Total War Sieges Tier List
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2023
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Tier list explaining which Total War Games had good sieges and which ones didn't.
Please note this is an unofficial video and is not endorsed by SEGA or the Creative Assembly in any way. For more information on Total War, please visit www.totalwar.com - Hry
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Babe wake up Legend posted a new tierlist
And it has Rome: Total War!
I am awake...
It really be like that
Wake up again! The new Total War is here!
You have to let it go, the accident wasn't your fault.
"In Total War Atilla you can see civilians and kill them."
Red Cross wants to know your location
The Geneva Suggestion at its peak.
The walls for the Roman large settlements in Rome 1 were absurdly large. Always loved watching massive chunks of stone crush people below. Also enjoyed sieges engines on top of the siege towers.
So large the camera couldn’t handle it lmao
Yea I always found it amusing that TW: Medieval II technology could not surpass what came >1000 years before in TW: Rome I.
@@dmitriysamusenko5910 To be fair, technology did regress in the Middle Ages...
@@dmitriysamusenko5910 1000 years and the Romans didn't upgrade the GPU? smh, romulus would never...
@@RuosongGao ehhh not really. These people were more than capable of creating grand structures. That was the era of the grandest cathedrals and abbeys
I have a great deal of respect for Legend because while he can come across as bitter, he’s just incredibly well versed on what CA has accomplished before and what they could deliver for the game. This tier list is a cookbook for CA to take as feedback on what would be great for future games or reworks.
Why'd he be bitter? I never got that from watching this
@@jameskorek9726 That's just his natural personality, I think. He used to be way, way less subtle about it.
CA are a garbage corporation so yeah he should be bitter. We all should be. They took a brilliant franchise and crashed it through the floor for money.
Not that they will ever take the feedback anyway
@@user-vn1wz3tr1h I remember his old Pure Evil campaigns lmfao
Attila is so underrated in the community... It's so good but I feel like it's immediately discarded just because of the poor optimizations.
The poor optimization is a massive factor though. One particular problem which make Atilla to this day almost unplayable imo is once you reach a certain unit size on siege maps the units starts lagging so bad its like its on slow motion, regardless of hardware, especially once you start climbing walls so likely pathfinding related. Rome 2 and Thrones of Brittania actually had the exact same problem only slightly less. For whatever reason that problem never existed in the warhammer games or the older games.
It kept crashing in multiplayer for me and my friend. Very annoying.
That's really interesting. This comes up a lot, but some people don't have these issues at all (myself included). I haven't noticed Atilla having any worse performance than any other TW, except in cases where AI brought too many navy and couldn't land which fried their brains. But yeah, otherwise, imo, even good games are essentially bad games if performance is shit.
well its really strange game where the world is literally falling apart around you, as is your empire, its preety badly balanced and frustrating overall
Ryzen x3d cpus allow for 100+ fps in Attila.
I kinda think the sieges in Warhammer 3 suffer from being over developed. The devs were clearly passionate about improving the siege experience from 1 and 2, which is not inherently a bad thing, they just went a bit overboard in the process.
This comment deserves more upvotes. They tried to fix what doesn't need fixing, and left broken what needs repair
good take. there's a lot of areas on siege maps which are totally unnecessary and don't do anything. the additional space coupled with areas that should be bottlenecks instead being forks makes it harder to defend the settlement
I have only played warhammer so I don't know what sieges "should" be like, but it always felt incomplete or wrong. In my brain in a siege I'm expecting a helms deep kind of thing with a bunch of siege equipment, ladders, all that jazz. in the TWW games the walls just seem pointless. I dont think I have ever seen a piece of siege equipment actually perform a useful function before. You have this whole supplies and labor system for building siege equipment and the only time I have used it is in TWW2 to build a battering ram when I forget to bring a siege attacker, which dosen't matter at all anymore anyway in TWW3.
i hate the warhammer three sieges. they are chaotic, the maps are way too big and unintuitive, the layouts are unrealistic and annoying, the ai sucks and they take an eternity
Then you've never played other TW games
actually my favorite sieges are the unwalled city battles in napoleon. there are more buildings than in empire, and you get these cool moments where you can set up cannons and fire canister down a street. there are many fun angles of engagement, and setting up elite grenadiers inside of a house gives you a nice anchor for your army
The issue I have with that is, it isn't that the sieges are good. You are just enjoying the visuals and spectacle more. Fundamentally, you're saying it is a land battle but you get free chokepoints, which makes it an easier and dumber land battle.
These battles were so underrated. It actually felt like a custom defense. You could choose your own points to hold and defend areas that fitted the type and size of your troops.
I actually liked these Atwell. It presented like actual obstacles for your army, you had to spread your troops out into a defensive perimeter if you were defending a settlement, and it just felt so much more natural.
Plus, I had many a game where I barricaded my last regiment inside a house and won because the A.I can't put elephants inside your house lol.
@@BailensdeLykenos But... you didn't have to and to do so was to your detriment. So that is you roleplaying and seeing an obstacle when in reality it was only so if you choose to engage with it, which itself is bad design. Otherwise, it was always a one sided choke point. Barricading in houses drastically reduced effectiveness, and only was ever sometimes useful because of the poor AI. Look at your own example - "I liked it because the AI wasn't allowed to react to it". That's bad design, no? And what you're recalling is fond memories and experiences you enjoyed, but not because they were well designed?
Yeah, you directly proved irrational amd bad design with your example.
