It’s no place for horsemen!
We introduced to the game process additional conditions that will make a siege significantly more difficult than a battle on an open field. Like in a tower arenas, when attacking a castle a knight won’t be able to use a horse since the cavalry doesn’t have enough space to move. Be ready for the fact that when you hero who you trained for victorious battles on a horse will have to dismount before entering through the broken gates.
Developing a character is a two edged sword. You can create a wonderful infantryman who will have great combat characteristics and who won’t suffer big losses during a siege but this way you will lose a great horseman. A horse which is an additional item for your main character significantly influences his attributes. In Legends of Eisenwald there are many different horses to everyone’s taste and each on of them influences uniquely character’s attributes. +15 HP and +10 to the initiative is already good, isn’t it?
A lance as a special weapon type also allows to increase damage to enemy when attacking from distance. With a talent “Ramming Attack” if your enemy fell from one strike, your horseman can attack again. Besides, recently we added a few items that can be used only when sitting on a horse (like a saddle for balance, for example). All these factors make a knight who can use ride a horse a dangerous and deadly opponent that everyone will be scared of.
What do you suffer losses from?
The first stage of a siege is an attack against the gates. When you make a decision to attack a castle, you see a window with damage that your army will suffer. AI already calculated what happened based on many different game factors. Infantrymen try to break the gates, your archers with big penalty because of the walls that enemies use to cover, are trying to shoot archers on the defending side. And defending archers shoot your army without any penalties. Durability of the gates and sum of the attack of all infantry calculate time that is required to break the gates. During all this time your army will be under fire and it means your troops will suffer losses.
Two-stage sieges?
Combat mechanics in Legends of Eisenwald are practically done. Last minor changes we did last week. Everything that needs to be worried about will be resolved with a new graphics interface. To the screen of losses on the first stage of a siege will be added a nice picture with combat and also a small description of what is going on, so you don’t have to guess where all these wounds are from.
After the game is released we have a few interesting ideas that we don’t have the time to do now. For example, we want to do the full fledged first part of a siege, with breaking the gates so you can rely on your power on both stages and not on calculations of the AI. There is an interesting idea with sieges where a long siege will cause defending troops to lower their characteristics, or a building of a ram that increases a speed of breaking the gates. We want to add an opportunity for defending units to get out from a castle, so you can be attacked from rearward by other knights who want to help inhabitants of a castle. Troops under siege will join a battle and your knight won’t have it easy fighting on two fronts.
