Combat is as irritating as ever

[Anthropoid]

I was under the impression that sieges were quite common. Just as a 'ballpark' of what I perceived: for every pitched battle at least 2 maybe 3 sieges.

But I am not a professional medieval historian, so that 'impression' could be quite inaccurate.

Wikipedia is great for a lot of things, but "list of sieges during Medieval Times" seems like the kind of thing that would fail to list of a lot of the more minor ones. Course the list of "battles" for the comparable time also seems like to fail to list minor battles too, so for purposes of comparing numbers of sieges to battles, maybe it is fine.

Would be curious to hear someone who has more knowledge and confidence on this comment.

 

[Carbattle]

I think the Paradox combat engine works best with HOI and gets worse as you go back in time, with CK being the worst of the lot. Can't see how anyone can defend "a siege per holding per county" as even remotely historical. And it's not fun, offers no strategic challenge so shouldn't be there.

I agree that warfare was slow and tedious in those times, but from my even small knowledge of history, there just wasn'y that many sieges. And while some did take months, many were over in days and sometimes the defenders gave up instantly. So something else was causing the slow pace. I notice weather isn't modelled in CH, which seems odd given that I thought that campaigning just didn't take place in winter months. As well as the effect of weather on engagements like Agincourt! Attrition also seems to have gone missing. Didn't armies decay at quite a rate back then, merely by sitting still? Especially in enemy territory, attrition would be a significant effect.

Well actually, a "siege per holding per county" is pretty historical given the time period. This was a time when raids were common place (not just from invading armies, but mostly from brigands, vikings, and the sort) and often were the biggest economic woe to the "small folk", which caused economic turmoil for the nobility. To compensate, much of the nobility began constructing more fortifications to defend against the fast, but often light, raids against their territory. Horses and ships might do well against an undefended village, but would have a hard time against any completed wall over 6 feet tall. Also, many used fortifications to prevent rebellions and built them in strategic areas as William did after his conquest of England. Having no defenses for these economic, political, and strategic points would be very foolish for the lords of the land. And sense these fortifications intentionally guarded important areas, these became rather large targets for an invading army. Now this isn't to say that all towns and churches had defensive buildings, but most of sufficient population would have something to protect the people of the land, as this was considered the responsibility of the lords of the realm.
Now the weather thing I agree with completely, and concerning normal armies, I think the attrition system does a good job representing the normal loss of troops for an army. Mongol and Aztec doom stacks that suffer no attrition, on the other hand...

 

[Talq]

Except there is no raiding in CK2, so including the fortification density to deal with it is overkill.

Re the wikipedia list, I wouldn't put a great deal of stock in it, not least because it depends on the availability of historical sources, and we don't have a lot of detail for a lot of campaigns in this period. I also suspect a lot of 'minor sieges' were not recorded even then (the 100 year war had hundreds of 'sieges', but frequently they didn't last for more than a couple of weeks (garrisons in a hopeless position are going to be willing to come to terms fairly quickly in practice.

Re castles, yes there are a lot of ruins around, but not all of them were active at the same time (and a large number are also 'for show' - they were built by nobles, but were never expected to handle enemy action). There is also the practical point, that a lot of castles either fell to treachery or the garrison selling out or would be conceded if they were indefensible (if the enemy king controls the land for 100 miles around, and you have no real way to get supplies or reinforcements to the castle, then its pointless trying to defend it).

Come CK3, I think Paradox would be best to just model the fortifications in the province, and leave the holding model for economic development (as an aside, I don't know of any bishopric past the 'fortified against raids' level (or the castle with an ecclesiastical holder level). Doesn't mean there wasn't one, but I suspect its still a 'CK2 make the holding model work' kludge). It would fix a few problems (like the beloved 'would you care to fight the pope or HRE for this one castle?' problem), and give them the flexibility to model sieges in more depth (like cutting siege times if the field army of the liege is destroyed) and not have assaults take less than a week.

 

[crusaderknight]

Pitch Battles were relatively rare during this time. I think the battle system included in this game works well for the open plains i.e, it is realistic. However, 30k men attacking another 25k men in the mountains with the grand skirmishing, then the melee, and then retreat and pursuit should be modified. There is no frontage and the system assumes that all men are fighting at all times, whether on the field or in tight mountain passes which is absurd, and really gives numbers and edge in the final analysis. Hills, Mountains, Forests etc, should be more of a meat grinder and give the kill ratio privilege over to the defending army, even if significantly smaller. Tactics and traits only really apply if the armies are either the same number or close to it. In other words, in this game an Agincourt or Crecy cannot happen, nor can the Muslim Victories in 711 or those attack the Persian and eastern roman empires. The system per se is fine, they just need to modify a few things especially with terrain and frontage.

I beg to differ. Just today, as the Byzzies, I attacked an army of Rum in central Anatolia. They had about 1200 guys, I had a little over 3600 (basically, even my weakest flank had more troops than their whole army, albeit by very little). Their best leader had a martial skill of 7. My worst leader had a martial skill of 11, with my best having a skill of 20. The only thing in their favour was the terrain. But they obliterated me. Granted, I took a solid chunk out of them (left them with only about 200 men standing) but they actually won the battle, killed about 1700 of my men, and routed the rest. I was both very upset and very impressed at the same time. It's not that Agincourt or Crecy can't happen, they're just very, very rare, as they should be.