how can i create a unit of 1 soldier only?

[attila_of_nazareth]

i asked Halie Satanus at twc if he knew how to make a unit of only one man, he said as far as he knows the minimum limit is 4. however he also said that someone here had found a work around!
can you please help!
i am doing a mod called ‘mythology tw’ and it will have giants and monsters in it, naturally we only want one of each per unit or it would look a bit odd.

btw. if anyone is interestest in joining the team, we especially need mappers for the new campaign. we all ready have many models done and i have many skins and photo-realistic shields. the mod is going to have nice graphics without compromising speed [we hope to do this by using many vannila models, just re-skin them]. it will be a whole new game!

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=157914

please apply by pm here or at twc

[Thor the Bassist]

Here's the answer to one unit question. (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=101704)

[attila_of_nazareth]

thanks thor, i was going to try this [below], but wouldn’t it look odd?


"a) Making a unit with invisible models for soldiers and setting the model of the officer to be the model of the troops of the unit you wanted to shoot."

hmm i wonder if i can set the distance between men to be very low or even zero, e.g.

from this:
formation 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, square, phalanx

to this:
formation 0, 0, 2, 2, 5, square, phalanx

i have got units to 0.5 spacing before, i guess i can try a few things.

[Thor the Bassist]

I think the unit spacing will cause the animations to look funny on desyncronise animations option setting a bit like if you've ever got units stuck in one place and they stand on the same bit of ground but you can try it and simply run the mod with syncronised animations and it might work.

With the invisible units it would look odd because you would have units fighting who were invisible. You could set their defense to 0 and then they would all get killed really early in battle.

Myrddraal's solution is proberably best but mounts only have one attack value unless you can get the invisible mouts to fire projectiles. That is if you want a second ranged attack.

[attila_of_nazareth]

a bit like if you’ve ever got units stuck in one place

ah yes i know what you mean.
if all the units occupied the same space then perhaps it wouldn’t look like you are fighting invisible enemies.


With the invisible units it would look odd because you would have units fighting who were invisible. You could set their defense to 0 and then they would all get killed really early in battle.

i thought of this too, but the general would be 0 by default [has the same data as the soldiers]?


Myrddraal’s solution is proberably best but mounts only have one attack value unless you can get the invisible mouts to fire projectiles. That is if you want a second ranged attack.

i don’t need secondary attacks for most monsters/giants e.g. talos. so units with mounts can be 1? hmm i’ll re-read what he said, to see what he meant, but i didn’t really understand what he meant.

thank you

[Thor the Bassist]

Oh I wasn't thinking on the last post - if you can get invisible troops with 0 attack 0 defense etc and then put 0 on the unit spacing it will work but it may give you a huge error if the unit spacing has a hardcoded limit. If not you could get a really good effect. I didn't link the two ideas.

The mount one has to be done well as it has some unwanted effects (so I've heard).

[attila_of_nazareth]

thanks thor, you have been most helpfull.
i’ll try a few of those ideas out and get back to you in a few days, just so you know if they work or not ~ for future reference.

p.s. know any mappers :beam:

[Thor the Bassist]

I am a battlemapper/settlement designer but am much too busy at the moment sorry. I can't think of anyone who isn't on another project. You could advertise at mod discussion or ad a new post in your thread at the forge - if you have one (remember forge is one mod, one thread).

[Myrddraal]

the number of soldiers is based on the number of riders.

If you put 12 invisible riders per mount, and make the unit size 6, then even on large unit sizes the 1 mount will be 1 unit I believe.

[attila_of_nazareth]

thanks mate!

i just tried that and got 48 talos’s [giant men] strangely i got no elephants at all! [and i didnt make them invisible]

i used cathage war elephants:

dictionary carthaginian_elephant_african ; War Elephants
category cavalry
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier carthaginian_elephant_crew, 12, 6, 1
mount elephant indian

should i be using the model as the crew? here i used it to replace the 'indian elephant' model and skin.

here’s the dmb entry [test]
type elephant_indian
skeleton fs_s1_barbswordsman
scale 9.0
indiv_range 40
texture carthage, SPARTA/data/models_unit/textures/01m_talos_CARTHAGE_GENERAL.TGA
model_flexi_m data/models_unit/officer_carthage_general_high.cas, 15
model_flexi_m data/models_unit/officer_carthage_general_med.cas, 30
model_flexi_m data/models_unit/officer_carthage_general_low.cas, 40
model_flexi_m data/models_unit/officer_carthage_general_lowest.cas, max
model_sprite 60.0, data/sprites/carthaginian_general_sprite.spr
model_tri 400, 0.5f, 0.5f, 0.5

[Makanyane]

did you also try changing the number of riders for it in descr_mount.txt?

