Recruitment-call for besiegers.

Very well. I've been wanting to make a 'siege' scenario. Or, rather, a series of 'em.
Think of EFZI or BfNY, but with one besieging army and resistors inside. perhaps a relief army or armies going around. Maybe raiding parties will be around to attack your camp.

Small map. Imagine a city and its surroundings.

Wall tiles are impassable. Except for 'breachable' walls and gates, not sure how to implement them except with LM terrain and/or using forests and jungles which can be chopped down, i.e., sappers can bring them down and leave 'breaches' (another terrain) in the place.
Need urban terrain gfx.
There will be women throwing tiles, kids throwing rocks at you, hastily armed recruits, etc. etc.
Cavalry, elephants, chariots, and the like can't enter houses. Dogs can. House-to-house fighting will mean that houses have a LARGE defending bonus.
The player's (the assailer's) stock of artillery ammunition is limited. You can capture the city's supplies if you manage to get there, but you'll really need to get there.
To take cover from the defenders' fire, you'll have to move mantelets and siege towers before you, or else.

'Cities' will be converted to houses, manors, temples, aqueducts, cisterns, fortresses... Maybe we could have 'neighbourhoods' (civs in locked alliance) to have a larger variety of city gfx.

So, needed staff/stuff:

• terrain makers to put in building graphics,
• unit makers/compilers to send in some modified units which might be required
• in-game music and sound effects, someone in charge of it.
• IDEAS. if you have any ideas on this kind of thing, don't be afraid to poast them.

This is for FUN and to take the development of civ3 to the utmost.

CONSCRIPTS, SIGN UP. Post what you can7are willing to do, etc. etc.

Mirrored in the Renaissance and Brotherhood forums.

It may be best to make the Castle Gate a unit graphic, confoming to the walls on each side so it fits. This way it would have to be destroyed by more powerful siege engines for your soldiers to be able to get through.

Moat's give negative defense, and stop all movement (high Move Cost) while units are crossing. Moat's are within shooting range of Castle Tower Archers.

Not sure of a way to 'scale' walls so-to-speak with siege machines.

Tom

tom2050 said:

It may be best to make the Castle Gate a unit graphic, confoming to the walls on each side so it fits. This way it would have to be destroyed by more powerful siege engines for your soldiers to be able to get through.

Moat's give negative defense, and stop all movement (high Move Cost) while units are crossing. Moat's are within shooting range of Castle Tower Archers.

Not sure of a way to 'scale' walls so-to-speak with siege machines.

Tom

Click to expand...

Obviously, buildings will be out of proportion as in every civ game.
I'd forgotten about moats. Yes, they'll have a negative defense bonus. Still, to send the cavalry in, you'll need to control the gates or use a ferry.
I've been thinking. The Gates could be one of many defender civs which have city gates as their city graphics. They have to be captured and are the only way in. If not, you can always destroy them and walk through the rubble.

Here's a method to use. Siege battering rams could be made to be able to enter certain terrain. This terrain can only hold the Castle Walls. These Castle Wall units would thus, be able to be attacked by Siege battering rams, whereas soldiers can not do so.

Since Civ scaled roads are mostly irrelevent in a close-up battle... the battering ram could be made to do road building in 1 turn (since human player only), in which case the battering ram could build a road same turn in that spot which opens the wall up for soldiers to pour through.

I've been thinking. The Gates could be one of many defender civs which have city gates as their city graphics. They have to be captured and are the only way in. If not, you can always destroy them and walk through the rubble.

Click to expand...

You mean multiple civ's controlling the Gates to the Castle? Multiple defending civ's of the same castle?

Tom

I don't have nearly enough time to help with the scenario (although I'd love to, conceptually), but I'd still still like to show my support to it!

I'll try to upload a terrain type list tomorrow.

tom2050 said:

Here's a method to use. Siege battering rams could be made to be able to enter certain terrain. This terrain can only hold the Castle Walls. These Castle Wall units would thus, be able to be attacked by Siege battering rams, whereas soldiers can not do so.

Since Civ scaled roads are mostly irrelevent in a close-up battle... the battering ram could be made to do road building in 1 turn (since human player only), in which case the battering ram could build a road same turn in that spot which opens the wall up for soldiers to pour through.

Click to expand...

Hmmno. I want to keep the wheelie thing for not allowing cavalry or siege weapons inside buildings. this will add another tactical dimension to the game. Not only will you have to use your archers and slingers to clear them out of their places. I'll try to implement sappers anyway.
I'm not sure on how to manage the movement rates yet. I think...

• Heavy infantry 1, all roads (road=2 movement)
  • Axemen, heavy attackers but they need backup fast.
  • Swordsmen, middle ground between axemen and pikemen.
  • Pikemen, net defenders and ground holders.
• Elephants 1, but wheeled. It's very difficult to move through the streets.
• Light infantry/dogs 2, ignore nearly all movement costs except for moats, which will be death traps.
• Cavalry is wheeled so can't move through houses and such. Ignores most movement costs, but a few 'traps' will happen.
  • Light cavalry has 3 movement, but is weaker. Might be javelineers and/or archers, plus light swordsmen that can keep up with them.
  • heavy cavalry is slower (2 points), but can beat almost anything when charging. However, if they're held up at barricades they become easy prey to attacks from inside the houses -they can't hit back!
• Most, if not all, of your siege weapons will be immobile. The missiles will be limited and your actual artillery will be just an empty transport.
• Mantelets will take shots from the enemy archers on the walls and are basically land transport+shields. They'll be very slow, though, so your infantry will have to slow down in order to keep up, or risk being hit by the garrison.

