[Idea] Realistic City Siege

[Dancing Hoskuld]

2 Foot units shouldnot be able to witdraw from battle with mounted units because mounted are much faster. It is annoying when skirmisher run away from battle with your mounted infantry

Mounted infantry dismount to fight, ie they don't fight on horseback so are slower at movement as they need to remount to pursue.

 

[Thunderbrd]

@TB

1 Can we add anoter tweak to siege units to be capturable like in civ3. It simply dosent make sense when i attack unprotected siege ram with my mounted infantry and i loose.

2 Foot units shouldnot be able to witdraw from battle with mounted units because mounted are much faster. It is annoying when skirmisher run away from battle with your mounted infantry

1) They are capable of being captured. Furthermore, their crew is armed - eventually to be represented as small blade wielders.

2) Thus why I'm spending the lion's share of my time working out what units to apply the Pursuit ability to right now. It's a huge planning effort taking place in some secrecy perhaps but mostly due to efficiency. I'm doing it on an excel doc but will expose that to a google doc as soon as I have a proposal complete. Then I'll be looking for help in applying those changes... (hint hint)

 

[Nimek]

Can we block ability toupgrade units inside enemy borders?

It simply unrealistic that during city siege i can upgrade my rams to bombard.

 

[Koshling]

Can we block ability toupgrade units inside enemy borders?

It simply unrealistic that during city siege i can upgrade my rams to bombard.

That's a leader trait isn't it? Or is it a civic thing?

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's the main purpose of the Progressist trait. It's also an effect I plan to break apart into a couple of stages and merge in some other effects so that Progressist can be given a proper tiered progression chain. Whether in an opponent's border or not will be one of those 'steps'. Equipment upgrades and extending where those can take place will play a role too.

 

[Nimek]

@Hydro or otheer unit modder

Can we tweak rams now.

- Add new tags by Thunderbird

Spoiler :

iBreakdownChance: I'd start our Ram line at 10% for the Log Ram (note that the log ram (hand ram in xml) must be enabled to attack when you make this change and that means the may attack boolean as well as the combat limit amount must be made to be over 0.) Then gradually edge the chance up by another 10% per upgrade.

iBreakdownDamage: Testing showed this amount is very VERY powerful so should be applied extremely gradually. Log Rams should start with a base 1 on this value. Then add another 1 for each unit upgrade (though maybe increase by more than one for more advanced upgrades.)

Note: I was surprised our rams have first strike. I'd suggest they lose it - eventually they'll get some back by having Distance Support units on the stack. But that's how the programming expects them to have it. If any unit type provides the perfect example of a unit type that should NOT have first strike for any logical reason, Rams are it.

- add siege_gatecrasher combat class
- remove first strike
- remove ability to range bombardment

After siege_gatecrasher CC will be added please tweak traps line to also affect on this CC.


Also we need something more early than cataput (reveleted by siege warfare tech) like onager from Total War enable at Matemathics

BTW
I am very proud with all earlier changes. City siege is muchmore realistic and much harder and gives more pleasure
I would love to see full functional new rams in v33

 

[Hydromancerx]

I will leave it up to TB to change them.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, cool. I did a pretty thorough explanation there of how to plot out the adjustments to the ram line. The Gatecrasher siege CC is already in our assets at this time. Nimek, please do me a favor and make an attempt to chart out the plan on these units, we'll give it a quick review, and if you like I'll then make the xml changes or you can... I can let you know exactly how to code these tags (I did write a tutorial recently that should enable you to work that out ) I agree it would be cool to see in action!

As for an earlier catapult... I think it might be cool to have a period where rams are all one can use so that the player must familiarize himself with how to use one before the usual 'catapult' comes into play.

 

[Nimek]

@TB ok give me example how to use this new tags inside XML and if you can tell me where to look for rams units in what directory??

 

[Thunderbrd]

k... will do. I'll have to do it after I get back from work tho

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ugh... give me another day as I will not have time for this yet. However, I promise you'd be able to figure it out if you read my tutorial and follow it carefully

Another tip: for finding specific game entities in the code, a sense for naming conventions, GrepWin, and Notepad++ are your best friends and allies. Doesn't take long to find what you're looking for using these tools.

