Yeah, the siege is somewhat ugly in that there is no reason for why it takes exactly N turns to siege a city. It just happens to be so because, err, we say it is so And I can see it slowing down attacks needlessly (why must I siege 5 turns this city containing one peasant???).

Now that I look at my ideas above they are needlessly complex (as in coding, and also in game mechanism). My favorite from that list is magical units which are powerful in your own land. It is easy to understand, probably simple to implement, allows for faction / magic school / sovereign differentiation and it would fit into the game's world. It is also easy to tune, just change how powerful they are and the attack/defense balance will change.

But, maybe the solution is just making the AI a better defender...

A "wait X turns until you can fight" is fine if it is done like in Shogun 2. There, you can starve the city in X turns, and if they don't get assistance or charge out they surrender. But really, at that point there's very little reason not to fight. So the siege mechanic really works like a build-up to an epic tactical combat (which isn't dependent on strategic manoeuvring, but more how much force you can muster in a year or so). That epic tactical combat is completely missing from FE. THAT piece is what is needed in the game, not pre-siege mechanic that someone calls a siege.

There is a tactical system. If you want to do sieges, use that.

I strongly disagree. It is quite possible to add tons of strategic depth just making small changes such as this. Regardless of how sieges "should" be a wait time for sieges would add lots to the game on the strategic level, and help prevent players from just blobbing. If nothing else a wait time for sieges would allow the AI to counter-mass if you try to steamroll it, since it seems to have trouble with that.

Don't forget there is several levels of fortification improvements for cities, obviously the ability to defend should be tied to the level of fortifications you build in the city. Something like 3-6-9 turns? Also as Horemheb said fortification improvements should give the defending player advantages, like some walls to channel the enemy to one point and some conveniently placed good defense boosting tiles.

Really tough capitals wouldn't really add much to the game. It's not about prolonging defeat but rather rewarding strategy and allowing players to come back, so a single defeat doesn't always snowball into a complete game over. If you have only one city left then you won't be coming back.

Also since we have an unhappiness system it would be weird if citizens couldn't revolt, especially after being conquered. Steamrolling would be much harder if you had to leave garrisons in freshly conquered cities.

The wait time for sieges should be reduced by the presence of siege engines. The more siege engine units you bring to battle the shorter the wait time. Earth spells that weaken or destroy city walls could reduce the wait time.

Example:

• Attack Fortress city with No siege engines = Wait 5 turns
• Attack Fortress city with 1 siege engine = Wait 3 turns (5 combat units + 1 siege engine unit)
• Attack Fortress city with 2 siege engines = Wait 1 turn (4 combat units + 2 siege engine units)
• Attack Fortress city with 3 siege engines = Wait 0 turns (3 combat units + 3 siege engine units)

Research Tech:

• Advanced Fortresses Tech should increase the strength of Fortresses & the wait time. See: Vauban Fortresses or Walls of Constantinople for historical examples.
• Advances Siege Engines Tech should reduce the wait time when attacking a city.

Seige Related Buildings:

• Siege Granaries and Cisterns - Each one built increase the enemy's wait time for a beseiged Fortress city reflecting the stockpiling of food and water for a siege.

I would also think that the wait time might be affected by the relative intelligence of the opposing generals. A smarter general will be better at attacking or defend a fortified city.

Wait Time = City Level - # Siege Engines + ((Defender Intelligence/Attacker Intelligence)

Example:

• City Level 5 (5) - Siege Engines (0) + Intelligence Bonus (21 Defender / Attack 7)(3) = Wait Time of 8 turns

• City Level 5 (5) - Siege Engines (0) + Intelligence Bonus (12 Defender / Attack 12)(0) = Wait Time of 5 turns

• City Level 5 (5) - Siege Engines (0) + Intelligence Bonus (7 Defender / Attack 21)(-3) = Wait Time of 2 turns

I've always thought a way to add epic battles would be to allow tactical battles to occur over multiple turns.  X number of rounds caps how much fighting occurs each game turn turn.  This allows Brad's goal of shorter battles to be met, but still allows battles to take longer and, through the addition of some subsystems, to be more epic. 

