4th crusade and the Nicean reconquest were exceptions as people more articulate than me (Granite) have already said
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Constantinople should only be harder to take, if the Romans want to maintaine the theodisian walls and that should be expensive. Otherwise this is just modifier stacking for no particular reason.
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It should be extremely hard unless you have a very clear military superiority or you unlock great siege weapons, there's a reason why Costantinople was conquered so late compared to the first Ottoman' expansion into Europe, and it wasn't for lack of trying
The geography of the city is just too advantageous for the defenders, there's no way you should be able to take the city with 4k levies (in the video it happens with a 2k army) unless the city is just completely abandoned and the Byzantines don't pay for the walls anymore
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If you maintiane the expensive walls: Yes. Otherwise I dont see a reason why it should be harder than let's say Belgrade. Generally speaking the Ottomans had other matters to attend to, which is why they had to break up the siege. Mind you at various times the Ottomans had good relations with the Romans and at other times they were literally vassals. Your comment implies that there was a 150 year attempt, which is not the case.
By the logic that people defend here, we should buff Belgrade for no reason, because you know the Ottomans actually failed to get the city, unlike Constantinople, were they only had to abandon the siege.
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If a city holds for 8 years with high level of scarcity and a significantly stronger foe i would consider it a victory since sooner or later something would have happend, the point still stands: Costantinople is a hard city to take unless the Empire became somehow poorer then it's real life counterpart, which would honestly be impressive
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Constantinople was always open through the sea route. Thanks to the italians. So you are comparing apples to bananas.
And again: If you maintaine the fortifications: Yes it should be hard to conquer, but you are essentially saying:
I dont want to pay anything and the city should just have a flat modifier to be hard to conquer, so I can have an easier time playing as them.
I disagree with that.
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I’m guessing it’s 2k of regulars, but yeah that’s nowhere near enough unless the city was basically abandoned.
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Ludi already mentioned Byzantium gets the best city walls ever in the game with a special event after a few decades IIRC. He even said that Serbs spent lots of time and manpower just to siege Constantinople but couldn’t take it
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No i think they should pay, not that much considering how cost efficient the walls are but they should still pay
I never said they shouldn't because that would be unfair considering you have to pay for normal forts, why not stronger ones?
Still holding for 8 years is impressive, most cities would have fell in that time and context, plus the open sea route is one of it's strong geographical points, that's why it should be a hard city to attack
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You can hold indefinetly with an open sea route. You are not running out of supplies. A large army infront of your city can. That is not reason enough to buff the city defences.
Rhodes essentially was a city on an island and hold out for "centuries" regarding that. So did Cyprus for the most part and essentially as a city state. You also have several examples of Corfu and Malta being impenetrable forts. Crete itself is also arguably one of it. None of it should get a special modifier making it hard to conquer. The difficulty comes from the supplies and the maintained fortifications.
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I think in the Age of Traditions it should be practically impossible to take cities (High population/walls). It should require a standing army (10k?) to siege, and even if you take it somehow it should be really hard to control IF it is the wrong religion and culture.
Fully disagree. If you do that Yuan will never fall and large conquests across the old world will be made impossible. That is simply not the reality of the 14th century.
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The actual answer is that it should be naturally hard to sieze any fortification that can reliably resupply who's walls you can't easily and consistently breach and keep breached. Whether game mechanics will represent such well is another topic tbh.
At the very least a fleet blockade should be required without heavy enough cannon which is how the city was taken in the 4th Crusade (and only after the Crusaders had entered is when Alexios fled).
At the very least a fleet blockade should be required without heavy enough cannon which is how the city was taken in the 4th Crusade (and only after the Crusaders had entered is when Alexios fled).
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The small penalty to siege difficulty from unblockaded coastal forts seen in EU4 is completely insufficient. We have examples of sieges lasting decades under that exact circumstance in this period. IMO there should be some way for ships to resupply forts with men and provisions, pretty much forcing you to take the fort by storm, which of course requires a lot of men of your own as well as enough cannon to create a breech.
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Yeah to me the thing here is that Italians should help the Byzantines in sieges, overbuffing the fort is not the point.
If you can't starve it you need artillery, if you can starve you don't
If you can't starve it you need artillery, if you can starve you don't
I agree with the general assessment that fortifications should be difficult to take, especially without the correct equipment and preparations. Coastal fortifications should also definitely be impossible to take if you lack naval dominance, unless you assault assault the fort.