I think Yrridians Battle of Ceasaragusta video is a great example of how just a couple of units , when commanded well, can overcome an overwhelming force in Atilla, even on higher difficulties. It's a town defense instead of a siege, but the principle is the same, and really showcases Atilla's battles being great fun.
I think CA’s problem comes down to not have a “role” for sieges in WH and in total war generally. They treat sieges like a small part of the game, when they are part of the centre of the gameplay loop.
Sieges should be the final obstacle you have to overcome to gain resources (territory) and a way of securing your own. But for some reason CA has decided making sieges realistic would not be fun.
Well that would involve just sitting about starving them out, what we call sieges are really assaults
@@McHobotheBobo that's what the AI does to my walled settlements in WH3, they only attack when my garrison is at >20% strength. So no siege defense battles for me
Realistic sieges would be what we have right now in wh3, starving people out by sieging AI
assaults did happen, the reason more seiges were starving them out was because an assault was incredibly costly, certainly not because they just started dying because a single guy walked up and started shouting outside the walls,
as of right now you just need a reinforcing army and you can take an absolute fortress with 90 casualties
@@LuzikArbuzik77 the attacker would also need to face diseases and supply problems during the siege to make it more realistic. But as an above what CA calls siege battles are really assaults.
The last time CA tried to improve sieges was in Attila with fire & siege escalation, then they went like 10 step back in WH1. Now in WH3 we have this Fortnite-bs.
Attila has the best imo. The AI is also alright
@Dyl It certainly has the potential. I love Attila but most of the factions really need a remake in the way WH-factions got over the years, and ofc that it doesnt crash 50% when trying to start the game
Atilla let your cavalry dismount and fight on foot, something missimg since Rome Total War, sad it went away again in the Warhammer games
@@goatcheezius2399 Shogun 2 also had that.
@@googleandsusansucksEvery game since Empire had that feature until Warhammer removed it.
@Dyl could have been the best total war, but I think many people would bitch about how brutal the difficulty is. Everything is put against you, no money, religious problems,food problems with the climate change, the Huns being overpowered,etc. I had no problems with that it was a really tense and stressful campaign but I guess many people would not like that
One major problem with modern TWs is the limited building slots. If you build extra defences, that's one or two slots that cannot be used for something else (growing the economy or training better troops), instead of having the option of build it if you can afford it.
Indeed. I wish they would bring back the system from Fall of the Samurai where the defenses were separate from the other build slots. Same goes for port buildings.
@@darksidecookies2145 same for farms and roads. At which point does building a barrack or towers come at the expense (so long that you can afford it) of farming some food outside of the city ?
@@Duke_of_Lorraine the building system as a whole desperatly needs a rework. Bulding 4 buildings and upgrafing them without thought is boring as hell. I still remember roma surrectum 2 and Europa barbarorum having way way way better building systems 15 years ago.
@@d.cirovic1695 it was a considerable downgrade over Rome 1 and Medieval 2 yes
I am never going to forget that one time years ago when I tried setting up a phalanx to advance on the enemy in a city in R:TW and instead of forming up how I wanted it to it decided to face a building then start advancing towards the enemy sideways.
I absolutely loved medieval 2 sieges. Whenever you have 5 entire armies attacking your fortress, you can keep falling back the citadel and regroup with another gate for the enemy to overcome.
I loved attacking port settlements in Rome 2. Using your navy and army to pincer attack the city was so much fun for me. I actually liked the naval combat and wish it came back.
Yeah taking out the garrison fleet and then parking your artillery ships off the city coast was super fun
Didn't Medieval 2 also have those sieges were the AI only sends a single unit forward with a ram and you could just hide in the most inner wall, wait for the ram to arrive, kill the unit, and then the AI would send its units one by one?
Also, Attila sieges were so much fun. You could hold your forts with like a tenth of the manpower you were up against, which is very realistic.
And destroying the siege towers using fire arrows was very easy
Atilla sieges were surprisingly enjoyable. My main issue with Atilla was how many sieges youd end up having over the course of a single campaign and, as garrison compositions are static, youd be fighting multiple garrisons with 1-2 archers, spearmen and 1 cav unit. Again. And again. And again.
To be fair, every TW sttruggles massively with making sieges enjoyable.
@@khankhomrad8855 Attila also felt more apocalyptic than Chaos in Warhammer ever did.
@@khankhomrad8855 my main problem with Attila is trying to stay above 30 fps
@@panoptikum9768 warhammer 1 kinda felt dark and gritty and more serious despite being a flawed game.
Warhammer 3 is just strange.
Like sure we have demons but there are so many jokes and bright colours.
Kislev is basically slavic memes made manifest.
Ogres were Designed by a den of redditors. With the chungus and fart jokes.
Sometimes feel like Marvel syndrome where a dark and serious setting is interrupt too often by jokes.
I mostly played 3K on records mode and sieges in that game were one of the most epic battles I have ever seen. One time I managed to hold back three full armies with a full, but damaged stack in a mine, it was a great experiance.
Fall of the Samurai also had naval sieges although they were very hard to trigger. You could have a sea battle where in addition to your ships you also had shore defenses that you could use (if you had built the port up). The AI was pretty good about staying out of the firing arc of these but if you could get the AI chasing your ships around they would forget about trying to bombard the shore.
