I just had a very annoying raid where ten different gates were attacked by raiders. The problem, of course, is that the combat flag mechanic of mobilizing soldiers is a very primitive and clunky way of organizing my defenses, I had enough soldiers, but just two barracks, so I could only focus my soldiers on two specific points and had to reassign soldiers manually to all the other gates that were attacked. The result was that I had a few gates where I destroyed the raiders easily, and a few gates where I didnāt have soldiers and the destruction was massive.
This is a huge feel bad experience, as it feels like the game doesnāt allow me to properly organize my defenses by forcing me to send all my soldiers to one single rally point per barracks instead of just assigning soldiers to specific gates, and then it exploits the fact that I canāt properly organize my defenses by sending raiders to attack undefended gates far from the combat flag Iām forced to use.
If you want to have the ārealismā of raiders attacking my village from multiple directions, at least include the ārealismā as well where it is humanly possible for me to defend my village from multiple directions, perhaps by having soldiers patrol instead of āgarrisoningā which effectively means doing nothing, or by assigning them to defend certain gates (and not walk through the gate to engage in hand to hand combat for no reason), or even better, have soldiers and guards be part-time jobs to be taken up by whatever villagers happen to be close by the attack (and use the barracks as a location to store weapons), so there will always be soldiers close by and I donāt need to put barracks everywhere and support a needlessly huge standing army just to be able to defend my village from different directions. Small independent villages arenāt supposed to have professional armies anyway, soldiers should be regular villagers having normal jobs who only get mobilized and pick up a sword in times of war.
Right now it feels the game forces me to have an expensive standing army that can only effectively defend as long as only two or three points of entry are attacked, and then it attacks at eight points of entry simultaneously to exploit these limitations the game forces on the player. As I said, a big feel bad experience.
I agree, the aforesaid standing army is really expensive to maintain and I STILL have issues getting them to attack properlyā¦the amount of management I need to do for a simple raid is staggering. Iām hoping a lot of the soldier issues get fixed as the rest of the villager AI is improved.
āSorry Vikings, you are not allowed to attack our city from anywhere but the east side, where we have all our defenses.ā
Right now it feels the game forces me to have an expensive standing army that can only effectively defend as long as only two or three points of entry are attacked, and then it attacks at eight points of entry simultaneously to exploit these limitations the game forces on the player. As I said, a big feel bad experience.
Iāve had multiple cities over 500 population and I donāt think Iāve ever had more than 24-36 in my army, and Iāve defended against 120-140 man Army invasions (not raiders). The game isnāt limiting you in any way.
Towers. Towers (and walls preferably) are your main defense. Not barracks and soldiers. They are a nice back-up and great for killing unwanted wolf dens, and in a pinch amazing as a front line super tower, but as far as defending the city I see them as a last defense only if the raiders somehow overwhelmed the towers.
I disagree! If you have castle in really strategic position they can pump arrows like thereās no tomorrow. When they are done you can move troops to fight on foot. I usually have 2 smaller ones and 1 big barracks. I just use them as tanky towers behind walls.
Iāve ran into the exact same issue as you. It was mildly annoying, as are most learning experiences of that nature.
Build more barracks, problem solved. By the time I hit 500 population Iām on at least 3, up to 5 barracks. That and ample towers will clean up most anything with ease.
āSorry Vikings, you are not allowed to attack our city from anywhere but the east side, where we have all our defenses.ā
Very disingenuous strawman. Iām perfectly fine with raiders attacking from different directions as long as the game allows me to defend different directions. I already said that. Just donāt exploit the current limitations of the game itself to screw over the player.
So if you donāt have anything constructive or useful to add, maybe itās better to not comment in the first place.
It does allow defending multiple locations via unit selection. Did you know that hunters are good fighters, too? They come equipped for the job and have no salary. Cycle through hunters and tell them to fight.
I have all sides of my city defended. How does it limit you from defending all sides? I have walls the whole way around, towers inside and out, and 4 barracks. I often get attacked from a minimum of 2 sides
Maybe Iām just building my town too large, but I have around 20 gates into my town. The raid I had which prompted my original post attacked from two sides and ultimately targeted 8 or 9 gates, I had to constantly micromanage and move soldiers around there were constantly new gates being attacked. And it always takes a long time for soldiers to get from one gate to the next, usually the raiders had enough time to break through the gate before they even arrived.
Of course, I have a lot of towers defending, one or two per gate, but those are not nearly strong enough to deter groups of more than 10 raiders or so. It will shoot and kill perhaps five of them, and then the rest will have broken through the gate and start wantonly slaughtering villagers for no reason. So I absolutely canāt defend any gate with towers alone.
Hunters usually are spread way too far apart for them to be any good. Maybe there will be one or two hunters nearby, but they get slaughtered easily against a force of 15 raiders.
I can imagine that works. The annoying thing is that barracks have a huge footprint, you canāt just fit them in between somewhere. And for towers, the annoying thing for those is that you can build a lot of them, but that means you need to employ a lot of guards as well, which is a big drain on my fit to work population.
I wish I could just store crossbows and arrows in a tower, and when Iām attacked, just have the closest two villagers garrison that tower and start shooting at the invaders. the fact that I have to maintain a large professional standing army which doesnāt do anything 95% of the time, just in case there might be a raid happening sometimes wherever they happen to be, that is a huge annoyance to me right now.
Your postās title is literally: āMake raiders attack from just one directionā, so itās not a disingenuous strawman at all. Thatās literally what you asked for!
Iām perfectly fine with raiders attacking from different directions as long as the game allows me to defend different directions. I already said that. Just donāt exploit the current limitations of the game itself to screw over the player.
There is literally nothing stopping you from defending from multiple directions. Nothing.
So if you donāt have anything constructive or useful to add, maybe itās better to not comment in the first place.
Maybe itās better if you actually learn how to play the game properly before you complain that itās broken.
If you donāt mind, let me give you a few tips. First off, that is too many gates. If you have 20 entrances into town, then you have to spread your defenses thin or overuse your workforce defending them. Cut down on the gates. Your villagers can walk a little further no problem.
Second is what many refer to as an airlock system (as shown in this screenshot from my village:)
Notice that it is not one gate and then open city. Have a series of gates and it will greatly slow down any invaders trying to go through. Meanwhile, my 20 towers and fully loaded fort there tear through invaders like tissue. Keep in mind, I have that many there because I am at a point where I regularly get invaders of almost 300 at a time, and often have another 200 plain raiders come at the same time as well. There are only two entrances on that side. Also make sure to have towers to not only cover your gates but to cover the other towers as well.
Third is road placement. You will want to have a road outside your walls that leads to the gates where your defenses are. The AI in this game tells villagers and raiders alike to try take the fastest route possible to their destination, which 90% of the time means snapping to the road and using its speed boost. Use this weakness to your advantage when you can.
Note in this picture I have a road running parallel to my wall. Raiders quite often approach from that area and so will always take the road to get to my gate. This runs them straight through the firing range of all my towers, giving me a ton of free kills before they even get to start attacking that gate. Moreover, when they start to flee, they take the road back the way they came and get pounded again on the way back.
The point here is that if you want them to attack from one direction, then make them do it. Restrict their preferred points of entry so they focus their attack where you want and then make them work harder to get in. Then you can concentrate your defenses and over power them easily without resorting to waiting for soldiers.
Go into your wall building and make sure that the walls are built as close to the water as possible. They can actually be built further than youād think.
