Given how siege weapons work, I have a few suggestions for how the AI can be changed to make them more user-friendly. The big problem I’ve found is that what you have is a slow, vulnerable unit with great range and incredibly damage to buildings. Ideally these will apply to the more traditional siege units (Destroyers, Meat Wagons, Glaive Throwers and Mortar teams) as opposed to secondary siege units (Raiders, Chimeras, etc.). That said -
Siege weapons should - unless ordered otherwise - prioritize buildings first. Considering they do more damage to buildings and most ground units can outrun a siege attack, prioritizing units is a waste of time at best.
Siege units do not attack unless given a direct order to attack. Because of their long range, a siege weapon can give away your location if an enemy comes close enough to cause the unit’s AI to become aggressive. Since siege weapons aren’t going to be your main source of battlefield DPS, making it so they’re less aggressive might help. Setting hold orders so that siege weapons on hold don’t attack, perhaps?
Destroyers with the burning oil upgrade and upgraded Glaive throwers should do more damage to trees.
Prioritize buildings, no thanks, maybe on purpose I want to hit ground during battles, and units in the back side (like HH’s, or casters).
I do not see the benefit holding any attack. And you have already hold button for that.
I agree only on that point only.
Plus burning oil should do extra damage to Water Elementals, anything that is Water or Tree.
Basically Any fire stuff should do extra damage to tree + water.
Eh, oil isn’t soluble in water, meaning if you threw burning oil on a water elemental it would just slide down the thing while the elemental just has to move forward a little bit to not be hurt by the residual heat.
If you put burning oil in water, the water sublime (became instantly gas form ) so elemental is damaged pretty much. Of course depend on quantities.
Fire and water + fire and wood are generally enemies!
Generally you don’t want them to just randomly attack buildings, you want them to attack a specific building or buildings, which means using attack ground or targeting a specific building. So I don’t think giving them a special attack move command that ignores units is necessary. Plus you have units like raiders which aren’t terrible at attacking units and thus it wouldn’t be all siege units anyway, just mortar/glaive/meat wagon. Tanks already only attack buildings unless they have the anti-air upgrade.
smart positioning makes this unnecessary.
I don’t think we need to make it any easier to down trees.
They most certainly do not. From a lore perspective, Lich and Dreadlord have a very high intellect, and from a balance perspective, humans already have 4 units with siege damage, while undead has 1! If anything, it is undead, who should get an extra siege attack on banshees and/or destroyers. Orcs siege damage is fine, and they’ve got demolishers, not destroyers. And back to OP’s question, I currently don’t have an opinion about points 1. and 3. but I can back point 2. to a certain extent, as I also would like to see a decrease of the long range siege units’ acquisition range to a standard 500, or 600 or even 700, but anything higher than that, is way too much. And can we decrease batrider’s acquisition range while we are at it as well? It is currently 1000, which is insanely high for a unit with such a short ranged attack. I know batriders are pretty twisted and eager to justify the means, but still they shouldn’t have acquisition range higher than dryad’s 800, which is also too high tbh. Chimaera have less acquisition range than batrider, it is 900, and its attack range well justifies it, unlike batrider’s!
If you reduce a unit’s acquisition range, it can no longer attack beyond that range, regardless of the “range” on its attacks. It is very stupid to make units arbitrarily ignore their max range.
Orcs in mythology tend to be very good at making siege weapons and other devices of war. That trait dates back to Tolkien’s works, which more or less created the incarnation of Orcs that Warcraft, Warhammer, and most other fantasy settings are based on. The strength of Catapults and Demolishers actually fits Orcs quite well.
Despite that, Human siege weapons have their own advantages that make them better in certain situations:
Mortar teams have a much larger splash radius than other artillery, which actually makes them slightly better against groups of units. The downside of that is that Human units are generally not as tough as Orcs or Tauren, so friendly-fire can be a bigger issue if you aren’t careful.
Siege Engines are the best siege weapon at killing buildings, and they are also tougher to destroy than other siege units.
As for undead, Meat Wagons are at least squishier than other siege weapons when you consider their supply and complete lack of armor upgrades (which make a fairly large difference), and their corpse & plague mechanics fit undead quite well.