Imagine a surprise attack against one of your cities where your goal is imply to survive through X rounds.  During the intervening strategic turn you scramble to get reinforcements on scene while the opponent sends additional troops to join their attacking army.  Over the course of a few seasons the battle builds beyond what either side originally expected and becomes the defining battle of the war.  Both sides know after a few seasons that losing this battle may mean losing the entire war as their army is likely to be decimated and they have little left in the way of reserves.  Everything is committed already.  Or do they keep some troops back as reserves in a fortified area hoping to inflict enough damage in the current battle that they can stave off any further progress by the opposing army? 

Obviously this adds complexity to the balance and AI requirements of tactical battles.  But it also opens up all new possibilities for the interaction between the strategic game and the tactical one.  It would also add more possibilities in the realm of true medieval combat.  Empires could spend heavily on fortifications that would allow them to keep lighter garrisons and be more flexible in their fielded army, but at the cost of greater upkeep and resource investment.  They would have the decision of just how light a garrison could survive long enough for reinforcements to arrive (as one example, there are all sorts of other potential scenarios).

I realize this likely isn't implementable in FE 1.0 (and really belongs on one of those pie in then sky wish lists), but I've always thought it would add depth and grandeur to the tactical battles in the Elemental world.  With the right set of supporting subsystems it also adds whole new levels to the strategic game. 

I have gotten some new features added that should help all involved.

First, there is now a "gold rush" option. You can rush build units.  That will help a lot.

Second, I'm working on the AI scouting so that it will keep track of the most powerful army it encounters so that it can prepare for it.

Third, cities have their own militia. 

Frogboy, I'm curious how you steamrolled the AI when all the indicators showed that they were competitive.  What did they do wrong? 

Not trying to stir trouble, just curious what the AI got wrong that caused such a drastic change in the picture so quickly. 

That's some interesting information.

Yeah, the city militia thing has me intrigued.

Very...., I hope we can upgrade them to some extent, & possibly get a faction/sov/hero gen. trait for them to be really good or something

"Second, I'm working on the AI scouting so that it will keep track of the most powerful army it encounters so that it can prepare for it."

sweet, they be checkin the armor & weapon types along with known magic usage by the said enemy (& might do so for each faction in question)?

Militia could be a cool feature. I'd like it if you could design them yourself, but that might be a little complicated. Also if you choose how many you want to have through using level-up bonus buildings.

I'm going to throw my wait behind the siege mechanic idea though. Imagine what GalCiv would be like if you could invade planets without researching planetary invasion or building transports. That's how elemental plays now. While Heavenfall has a point that simply applying a turn limit before you can attack is rather arbitrary (in the the total war games, the siege time is the time it takes the enemy to starve, at the end of which the have to sally out; you have the option to attack the walls earlier if you choose), this feature would be so useful that it would be a benefit to have any kind of siege system, even if it isn't up to the standards of the TW games.

I always thought of magic as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. Perhaps what is needed is some sort of "defcon" system where mana consumption:accumulation is decided by how serious a situation the AI believes itself to be in?

Militia don't really make sense to me. Why not just build garrisons? How will you upgrade them? How useful would they actually be, especially late game? I think that free city militia encourages putting all your units into one big steamroller instead of actually having to do some thinking about where to put units.

The AI scouting thing sounds cool. One of the smartest looking things an AI can do is when you mass along a border they counter-mass.

Woot! Militia is great news. This will greatly improve the game. 

@DsRaider, What are you talking about? Militias are just a representation of the able bodied men and women of a city taking up arms to defend it. I would imagine they are the pitchfork and torches variety. It is illogical to upgrade them. They are there to prevent early game steamrolls as each city will have a natural defense. This is much better than allowing one unit to to be able to capture and then raze a town just because there are no guard units present. I don't think they can leave a city, but are likely added to the roster when entering tactical combat.

This has been a long time coming. Great decision guys. 

I would expect "militia" is just a generic term for a wide range of quality on units, or number of soldiers should drastically scale with the level of the city (remember, quality on units isn't nearly as deciding a factor as it was in E:wom, at least judging by weapon scaling).

It would be neat if there were specific buildings that boosted militia as well, for example it could be one of the options from the random city improvements when you level up the city. Or nearby world resources could provide a lot of militia - example: you make a deal with a bunch of local bandits to come to your aid when your city gets attacked. In return, you'll pay them upkeep.

And so on and so forth. Yeah, militia is great news.

Ya the huge change to unit scaling in FE slipped my mind. They already mentioned a militia random improvement, it was called the belltower. Not sure what it will do now, maybe more militia?

