Making the game allow me to siege assault on the strategic map w/o siege/infantry

[orgo.love]

Hi there.

I've tried literally EVERYTHING I could think of to make the campaign allow me to siege assault using just Elephants. Of course, in custom battles, even one unit of elephants are allowed to siege assault without any siege equipment or infantry. However, on the strategic map, even if I have an army completely made of elephants, the game does not let me siege assault. It first asks me to build siege equipment, and once built, says assault is impossible because infantry is required to operate the siege equipment...

EVEN THOUGH the elephants could attack the main gate! :(

Is there ANY WAY possible to make this happen? Man. This is really disheartening...

The only thing that I thought would be needed was to change a unit such that the game allowed it to fight by itself in a custom battle siege assault, without any infantry or siege equipment. And this worked.

However... in the campaign map, it's not letting me siege assault, even with the same units... :(

I'm really getting frustrated now :(

Man. M:TW was so easy in this aspect! I could mod everything just through the text file, and even archers could assault and take down stone walls if given enough ammo and damage.

Why did they have to make hardcoded changes?? :(


This was one of the ultimate goals of my modding for RTW... If I cannot get this to work, I might as well give up and go back to M:TW or begin modding M2:TW...

[Horseman]

Hmmm something is wrong, in my game having elephants does let me siege and assualt same turn, no modding required to do that either!

Something may be wrong with your install

[orgo.love]

Actually, the "elephants" I'm referring to are units I've modded as "elephant" classification to be able to attack gates...

Edit: I tried again just now, with non-modded normal units. With Yubtseb elephants in fact...

An army composed of -one- unit of yubtseb elephants assaulted carthage on the first turn. Unfortunately, the "assault city" button was grayed out.

Is there something wrong with my game?

[orgo.love]

Just tried again, this time with an army made of 1 unit of cataphract elephants. No use...

Tried an army of 20 units classified as elephants. Still didn't work. :( Is there something I'm missing? Are siege battles in the strategic maps ONLY possible with siege equipment+infantry or siege engines?

[orgo.love]

Pic of my symptoms:



Help?? :(

[Makanyane]

Could you post your export_descr_units.txt entry for them, I suspect its something to do with settings in that, but can't think of what off-hand at the moment.


I've managed to have problem the other way around before.... where 'elephant' thought it could assault city on own according to campaign map, but just stood there like an idiot when it got to wall / gate in battle map, so there must be some combination that triggers each part!

[orgo.love]

So is my symptom really a problem? Can other people assault cities with just an elephant army? Perhaps I should re-install R:TW?

Here's my unit entry for the elephant above:

type             merc elephants
dictionary       merc_elephants      ; Mercenary War Elephants
category         cavalry
class            heavy
voice_type       Heavy_1
soldier          greek_elephant_crew_merc, 18, 6, 1
mount            elephant african
mount_effect     horse +4, chariot +8, camel +4
attributes       sea_faring, can_run_amok, frighten_foot, frighten_mounted, mercenary_unit
formation        7, 11, 13,16, 1, square
stat_health      1, 12
stat_pri         6, 3, arrow, 120, 60, missile, archery, piercing, none, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr    no
stat_sec         6, 8, no, 0, 0, melee, other, blunt, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr    area, launching, ap
stat_pri_armour  0, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour  13, 3, flesh
stat_heat        -1
stat_ground      0, 1, -6, -1
stat_mental      8, normal, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 2690, 490, 270, 410, 2690
ownership        slave

and the mount entry for the elephant:

type				elephant african
class				elephant
model				elephant_african
radius				5.5
x_radius			1.3
height				3
mass				15
banner_height		1
bouyancy_offset		3
water_trail_effect	elephant_water_trail
root_node_height	2.52
attack_delay		1
dead_radius			2.5
tusk_z				3.0
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

I'm thinking about re-installing Rome and see if there was a problem with my installation...


Are other members really able to assault cities with just units of elephants?

[Makanyane]

I'm suspecting that maybe it elephants that just attack as elephants - eg with tusks (secondary attack only) can assault, but ones with missile firing riders maybe can't.

Try switching off your missile firing riders by using

stat_pri 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,0.7
stat_pri_attr no

(I know that doesn't help what you are trying to do if it is the case - but would determine if that is your problem - I doubt its a problem with your RTW installation!)

and yeah my elephant ogres definitely allow an instant assault

[orgo.love]

I'll test the vanilla elephants and get back to you. (Basic Carthaginian elephants w/o any archers)

EDIT: Nope. not possible. I'll test whether the "attacking with elephant" capability is faction limited... though since you can use your elephant ogres immediately, that's probably not the case.

[orgo.love]

WTF????? As carthage, even the basic elephants can siege assault!



The information for whether elephants can siege assault or not must be faction-limited somewhere... but where???

Actually, no. Maybe the wall level was different. I'll check.

[orgo.love]

???? At stone_wall levels or higher, the elephants can't assault... Wtf? what is this...