It was rather easy to trigger. Since AI always tries to blockade the port with which one trades, I would leave a single shitty ship to defend it, so AI fleet would attack it and get obliterated by coastal artillery
And it was goddamn fun
When I first started playing the chaos dwarfs, I saw just how bad sieges could get... it was a minor settlement battle I was defending. The greenskins outnumbered my garrison heavily. They had 7 or 8 different ways to get into my settlement and overrun me with ease. Instead, the AI decided to shove their entire army and wagh up one ramp... while it was satisfying to hit em with the dreadquake battery and see massive casualties pile up, it felt cheap. Really showed how mindless the AI can be sometimes :/
Meanwhile Helman Gorst attacked me from 3 different sides. Still lost though, because blunderbusses
It's the main reason I won't buy TW:WH3
For Greenskins it actually seems pretty lore accurate. XD
@CruisingForMermaids I'd def buy the game unless that's a real deal breaker for you. I'm absolutely addicted to this game, it's a ton of fun and has tons of replayability
Thats so weird, I always have the opposite experience. The AI always divides its forces and attacks from multiple directions (if it can). It really makes me have to think about where to place units.
Maybe one of the issues with wh3 is that your "defensive points" have more entrances than the main plaza in mtw2 where people have their last stand. A good deal of the grind in mtw2 was having to fight to that one point where you could finally collapse in with your forces on all sides in highly advantageous angles. You don't have to designate "defensive points" if they're tactically worth holding gamers will find them or even make them if given the tools
Total war WH3 sieges: get a few fast "strong" units + lord + hero(s), leave the rest of your army on the other side of the map, cap the 2nd most important point, then cap the most important point, ???, win. There have been so many times where I took a city with 16-18 high rank units garrisoning it with absolute crap+some fast units. It feels like cheating. If you have a mage with defensive/healing buffs it's actually laughable how easy they are.
Sounds like tutorial how to get Nagashizzar as Imrik in 8 turns
The saddest part in the video : "So maybe a future TW might actually be able to just consistently become amazing in sieges", because A it is said in a defeatest spirit that WH will never have a rework for that again and B it is because I have kept hoping for that for years but CA keeps surprising but in the wrong way ... when I heard rework I was hoping for removed ladders, CA doubled down on those instead.
But WH definitely will not get another siege rework. CA is clearly incapable of creating good sieges and they've already spent a lot on the useless siege rework we got, so I expect them to never touch it again.
Yeah, we may only hope that Manor lords will give us proper sieges
CA will clearly never give them to us again
Basic Shogun 2 does it for me. FotS is fun, too, but when the AI starts getting good cannons, there's much less you can do as the defender other than just waiting for them to kill your units. Shogun 2 sieges are some of my favorite battle types in the entire series, being able to defend against an overwhelming enemy and fighting to the last man...Great times.
Agreed, cannons are too powerful of a tool for siege attackers with how accurate they are which really hurts the siege balance; I usually mod Shogun 2 to give +1 food per settlement, that way there's moe higher tier settlements throughout the campaign, but otherwise I think it is completely fine; I love how unlocking guns completely changes the power balance in sieges as well.
@@captainnyet9855 I mean, that's how it went it the real life, too. Castles weren't as useful when the enemies could just bomb you to dust sitting outside your own range.
What about when their general charges up your walls with the first wave of their men? Happened all the time in my games.
@@captainnyet9855 historically accurate so it's fine
"Why is it that the capture points are usually some of the worst defensive positions on the map?" I think you've hit the nail on the head there. That's the main issue with Warhammer sieges. And why they're so ridiculously easy to cheese.
It was great in Medieval 2 Citadel.
It starts getting worse since Attila.
Defending Syracuse In Rome: Total War with peltasts and mercs and levy hoplites, rag tag army against superior Roman force until you can get relief force onto the island is how I fell in love with Rome: Total War.
Gotta say my opinion of anyone falls down a notch when they do not understand that.
I think this is a reasonable list. Attila is fantastic, by far my favorite total war game.
This tier list just make me wish for a Medieval 3 even more
So we can have a Richard the Lionheart one man doomstack that gets 2000 kills in a siege in Jerusalem? No thank you
@@Diego000793 historical
@@LuLingqi101 I'm sorry but CA doesn't make those games anymore. I really wish they'd do a new historical game, but I just lost my faith on them
@@Diego000793 they will absolutely do pure historical for Med 3. People who say they won't are just crybabies.
@@Diego000793 That's lore!
One thing about Empire is that it actually has 3 cultures with different fort types. But that doesn't really matter, because they're all pretty abusable.
Bit surprised you rated Atilla so high as you can easily (but very tediously) cheese any port city siege with your fleet.
The cheese god likes cheese.
I think that has to do more with the AI than the Siege Design. I think in every TW you can cheese any siege, especially with the battle timer in each game, but at that point you are not playing the game, just waiting for a timer to win
Talk what you want about TWW3 sieges, but NOTHING beats how bad it was in Empire, where you could have A SINGLE PEASANT holding off an entire star fortress and the siege would just. not. end.
Sieges are such an important part of these games for me, so I’m really glad you posted this. I actually never played Medieval 2, so that might be something for me to go check out, because defending against overwhelming odds with a small garrison is one of my favorite things to do in TW(and one that I get SO little of in Warhammer 3). I loved Shogun 2 sieges, so much, with the risk vs reward of climbing the walls vs. trying to burn down or force open the gates. Setting the towers ablaze with fire arrows. Such a good game.
The actual maps are amazing in Medieval 2 but the AI as the attacker can be bad. They are very passive until the siege towers/rams are in place. An experienced player can derp them out pretty easily. One they breach the walls or gates, they usually send everything into the breach.
Hilarious moments are when you play England or the Turks, since they have access to the deployable spikes. Let the Mongols siege you and watch their entire cavalry force die to running into wooden spikes.
