I was watching some KotD, is taxi-ing with siege towers really a meta we want? This feels super cheesy, I’m surprised this hasn’t been fixed/banned in tournament rules.
Any thoughts on this?
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Not even the pros want it.
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What else are we going to do with siege towers?
well, their purpose is to allow units to jump over walls, right?
right now their main use is making units speed up and dodge arrow fire in the open. the scene i just watched was several fire lancers chasing cav archers in the open by being driven around in a siege tower.
so options to prevent this behaviour would be:
-reduce the movement speed of siege towers
-add a count-down for units to be ejected (eg they have to be in the siege tower for at least 20 seconds before they can be ejected)
-make siege towers cheaper, but single use: you can only eject the units by destroying the siege tower
-forbid this in tournament rules (doesn’t fix the issue in ranked though)
I’m open to other suggestions
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That’s extremely niche and basically useless. At least make it so that they’ll fire arrows if archers are inside.
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that is their intended purpose though. it might be narrow, but not much more narrow than petards
i think that would open a whole other can of worms. how would you even defend against a siege tower full of xbows? it just means that xbows are no longer countered by skirms. you’d be forced into defending with mangonels/scorpions (against which siege towers full of infantry are very strong)
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Rather than reduce the movement speed of siege towers, I’d remove/reduce the speed boost from units inside them - that would specifically target taxi strategies while having (hopefully) minimal impact on “normal” usage (especially if base movement speed was increased as compensation). A countdown would interfere with siege tower intended usage (20 seconds is plenty of time to quickwall behind the wall). Single use would also be quite inconvenient - having it become stationary might be a better option, though I could see players getting frustrated when it becomes stationary in the wrong spot.
Though I suspect that using a giant mass of wood to block attacks (especially ranged attacks) was actually used historically (at the very least I recall stronghold having units dedicated specifically to this). So as frustrating as siege taxis might be to some people, it’s not all that unrealistic.
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i like this idea as well. however the taxi-hopping to dodge damage would still work. Would be interesting to see this play out though
i meant that the countdown starts when the units get garrisoned. so you garrison the units, move to the enemy’s walls (during this journey the countdown probably runs out, maybe it needs to be adjusted to 10 or 15 seconds) and the units can still hop over the wall instantly.
it becoming station would basically make it single use though, right? alternatively it could be a unit that replaces a wall section with “towered wall section” which can be passed by units on foot (ie infantry and foor archers)
yeah, i remember the Mantlets in Stronghold. however historically the towers would be way slower than a man on foot. Currently a fully garrisoned Siege Tower can keep up with a knight before husbandry
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Physically speaking, infantry probably pushed a siege tower from behind to speed up rather than garrisoning it inside. So my thoughts are below.
- Speed up when infantry are nearby (and no unit is in the siege tower or ram)
- Not speed up when the siege tower or ram is garrisoned by infantry
- Siege tower garrison capacity is reduced: 10→8 (for granaders nerf)
It was. Horse-drawn siege walls were commonly used as mobile cover in battle.
My two cents:
- When garrisoned with infantry, the Siege Tower can move faster.
- When garrisoned with archers, it cannot move faster, but it can fire arrows with X% (e.g. 50%) reduced DPS, since it is mobile (unlike a defensive tower) and has high armor compared to unsheltered archers.
- If both infantry and archers are garrisoned, its movement speed and attack power increase proportionally.
- Optional: Make the Siege Tower require a packed/unpacked state. When packed, it can move but the garrisons cannot enter or leave, and if archers are garrisoned, the DPS is reduced. When unpacked, it cannot move but the garrisons can enter or leave, and if archers are garrisoned, the DPS is not reduced or is reduced by a smaller amount.
Frankly, I feel it would be more logical if the maximum movement speed of a siege weapon garrisoned with infantry were equal to the infantry’s speed, rather than faster. If the garrisoned infantry have different speeds, then something like using their average as the siege weapon’s maximum speed would make sense. However, this seems to change a lot like it would affect Mongol rams.
