Post by jacobdebroedere on Jul 23, 2007 10:29:55 GMT
I was just wondering how settlements are going to be sieged in the mod. The precolumbian civs didn't know the wheel, so siege towers and rams like in RTW aren't possible if we are going to keep it realistic. The technology for digging sap points was available, but there is no hard evidence it was ever used (however,there is also no evidence they didn't used it). Onagers are obviously not possible.
A normal battering ram carried by soldiers is an option (I don't know it's possible to implement this in the game), and ladders don't have to be changed at all.
There are historians who believe Mesoamerican civs didn't build fortifications or city walls above pallisades, and even large cities like Tenochtitlan are rumored to had no real defences(except it's extremely strategic position in the middle of a lake), so there was no real siege warfare. Cities would fall easily to an ennemy assault. If you were lucky, however, to have your city located on a good natrural defensive position an enemy wouldn't even consider attacking it. This sounds crazy to me, if I would have been the leader of a city surrounded by neighbours like the Aztecs the first thing I would do is constructing a decent wall(but I'm no historian). I could not find articles on the internet describing sieges in mesoamerica, possible due to the lack of information about the period before the Spanish conquests, or maybe those historians are right and there were no sieges (and thus no information about them).
But this mod also covers South America, and we all know the Incas did build stone forts(I don't know about city walls). Those forts were clearly built to withstand a possible siege, so it's almost certain the Inca's (and their enemies) were familiar with siege warfare. I don't know if methods other then a straight forward assault with ladders, climbing ropes,... or attrition were used. Starving the defenders of a fort, located 3000m high on a steep, windy mountain, would have posed a huge problem for the attackers:as a rule there are always more attackers then defenders during a siege,and all those guys had to eat. Finding enough food on the Andes mountain flanks is not easy,if not impossible. But this is a game and in this case gameplay beats realism.
I know this is a lengthy first post, congratulations to all who read it completely .
A normal battering ram carried by soldiers is an option (I don't know it's possible to implement this in the game), and ladders don't have to be changed at all.
There are historians who believe Mesoamerican civs didn't build fortifications or city walls above pallisades, and even large cities like Tenochtitlan are rumored to had no real defences(except it's extremely strategic position in the middle of a lake), so there was no real siege warfare. Cities would fall easily to an ennemy assault. If you were lucky, however, to have your city located on a good natrural defensive position an enemy wouldn't even consider attacking it. This sounds crazy to me, if I would have been the leader of a city surrounded by neighbours like the Aztecs the first thing I would do is constructing a decent wall(but I'm no historian). I could not find articles on the internet describing sieges in mesoamerica, possible due to the lack of information about the period before the Spanish conquests, or maybe those historians are right and there were no sieges (and thus no information about them).
But this mod also covers South America, and we all know the Incas did build stone forts(I don't know about city walls). Those forts were clearly built to withstand a possible siege, so it's almost certain the Inca's (and their enemies) were familiar with siege warfare. I don't know if methods other then a straight forward assault with ladders, climbing ropes,... or attrition were used. Starving the defenders of a fort, located 3000m high on a steep, windy mountain, would have posed a huge problem for the attackers:as a rule there are always more attackers then defenders during a siege,and all those guys had to eat. Finding enough food on the Andes mountain flanks is not easy,if not impossible. But this is a game and in this case gameplay beats realism.
I know this is a lengthy first post, congratulations to all who read it completely .