[Makanyane]

ah that explains the problem...

I realised they only went for wooden bits, eg. the earlier pallisade type walls, and I thought for gates as well?!

So maybe it lets them attack gates in the custom battle stone walls (I'm sure I've seen them dying under boiling oil) but doesn't count it as a valid enough assault method to use from strat map? (I probably wasn't paying any attention to whether my guys could still do it when city/wall size was larger)


Trying to change anything about that would mean looking at the walls files probably and not the elephants, you might be heading into hard-coded territory though. (might just be related to the wall level in export_descr_buildings.txt and not anything about the actual wall model/stat set up.

[orgo.love]

: (


Sorry for the late reply. I was just looking through the blue lotus list, and it seems like they already did my idea through fireball monks :/ I'm a little disappointed.

Anyway...

I don't know where to go from here. the ONLY units that can attack both buildings and units with impunity seem to be siege units. However, siege units seem extremely complicated to mod, and their movement range in the strategic map just sucks.


Two ways:

1. spend another week trying to figure out how to change siege engines and siege engine movement speeds

or

2. Just limit the wall levels of all cities to wooden palisades. Highly unlikely.


I wonder if the defense is limited to the "name" of the walls, or to the levels. Meaning, if I give them a defense with a "name" of wooden palisade (i.e. level 2, I think?) but give them wall level 4 in the EDB file-perhaps this will allow the elephants to still attack.

Still, this would only be a patch-up solution though. Testing right now, will get back to you shortly.

[orgo.love]

Ok. I edited the EDB file to give wooden_walls the following:

            capability
            {
                wall_level 4
                tower_level 2
                gate_defences 2
                gate_strength 2
            }

I gave the victim city wooden_walls, and assaulted with regular elephants. I was indeed able to assault the buildings.

Unfortunately, when I entered the battle map, I saw that the city still only had wooden walls, despite the capability change. It's making me believe that perhaps the walls are not tied to EDB capabilities at all.

[Makanyane]

hmm, oh well keep looking at the wall stuff - there are stats for the walls and you can change which wall models are used when, see descr_walls.txt


as for getting seige engine to look like something else, only thing I found to do that was for a single looking unit only. Have a one engine, siege engine unit, use any cas you like for the engine model but make sure it has an invisible texture, problem with that if its anything big you still see the engines shadow, you can use

engine_model_group normal
engine_skeleton onager
engine_collision data/models_missile/sling_stone.CAS
engine_model data/models_missile/sling_stone.CAS, 40.0

so that the engine and shadow is just very small stone bobbing around somewhere....

Assign the thing you want to look like the fireball thrower as an officer for the siege engine. Give the siege engine an invisible crew (invisible alpha'd out textures.) Move the firing point of the engine so it looks like fireball is coming from officer position.

Remaining problems, probably still can't move through woods, and probably still slow on campaign map, also if the visible officer unit dies before rest of invisible crew you get some fairly strange effects.



Dol Guldur was trying to get a fireball throwing giant for his Balor unit in GAFM which was where I ended up discussing above ideas. Have a look around the files for that and see what he used in the end.

As I've mentioned his name now he might turn up and give some advice too
*cough* DG....

[Dol Guldur]

Not only BL, Wheel of Time had fire-ball throwing Aes Sedai (witches) way back in 2005. :)

Wish I'd seen this thread earlier - could have told you about the level limitation, though I was unware of any differentiation between CB and SM.

[Myrddraal]

Don't be dissapointed if something has been done before, just do it better

[Dol Guldur]

Yep, look at GAFM - and the blunderbuss unit (Christmas mini-release) may also be of interest.

But Mak has really looked more into this than me, FATW requires no such fantasy ;)

[orgo.love]

A couple questions:

1. Can you have a siege engine that requires 0 crew? That way an engine can be given one "escort" that can walk through.
2. Is the speed of the siege engine dependent on the skeleton size of the engine?


Finally, a request for the rest of ppl: may I see the entries for a unit that has the coding for siege units but on the battle map seems like a normal "unit"?

[orgo.love]

Hi Dol_Guldur.

I am looking at GAFM right now. I haven't actually played it because I don't want to overwrite what I've done so far.
(is there a way to play this without overwriting the "original" data folder?)

I've looked at your "fom balor eye" thing.

Questions:
How does it look in game? (giant floating eye?)

What is its firing rate (as in how fast does it shoot)? (like regular onagers?)

How did you take care of the "loading/reloading" animation and the sounds associated with it? (it's still there or no?)

Are the crews visible? (isn't it still possible to make the # of crews 1?)
Can it move through forests in the battle map? Strat map?

How fast can it move in the strat map/battle map?

Did you use 3d modeling to make a new balor eye skeleton?

Does the onager skin still show? Or is it a giant eye, despite using the "onager" entry in the "engine type"?

Do the "onagers"-aka eyes- have similar hp as regular onagers?