A small guide to fort commanders defending a fortified position in Skyrim.

1. Do not, for the love of Talos, put in a gate, or portcullis or something, because you really don't want to sit safely behind your walls when you can have your enemy storming inside instead. Build a couple of barricades instead, that will hold them.

2. Make sure to spread all your archers out thinly, and put them on exposed positions along the walls, don't let them take advantage of cover when defending a fortification, and don't let them release barrages of arrows, that could stop the enemy from advancing.

3. So those cunning barricades didn't hold eh? Well now that they are inside, do not make the mistake of trying to defend chokepoints and take advantage of higher ground. Make sure your defenders are spread out instead and allow the enemy free access to all parts of your fort. Everyone knows that preparation and organization are the first steps to failure.

4. Don't use any form of magic, like runes, or other technique to assist your defense. Like that oil that you can find all over every barrow and dungeon in Skyrim that burns so nicely, surely you can't come up with some good use for that when defending a fortress.

5. The ancient nords were obviously very cunning in designing different traps and contraptions to keep nosy people out of their sacred resting places. Modern nords and imperials however, find such innovation and engineering quite overrated when defending your own life.

Please make sure to spread these important directions to every commander in the region, our success in this war rests upon the proper adaption of these strategies.

HAH! I know right? Let's just let this one guy do all the defending while our [censored] strategy fails behind him.

Actually pretty funny.

You forget to mention to put everyone in iron or steel armour...there's no such thing as a lightning rod in Skyrim.

I agree with point 1. Sieges aren`t too well thought out. They could have had the gates closed then have a catapult (which is ingame) smash a wall or Gate and then storm in.


point 2, I don`t agree so much. it`s a good idea to keep them spaced because the game hasn`t the power to have enough archers to mass and fire them in one go. There number of volleys would in no way cause the attackers to flee. Better to space out and pick your targets. I doubt this is by design of the Devs though.

point 3, Well it`s not so simple. from what I saw the barricade is broken quite quickly. troops are still all over the place. it`s not easy to just get everyone to defend one choke point in those circumstances, especially if the enemy are quick. however, I would have had better barricades than stakes which are actually effective against HORSES!

Point 4, Agreed. magics and traps set in front would`ve made life difficult. In a world of known accepted magic it should be an integral part of most warfare. In fact every army should have at least one wizard, but I think the Devs are still in `Earth` mode and forget how magic would affect warfare.

point 5, agreed.

Who needs such sophistications when you have spawn points?

You can create all the cannon fodder you need to repulse those pesky 3 soldiers and a Dragonborn storming your fortress...

The civil war quests hit a new low. There were countless better ways I could think of making them more realistic that doesn't involve leading three respawning soldiers against a bunch of respawning enemies.

disregard

The technology just isn't there yet to provide for a realistic siege experience in an open world game like Skyrim. I do applaud them for trying though, its certainly a step up from any of the battles I had in vanilla Oblivion or Morrowind. Still not on par with Mount and Blade though.

Yet they didn't try to mask this with a different approach.

Instead of another mindless battle, why not being sent to poison the dwells, to steal the garrison salary or to cause 'incidents' of various nature that will hamper the war effort allowing your troops to later reclaim a certain area? In this way you don't have to fight with the graphic engine limits and you provide a better, more varied experience to the player.

maybe there's a mod to change/fix this fortress fight.

ORLY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2DshotexMU

I think the attacks made in the civil war quest are supposed to be carefully planned raids made when the fort's defenses are down. Yeah, weak justification (given that you never see them with their defenses UP) but certainly something that was actually done.

OK, so the technology exists. Its just not available on the average mid-range system, let alone a console.

I don't think that's still quite what the OP was talking about, though - it's a mass battle (and very cool), but the strategy is more the issue here. It would be ace if forts had proper defences like murder holes, portcullis', choke points etc.

I'm sure it can be done with the current AI.

The thing is, if they'd worked on making the sieges realistic they'd have had to have created a Total War game within Skyrim. And Creative Assembly have been making Total War games for years with siege battles always having their problems. And that's a big part of what their games are about - unlike Skyrim which is far from being a siege simulator.

My computer would explode in a deadly inferno if that was what the game was like

I stutter at more than like 20 people on screen at once. Nevermind over 1000 lol

Although some mages, notably several of the Jarl court mages, are known to have fought in previous wars in Skyrim, Skyrim's nords are quite fearful of magic, and many harbor deep hatred for it. For this reason, it makes sense that much of the warfare would be conducted without it in Skyrim. In addition, if we are being honest with ourselves, it would be quite impossible for any army to fight as a cohesive unit when all it takes to turn dozens of soldiers at a time against each other is one powerful frenzy spell. To the OP, it is hard to equate war in TES to war on earth considering the forces fighting in Skyrim number in the dozens instead of tens of thousands.

Well it would be possible. Hate to bring up the follow series.... but the Eragon books take this into account. A single mage can wipe out an entire army by reaching into the enemies' minds and then essentially turning them off. The way to combat it is that the enemy mages protect their followers from the spells.

To put it into skyrim terms. Mage A casts frenzy on Army B. To counter mage B casts a dispel or calm spell on his army. Or he casts some sort of protection spell prior to the battle.


The combat could be improved without huge armies. Just have people do semi smart things. Guard chokepoints instead of charging into them. Stay behind your barricades, use traps and trap spells, etc.

Well for one mages in Skyrim don't know how to cast dispel and pacifying your entire army wouldn't exactly help your plight either, but I get your point. As for improving AI for large battles, there are too few of them to really worry about altering the whole AI system just so guards fight like rank and file soldiers. The big battles weren't fantastic but they were still fun and I would much rather have beth worry about improving other aspects of the game rather than big battle AI.

Make sure you leave the safety of the fort to be a kite for a passing adventurer. One at a time.

Castle sieges isn't exactly a core element of the game so I don't expect any massive, strategical struggle of wits when attacking a fort.

Just find it amusing as I run through a fort to think that they could basically just as well have stepped out and defended it on the ground outside.

It doesn't help that victory in those sieges is determined by kill count rather than by actually taking (and keeping) the objective, since there are still plenty of defenders left in some cases after the required number is reached. At least in the fight for Whiterun you had to lower the drawbridge, however there's an awfully convenient bypass along the wall that lets you drop it without needing to kill any of the defenders to get there (HINT: ignore your allies and go around, you can drop onto the path from above).

6. And make sure your troops attack in waves and not in full force.

6(edit): make sure your troops attack one at a time instead of in full force.

7: If the guy next to you dies to an arrow and you didn't see the shooter beforehand, look around for an approximation of 10 seconds, then assume it was the arrow you shot straight up last week and then go back to sleep.

8: When the sleeping guy gets shot with an arrow, look around for 5 seconds, then go sharpen your sword ignoring any footsteps behind you... they are probably the guy that is sleeping. If you comment that the sleeping guy is dead you are a bad guard, and you need to spend less time thinking.