Personally, I think if seige tower base speed/ garrison capacity is same as ram, many problem solved. It is especially exploitable for ranged infantry - such as gbeto and Throwing axman. Ranged unit hiding in seige tower that is resistant to arrow and can dodge mangonel.
How can you reasonably counter this?
Ram isn’t really the problem. Seige tower is problem due to the movement speed similar to knight before husbandry when garrisoned.
Then this mass wood seige shouldn’t be moved faster than foot soldiers.
Rams and Mongols aren’t need to be changed. It wasn’t problem nor exploited for 20 years. Only the problem is seige tower which give ALL civs to taxi that resistant arrow and can dodge mangonel. Seige tower maximum movement speed similar to fully garrisoned ram can solve the problem.
I think the movement speed of these towers should be slowed down. Historically, these towers already moved at a slower pace.
It may be a buff for ram pushing that it gets faster just by having infantry nearby.Infantry marches while protecting rams. In contrast, it’s a nerf for siege taxi micro because of speed down.
Right now rams have 0.6 + 0.05/unit for a max of 0.9 movement speed. Siege towers have 0.8 + 0.05/unit for a max of 1.3 movement speed. (garrison capacity is 6 and 10 respectively)
Militia-line and archers have base 0.96 movement speed. So I think it would be best for the siege tower to end somewhere in the range of 0.9 and 0.96 (since garrisoned rams haven’t been too much of an issue).
So some options:
- 0.8 + 0.02/unit, with garrison capacity reduced to 8 (maxes at .96, is always faster than battering ram with equal garrisoned units)
- 0.9 speed flat
- 0.7 + 0.025/unit (maxes at .95, but not always faster than battering ram)
- 0.7 + 0.03/unit, with garrison reduced to 8 (maxes at .94, slower than battering ram at 6 units, otherwise same or faster)
- etc
Movement speed isn’t too important for jumping over walls - it mainly matters for the taxi (though taking extra time to get to the wall is not ideal). So if the taxi is to be nerfed, reducing movement speed is likely the best option if you want minimal impact on wall-jumping. Most other suggestions end up hitting the wall-jumping in some way, and should be harder to implement as well.
My suggestions:
- Fixed speed for Siege towers, the same value as Longswordsmen with Squires.
- Archers garrisoned fire arrows. Each garrisoned archer adds to the total of arrows in the same proportion that it does when garrisoning a tower, in other words, the siege tower will have (hidden) the same base attack of towers and receive the same upgrades from blacksmith and university, but won’t be able to shoot when ungarrisoned.
So, Siege Towers won’t add speed to infantry or archers, only protection and the ability to jump over walls.
They won’t be able to outrun mounted units.
They won’t be able to surprise foot units.
They won’t be able to run from mangonels, only the same dodging capability of archers on foot.
They will be able to tank Skirmisher fire, but that is going to be their new role to protect foot units from pierce damage (Skirmishers are too strong currently, anyway).
It will be easier to dodge Mangonels with archers ungarrisoned.
And remember that ranged units must wait a full reload cycle before attacking after ungarrisoning.
At the end, Siege Towers will be more useful, more historically accurate and add new strategies (without cheesing).
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i think i prefer having archer v archer micro battles. having 2 or 3 siege towers shooting at each other is way less interesting to watch.
archers in siege towers would need to have lower damage output than archers in the open.
I like the thinking though
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Unless we need to have pseudo elephant archers for every civ, there is no need to make sigee towers to shoot arrows. We don’t really send units up to walls for fighting like medieval times either.
Longswords with squires are faster than archers, and not every civ has squires (and a few infantry units are slower than longswords). If you don’t want the siege tower speeding up infantry/archers, you need it to be at most 0.96 speed (the default and currently-only speed for archer-line), and preferably less than that. Teutonic Knights currently have .8 speed (.88 with squires), so the .9 flat movement speed option I gave would still speed them up a bit.
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The problem with Siege Towers is that they are faster then Rams and also scale twice as much with number of garrisoned Infantry. If they would just scale like Rams that would be less of an issue.
I think their main usage should be buffed. They should be able to be stationed next to a wall and then allow units to move through them with a single click.
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