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Brutal Sieges

TWW2 is no longer getting patches or DLC, so my mods are also considered final and will not receive any more updates. Therefore I disabled comments on all of them to avoid constantly getting notifications for the same dumb questions that have been answered a thousand times already. Any comments or announcements I might make in the future will be posted under my collection here:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1766089433

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This mod does not receive updates. However, it will most likely always work and does not need an update (the yellow warning has nothing to do with whether a mod still works - it simply always shows up if the mod was last modified before the most recent patch).

Changes siege battles to make them feel more like actual sieges instead of wall leapfrogging. Taking a walled city is now brutally more difficult if you don't bring enough siege weapons - which in turn can now be built much faster. But even with siege weapons it is moderately more challenging.

Note: Personally I stopped using this mod and use Pierce's Better Sieges instead:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2353617634
It's similar to this mod but more comprehensive and better balanced so I recommend using it over this one.


LIST OF CHANGES

-gates have 10x hitpoints, walls 12.5x
-units climbing walls move at 30% speed
-climbing walls causes instant exhaustion (complete vigour depletion)
-battering rams do vastly increased damage against gates
-siege holdout times have been reduced by 5 turns across the board
-as a result, available labour force per turn for building siege weapons has increased
-building siege weapons costs less manpower, but a maximum of 2x2 siege towers can be built
-wall defense towers can now fire full 180 degrees
-battering rams and siege towers have more hp
-some very large monsters can now attack walls (no smallish monsters, missile monsters, or monsters carrying a rider)
-the settlement garrison gets a buff to missile resistance, magic resistance and ammunition (AI-only)
-"damage walls" hero action has been nerfed, base success chance decreased from 60% to 5%


DETAILS

Walls and gates have massively increased hitpoints, normal units will now take ages to destroy gates. Gates have 10x more hp, walls 12.5x.

Artillery and monsters are also far less effective against gates; no longer is it possible to already have the gate destroyed with two artillery pieces by the time your infantry arrives there.

Units climbing walls are now extremely slow. It takes a unit of swordsmen about 8 minutes to climb a wall. As a result, it is much more important to bring a number of siege towers.

Units climbing a wall will now be completely exhausted afterwards, not just winded. Carrying those invisible ladders in their pockets is really not that easy.

Battering rams do vastly increased damage against gates. They still need longer to destroy them than before due to the hitpoint increase, nonetheless they are by far the most effective means to destroy gates.

Building siege weapons is much faster; rams cost only 2 points and towers 6. So with an army that has 10 manpower, you can build 2 battering rams and 1x2 siege towers in one turn. The aim of this mod is not to waste more time on the campaign map preparing for sieges, just to make the battle itself feel more like a siege.

Having a large number of siege towers makes sieges much easier, and building them is now very fast. To balance this, you now cannot build more than 2x2 siege towers for a siege. Batterings rams are still unlimited.

All city towers can now fire in a much wider angle of 180 degrees, so your attacking units and siege weapons will be under constant fire until you have captured the towers. The towers can even fire on attackers while they are climbing the walls! It may pay off to bring more than one battering ram.

Siege towers and rams have more hitpoints to counterbalance that they are now vulnerable to wall tower fire for the entire battle.

Certain very large monsters are now able to attack walls, however they are not very effective at it and need a long time to create a breach.

Only the largest monsters can attack walls, like Giants, Dragons or Arachnaroks. Missile monsters, or monsters carrying a lord or hero, cannot attack walls, as wildly flailing at a massive stone structure would surely throw off or kill the riders sitting on top of the monster.

The defending garrison gets 30% missile resistance, 25% magic resistance and +50% ammunition. This buff is only applied to the garrison force, not to any normal armies that may also take part in the battle. It symbolizes the advantage local defenders should have from walls, buildings protecting them, and ammunition caches. In the vanilla game, units on walls are actually at a disadvantage because they can only fire effectively on units directly in front of them. (I'd prefer to give the buffs only to units currently standing on a wall, but this is unfortunately not possible.)

Only the AI gets the aforementioned buff. The AI as siege attacker is very disadvantaged by this mod because they'll still climb walls and attack gates with normal units, not "knowing" that this is much less effective now. So they don't need more grief from this extra disadvantage. In any case defensive sieges are very rare, in about 99% of sieges in my campaigns I'm the attacker.

The success chance of the "damage walls" hero action is massively decreased to make it mostly unusable. Being able to easily make a swiss cheese out of walls would render all the other changes moot. And it seems quite silly anyway that one person should be able to just punch a half dozen huge holes into a city wall overnight.

Autoresolve is unaffected, so if a siege is too hard, you can still cheese your way out of it :p


KNOWN ISSUES

As a result of these changes, Skaven Warp-Grinders have become quite ineffective at destroying walls, this is unfortunately not avoidable as there is no way to grant a special damage bonus against walls to a unit.

As has been pointed out, sieges become a LOT easier if you are defending against the AI, because the AI is not programmed to know about the changes and still climbs walls which is now a suicidal move. In my campaigns that doesn't matter much because the AI almost never is the attacker in sieges. But if you play very defensively and let the AI come to you, this mod will probably make your campaigns easier rather than harder.