Wow that’s a really bad bug then. And a confirmed one too! I have just changed acq range in world editor to 500 on a test map, and the mortar team’s in-game attack range now says 500, while its actual Attack 1 range in world editor is still 1150. Unbelievable… This most definitely should not be the case - the acquisition range should not affect the in-game unit’s attack range. I guess that rules out decreasing the acquisition range for long ranged siege units like demolishers then, at least until this bug is fixed. Batrider’s acquisition range can still be changed though, its attack range is measly 300, but as soon as anything comes within 1000 distance nearby, it just bolts into the fray, which it really shouldn’t. Of course there is a workaround of clicking to ‘Move’ onto the hero, and then a unit under Move command will get passively leashed, and follow the hero without attacking anything, even if attacked, but a proper fix would be unlinking the in-game attack range from the acquisition range completely via the code change, so a unit could keep their long range, but will not auto-attack the target that is more than 700 away, unless a player explicitly orders it so.
Where in the lore is it ever said that these generic heroes are posessed of greater intellect than humans? After all, Undead originally came from humans and others, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to have more intellect than they had in life.
Also, lore of other games / franchises / etc is not really relevant here, only what’s actually established within the warcraft world is relevant. And I’m not really sure where this was ever said in the story of the game or even WoW.
That is no bug. That’s how WarCraft III has always worked. Acquisition range marks the maximum range where units can acquire targets for attacks. WarCraft III does not make units ignore targets within their range, and neither does StarCraft.
It is nonsensical to make a unit randomly ignore units within their attack range. That just renders units useless.
Most of the original Liches were actually former Orc Necrolytes and Warlocks under the service of Nerzhul when he accidentally opened a portal to a world controlled by the Burning Legion, during the climax of the WarCraft II expansion campaign. Nerzhul himself was bound to a suit of armor and become the Lich King.
Dreadlords are typically casters that served as lieutenants of the Burning Legion.
Both of these groups are implied to be intelligent (at the very least more intelligent than average humanoids) when it comes to magic, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into stronger siege weapons.
That said, the Burning Legion has fairly powerful siege weapons and technology. Both the Scourge and the Forsaken also seem to have fairly extensive research on plagues, on other chemical weapons, and on various devices and weapons of war to deploy them.
Oh, I see what you mean. I was always under the impression that acquisition range variable is for the unit “auto-acquire” the target for the attack, i.e. the distance that an enemy unit must come close to, before the game automatically orders your unit to run towards enemy unit to attack them. While I thought the attack range, is the actual… attack range value!, which is displayed in game on the unit attack icon when you hover over it, and is the only thing that determines the maximum range the unit can attack another unit, without moving an inch from their current spot.
So for example if demolisher has 700 acquisition range (uacq), and 1150 attack range (ua1r), it will not auto-attack enemy units that come within 800 distance close to it, but you can still order the demolisher to attack the enemy unit within 800 distance manually, and then demolisher will start attacking the enemy unit. But unless you order demolisher to attack the enemy unit, it will not engage into attacking until the unit comes within 700 distance, and only then demolisher will auto-attack the enemy unit even without your command. That’s how I would have coded it anyway, but it seems that’s not what is actually happening, and the “acquisition range” is in fact “maximum range”, while “attack range” is … “maximum range” too?.. Argh
Pretty much this:
Also these generic heroes are pretty much a direct shoutout to Kel’Thuzad and Tichondrius, who are very intelligent, and played important roles in master plan of bringing the burning legion into Azeroth. Not something an average human could do, even if they wanted to. In fact dreadlords are the main reason behind sargeras corruption!
“In the published Warcraft III lore, the nathrezim were one of two demon races responsible for Sargeras’ corruption, the other being the eredar. In The Burning Crusade, the eredar’s origins were retconned so that they were corrupted by Sargeras and not the other way around, leaving only the nathrezim in this role.”
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Nathrezim
So in lore, both Liches and Dreadlords are far smarter than an average human. Yet in the actual game, somehow they are not smart enough to advance anywhere past a primitive hearse to sow terror and destruction across the enemy cities. What a letdown…
The orcs in warcraft, just like in other franchises like lotr, are more than capable of successfully sieging enemy cities. They have destroyed stormwind during first war, remember? Which would not be possible without a good siege weaponry in their possession. But as warcraft 3 balance perspective goes, orcs currently have just the right amount of units with siege damage, and can remain static in their standing. The one who really requires more siege units though, is undead. They literally have only one slow moving, extremely vulnerable meat wagon, and that’s it. Every other faction has three units, that are either capable of hit and run like chimaeras, batriders, raiders and gyrocopters, or are much more durable, like mountain giants and steam engines. Meat wagon is none of that, but that’s the only thing with siege damage undead has, and because victory condition in warcraft 3 is to destroy enemy buildings, undead obviously has the short end of the stick here, and even though this is how it has always worked, it doesn’t mean it should have in the past or in the future.