However, I disagree with sentiment that the Theodosian walls should just be another fort, for the first 100 years of the game. I don't think any other fortification in history has such an impressive track record of repelling sieges, and there's a reason for its reputation back then, and today. It was truly an engineering marvel, that drew on the resources of a continent spanning empire that's long since been reduced, and will soon have its borders limited to said perimeter wall. There's also reason the walls have never been replicated.
The scale of the walls was extremely impressive and would've been incredibly daunting for any besieger standing beneath it, especially one tasked with an assault. You had to cross a moat 10 m deep and 20 m wide before reaching the low walls, then you had to scale the 9 m tall outer wall, before finally reaching the 12 m tall and 5 m thick inner wall. This is all while taking fire from the 14 m and 20 m tall towers of the outer and inner wall, respectively. For comparison, most other medieval cities at the time only had a single stone wall, before cannons became prevalent.
I think the best way to translate this into the game is to give the Theodosian Walls a modifier that increases attrition and dramatically increases casualties from assault. These should scale with the level of maintenance, but obviously tick up and down, instead of being instant. To offset this, maintenance would obviously have to be more expensive than your average fort. Finally, a breach event should not be possible, unless you have cannons. Essentially, this would mean you'd need a large army with cannons (and naval dominance) to take the city.
It would also be cool if there was a decision to modify the walls for protection against artillery, possibly at the cost of a lot of money and perhaps the loss of the modifiers, essentially turning them into normal upgradable fortifications. You likely won't need it if you're big enough to discourage threats to the capital, but it would be nice to have the option. Perhaps a prestige modifier could be added to encourage you to keep the walls around in their base state?
However, I disagree with sentiment that the Theodosian walls should just be another fort, for the first 100 years of the game. I don't think any other fortification in history has such an impressive track record of repelling sieges, and there's a reason for its reputation back then, and today. It was truly an engineering marvel, that drew on the resources of a continent spanning empire that's long since been reduced, and will soon have its borders limited to said perimeter wall. There's also reason the walls have never been replicated.
The scale of the walls was extremely impressive and would've been incredibly daunting for any besieger standing beneath it, especially one tasked with an assault. You had to cross a moat 10 m deep and 20 m wide before reaching the low walls, then you had to scale the 9 m tall outer wall, before finally reaching the 12 m tall and 5 m thick inner wall. This is all while taking fire from the 14 m and 20 m tall towers of the outer and inner wall, respectively. For comparison, most other medieval cities at the time only had a single stone wall, before cannons became prevalent.
I think the best way to translate this into the game is to give the Theodosian Walls a modifier that increases attrition and dramatically increases casualties from assault. These should scale with the level of maintenance, but obviously tick up and down, instead of being instant. To offset this, maintenance would obviously have to be more expensive than your average fort. Finally, a breach event should not be possible, unless you have cannons. Essentially, this would mean you'd need a large army with cannons (and naval dominance) to take the city.
It would also be cool if there was a decision to modify the walls for protection against artillery, possibly at the cost of a lot of money and perhaps the loss of the modifiers, essentially turning them into normal upgradable fortifications. You likely won't need it if you're big enough to discourage threats to the capital, but it would be nice to have the option. Perhaps a prestige modifier could be added to encourage you to keep the walls around in their base state?
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I feel like they need to have it so if you are unable to blockade a cities' food supplies, you simply cannot take it without an assault. In general as long as a city has food it should be untakeable; you can stand outside a castle for however long you desire, if it has 2 years of food stores you should have to take 2 years to siege it unless you assault it. Assaulting a city then should be a much more important part of war(if you want to finish it quickly). And of course if you run out of food yourself you should be struck by mass desertion. Siege equipment then should not just auto-take sieges but rather lower the effective fort level of cities so that you can then assault it as less grevious a cost. Fort level should also go down over the length of a siege to represent stuff like sapping, constructing on-site siege equipment(from simple rams to towers and other engines) so you can have less costly assaults if you wait too of course.
But yeah point is, if you don't cut off a cities access to food stores, it should be impossible to actually take it over time; coastal cities should require a good blockade, basically.
But yeah point is, if you don't cut off a cities access to food stores, it should be impossible to actually take it over time; coastal cities should require a good blockade, basically.