Myrddraal was suggesting using twelve riders - the default is only three. If it uses more riders - you'll get less 'elephants' (your carthage general)

Also you can use 6 instead of 12 in the EDU entry.

You've replaced the elephant element with your general model so although he's human shaped he'll be acting like an elephant! He has become the mount. That is the right way around to do it if you want fewer units.

If you haven't made the crew invisible yet, you won't see them in most conditions anyway because your general doesn't have a proper place on his skeleton to attach them to. They will appear at odd moments though especially when they die, so you need to give the crew an invisible skin by excluding everything from the alpha channel in its tga.dds

[attila_of_nazareth]

ah i see! the men are there btw they were hidden by the sheer size of the giant lols.
he doesn’t act like an elephant at least he is not on all fours.

now i just got to change the movement speed and the way he attacks, at the moment he acts like other soldiers but slashes away in the air.
thanks a lot makanyane!

how many riders must go in desc mount? i put 12 and got an error

[Makanyane]

yeah I didn't mean he'd be on all fours... the skeleton animation you use in DMB determines that bit, but you should find that he's throwing other units around and 'trampling' them


note he can only use the secondary attack in EDU as an attack - the primary attack goes to the riders and as they aren't attached properly to the mount will give crash if they try to use it.


in descr_mount.txt - did you also add offset's for the right number of riders? if you look at existing ones it has


tusk_radius 5
riders 13
rider_offset 0.0, 4.75, 5.224
rider_offset 1, 4.94, 3.0
rider_offset -1, 4.94, 3.0
rider_offset 1, 4.94, 1.9
rider_offset -1, 4.94, 1.9
rider_offset 1, 4.94, 0.8
rider_offset -1, 4.94, 0.8
rider_offset 1, 4.94, -0.3
rider_offset -1, 4.94, -0.3
rider_offset 1, 4.94, -1.4
rider_offset -1, 4.94, -1.4
rider_offset 1, 4.94, -2.5
rider_offset -1, 4.94, -2.5
for oliphant - 13 riders = 13 rider_offset lines required.

EDIT:(I must admit I've had trouble getting these type units working properly too! Ours did in the end but he was meant to have 12 per unit so set ups a bit different)

[attila_of_nazareth]

makanyane, hi


you should find that he’s throwing other units around and ‘trampling’ them
that looks ok when you have a giant taller than the trees lol [9.0 scale]
i use the elephant indian, it has 3 riders, so i presume then that i make it 1 rider and 1 offset!

tusk_radius 2.0
riders 3
rider_offset 0.0, 1.225, 1.306
rider_offset 0.0, 1.1, 0.5
rider_offset 0, 1.1, -.25

to

riders 1
rider_offset 0.0, 1.225, 1.306


thanks for your help mate, this has been surprisingly difficult.

[Bardo]

I have posted some info in the complete edu guide related to this topic. I'm sory I didn't see this thread before:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=88860&page=3


the number of soldiers is based on the number of riders.

If you put 12 invisible riders per mount, and make the unit size 6, then even on large unit sizes the 1 mount will be 1 unit I believe.
I'm afraid it is not than simple, but something similar is possible. The number of riders acts as a maximum of crew for a certain mount, but it does not define the number of soldiers per mount. It is the EDU entry soldiers/extras, I think.
If you make the unit size 6 and the number of riders 12, it will appear 12 soldiers with 2 mounts on large settings, and 24 soldiers with 4 mounts on huge. I have tryed it for long time until I have found the effect of the attribute general_unit over the minimum soldiers of a unit.

Note: sorry for talking about the same issue on several threads, but I have found it interesting enough to redirect all them to my answer.