I'll add in some of the defenders tomorrow.
I also don't know whether to put in some troops

tom2050 said:

You mean multiple civ's controlling the Gates to the Castle? Multiple defending civ's of the same castle?

Click to expand...

No. One civ for the garrison holding the walls, with towers and gates for city gfx, one another for dock facilities, other for temples and one for 'normal' buldings. I don't have enough terrain types for it. Blasted hardcoding.

Virote_Considon said:

I don't have nearly enough time to help with the scenario (although I'd love to, conceptually), but I'd still still like to show my support to it!

Click to expand...

Thanks. Ideas and comments are always welcome.

Still need a citymaker to put in towers and the like. I don't trust my GIMP skills.
Defender units will come up tonight/tomorrow.

Are you going to use the graphics from Age of Empires...? I have the very first one, and first one only

I have AOE I and II. And i'll probably end up converting walls and houses to make it quicker.

You might as well use something like the large Castle graphic that was in AoE1, or something similar for the city.

Hmnah. Let's see...
An option for the towers on the walls was to make them capturable units so they'd change colour with whoever conquered them. But I've decided they'll be static towers, probably converted from AOE, or I'll make a simple tower myself.
Most of the 'cities' i.e. buildings, will probably be structures converted from AOE and other graphics, as well as cut'n'paste jobs from existing fanmade graphics.
Unless someone wants to make an appearance...

Not sure if i can help, since i do not create so large buildings. You would need AOE sized ones, and i never put so much detail in my models

It's just a lump of wall, make it broader!

Anyway i will need pics (and i am not saying i will definately do it, it depends on whether i can, and will be happy with it)

I'm "working" on Assyrian Siege units, It'd be good to have someone to get me off my butt and working on it. If you want to see a prev of the siege tower, it's in my workshop. Battering ram will be similar.

Varwnos said:

Anyway i will need pics (and i am not saying i will definately do it, it depends on whether i can, and will be happy with it)

Click to expand...

These will help ya:



Basically, what I'd need is a wall (impassable terrain) and some towers (high def, no wheels) which would serve as shooting platforms for the defenders' archers and slingers. Im not sure on how to implement gates. Perhaps they could be the Lm version of the towers, with invisible roads on them so that the cavalry can burst through.
the best towers would be square ones.

Bowsling said:

I'm "working" on Assyrian Siege units, It'd be good to have someone to get me off my butt and working on it. If you want to see a prev of the siege tower, it's in my workshop. Battering ram will be similar.

Click to expand...

Can you do a mantelet?

Hmmm ... Several thoughts / questions -

1. What time/distance scale are you using (because, being in possession of numerous pre-gunpowder cardboard-and-paper games, I can help with relative values).

2. It seems that a distance scale wherein artillery has a range > / = 4 will actually make the AI use artillery.

3. Try to talk someone into making you boiling oil units, or Grecian fire (pretty!)

4. Use units for walls etc., not terrain. Walls can be destroyed; terrain only in SMAC. Of course they would have the requisite DF/HP to prove their mettle. Also, walled fortifications never had enough soldiers to man the entire wall, keep, etc. As there is no way to introduce seige towers/ladders, a wall unit will keep an enemy peasant from putting on plunger-suction boots and walking straight up 30 meters or whatever. You'd need as many - actually, less - units than tiles, and arranging them would be simpler.

5. Gates were usually majorly fortified, albeit not so much as, say, stone walls. They should be purely defensive units with the DF sufficiently lower than the walls so that it's obvious to both humans and AI where best to attack / defend. (I.e., they should be destroyed if successfully breached, not captured.)

6. If you want to get ugly, use Charm to simulate, say, LOTR style catapulting of masses of severed heads of the beseiged over the walls.

7. By all means make it a port with both accessible docks and higher, open areas (e.g., road leading from river to castle) which can only be attacked by "marines".

I'll let you know what else comes to mind

Best,

Cheatem

1. Time? 1 hour per turn, I suppose. Or whetever the minimum is (it's 2 hours/turn in EFZI)

2. AI will have archers and lots of people throwing tiles/stones/burning oil. Your own artillery will be a lot of ballistas.

3. There's already one greek fire pot, very nasty nasty nasty.

4. My walls would have been impassable terrain. Immobile units don't really convince me.

5. What about them being cities?

6. Oh yes! Trolls will have that, they'll be living battering rams.

7. Coastal port, river port, estuary port?

An idea I was having was to make some units, especially mêlée infantry be m-units (2-4, depending on each unit) Scouts, trolls and elephants would be single units, archers, slingers and cavalry would be in threes. What do you think?


-Dewey.

Why can't you just make some byzantine empire scenario?

At least i could help with that.

Varwnos said:

Why can't you just make some byzantine empire scenario?

At least i could help with that.

Click to expand...

... You know, the rape of Constantinople by the Crusaders might make for a very interesting scenario ...