[Submod] Hardcore Siege Mechanic [HSM]

This is a submod with the goal in mind to slow expansion to more historical standards while placing emphasis on an important figure leading a siege and increasing the overall immersion/difficulty for the player (the AI will not feel these effects as strongly due to certain scripts in place, although their family members will have the same as the player). The immersion increase is based on the fact that there were often numerous assaults upon a city- not just one as portrayed in MTW2. It would often take take more than 4 months (lets say 8 as a minimum and 12 as an average) which is what this submod aims to portray.


1) The player will have to merge their armies into a single large stack led by a family member. Said family member will have a set ability to build siege equipment based on their traits. Unless a Green/Blooded family member has a 'Siege Attacker' or has been trained at an academy in the art of siege warfare they will be unable to assault a city, only starve them out.

2) To stop the player from cheating and avoiding this mechanic there is a default 5000 denarii/gold flat rate for captain led stacks (and there are other higher optional rates for captains, this rate does not apply to stacks led by a family member, which have no charges applied to them). Additionally if the captain is inside of a fort or city there is no wage cost. This can also represent the costs of mobilizing your forces, the bribes to important figures, the increased strain on your treasury as you shift into a war footing etc.

3) There was no way that I could find (and I tried several other ways) to force realistic siege equipment build times without making it family member only (I tried to include captains in it too). Of course- the AI due to debt relief scripts will not be affected by this change, although the scripter @Bogia should take this change into account if you guys agree with it.

4) This also means that the AI can avoid the siege build time rate by using captain only stacks (which is on the rare side fortunately) however, it usually takes about two turns for the AI to build up enough siege equipment that it feels ready from my observation. So there is that.



Without a full stack army it will be very hard using a family member lacking siege training or other siege related studies to assault a city.


Green and Blooded family members will virtually be completed unable to build siege equipment unless they have training on the subject from studies in their schools or a siege attacker trait. Although they can still starve a city out.

Veterans will have a better ability than blooded commanders to build siege equipment (albeit slowly and not in one turn even with a full stack).

Grizzled and Seen the Elephant will find it even easier than veterans to organize and lead their sieges.


Please note there are additional cost choices within the 'Even Worse Consequences' folder. To install one- Right click on the file you want to use and then click rename, remove the 10k part (or whichever you want to use) then replace the descr_character located within your MTW2/mods/EBII/data folder.


Installation- extract the files into your MTW2/mods/EBII/data folder

Have fun!