Meds 2 has some amazing mods, like the Elder scroll, Lord of the Rings or Legend of Zelda ones, honestly every time I remember it I feel like redownloading it, but it is sadly way less stable and tend to crash often. Ain't nothing as dishearting than having fun then having to abandon a mid to late game campaign because something the AI does systematically cause the game to crash at the turn end...
Still would definitely recommend it, just be ready because it still a game more than a decade old and thus many mechanics you're used to simply aren't present yet.
Medieval 2 being some of the best sieges I fully agree with. Being able to hold off a Mongol horde with just the garrison was loads of fun back in the day. I do wish they would do a remaster like they did with Rome if we aren't going to get Medieval 3.
Atleats for the beatiful remade mods that will come.
Considering that Imperium surrectum came out of Rome remaster, I pray for Medieval 2 remaster
There are so many mods that would benefit so if the settlement cap was 300 instead of 200. And Rome remaster's cap seems to be around 2 000
FYI @LegendofTotalWar Your channel is the only channel i'm willing to watch sponsored ads without skipping. Great content and insight as always :)
I really missed other content rather than Warhammer. It has been a lot of time since I came to this channel last time. Subscribed again.
I think I mostly agree on that ranking. Tho probably wouldn't have put WH3 in terrible but maybe bad or meh. Subjectively I actually quite enjoy them but objectively I do see the issues you named, especially the tower rebuilding... The AI in general I only partly agree. While I think it was terrible when game 3 came out, now while not good they aren't terrible either. They don't always place all their units at the wall where your army is anymore. it happend countless times now that my stealthy cheese units ran into counter stealth or patrooling cav. Also if I try to capture the city points they usually send cav there to intercept. I'm usually playing on very hard campaign and normal battle difficulty and noticed actually that the AI is worse on higher battle difficulty in sieges. They seem to be way more aggressive on VH battle, but less strategic. Also I agree that they should make ladders etc. like in the other games.
A rule of thumb IRL is that you need 3x more attackers than defenders to break through. It should be the target for balancing sieges
Give me 12 good men
@@jonasfull I'll give you 12 angry men
That isnt a real rule per say, it only applies if both sides are using only infantry. Artillery, air power, vehicles and mortars can easily give the attacker a advantage even if they are outnumbered.
@@grimaldus1523 yes, these are force multiplier. And quality matters to, you'd need much more than 3x the number if you storm a fortress with peasants while it's defended by elite troops.
I have a screenshot on Steam of a FotS battle where my garrisoned castle had 2500 men guarding it and the attackers brought 10,000 men. I managed to take out 7500 of them before running out of ammo and defenders. I still think the enemy lost that one.
The worst part of tww3 is that in all the hours i've spent on the game i almost NEVER get any defensive sieges. The ai almost always sieges your cities and forcing you to sally out. I never get to derend ;-;
fantastic discussion behind each decision why! thank you for the video
Thanks to say it Legend !
A lot of players think the same and a lot of topics are about the sieges in the forum !
Hope that CA will change it with the 4.0
I started using siege removal mods in WH3 early on and never felt like stopping using them. Maps feel like they lack variety, which I think largely owes to the fact that most human factions share the same designs. Ass ladders make it so that you only keep troops on walls to activate towers and have them fold once the enemy closes in. Rebuildable towers are just infuriating. Also this might be just a pet peeve, but it feels like the paths inside settlements are too narrow, even single units move around stretched forward, which does benefit the defender, but feels janky.
The more arcady style of sieges could work, but I'd redesign them a lot. First of all building towers, traps etc. should only be done pre-battle. Ladders should be finite, the attacking army could start with maybe 2 by default and have more if they besiege longer or have traits/tech. All ranged units, including weapon teams and siege artillery should be able to fire from the top of the walls in some way. I'd retain the defender point mechanic, but I'd use it like a survival battle or domination mode resource, the defender would have a small pool of units they could summon or resummon if they held the points. The attacker could get like a single use army ability nuke to destroy battlements for each unique point they captured. And I'd make the paths wide enough that a single max stretched infantry unit could fill them.
there also way too many pathways making it so the only choke ponts worth using are the ones next to the capture points you want to protect cause there's no point in sending a few units to block when they enemy can just use the 3 paths next to them to avoid them
I wish that everyone at creative assembly would actually play the gamea they made in the past so that they could understand what actually made them really good. They have lost so much institutional knowledge on how to do these things from staff turnover through the years, it's really sad.
I'm grateful to have the legend himself speak for the sieges in all the Total War games I haven't played but wanted to for comparison to the Warhammer games which is what I've mainly dealt with in the last decade. I'm a big fan of big, gripping sieges too.
Great video. Love yours tierlists.
I recently fought an unbreakable Thorek Ironbrow. Was left with 10 units, almost dead, and he and his Runesmith buddy ran from point to point. It took me 120 ingame minutes to finish, because only the towers were able to damage him anymore.
9:22 I love the instant realization of "we're talking about TOTAL WAR HERE"
The main issue of sieges in Warhammer is magic, devs didn't know how to balance it in siege battles, and also flying units
I would rather see cheesiest useage of magic in sieges while the sieges are atleast Medieval 2 tier rather than have shitty sieges with 'balanced' magic
Warhammer world has so many unique cities and forts. Karak Kadrin siege should be a rush over a long bridge while defenders destroy you with artillery. But they give us the most easily mass-produced shitty sieges
Also flying units should be great in sieges. Inherent advantage of being able to fly over walls
I think formations help a lot with sieges. Something like a pike wall is super powerful in streets, and the attacker needs to save their ammo so they can properly deal with them. They can't just spam arrows at every unit like shielded units.
