Dev Blog 26/09/19

Greetings warriors of Calradia! In this week’s blog, we will be concluding our miniseries of blog posts on sieges by discussing the assault phase, with a particular focus on how the game’s AI evaluates and reacts to unfolding events. Sieges are very much a key event in the game. Whether defending your homeland, aggressively expanding your borders, or simply trying to establish yourself among the ranks of the nobility, sieges are at the very heart of the Mount & Blade experience. With Bannerlord, our goal is to enhance sieges in their entirety, ranging from the tricks you can employ to indirectly weaken a settlement before laying siege, all the way through to driving the last defenders from the keep. In our previous siege blogs, we looked at the bombardment phase on the campaign map and discussed the options that players have at their disposal when either attacking or defending a castle. We also looked at keep battles and talked about their importance and the instances in which they can occur. The one thing we haven’t looked at is perhaps the most important and the bloodiest phase of a siege: the assault. Assaulting a castle is something that players should carefully consider. Castles will call on a local militia to defend the settlement in times of crisis, but more often than not, they will also house a garrison of professional soldiers that can put up much more of a resistance. And if the castle has a governor overseeing the defense, things will get even trickier still since governors can boost defensive siege engines and garrison quality. But let’s put all that to one side and imagine that you have weighed up the pros and cons of launching an assault and decided to press ahead with your attack. Firstly, you are met with a deployment phase in which you can choose where to position your troops and siege machines before the battle begins. You can select each formation and move it around a deployable zone, positioning your troops for the best possible advantage. Each castle will have three sections open to attack and you have to choose a method of attack for each of these. For each section, there may be a magnitude of options available depending on the level of your preparation: You can simply ignore a section to focus on other targets, attempt to ascend ladders, use an assault tower, break down a gate with a battering ram, or if you have been able to take down a wall section by bombardment, try to push your way through the breach.