Total War Warhammer 3 dev is reworking sieges, and it wants your help

Creative Assembly is changing how Total War Warhammer 3 sieges work, and it's calling for players to help test the rework by joining an upcoming proving grounds. While we'll be waiting a little longer for the strategy game's next DLC to arrive, CA has been hard at work on major changes in the meantime, and it talks us through the first part of a grander TWW3 siege rework in a new developer blog.

"Our goal here, in simple terms, is to make sieges more fun," Total War Warhammer 3 senior community manager Steve Coleman explains, "and your feedback is crucial to us achieving this. We won't roll out any changes to the base game until we're totally happy with the response from you, the players." CA recently announced a delay to its next DLC, Tides of Torment, as it aims to ensure the expansion meets the standard of one of our best Warhammer games. In the meantime, it's working on other key fixes, including this siege rework.

Battle team lead Milcho Vasilev walks us through the key changes, which he describes as "just the first steps for us to get sieges where they want them to be" in a longer-lasting initiative. The biggest difference is the removal of the 'pocket ladders' that infantry units are able to deploy. Vasilev explains that "the ability to pull a huge ladder out of your… nothing can be quite immersion breaking and takes away from the more strategic planning of the battle.

"In addition, this makes walls almost obsolete and allows enemies to bypass them with ease while making defending chokepoints inside the settlement the obvious choice," Vasilev continues. "This is not how we want sieges to feel." He does note, however, that there will be an option to restore these pocket ladders if you prefer all-out slaughter over more strategic decision making.

Alongside this, other siege equipment has been rebalanced, as have defensive structures. Attacking players are able to field more Siege Towers and Battering Rams to compensate for the lack of ladders. Both equipment types should feel slightly more effective, and will require less manpower to build. Siege Attrition has been made into a linear progression, so it will grow "stronger and stronger with each consecutive turn a settlement remains under siege."

On the defensive side, towers have been made deadlier but with a much shorter range, while gates will be more durable against most attacks, but more vulnerable to battering rams. The former change gives attackers a little more room to maneuver on approach, but the increased potency combined with the gate resilience will make settlements less vulnerable to tricks such as direct, fast infantry attacks.

Alongside this, CA is "starting an initiative of reworking old siege maps." This initial test will feature just three, for Skaven, Empire, and Orcs, but more are coming, with a focus on opening up space to create more approaches and wider battle zones. The developer has also fixed "over 50 issues" related to the battle AI during siege mode; some of these help teach it how to play without the use of pocket ladders, while others fix separate issues.

"Battle AI has always been tricky to get right, but that is most obvious in siege battles and we are really trying to make it play better and react to the player's actions in a more realistic way," Vasilev says. "We are not saying that we have 'fixed the battle AI,' but hopefully with these improvements it will behave a lot more convincingly and offer a more interesting challenge."

The Total War Warhammer 3 siege rework beta will be live on the proving grounds from Thursday July 24 until Thursday August 7. You'll be able to watch a livestream showcasing some of these adjustments on Thursday July 17 at 7:30am PT / 10:30am ET / 3:30pm BST / 4:30pm CEST via the Total War Twitch channel.

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