Castle walls?

[Rainbow]

Keep sieges are quite a bit more complex than just tearing down a wall and rushing in through the gap. In Dominions, we always have then attackers filing in through an open gate, where the defenders are waiting for them in the courtyard. This is a pretty crude picture, which doesn't give our imagination much to work with, but this is because the focus of Dominions is not on the keep sieges.

To imagine how a real keep siege could happen, it could involved many varied strategies. Breaking down the main gate, ladder storming walls, tearing down walls, starving out the defenders, tunneling under walls to make them collapse,. these would just be a few strategies that could be combined in various ways, depending on the layout of the keep and the immediately surrounding area.

Add the many fantasy elements of Dominions two, like flying attackers, magic horns that can bLast down walls, towers and gates, magic that can do pretty much anything, the tactics involved in winning a siege become very complex and varied indeed.

The strength of the attackers and defenders could reflect their ability to chop down and transport lumber to construct siege engines. It is easy to imagine how much more useful a Jotunheim giant would be in a siege on either side of the wall, compared to a puny human. The Jotun are known for hurling spears the size of treetrunks at their enemies. Compared to firing longbow arrows at the uncoming gate ram, a few giant tossed boulders would probably produce vastly better results.

In the case of city guards or similar units that get a defence bonus, think 'people who are trained specifically for defending a castle'.

I think keep sieges work very well in Dominions. There is no micromanagement at all, and we still have the major important elements, like the defence value of the fortification, the relative sizes of the besieging and besieged forces, attrition from lack of supplies, opportunity for relief forces to arrive, the ability to make sorties out of the fortification (break siege and retreat back inside), etc.

/Rainbow