Beefing Up Walls

[Dol Guldur]

Does anyone have any tips or crafty ways of making walls (I am speaking more of wooden walls here) an actual advantage for the besieged rather that just a death trap?

I've added a siegestarter trait to all characters which gives them a +10 command bonus when defending walls (and a concomitant reduction in siegeattack to the assailant) but of course this is limited or negated when no character is involved, and in battle mode the player is going to beat the ai most times anyway - and besides all that it actually makes little difference anyway :(

I've also remove the flanking walls from the gates and replaced them with walls with towers (so 2 extra towers per gate). This has improved things a bit although there is still a huge blindspot for them once troops get near the gate.

I've also changed the towers arrows to more of a machine gun effect. Oh, and I have reduced the ram attack to make taking down the door take longer.

Despite all these things the settlements are still too easy to take, both in autoresolve and on the battlemap.

Does anyone have any other tips? And does anyone know how to increase the range of the arrows from the towers? Increasing velocity did not work.

Thx.

[Thor the Bassist]

Upgrade walls as fast as you can!

By wooden walls I assume you mean the thin palisade walls. I have found that they are easiest to defend when using spearment as you can block all the rather predictable gaps that the enemy will batter through. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do before the enemy gets into the actual settlement but his is proberably in keeping with walls of the same type in reality. On the other hand I believe palisade walls wouldn't actually have formed settlment defenses in reality they would have been camp defenses with thicker walls being built around settlements.

Personally I dont find it too hard if there are spearmen with the shield wall capability active.

[Dol Guldur]

Thor,

Thanks for the reply - I appreciate your words but I was not asking about gameplay - this is the modding questions' forum ;)

I am looking to mod the game so that hundreds die trying to just take a gate, not just a few knocked off with arrow towers. If I can find enough techniques they may combine to produce a suitable effect.

[Makanyane]

only thing I know of that effects it at all is the 'reload ticks' in descr_walls.txt which I assume you fiddled for your machine gun effect.

If there is anything hardcoded into the stone walls being more effective you could always make the stone wall look like larger scale timber defence.

*disobeys and goes back to talking about gameplay*

trouble with modding game so walls of any sort are more effective is its tends to disproportionately dis-advantage the AI - human player normally has the sense to move units that aren't assaulting out of the way of tower fire. AI is spectacularly bad at that and will happily sit there to be shot to .....

If you could set it differently just for the ai cultures it would be more interesting.

[Dol Guldur]

I like mods with one faction playable as it gives a lot more potential for things, and the AI faction is supposed to be a bit stupid (they have far superior numbers) so no problems there ;)

I'll think about the stone wall idea but I think the animations and everything else make it too much hassle. But thx :)

Now, how to get rocks being thrown from those towers as well as arrows fired....hmmm...I wonder....

[Thor the Bassist]

I know this is modding ;)

I also know (from rather painful hours spent bashing my head against walls - pun me noooo) walls are bl**dy hard to change - possibly the most hardcoded element (other than say, stuff goes down).

I'm not sure what type of angle you're wanting to approach this from. I mean effectively the wooden walls are a larger version of my garden fence so aren't that amazing at keeping enemies out who have rams but do stop people from assaulting you immediately allowing you time to prepare for the siege.

Maybe you could change the tech tree in the strat map so the palisade is built in one turn at level 1 city (cant remember what that is) and then you spend 2 turns to build the proper wooden walls? This makes the palisade more of a temporary solution.

Meh I dont know?

[satanea juda]

I'll think about the stone wall idea but I think the animations and everything else make it too much hassle. But thx :)

EOD II has a Stone to Wood wall conversion, inc a nice big Gate house and animatied sections that don't turn into stone when they fall. Your welcome to use those if you wish. They also come with a handy ''one texture tga'' for the whole set, so easy to alter if you want to..((Wolf head shield is optional))

https://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=010viewts1.jpg

[Dol Guldur]

Hey..thank you - I will look into it! Credit, of course, will be given if used.

[Dol Guldur]

On a related note, has anyone observed what factors are taken into account when autoresolving city-defend/city-attack battles?

I need to see if I can make the outcome worse for the attacker - as far as I can see at present, walls seem to make little difference :(