No Siege Attacker
The mod removes the ability of armies on the campaign map from besieging a walled settlement and attacking immediately within one turn (i.e. launch a siege battle).
Armies on the campaign map, whether Player or AI, are now forced to spend at least one turn to build siege equipment to launch a siege battle.
This is intended to accompany Juggernaut999’s backport of No more pocket ladders!, itself a version of Frodo45127’s mod from WH3.
With No more pocket ladders! you may find that the AI engage in siege battles with artillery, but then awkwardly shuffle one of their units in front of the gates, perhaps grazing them with their weapons in an attempt to breach them. Meanwhile, your ranged units and towers pick off the rest of the army casually standing within arrow range.
This appears to be a side effect of having no butt ladders for units when the AI has no siege equipment. This mod forces the AI to use siege equipment, where their pathfinding is more functional / less borked, and results in less cheese and more, well… siege.
As a result, you’ll have actual siege battles with siege equipment and no butt ladders. Indeed, you’ll be able to more reliably enter siege battles as a supporting army to your allies and let the enemy direct all their warp lightning at them mount your own glorious ingress on the flank.
Note that this does not remove the ability from units that allows them to physically attack gates, or indeed artillery and other war machines from attacking walls.
It also does not affect Empire Fort / High Elf Gate battles, as CA decided to deliberately treat these as field battles (so no siege equipment can be built).
I recommend a few other mods that I use to enhance siege battles alongside this mod:
- Pierce’s Better Sieges (piercebuster) for various improvements to siege, including buffs to siege equipment
- Better Siege Attrition (Zarkis) to enable faster siege attrition at a lower rate, now that you and the AI are besieging over multiple turns more often
- Fight to the Death – Unbreakable Siege Defenders LITE version (Heitri) to ensure defenders do in fact fight to the death without perpetually retreating, like in sieges of yore in RTW and Med 2.