Wonderful tier list! Great job 👍👏👏
Before watching, i would like to highlight Shogun 2, not because i think its necesarily the best sieges, but because i really enjoy how the 3 versions, rise of the samurai, normal, fall of the samurai, all use the same baseline japanese castles but each with their own spin and tactic due to the different techs, i really enjoyed how that came across.
For best i think its Medieval 2
Medieval 2 is the clear winner for me, the amount of different layouts and options make it feel much less tiring on your 10th, 30th, or 100th siege. Yes, there is trouble with pathfinding, yes you can cheese but overall this is the most fun I've had. Honourable mention to Shogun 2.
I will never forget where I held back the entire Timur horde by just having canon towers and letting then kill the entire armies. AI won't attack during sieges if you're the aggressor.
I mean the pathfinding is still way better than warhammer 3. I fucking hate telling my army to path to the other side of an OPEN AND BROKEN GATE and 75% the units are like "Ok boss up the wall it is via ladders. See you in 2 minutes." and you can't get them DOWN properly to cancel the freaking order. It's insanely annoying. Just go through the gate!!!! So yeah decades old game wins again.
@@srdjan455Yeah, cannon towers were bit too OP
I am playing Fall of Constantinopole and cannon towers decimated Ottoman army
i just had a siege with kugath + 4 heroes vs wurzzag and about 5000 greenskins. i broke the gate. killed a few units on the way, waddled up to the center and capped the point. besides the fact that i just stood their, making myself a sandwich and tea and came back to the victory screen. 10/10 design for saving time
i played a siege on Warhammer 3 and i was defending against eltharion and his two armies
eltharion's AI broke and he was just standing still menacingly for the entirety of the battle so i just shot him
when his reinforcements came they also just stood outside standing around... all i had was one unbreakable unit remaining on the battlefield and they just stood there
21:29 And now minor settlement battles don't happen anymore at all. I have not seen the AI building any garrison buildings at all in multiple campaigns now which means I never get the chance to attack a minor settlement because everything is a land battle - and I never get to defend my settlements either because the AI never attacks, they always lay siege and wait until my units die of attrition - and since the battles when attacking the besieging force are land battles I have exactly zero opportunity to play minor settlement battles at all, it is 100 % land battles now.
Yay. Thanks to all the guys who whined until this change was made. I enjoyed minor settlement battles and thanks to you I don't get any of them anymore - ever.
In regards to butt ladders...they are not the problem (even though I think the attacker should have to spend a turn besieging to actually build them). The problem is that the walls don't provide bonuses.
Looking at what fortifications did in the real world the bonuses for defending walls should be like this:
- 90 % missile resist. Yes, it is extremely hard to hit someone on a castle wall with an arrow or crossbow bolts because battlements provide almost perfect protection
- massive bonuses to Melee attack - like a +10 bonus or so - unless the enemy model (not unit, this should be on a model by model basis) is already on top of the wall as well
- melee defence of 0 for climbing models, again returning to normal as soon as the model is finally on top of the wall.
- Being able to attack directly without siege equipment should be next to impossible.
- artillery is way too effective in destroying walls and yes, this includes cannons.
- towers should only shoot when manned by archer units
I never thought I would see you complain about cheese you are the king of it
One thing I really loved with the sieges in Thrones is how much variation there was between cities. That's also why I would rank Medieval 2 and Shogun 2 a little lower, they were quite similar depending on the level of the settlement. Three Kingdoms was an odd one because different types of settlement were very different, but very much the same as each other. Which led to me being like, oh good I'm defending this mine, or ugh, I'm defending this cattle field. So, in some ways better, but not wholly.
Awesome. I remember requesting this a couple of weeks back 😊.
Loved hearing you praise Attila. I really wish that CA would still release some optimization patches for the game.
Would love a video like this where you rank battles in total war games
I just recently completed a campaign on Shogun 2 and whilst the defensive sieges were quite fun, especially if I had matchlocks, a lot of the attacking sieges had me just set up some archers surrounding the castle on max speed and let the one or two or three castle garrison units run around like headless chickens as they all die. And that continued all the way up 'til the end of the game with very few outliers where I actually felt the need to, well, siege the castle.
The biggest problem with S2's sieges is that they, more than any other TW, put the defender at a disadvantage. You don't notice it too much if you're playing the AI, but if up against a player with good bow units, they can just decimate you. The forts don't provide any cover from arrow fire unless you have men at the walls, and even then if archers can get a direct angle to your men, or they shoot behind them, they're still getting slaughtered. It's not so bad in the later forts as you can hide units at the very top, out of range of enemy archers, but the smaller forts can be a massive pain to defend.
I'd love to see a proper review of some of the older total war games from you, I bet lots of people got introduced to total war trough warhammer 2/3, and have no idea about the older titles, which ones are worth a shot and what you can expect.
I remember all the (pre-cannon, at least) sieges I had in Medieval 2 boiling down to archers on the wall to help snipe out any siege towers, making a semicircle of spears behind the main gate and waiting for the AI to break that down and then keep blobbing in through it to get chopped up and rout because for some reason that's all it ever seemed to do. That wasn't fun at all.
the most fun sieges ive ever had, have been in FoTS indeed. Lovely towers and star citadels that have incredible impact at the cost of building them ofc. 10/10 imo
Thrones of Britania: I won, but at what cost
I totally agree with Medieval 2. Even now my best memories of total war siege is Med2 castles. I can specifically remember Innsbruch being a fantastic choke point in the mountains.
