The goal is to transform the Siege Tower from a simple “taxi” for bypassing units into a true siege engine that incentivizes the use of infantry. To achieve this, it is first necessary to drastically reduce the unit’s movement speed. Then comes the radical change: the ability to convert enemy walls, castles, or towers. The heart of this mechanic would be the infantry garrison. The conversion speed would not be fixed, but would scale based on the number of soldiers inside. In this way, the Siege Tower would stop being a niche unit and become the center of a new gameplay dynamic.
What do you think? will siege tower fairly viable in late castle?
It’ drastic change, I think the game and its players are not ready. I think then you need to make garrison of castles/towers somehow fight the garrison of siege tower or its gonna be strange.
I understand the logic you have its kinda realistic. But to achieve such thing you need combat on the walls possible like total war series. But combat in tww on walls is poor as F.
Converting walls would be whatever: players would then be able to delete the wall, but it basically turns the siege tower into a different type of petard. Converting gates would be more interesting, though I’d rather not see that as a siege tower function. Towers can already be converted by monks (rare as it is) - siege towers are much more resistant to ranged attacks though, which would make it too easy for siege towers imo. Converting castles is downright OP (which is why castles are immune to monks - even if its next to impossible, the mere possibility is too much of a swing)
That’s absurd. Why would the people inside be prevented from leaving the siege tower except on the other side of a wall? The entry door is literally at ground level.
Siege towers also represent mantlets (so do rams for that matter). If you don’t want to give the soldiers inside mobility you should do the same things they did in real life: build walls and catapults.
firstly, my suggestions i about gameplay and balance, not realism. houses also have doors, yet only khmer can enter them, realism needs to bow to gameplay.
secondly, if we are talking about realism, why would a siege tower ever be faster than the units garrisoned in it (ie pushing it). Realistically siege towers were hard to maneuver. They would be built near a siege and make a one-way trip to a wall (if they even made it that far without being destroyed)
And real siege towers were also pulled by oxen and horses.
What’s the problem gameplay wise? They get away? Use cavalry. You fear the people inside have pikes? Train archers with your cavalry. They give an edge to infantry play? People have complained for literal decades that infantry was useless and should be more powerful.
I’d make them slower the more units they garrison so you solve the main issue (using them as taxis). One of the reasons they’re not used for what they’re supposed to, it’s also because the ungarrison part is kinda clunky because of space, if units would move away as soon as they’re dropped over the wall to leave space for others maybe it would be more viable and need less micro… similar problem with transport ships overall.
which, when pulling a siege tower, move faster than a human soldier?
have you been watching any tournaments recently?
people put units (especially fire lancers) in siege towers, move the siege tower around (a fully garrisoned siege tower is almost as fast as a knight) eject the units, kill a few vils/mangonels/etc. and re-garrison.
fire-lancers in siege towers currently have no counter:
knights, countered by the firelancers
archers, can’t catch up/die when firelancers or other garrisoned units eject on top of them
siege - dies horribly to anything that gets ejected
CA - firelancers get ejected on top of them and it’s a slaughter.
the issue is so bad that the practice was finally banned in tournaments (literally happened today), but that doesn’t fix the issue for everyone else.
If there’s a need for a fast troop transport, it can be a new unit, called a “war wagon” perhaps (not ideal because could be mistaken with the Hussite one). Siege tower with absurd speed is slightly too funny imho.
Swordsmen do good damage to both units, but siege towers are too fast for them to catch. With an appropriate speed nerf, they’d be a decent counter I think.
Just the Hussite one? I think you might be forgetting another unit with an even more similar name!
I get the idea, but in my opinion this kind of change risks being a step backwards and making siege towers largely useless again.
Limiting unit exit only to tiles next to walls would remove the “taxi” behavior, yes, but at the same time it misses a bigger opportunity.
Specifically:
Giving infantry more value, since right now it still takes a lot of punishment and is often a sub-optimal choice.
Making siege towers truly playable without making them OP, by giving them a clear and meaningful role.
In my view, siege towers and infantry should be standard tools in every castle siege – the name siege tower itself implies that. They shouldn’t exist only to bypass a single layer of walls, which is a fairly rare scenario nowadays.
The real challenge isn’t just removing abuses, but creating real incentives to use them: making infantry + siege tower a natural and interesting choice, not a niche gimmick.
I’d be really interested to hear from others here: how would you make siege towers and infantry truly playable, while keeping them balanced and relevant in siege situations?
I think you’re right about the risks, especially regarding balance. That said, I’d still be interested in at least testing something along these lines.
The reason is that it would open up an entire siege branch in Castle Age that is basically nonexistent right now. As things stand, the ways to deal with castles in Castle Age are extremely limited:
rams,
petards (if everything goes well),
and a handful of specific unique units.
That’s a very narrow set of options, and I honestly think it makes Castle Age sieges feel overly constrained and one-dimensional from a strategic standpoint. Having more siege-oriented interactions—even experimental ones—could make that phase of the game much more interesting.
So yes, balance concerns are absolutely valid, but I feel it’s also kind of unfortunate to keep Castle Age siege options this restricted. Trying something new, even temporarily, might be worth it to see if it creates healthier and more diverse siege gameplay.
That might work from a mechanical point of view, but personally I really dislike the siege tower taxi concept. It just feels wrong to me.
Tying siege tower speed to garrisoned infantry—especially restricting it to Longswords only—could be an interesting experiment, but I’m not convinced it addresses the core issue. Even with class restrictions, the moment siege towers are mainly used to move units around the map, their identity shifts away from siege and into transport, which I find pretty unappealing.
From my perspective, siege towers should exist to enable assaults on fortified positions, not to act as a mobility trick. If the design goal is to make infantry and siege towers relevant, I’d rather see mechanics that reinforce their role in breaking or contesting defenses, instead of leaning into taxi-style gameplay—even in a limited form.
In short: it might function, but to me the siege tower taxi is still a very stomach-turning idea, regardless of how it’s constrained.
I see the reasoning, but I think this would end up making siege towers unusable again. Slowing them down based on garrison size may solve the taxi issue on paper, but in practice it removes most of the incentive to ever build one.
As I mentioned before, this also means missing a real opportunity to improve AoE2’s siege gameplay. Right now, siege towers already struggle to justify their cost and micro requirements; adding heavy movement penalties would push them even further into irrelevance.
I do agree that the ungarrisoning is clunky and that space issues make them frustrating to use. Improving unit behavior when exiting—like automatically moving away to create space, similar to transport ships—would be a great quality-of-life change and could definitely help.
But I’d much rather see changes that make siege towers and infantry stronger and more appealing in actual siege situations, rather than fixes that mainly focus on preventing abuse and end up killing the unit altogether.