Bigger than Huge unit sizes

[spursdan21]

Hello to all this is my first post in about a year (new account).

Since i've had Rome i've experimented with the scripting a lot and been fairly successful with it having some fun along the way so i'm not a complete idiot to the subject; but now im stuck.

I remember seeing quite a while ago that someone had managed to exceed the 240 men per unit limit by adding the unit again as an animal attatched to the same unit. This meant for example that 240 barbarian warband had another barbarian each as an animal (behaving like normal warband) giving 480 men. Sadly I cant find the article/post again. I understand how it is done though I think.

The problem I have is I have installed RTR platinum 1.9 which doesn't use animals. I thought I'd just add the animal line again into the descr_export_unit folder where it should be and it will be ok: it isn't. The script file reads the stats in order so where it would normally read;

soldier
officer
ship
engine
animal
mount
mount_effect
attributes

in the case of the Macedonian Chalkispides (which i'm trialling the bigger size with) it doesn't need the lines officer, ship, engine, animal, mount or mount_effect. It looks like this;

soldier egyptian_agema, 60, 0, 1
attributes sea_faring,hide_forest,can_sap

so when I add

soldier egyptian_agema, 60, 0, 1
animal macedonian chalkispides
attributes sea_faring,hide_forest,can_sap

it tells me on the -show_err that i have no attributes set for the Macedonian Chalkispides- because the line has moved down one. Perhaps i'm using the wrong unit name in the animal line (but i have followed the wardogs pattern of wardogs.... animal= wardogs)? Is it RTR platinum telling whatever reads the script to ignore any line beginning "animal"?

If the problem is in the export_descr_unit_enums file i haven't ever used it before but will pick it up quickly and will be eternally grateful for any help. Something to ponder for all.

Thanks,
Dan

[spursdan21]

Excuse the double post. I looked further into it and added the unit to the descr_animals script and into the animals section of the descr_models_battle script. Dont fully understand it yet but its trial and error; the closest I came was when half of my army ran at the enemy unarmed at very high speed... barking loudly. haha

[Red Spot]

thats not the closest you will come ... thats the closest anyone will come ...

You basicly have made an army of men that has dogs that look the same as the men, like you're taking your dog for a walk but cant see the difference between looking at your dog or looking at the mirror ....
They are dogs and dogs run faster than men (open for discussion, but hey its a game ...) and come without weapons except for teeth ...


The concept can work though, but more in a mod like FATW, where they could for instance have say an "orc handler" and than have it lead around 300 dogs with the look of minitur orcs, having them melee with their teeth may not look all that bad with such a unit ....


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[Aradan]

Well I *think* you can make the model seem like using a weapon constantly, change the skeleton and replace the barking sounds, but the hardcoded issues (no exp gain for 'dog-kills', uncontrollable 'dogs' etc) are un-solvable afaik. If this idea was doable, then a big mod would have done it by now I think, ar at least try to.

[Red Spot]

I'm convinced that if a team like the FATW-team puts it mind to it they can pull it of, I see it as no different than the "tweak" made to get that huge Orc in game ... ;)

(that is if the "no exp" "uncontrolable" etc etc are no issue, why exp. if they get retrained automaticly anyway :D)


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[spursdan21]

Thanks for the words anyway guys, originally I was thinking how to get around the limiting 20 units per army, then I thought hey Ia can double the unit sizes again I'm sure I've seen it.

What's come to me now, looking through the scripts is that I'm now almost sure it can in some shape or form be done; better than doubling my (and all other) phalanx sizes, I could attatch smaller numbers of swordsmen or peltasts to them to make the game more realistic. I then dont need to waste a unit card on peltasts or back up swordsmen because i already have them and can use more phalanx or cavarly units. Added to this I could effectively remove most of the peltast types from the game as stand alone units and replace them with different attatchment units in the recruitment list; 240 chalkispides with 40 hypaspists or 240 chalkispides with 80 peltasts for example. This should also encourage the computer to build more battle line type units and genuinely inflict casualties on me.

Problems of course come from removing the phalanx's secondary attack of swords to assign it to whatever the extra unit uses, and I can see seiges being disasters. Open battles should be excellent if I can get it all working though. I say phalanxes because thats what I'm testing with and what I always love to use, I wouldn't make the game unbalanced I would fiddle all units. If there was a way around only having 20 units per army I wouldn't bother.

Here's to praying Empire doesn't give us a maximum of only 20 too (yet screenshots look horrifically like it will).

[Red Spot]

Well what you want doesnt work, "dogs" dont have a secondary attack and nor have handlers so phalanxes with a complement of "dogs" will only be able to use their phalanx ...

you can give them like a "trown spear" as primary and a sword or spear as secondary but it just means that they trow the spear and than fight "empty handed" with the stance dictated by the primary skeleton ...


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