In WH3, I've had gutter runners defeat a defending army because they climbed the walls on the other side of the city and stealthed to the capture point
Regarding Warhammer 3, i'd go further into the argument and point out that, uncontrary to other "total war" games where armies of different faction got relatively similar units to deal with siege battles, the uniqueness of the different army rosters of Warhammer 3 vast races disparity makes it so that some armies are exceedingly well suited for siege warfare and others definitely not - both offensively and/ defensively.
For example, Skavens are basically god tiers siege warfare attackers. Between the summoning of rats behind walls, the cheap fast casting lighting spell, the drill squad that is litteraly made for beaking walls or, the penultimate siege unit, the poison wind mortar that rain death upon the defender, they're exceedingly strong when it comes to siege offense.
On the other hand of the spectrum, we have the Vampire Coast. Apart from mortar teams and Queen Bess, most of the Vampire Coast roster is slow, direct line of sight gunpowder based units. They do have access to summons like Skavens but not nearly as many, nor as fast and reliable for disrupting formations as the Rats'. If you were to ask me _"with which army would you feel the most and then less confident to siege Naggarond with"_ i'd answer Skaven and Vampire Coast respectively, precisely for that.
Now onto defensive siege : Dwarves (and subsequently Chaos Dwarves) are basically running the show. Immovable lines of infantry with very high armor, melee defense, shield, leadership and smaller hitboxes makes for very, very strong contenders for defensive siege - add the artillery and magic to the mix (Chaos Dwarves') and it's basically impossible to break through.
On the other hand of the Spectrum : Vampire Counts or the different daemonic factions. (That's the problem when you are a fully melee centered faction... 'nuff said.)
Basically, you either have it easy or hard and it's of no fault of your own or the A.I. : the innate nature of the different faction's unique units roster makes them good or bad for said situation. On one side it's cool because, lore wise, it does show how some factions are indeed better at certain forms of warfare and completely suck at others. But that also means that everything depends of the map design and, as such, the developpers, to prevent said limitations or advantages to become too difficult/easy to overcome, lest the campaign becomes either a grindfest or a walk in the park.
Case in point : i recently played a Chaos Dwarf campaign and got attacked by Skaven on a factory settlement (fully developped garrison with a Lord Sorcerer of fire with "Burning head" and nothing else.) The Skaven had two armies : one full stack with a plague catapult and a way smaller one with Ruin priest and beastmaster hero. The map was filled to the brim with chokepoints but also a lot of different accesses.
I'll cut straight to the chase : the Skaven A.I. braindeadly stacked it's units on top of one another in an allay like chokepoint to such an extent that even a basic Burning Head caused a localized genocide (i used the Ka'dai summon to deal with the catapults in the beggining of the battle, no problem.) By the end of it all, my Chaos Sorcerer had more than 1.600 dead to his account (wasn't even level 8.) If i had tried the same with with Vampire Counts, i'd be a goner for sure.
I liked the siege battles in rome 1. Not complicated city designs but enough to feel interesting plus feel realistic. And the cities were gorgeous and had buildings constructed in them on the campaign map present in the battle map
Very good video. I`ve played all of these games, except first Rome, and I fully agree. Really reasonable points. Especially about Attila, that is my the most favorite Total War game ever.
Nothing in any TW game has ever brought me more joy than offensive siege battles in FotS with a full enemy stack crammed into a fort for my naval barrage and Armstrong guns to absolutely slaughter. I've wiped entire dangerous stacks with zero losses just with a few Armstrongs, a decent fleet off the coast and a couple of sharpshooter units. Mine wasn't even an army with fully-trained veterans, generals or max-accuracy units. Exploiting the AI like that does feel a bit cheap at times, but it's insanely fun.
Honourable mention goes to offensive sieges in Rome II as the Parthians or any other faction with long-range archers. You can often take out entire garrisons without any losses and it's great.
Bought Three kingdoms after playing WH3 and wow, the sieges were actually like a fresh breath of air, especially being able to put catapults on the walls again, cant believe I slept on this game for so long
Shogun 2 was my first TW and I remember looking forward to sieges.
I never thought I would get vietnam flash backs, but when legend was describing med 2 siege, I got flashbacks to ramming 10s of units down into the choke point thinking I would win easily, but coming out with horrendous losses.
One aspect you're missing judging in the Attila and Rome sieges is the amazing addition of amphibious assaults/two pronged assaults.
Yep. I have done so many combined assaults by land and sea
I absolutely love the sieges in Attila, tops for me. Shogun 2 is a close second. Thrones of Britannia, the only redeeming feature of that game is the sieges which are excellent
If only the Exploding tower mechanic is removed, I would like Attila Sieges even more...
Medieval has one feature that only Shogun 2 slightly replicate, major last stand at the square. Not to mention, Shogun2 doesn't has settlement battle since most of the time you're just attacking a castle in a middle of nowhere.