Frost Wyrms with their upgrade disable towers and buildings, I’d say that pretty much qualifies them for siege purposes. Also Lich’s ultimate is excellent for this purpose since it does percentage-based damage and buildings are static.
Nah, frost wyrms are pretty bad at siege. Their magic damage is too low against fortified armor, it only deals 35% compared to 150% that siege damage deals,
so even a single batrider’s damage against fortified armor is higher than a single frostie, and batrider only takes up 2 food compared to frosties 7. Three batriders are like 4 to 5 times better than a single frosty at sieging, there is just no contest,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VgnnpyQfd0
and disabling towers ability range is way too low compared to dragonhawk, who can disable towers outside of towers’ hitting range, while frost wyrms have to come close, and if there are many towers, they can’t disable them all, and unlike dragonhawks, will get killed. And chimaera can kill the towers outside of towers’ hitting range without even needing to disable them. Undead really needs a proper siege unit apart from meat wagons. I was thinking a secondary siege attack on destroyers, and/or banshees with exact same parameters like their main attack would compensate the gross lackluster of a proper siege unit for the undead. And Death & Decay does not quite cut it either, as all other races have AoE magic that is also excellent for sieging purpose, Starfall, Blizzard, Earthquake, but that doesn’t stop other races from having 2 extra excellent siege damage units in addition to their horribly slow glass cannons like the meat wagons are.
So changing this:
war3x.mpq > Units > UnitWeapons.slk >
weapsOn > change from '1' to '3' for a 'destroyer'
targs1 > remove 'structure' for a 'destroyer'
targs2 > add 'structure' for a 'destroyer'
rangeN2 > add the current value of 'rangeN1' for a 'destroyer' (450)
rngBuff2 > add the current value of 'rngBuff1' for a 'destroyer' (250)
atkType2 > change from 'normal' to 'siege' for a 'destroyer'
weapTp2 > add 'missile' for a 'destroyer'
cool2 > add the current value of 'cool1' for a 'destroyer' (1.35)
dice2 > add the current value of 'dice1' for a 'destroyer' (1)
sides2 > add the current value of 'sides1' for a 'destroyer' (3)
dmgplus2 > add the current value of 'dmgplus1' for a 'destroyer' (18)
dmgpt2 > add the current value of 'dmgpt1' for a 'destroyer' (0.633)
backSw2 > add the current value of 'backSw1' for a 'destroyer' (0.337)
Will give us that:
https://imgur.com/a/5LgUlRp
And changing this:
war3x.mpq > Units > UnitWeapons.slk >
weapsOn > change from '1' to '3' for a 'banshee'
targs1 > remove 'structure' for a 'banshee'
targs2 > add 'structure' for a 'banshee'
rangeN2 > add the current value of 'rangeN1' for a 'banshee' (600)
rngBuff2 > add the current value of 'rngBuff1' for a 'banshee' (250)
atkType2 > change from 'normal' to 'siege' for a 'banshee'
weapTp2 > add 'missile' for a 'banshee'
cool2 > add the current value of 'cool1' for a 'banshee' (1.5)
dice2 > add the current value of 'dice1' for a 'banshee' (1)
sides2 > add the current value of 'sides1' for a 'banshee' (5)
dmgplus2 > add the current value of 'dmgplus1' for a 'banshee' (8)
dmgpt2 > add the current value of 'dmgpt1' for a 'banshee' (0.56)
backSw2 > add the current value of 'backSw1' for a 'banshee' (0.51)
Eh, that’s fair. I don’t normally consider just the damage with sieging units, but any applications besides. Disabling the building with the frost breath is basically the same as having destroyed it if you can keep applying it, after all. And it lasts 5 seconds so it doesn’t necessarily have to mean throwing away a Frost Wyrm mid-fight just to keep any towers/reinforcement-making buildings disabled either, just a quick breath mint once in a while.
I also left out the idea of Banshees possessing their own siege units since half of the most useful ones are mechanical so it wouldn’t work anyway. Fair point about the Lich though.
No one can beat human siege weapons, because humans got Steam machines (tanks) and mortars in back. What more do you need?
Tanks pretty hard to counter, and mortars shread enemy unit to pieces in no time.
Orcs could be buffed little bit, burning oil seems pretty useless at the current patch level.
Also Liquid Fire is ruined! Do not worth it to research. Please boost those !
