Helmgart - A Siege That Mostly Gets It Right
Amid all the messy sieges in WH3, the Empire’s Helmgart fort siege map stands out as a small diamond in the dirt. What all other siege maps get wrong, Helmgart gets mostly right, and I hope CA uses it as a template to improve the rest.
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Size of the Map Relative to the Garrison:
Compared to almost all other settlement garrisons, Helmgart — being a fort — boasts a larger number and higher quality of troops. Most importantly, the size of the garrison perfectly matches the layout of the map. The defenders aren’t spread thin trying to hold sections of wall kilometers apart; instead, they can reposition efficiently to respond to incoming threats.
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- Layout of the Map and its Natural Advantages:
The Helmgart siege map provides excellent advantages to the defender allowing them to hold chokepoints whilst bombarding the incoming foe.
It has multiple layers of elevated ground, each taller than the previous ones, allowing you to position archers/crossbowmen effectively.
Even the paths the attacker takes, that leads them deeper into the fort towards the capture points, has elevated slopes and act like chokepoints when needed.
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- Towers Cover All Angles of Approach:
Anyone that has fought in the Empire knows of that specific siege map that's devoid of any towers in the corner where you always could park your army uncontested. Helmgart, however, covers all angles of approach allowing you to pepper the enemy as much as possible before reaching your walls/gate.
Also, the buildable towers inside the fort are highly elevated and have almost complete clear line of sight to deal as much damage as possible instead of having a third or even half of their sight blocked by some wall or building arrangement.
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However, there are still a couple of issues that need to be addressed:
- Enemy units that rout go deeper into the fort instead of out of it.
This is most probably due to the unit calculating that the nearest route to retreat off of the battlefield is deeper into the fort. CA should change this to make routing units always path to outside of the city/fort, but can keep shattered units to path towards the closest point of retreat.
- Enemy deployment zone is way too close to the fort's walls.
Unfortunately, all the advantages Helmgart boasts, about the towers covering all angles of approach, and the really long hike towards the forts walls are taken away by giving the enemy the ability to almost deploy right in front of the walls.
- Pocket ladders
Self explanatory. It'll be removed in the upcoming BETA next week and I'll be sure to test it out when it drops and see how the changes feel like.
Changes to Other Siege Maps I Would Like to See:
Only allow monsters, monstrous infantry, monstrous cavalry, battering rams, artillery and spells to damage gates.
Walls should only be able to be damaged by units with wallbreaker or artillery & spells.
Remove siege attacker from Legendary Lords that shouldn't have it. To compensate where needed, grant a starting unit that has siege attacker to Legendary Lords that don't have it.
Nuke half the siege map for most maps. Yes, you heard me. Most siege battles, players will only be able to utilize 80% of the unnecessarily large maps with the meagre garrisons they're given to defend it with. This leads to players simply concentrating most if not all of their force at the victory point instead of it acting as a last fall back reserve.
Finally, after fixing these core problems, I would like CA to explore additional mechanics they could implement to siege defense. Anyone remember the final battle for Tor Yvresse vs Grom? How you were able to summon troops or use army spells? Things like that or maybe even things like burning oil at the gates for Empire factions.
Posted Jul 17, 2025, 8:38 AM UTC