I wonder if this will be set up in the xml as something like <militiaspawn>angrypeasants01</militiaspawn> as a new part of the city hub improvement? That would make it easy to upgrade it to any unit, including dragons. 

I really didn't think this would be in the game due to its general awesomeness and Stardock's promise that the game will be carcinogenic. I mean we could even see races getting special militia as a trait or even a section of the warfare tree that upgrades your militia with armor, training, or... gulp* magics. 

Today is a good day to die!

I imagine it will be something like that because they also have mentioned guardian statue improvements. I would be very surprised if it wasn't very easy to create improvements that spawn any creature you want through xml.

Kantok, I bet their bar dipped when the real fighting started. My guess is the AI probably builds and researches fine, but it could not compete against the human player when war broke out.

One suggestion: gold rush should perhaps cost some pop like it does in AOWII?

Love city militia, helps builder players- and Stardock games are fun as builder games.

Their forces were too distributed.  I put my best units together into a single killer army and walked through them.

They reacted by trying to move their forces to intercept but they were too spread out to get to me in time.

In GalCiv II, the AI was able to counter this by rush building and we had logistics tech which limited the size of your fleets and then you had the extra step of havinv to invade separately with highly vulnerable transports. So you had to maintain air superiority for enough time to secure your invasion lines.

In Elemental, it's like Civ. You just conquer the city with an army. So it's a lot more challenging for a player to stop that, especially when the player can't see your army until is leaves the FOW. 

I don't want to solve the problem with magic spells (i.e. no teleporting).  If I had to do it over again, I'd probably have lobbied for an "Occupation Force" unit or something. So that your 4 swordsmen can't simply take over a city. I find it dissatisfying and unrealistic.  But it's been a staple for this land based games (Civ, MOM, HOMM, AOW, etc.) since forever.  I just don't see how Brutus the pikeman is suddenly able to administer a city.

Anyway, forgive me for ranting. I tend to play these games from the AI POV. I am not suggesting my preferences would be more fun. But I think they'd be more realistic and more challenging.

I'd like to take the opportunity to turn the scenario around. This sort of focused army invasion is exactly what the AI should be doing to you. Now, obviously I don't know the full circumstances, but in E:wom a big problem was that the AI never seemed to amass that "killer army" themselves and invade you.

My point here is that this isn't just an AI weakness, it's an "issue" with game design. And just as the AI has to counter it, the AI should be using it to its own advantage.

I agree with Heavenfall.  The Civ IV AI had no problem coming at you with stacks of doom.  EFE AI should do the same.

A few theories I just thought up, though I don't know if these are realisitc additions.

Hmm.  Occupation forces are a good way of whittling down killer stacks, and SOD is the issue right. 

It's not so much Brutus administering the city, it's Brutus keeping the city from revolting. 

One idea: conquered cities have a high number of malcontents.  Champions stationed in the city reduce the malcontent rate and can convert them to workers based on CHA.  Occupation forces just drain the excess malcontents (who would be a 4th pop group, but otherwise function same as other malcontents, but you gain them by event or occupation)  Certain civ techs and spells could also convert the malcontents, or allow malcontents to become workers (a nerve stapling type of spell perhaps?)

If the 4th group gets too high- they might leave the city and become enemy militia outside the city if enough militia can be generated to hurt an occupation force.  Champions would help to prevent this, but not occupation forces.

Personally, I think the problem with AI stacks of doom, is that they can be countered by two half-stacks.  Having limits to size of force that can be generated I think is better for AI, but you could game it in GC2 as well. 

One other suggestion: allow defending armies to pin attacking armies for a turn if they can hold them off for x number of turns, with the battle continuing into the next turn.  This would allow decent-sized defender stacks to hold off stacks of doom for a while until reinforcements come in.  The ROTK game for the Saturn did this.

On the next turn, the attacker has the option of retreating or continuing the attack.  (any reinforcements are added on)  You will likely need to save positions of forces, which could be memory problematic though. (probably less then I'm thinking though)

but one thing to keep in mind though, is that if like in Aow:sm they group all there units into stacks of doom they can be easily decimated by a few over land spells, not sure how to fix this

edit: & why arn't they (the ai) hittin you (Your Lordship Frogboy) with overland spells to damage your war machine?

I thought the answer to this question revolved around how you Brad can develop the AI to counter a human SOD, not how the mechanics do not replicate occupied city administration...?

(Btw history has been littered with able bodied people on both the attacking and defending sides who could administer a city after occupation)..