"Phantom" Siege Army

[Ylisaveta]

One of my guildmates and I went to the IA GvG map so that I could walk him through the screens to lay and remove a siege. I didn't tell him to fill the 8 slots with units to use for the siege because I thought it was obvious (my bad). I gave him step by step instructions on what to do, and he laid the siege. Then asked me how it knew which units, because he hadn't selected any.

We recreated this four more times, he did it again, then I did it, and each time, the IA took the goods and created a siege army. It was different each time, different units, different mixtures of 8 units, most of which we did not even possess (he only had archers, I had archers and rogues).

I asked more veteran guildies, they went over, and they also experienced this. Is this a thing? just in IA? We don't want to test it elsewhere because of the goods cost. Is this a bug, or a feature?

Any answer would be welcome. Hell, any theories would at least be interesting

 

[DeletedUser9184]

This is a feature. Sieges do NOT cost any units, as in you do not even need to have any units selected in order to place the siege. However, you can select units from your army management into your currently selected army, and that army will be used as your siege army when you place the siege, but again, you will not lose those units: they will just be copied. If you do not select any units (or select units that are not acceptable that province's age) for the siege, 8 units, each chosen randomly from the respective province's age, will be placed. Rogues, champions, or special units like barbarians/braves will not be chosen from the random unit selection, but you are still allowed to use rogues and (age-acceptable) champions yourself for the siege army to copy. You also do not need to place a full 8 units for the siege to copy: if you place 5 acceptable units, the siege army will copy those 5 units and pick 3 random units to use.
If you place any damaged units in for the siege army, those units will be fully healed when copied. (The same applies when replacing defenses, except for the copied part.)

 

[Ylisaveta]

I knew that you didn't lose the units, but I thought you had to at least choose what the AI would mirror. It never occurred to me that someone would not want to choose the units for their siege!

Thanks so much for your answer.

 

[DeletedUser10415]

It never occurred to me that someone would not want to choose the units for their siege!

It's not a matter of players not wanting to - It's Inno's method of simplifying an already simple GvG system. It used to be that players had to select the units for a siege army, and those units were taken from their supply of units. Nobody asked for this 'feature', and many opposed it. But we have it now.