An amazing game...but it can be improved:

1. strongholds don't feel very....strongholdy. No parapets and catapult, no huge doors. It feels very underwhelming. I expected my archers could man the walls and rain death upon the enemy troops as their massive siege machines batter down my gates. But then I find out my strongholds have an open gates policy.....

2. Some more unit variance. There's quite a few units that are pretty much carbon copies. The sword and shield or sword and mace is everywhere if you play the christian side.
What about mauls? Halberds? Twin swords? TWO-HANDERS??? It really looks like the sidhe get more variance.
So, something like a full-plate mail clad knights with sleek(really, oversized swords aren't cool, just stupid) two-handers would be nice. Kinda like paladins, but of the smitey variety

3. Reinforcements. If I've got a friendly army right next to to an enemy I'm attacking with another army, then with time, reinforcements should trickle in.
So basicely, once the battle starts, the game looks if there are any friendly/hostile armies in the vicinity and after a a while they start slowly coming.

4. Some basic diplomacy. If I got a quest that's inside another kingdoms territory, more of then than not I cannot go there or I'll start a war. So either the ability to avoid a war if the army is small enough or some way to secure passage (with gold if need be) for a while.

1. no gates without siege weapons
one execept the other

2. did you see Viking Berserkers, Fomorians and Giants? I think they bring in a little variance
i think more units come with the next DLCs

3. only effect would be that a battle would go longer

4. diplomacy is annouced for the two coming DLCs, but i don't know what options exactly

Battles would last longer? Maybe. Depends on how it's balanced.

Assuming proper siege and castle defenses are implemented, taking a stronghold would be a LOT harder (as it should be). In that case, you're gonna need more troops.

The way I see it, during normal battles, it would take 4 minutes or so for the reinforcement troosp to start trickling in...slowly.
During sieges they would come a lot sooner.

Ergo, you've got a change to wage a decisive battle and destroy 2 enemy armies in a single battle.


As for more units... I was talking about weapon/armor varriance.
I was thinking something like this:

http://images.elfwood.com/art/h/e/henyo ... din_01.jpg (but with a helmet and a longer sword)
OR THIS:
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/22 ... _large.jpg

* in retrospect, it's damn hard to find a image of a warrior with a normal-sized sword... *

Heck, I'll just link this article for reference:
http://www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html

Hi there,




I definitly agree on this one. It would add a great layer of strategy to the game, in addition to army stances (extended deployment, ambush....)

That's what I was thinking.

While a single battle MAY last longer, you can actually have less battles.
And it drives the "quantity has a quality of it's own" point further home.

And I really can't see how you plan to add castle sieges without it.
As history has shown us, the attacker needed a large numerical superiority to even consider attacking a stronghold. Even with 10:1 odds, sieges often failed.

Given that your and the enemy army are both full...you would never be able to take the castle.
If you do, then the stronghold/castle is severely luckluster and weak.

So the only way for siege combat to FEEL right, is if you need a massive force to take on a stronghold.