 

[Nimek]

Assets/XML/Units

I changed ram first strikes from 1 to 0
Added subcombat class siege_gatecrasher (May be inncorect)
boOnlyDefensive i set to 0 to be able to attack cities
Added
<iBreakdownChance>
<iBreakdownDamage>

Everything is good but rams now are unable to attack cities when noEntryLevel tag is added to defensive structures. WE need ignoreNoEntryLevel tag to allow rams to attack city defensive structures in all circumstances.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Assets/XML/Units

I changed ram first strikes from 1 to 0
Added subcombat class siege_gatecrasher (May be inncorect)
boOnlyDefensive i set to 0 to be able to attack cities
Added
<iBreakdownChance>
<iBreakdownDamage>

Everything is good but rams now are unable to attack cities when noEntryLevel tag is added to defensive structures. WE need ignoreNoEntryLevel tag to allow rams to attack city defensive structures in all circumstances.

Ah yeah, that'd be right then. I'd forgotten about that. Plus we should have a tag that keeps them to only attacking cities, no? I'll try to get that done right away.

And does your xml remove the ranged bombardment ability?

 

[Nimek]

Plus we should have a tag that keeps them to only attacking cities,

Yes this tag will be usefulll for rams

And does your xml remove the ranged bombardment ability?

Nope. Idid not know wat tag is resposible for that. Thanks for your response.

Great job. Keep Calm and Carry on

 

[Nimek]

Another tag that will be very usefull in future city siege development is ignore zone of control (now every invisible unit should have it)

SO the new tags should be

AttackOnlyCities
IgnoreNoEntryLevel
IgnoreZoneOfControl

How the work going? It will be awesome to see it in v33.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Another tag that will be very usefull in future city siege development is ignore zone of control (now every invisible unit should have it)

SO the new tags should be

AttackOnlyCities
IgnoreNoEntryLevel
IgnoreZoneOfControl

How the work going? It will be awesome to see it in v33.

Good ideas. And to answer your question, slow. I don't have any time during the week to mod usually so its all on the weekends. I'm a little stuck on another coding project too but I can probably fit those in on the side of it along with another tag I need for some units to work properly with the withdrawal stuff.

 

[Nimek]

O I tweaked Rams and also set iCombaLimit to 100 for all rams and i notices that message about defense reduction now appears but when defense against defense reduction in city is big than rams make no harm.

City was 180% defense and after two sucesfulll rams atack it was reduced to 180%
SO i think we need another tag

IgnoreBombardProtection to make rams to ignore this protection.

NOte that rams attack gates not walls and they dying during combat so to ballance it rams should ignore bombardprotection.

 

[intlidave]

O I tweaked Rams and also set iCombaLimit to 100 for all rams and i notices that message about defense reduction now appears but when defense against defense reduction in city is big than rams make no harm.

City was 180% defense and after two sucesfulll rams atack it was reduced to 180%
SO i think we need another tag

IgnoreBombardProtection to make rams to ignore this protection.

NOte that rams attack gates not walls and they dying during combat so to ballance it rams should ignore bombardprotection.

And what happens when rams attack force fields?

 

[Thunderbrd]

O I tweaked Rams and also set iCombaLimit to 100 for all rams and i notices that message about defense reduction now appears but when defense against defense reduction in city is big than rams make no harm.

City was 180% defense and after two sucesfulll rams atack it was reduced to 180%
SO i think we need another tag

IgnoreBombardProtection to make rams to ignore this protection.

NOte that rams attack gates not walls and they dying during combat so to ballance it rams should ignore bombardprotection.

A few things to consider on this subject:
1) The structure is intended to allow rams to improve their chances and damage via promotions, making them more capable of overcoming this.

2) Apparently I do need to make a minimum of 1 damage on a successful hit as the final result due to the fact that % modifiers will round integers DOWN which I had been assuming would round up instead.

3) Keep in mind as you establish the % chance to deal damage to defenses in a given round (iBreakdownChance) is directly countered by the repel value of the defender. Thus since we have more advanced city defenses adding repel values to the defender, it becomes possible for them to get very low (I'll have to check but I think min 5%) chance to succeed in a given round. Thus it's important to consider the expected Repel level of a city defender in the era pertinent to the ram's upgrade form. In other words, we might need to increase that to counter this expected repel value a bit. The promotions should enable a player to make rams more capable of success/round so those would help a player overcome this factor as well.

So I do need to check the 'minimums' on those and we should work on designing a few promotionlines for Gatecrasher siege weapons or the system will probably lack for balance.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You linked to this thread today and I have been wondering how progress goes on converting our ram units?

And as I visit I'm reminded of a few things I should try to get to in the coding. Probably will try to do that this weekend.