Idea for simple 'sieges'

What if cities have ‘siege zones’ covering all land squares in the nearest 3x3 area. If enemy troops come into this, the city is put into siege, cos the city is forced to close its gates (or something).

To be put in siege, a city doesn’t need to be completely surrounded by enemy units, but only cut off from supply routes (to at least 1 other city). If there are no terrain obstructions, a single enemy unit standing anywhere next to an enemy city will trigger a siege and cut off the city, even if there are roads on all adjacent squares.


Say the celts are at war with the romans. A celtic unit going next to a city on open terrain will threaten it and put it in siege until the unit is destroyed, even if roman units are next to the city. There is no obstruction to break up the siege zone into parts, so one unit sets off the whole siege zone.


But like this, Veii is not under siege, as it can be supplied by rome, the road to rome cannot be put in siege zone because the water separates the celtic guy from the other side of the city. Veii can close its north east border and keep its south west gate open. The celts need to cut off the square in white, south west of veii, which is a separate siege zone.


This time veii is cut off by putting another celtic guy in the second siege zone. There is no land connection to friendly cities now.


If a guy moves SW next to rome, now both rome and veii are cut off. They are both threatened by adjacent enemy units and have to be locked down. Both cities are sieged and cant help each other. The bit of land south of veii is not in a siege zone and can be worked by the citizens of veii, but since it offers no ‘supply’ from other cities, veii is still in a ‘siege’ state.

So the condition for a city siege would be:
1,At least one adjacent land square is in a ‘siege zone’ caused by an enemy unit
2,All road/rail routes to friendly cities are cut off by ‘siege zones’ or any other reason.


The point of being under siege in my idea, is that a ‘siege health bar’ thing would appear, to represent the health and morale of the civilian people in the city. At the end of each turn, besieging units automatically inflict damage to the ‘siege bar’, reducing it. The amount of damage depends on the ratio of defenders to besiegers, so more besieging units would reduce it faster. Also, siege/bombard units do extra damage to the siege bar per turn if they are next to the enemy city.

When in siege, a city can only work on any adjacent tiles that aren’t being sieged, and not the full city radius. Starvation would be limited though, maybe each pop only eats 1 food per turn due to rationing, so its not as bad as just stopping work on grasslands etc. This is so large cities don’t just suffer a population crash from a few turns siege.

Successful bombard attacks could lower the city ‘health’ bar, while granaries, hospitals etc. could add more ‘health’ to the bar.

As the bar decreases, it also goes from green to yellow to red:

At green, the bar is just counting down, and there are no ill effects yet. Defending units have all the bonuses of walls etc..

At yellow, the defending units suffer a small penalty in defence value if attacked, even if behind walls etc, and the city could loose extra population from starvation and disease each turn. So, sieging for a while before attacking could be a good option, as it was historically.

At red, the defending units suffer a big penalty if attacked, and defending units take actual damage to their own health bar / hit points each turn from starvation etc. The population of the city decreases more each turn than on yellow.

When the bar is empty, the city could surrender to the attacker and be captured, and/ or the defending units could be automatically forced out to attack the besieging units, or something like that.

This city ‘health bar’ thing could also be used to determine the number of partisans/resistors when the city is taken. If it was red or empty, there may be no resistors as the people are too sick and exhausted to resist.

In the modern age, bombarding a city with artillery and bombers could be a good tactic even if the defending units aren’t so tough, as it would lower the city’s health bar, terrorising people and causing fewer resistors when you finally capture the city.

Being under siege would just be another state a city could be in, adding to disorder and ‘we love the king’ states. Ports etc. would complicate things, possibly ships would be able to siege a port if they are next to an enemy city.

Basically siege could make it harder to rush the weaker defended enemy cities, but make it possible to take those-super fortified ones without a super-huge stack of troops, if you can keep a reasonable amount of men threatening a city for about 5-10 turns, any city could be captured if you can keep the siege going. I think this would be fair and balance out the combat a bit more. Actually fighting for land and good troop positions would be more important than just charging at enemy cities.

I have no chance to read everything here, so sorry if this has been identical to someone else’s idea. Thanks for reading this, please let me know what you think

interesting, i like, it. now consider the following scenario:
xRC
-OR
xxx

Where:
x=empty square
R=Roman unit
C=Celtic unit
O=The city (gaurded by defenders)
-=a road going to another city

so would the roman defenders cut off the siege?

I was thinking something like this would only work if it didnt matter where the friendly units are, only the enemy units. If enemy units can 'cover' all the land squares in the 3x3 radius then its a siege, even if some freindly units are in there.

Maybe a bit strange, but otherwise you could just put a couple of those obsolete units that are always hanging around up onto an adjacent mountain and make a city non-siegable.

Harbours should void a seige unless blockaded by ships in the same manner as you put above.

Daftpanzer said:

I was thinking something like this would only work if it didnt matter where the friendly units are, only the enemy units. If enemy units can 'cover' all the land squares in the 3x3 radius then its a siege, even if some freindly units are in there.

Maybe a bit strange, but otherwise you could just put a couple of those obsolete units that are always hanging around up onto an adjacent mountain and make a city non-siegable.

Click to expand...

well, if they were obsolete units, i could move that Celtic unit 1 square to attack those defenders and begin the siege

I think that "siege" should be something like a Naval Blockade, where if you cut off the city's only supply to a resource by road, then they cannot build thigns with that resource anymore.

eg.

C----C---E--I----C
c = city
`-' = road
i = iron
e = enemy

In this case, the first two cities are completely cut off from Iron, so they can no longer use it. But the third city is still okay. But...

C----C--E--I----C
`----------------'

then, all cities have supply to iron. But...

C-E--C--E--I----C
`----------------'

then, the second city has no iron.

Unless...

is this already implemented by C3C?

This is a GREAT IDEA. Thank you for raising it DaftPanzer. If we had the 'rations' system from CtP, then this would work even BETTER!! What I could envisage is that you would have a 'national ration', and you could then, if you wanted or needed to, adjust the rations in each city. Thus, if your city was under siege, then you could lower their rations below the national average, thus allowing them to survive longer on their current food stores. This would lower happiness, though, and make the population more susceptible to disease outbreaks!
Of course, I happen to think that the whole population system needs to be reworked-but thats a whole OTHER STORY !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

MSTK said:

is this already implemented by C3C?

Click to expand...

don't know about the patches, but i believe this feature was in and but for whatever reason it didn't happen that way in [C3C] although they have fixed that with a patch