It is very ironical that when Warhammer 3 was announced overhauled sieges were one of the most hyped up things xD
i agree with everything you have said here. thank you. you have to use mods just to fix some of the issues in warhammer 3 total war. im using mod that extend the countdown to 999999 sec on the main capture point so u pretty much have to rout the enemy to win no more losing cause u cant defend every point. and u can get a mod that makes it were u build towers and stuff at the start but if they get destroyed they done and over
What I especially dislike with WH1 to 3 is how the cities and fort effectively weren't designed to be defendable to begin with. Like in 1 and 2 they were nothing but a single wall that might as well have been a pallisade as it served only to create choke points when it broke down or when the gates were opened, and in 3 almost every siege map is designed that there is no proper way to defend it effectively if you're outnumbered. Way too many maps are simply undefendable unless you already have an army present, as even with a big garrison present, you're forced to spread out your troops as to cover every side which more than half the time result in very ineffective skirmishes where the defense it in an outright unfavorable position against the invader, as whatever you place there is almost assuredly going to get stomped out, which will result in a domino effect where you have to displace troops to prevent another frontline from getting overwhelmed or sandwhiched. Like whose idea at CA was it to make almost every potential choke point easily evaded or flanked? It make most sieges a total chore to deal with.
I'm not saying it ain't possible or doable, they're simply aren't fun to do on average, which in a game where half if not more of the gameplay is spent in sieges, is quite distressing.
Sieges in FoTS are my favourite thing about that game
Lol might be the only tier list where ToB makes a chance at the topspot.
TOB settlement are so amazing and look so pretty. Just sucks that the game itself was meh. I remember going up to my great rival, landed in Dorset, fought 2 really cool battles and then didn't meet any resistance from them anymore as I autoresolved every battle because I outnumbered them 3:1 with good quality units
@@Speederzzz Yeah I never played ToB but I remember Legend saying it was such a shame that it had such good siege battle while he barely fought any of them manual in his campaigns because there was no reason to.
But yeah I remember seeing some of them and thinking damn that is how it should be and they looked amazing.
@@Mahfireballs sometimes I fought 20 v 6 battles purely to look at the maps... they can do it... this is why I need a medieval 3 haha
possible fix for sieges in tww3:
at this point one thing that might help in tww3 sieges, is if CA removed butt laders and force constructing of proper siege laders, actual good barricade positions and maybe all units defending points get Melle defence buff and leadership and it gets better with town square and victory point giving all defence buffs plus 4 free artelary strikes and finally a small change in tww3 AI(because i don't expect CA doing and overall, that's why i said small change) , anyways making them recap points and try to defend them, when seeing the player going that direction.
Ps:attacker's would consequently get more moral and resistance when caping points, to balance it out.
you think it's a good idea or not?? what do you think??
Defendind the castle against 2 stacks of Mongols playing for Khorezm is still one of the brightest memories about all TW games even after 10+ years.
Their heavy cav was formidable even while being closed in the tight square under fire from three directions.
Was thinking how to improve the sieges im Warhammer 3 and came up with an ideea. First bring back the walls to minor settlement. Second introduce replenishment camp during the sieges. The attacker could pull back the wounded unit or hero and heal, replenish the ammo or the squad members. Of course the camp should be destructable, but should be situated behind the line of fire of the towers. Barricades and tower building should stay, yet i think the attrition effect should be longer, and should start after 4th or 5th turn of the siege. This would help both the defender and the attacker, but i believe we would have some epic sieges. This would also lower the mistakes you could make while attacking, and encourage for more aggressive tactics.
One detail that I also miss from are the unique settlements and/or landmarks.
WH3 could have added very unique maps with all the lore behind some cities like Praag but instead they went for such weird choices and with pride they stick with it…
Gotta love Legends honesty in the commercial, there really is something satisfying about yanking a nose hair out, even though it's painful. Similar to ripping off a scar really
11:55, actually I've been watching some of your 2013 videos of Rome 2 during the pandemic year. You were actually having fun even in the siege battles a lot more than your future Attila videos. You did sometimes comment on some bugs or how Rome 1 did (insert thing here) better (and I usually agreed) but despite finding flaws in the game you were enjoying it. You did mention some of those issues would need to be fixed for the game to have replay value. Also you've gotten bit better in commenting your thought process to the viewers since then.
I love your content of Rome 2, Warhammer 2, Shogun 2, and so on. Some of my favorite videos are disaster battles. Not only do you have to deal with an army you didn't built, but you show every bit of knowledge you have with the game. I don't mind watching cheese like wasting enemy ammo or getting the AI to shoot itself. The disaster battles I love the most are those where you not only do that but flex those micro muscles that I see you use more often in Rome 2 videos. You were already better at that than I am right now and you've improved a bit in this. Often you resort to showing off micro when the odds are just so bad. But the disaster battles I like the most are when its not so bad you need to do so, but after wasting enemy ammo and optimizing spells, you show off your micro skills for one reason or another. Maybe you it is for our benefit, maybe you were having fun, or maybe you just wanted a heroic victory instead of a decisive one.
I'm not saying you should do a livestream "Back to Rome 2" just so we see you flex those muscles. Total War Warhammer I, II, and III are good games and it is fun watching you command monsters. I'm just saying you did have fun with that game back then. I find it a bit sad you don't remember it that way.
I think I only enjoyed rome 2 when it first came out because it helped grow my channel a lot and I didn't know how busted the game truly was. It was the kind of game that the more I played it the less I liked it. If you watch around 2015 Rome 2 content you'll notice a very different tone.
The only siege in TW Empire i can remember was when I was playing as Prussia and I needed to conquer Denmark which was occupied by Saxons. So the situation came up to Saxons leaving the fort and me taking while they were in the field and sides attaker/defender changed. The rest were just boring and every time I didn't bother myself trying taking the fort while just waiting for enemy to come out himself. But still one of my favorite game among TW.
This channel is the reason I got add block. Times must be tough legend
Conclusion - you can judge a total war game by its sieges.
