Gathered Feedback: Durability of walls and catapults
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Welcome to the another feedback discussion thread!.
Usual introduction and disclaimer:
Each of these threads is related to a specific feedback/idea that the game's GM and Mods have collected in DIscord or in game and that has been forwarded to the developers. The aim of these threads is to discuss this feedback, to better understand how much interest the community shows toward it, if it has any critics or alternative ideas. So let us know what you think about it! Even just a +1 or -1 to the thread will be enough to understand how many players are for it or against it.
Note: The fact that a feedback is presented in this thread does not mean that it will be implemented, it could be refused by devs for mutiple reasons (technical feasibility, excessive effort, against the game's vision...), but the amount of support that a feedback receives will surely be a factor.
Today's Topic
The topic today is an hot one, which has seen a lot of discussions in the past weeks.
And many many many more.
So the topic today is this one.
Assuming that everything else works and the bugs we all know are fixed, what would be in your opinion the correct durability of a wooden wall and of a stone wall? For how long a catapult should fire on a section of wall to bring it down?At the same time, how sturdy should a catapult be?
This is a point where devs could surely benefit from our input.
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Stone walls should be double the strength of wood. As far as unlearning the 2 research points, the walls should remain. The current system allows for walls to stand, but if they are destroyed, you would need to respec back into the Fortified walls research. Which is absolutely fine with me.
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Unlearning the tech points for walls should reduce the durability of the walls. You are not paying for it so you should not get the extra benefit from it. Due to the one point per day unlearning of tech points a city can easily re-allocate points in the 3 day window before a siege into stone walls to get the hp increasing effect.
60 stones to take down a wood wall is good, but it should take -at least- 90 for a stone wall, if not a full 120.
This also assumes that catapults have object collision and people cannot hide in them and thus be un-targetable.
I have both attacked catapults and defended against an attack on my teams catapults and the hp seemed reasonable, what was unreasonable was the ability to hide in them -=AND=- the fact that lemming like behavior of suicide rushing the catapults over and over again was a valid tactic.... -WE NEED SOME EQUIPMENT LOSS- death needs some meaning, the war chests need to have their purpose restored (extra gear for the side as was the intent).
I have not been able to test it, but catapults should be deployable after the start of a siege. An attacker should be able to bring in X catapults and hold x-1 in mobile form in their tent as replacements should the ones they deploy earlier be destroyed. It will take extra resource commitment and time which seems appropriate and allows for the -possibility- of battle to continue after the first suicide rushes are able to kill a catapult.As far as player abilities able to damage a wall... If players can attack from on top of the wall then I guess it would be ok for other players to try to use specific abilities (like the short ranged summon big stone above your head and smash it into ground thing) to damage walls.... but defenders -need- to be able to retaliate from the top of walls... which they cannot do.
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Does anyone know if there is some historical information about catapults against wood or stone? Is there any info out there to tell us how tough a catapult is against an onslaught of attackers? If someone could dig up a bit of historical information it might help balance things out a bit.
Also I believe that if enough folks attack a wooden gate or wall with axes that they should be able to take it down. After all no one is pouring boiling oil on them or anything like that.
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@OlivePit I very much disagree with the tech point topic. At least at this point in the game, where we only have a max of 30 points for a rank 15 town. Now we do know this will be expanded eventually. Also having Nations with multiple rank 15 towns will give everyone more tech points, so we won't have to respec the walls. Fortified walls is also 2 points, so you would need to respec your high end crafting and something else. Yes this can all be down in 48 hours, but then you need another 48 to get back. 4 days to wait if you want to craft something specific, just because your stone wall, that you spent tons of time building was damaged.
Now as for death rushing the catapults and leaving attackers incapacitated... Yeah it was a solid move. We need more options to take a wall down. Battering Rams perhaps??? Then defenders, need to be able to defend from the walls. Artillery when???
My opinion. Double the strength of stone walls, allow us to aim up and down (an entirely different issue comes to mind) and re-visti the tech aspect when we have more to work with.
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The way the game point economy works, if wall tech is lowered, walls should be either weakened or start to decay from disrepair. As @OlivePit and others have stated, there shouldn't be an exploit-type situation where you pay up the walls tech, get the best walls, build them, then get rid of the points. Part of the purchase of the points represents the 'buying of the rights to have those advanced walls'
Historically, catapults and other siege equipment was handled in a handful of ways. To disable/defeat them, fire was often used, as well as making the landscape approaching the town rugged to make it harder to transport the siege equipment close to the walls, finally, axes and other tools were used to break down or tip over siege equipment to render it useless via saboteurs.
Walls were handled of course mainly via seige equipment, but there were multiple types, including towers used to create protected ladders, catapults/trebuchet used to knock down large sections of walls, a battering rams to knock out the city gates themselves. In addition to that, warriors with heavy axes and mauls and bladed polearms would chop at town gates to gain entrance, and rank and file troops might set fire to bundles of hay and oil barrels at the bases of the walls to smoke out defenders and possibly weaken wooden wall structures. Finally, a siege was often held with the idea to starve out the defenders by denying them food stores, and specifically attacking any food and water reserves within the town.
These being the historical ways of addressing a siege, certain attacks should slowly be able to wear down walls, or bypass them (relocate/lightning rush/battlejump) for when siege equipment is disabled. I also agree with being able to take an appropriate amount of time to deploy additional siege engines and arm them, or being able to have gathered logs and a hammer to 'repair/heal' a siege engine as well.
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@GamerSeuss We definitely should not be able to relocate or jump through the gates. I discovered that accidently. I messed with it for a bit, and stopped. But that seriously should not happen.
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@Junkie The issue is reported and acknowlegded by the developers.
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@LordSkykal Thank you for confirming. I was worried about that. /s
