make tribute system better, where in reality it’s not used pretty much at all, ever.
I don’t think they will rebalance game to make siege gameplay more important, and overall game pace slower, as a result I don’t think siege tower will become relevant in ant significant way.
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Besides it’s not entirely true, the post has something to it…
With the currently bad state of walls as an opening element, if this was changed a bit, better working siege towers would actually pose a nice “counterplay” without the need to add eco and getting the tech advantage, which would make defensive openers more “diverse” on open map types.
But I think at first it needs for the siege towers to be viable in these situations. After that we can discuss more about walls being improved. Nothing would be worse if we had unbreakable stone walls (with non-siege military) and siege towers still wouldn’t work.
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I remember that, that’s why I’m adding the arrows thing. However, I do thing it should be conditioned, so they are not just spammed.
This seems a faster, cheaper and more versatile version of Elephant Archer.
Garrisoned archer should allow them to fire arrows but small attack and reduce range, it is not a moving tower
Devs need to adjust the speed boost from garrisoned Infantry, it is too fast right now full garrisoned
I don’t like the idea to jump two-tiles but I like the free pass idea when the Siege Tower is in front of a wall
I would like that ST works the same way that the Hussite Wagon works in small fashion in reduce damage of units behind it; and make them taller to soak damage from buildings
IMO it should be weaker than the Ram but not sure about it; the cost seems fine
I’m fine with archers making it shoot arrows, but it shouldn’t lose the wall hopping mechanic. Ideally they should add units on walls, and let siege towers ungarrison on walls.
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