I feel like if Total Warhammer 3 moved to more realistic sieges, where defenders have a huge advantage, it would turn the game into a slog and I think most battles would just revolve around sieges rather than out in the field as tiny AI factions defended their small territory against your big persian empire. But if they had a huge defense advantage every time, it would take forever to expand and be so insanely costly the game would just take FOREVER to slog your way through, especially if you were doing immortal empires and trying to take over the whole world and stuff like that. It would just take forever and feel more like a grind than fun.
I preferred the Warhammer 2 sieges just because they did give defenders an advantage, but you could overcome it with siege weapons for the most part or clever tactics. It let you defend walled cities without an army by just using the garrison against much larger enemy forces but you could get around those defenses with catapults and army positioning as the attacker. Best of both worlds. The siege battles in WH2 were still kind of boring and a bit of a slog, but its better than WH3 nonsense.
Attacking a city needs to be challenging. There is no point otherwise. You can do many things to ease the siege, from agent actions to stalling or ambushing and waiting for enemy stacks to leave the city vulnerable. However cities themselves should be hard and harsh to take, ladders from the butt is the biggest issue.
Of course garrisons would have to be smaller, which with actually good defender advantage will still be fine and fun. I think the aim should be that a city with garrison building should be able to hold off a weak army and inflict notable casualties to a strong army (that brought siege weapons and spent some turns building more). And if you have an army garrisoned that in combination with the garrison should take 3 or even 4 equally strong armies. Of course, this very much dependent on factions, attacking a dwarfen city with an army in it should be a nightmare, while attacking greenskins should require only a slight advantage over the defending army size and strength
I couldnt agree more with this tier list and especially the notions given to WH3. I feel sieges In WH3 are really infuriating all around.
3k single entities as far as horse mounted generals issue has somewhat been addressed by them getting dismounted much easier if they just full on charge into a ball of infantry.
Ironically Thrones of Britannia was my first TW game and I had so much fun with battles and sieges because like you said you could win against overwhelming odds and yet the AI didn’t feel brain dead.
After playing a few sieges in WH3 I feel your pain. The sweet spot in this game is when you are predicted to loose but you can use good play to turn out a victory. I remember that happening a lot with ToB sieges but frustratingly little with WH3.
I might have to fire ToB back up to re-acquaint myself with how they did it. It makes me wonder how a company can be so good in one game then seemingly regress so much afterwards
Naval Bombardment in FOTS is the best thing ever, I fucking adore it. Literally the main reason why I build up a navy in that game, they can really reduce the most well defended settlement to a pile of undefendable rubble
I also rate Fall of the Samurai sieges very highly, for me it ought to have a tier of its own. For starters, they work really smoothly (unlike, say, Rome or Empire) both in terms of pathfinding and AI. Secondly, as Legend points out, especially with higher tier settlements the defender has a big advantage as you're not going to win a shooting match against defenders on the walls (unless, perhaps, you outrange them with light infantry rifle units), but the attacker can still manage by approaching sieges systematically: achieving *local* superiority to create beacheads and then having the decision of either reinforcing the secured levels of the fort of attacking from another angle, which actually makes for pretty compelling tactical decision-making even against the AI (and feels kinda-sorta authentic on top of that, perhaps not in the sense that defenders ought to have even bigger advantage and you're not really sieging anything but performing an escalade, but this systematic approach recalls the systematic approach e.g. French military de Vauban would have taken to siege warfare). Plus, if you feel like cheesing the sieges, the method of simply blasting the defenders to bits with Armstrong guns and naval bombardments is really really cool and doesn't feel super-gamey, unlike the ways you'd cheese sieges in many of these other games.
Honorable mention goes to Medieval 2, which would probably be ideal IF it was as smooth, but while it's a definitive improvement over R:TW, it isn't that smooth.
In theory I think vanilla Shogun 2 sieges are better, especially once matchlocks are unlocked (mostly because the cannons offeer too much of an advantage in both field and siege battles) but Vanilla Shogun suffers from having too many lvl 1 settlement sieges so it kind of evens out in the end.
@@captainnyet9855 There's that, but on the other hand, I think that all units being ranged (and direct fire) is better at enforcing the systematic approach of using local superiority to gain beacheads and then reinforcing success. But certainly, vanilla Shogun 2 is high-tier as well. Overall, I very much agree with Legend's assessment here.
@@captainnyet9855 By the time you unlock matchlocks, the campaign is usually over. I guess if you play on normal and just turtle up until you have the tech works. But if you play on very hard, the game wont let you turtle.
Med 2 and Shogun 2 FOTS are my fav historical tw, sieges are so important for immersion and enjoyment in total war.
I think Empire sieges are actually pretty good, apart from the horrendous pathfinding/AI issues. Long artillery duels until the attacker is either confident enough to win or doesn't want to risk more casualties from the defender's cannons. Then a heroic assault against the walls or breaches. As defender I like to keep a unit of cannons flanked by two good infantry units right in front of the wall against the main attack direction. A bit of a honeypot, and they can defend really well, also with support from the walls.
Totally agree with your tier list
I actually really liked sieges in Napoleon and Empire. It felt much more historically accurate to the time period.
It should be noted that forcing a surrender was preferred over storming the settlement as breaching usually resulted in high losses like the siege of Badajoz in 1812
The only thing I can see them potentially adding would be naval bombardments and revamping house to house combat
I really loved Legend's Medieval 1 playthrough as the Vikings. Watched the heck of it...
00:50 Legend preeching about his Slaaneshi fetiches 🤣🤣