A potentially controversial suggestion

[paleologos]

In my campaign with KH, after I took Syrakousai and the one eleutheroi city in Sicily, the Carthaginian army on the island attempted a siege in Syrakousai.
They were of course wiped out and with a land border established, a total war was inevitable. I took all of Sicily and landed a couple of spies in Africa, where I saw that Carthage and the two closest to it cities were garissoned by a total of five units of troops, two of which were generals' bodyguards, clearly no match for my own greek generals' bodyguards. The temptation was irresistible. So, when I took Carthage it had a population of 26000 more or less and only one unit in it's defence. Now, does anybody else, besides me, see something wrong with this picture?

So, here is the suggestion. A city that is being sieged/assaulted should get a number of defending units drafted out of it's population automatically (zero turn emergency) and with some cost to the economy (regardless of current account) due to the mobilisation of otherwise productive workforce and their number and quality should depend on the number of the residents and the level of the barracks. After (if) the sieging army is defeated the emergency draftees should get disbanded and the city's population restored, minus the casualties. I mean come on! Think realism. A foreign army comes to destroy your world, murder you and your old parents, castrate and enslave your sons and brutally gangrape and enslave your wife and virgin daughters, not at all unlike the traditional Roman way. In situations like these it is normal to expect a total citizens defence. Everybody that is strong enough to hold a rock should be on top of the walls throwing stuff at the attackers, not to mention the ground fighters inside the walls who, by the way, should get a huge moral boost effectively ensuring that all of them will fight to the death. It is unacceptable that I took, perhaps the most populus city on the map at the time, with only two units, which were also enough to depopulate it and plunder it after the battle, regardless of how many units I needed afterwards in order to garisson it.

If this change can be implemented, I strongly postulate that it should be. It will be a major improvement and an upgrade of the game difficulty, especially when it comes to blitzing.
I am looking forward to reading some feedback.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

[jirisys]

In my campaign with KH, after I took Syrakousai and the one eleutheroi city in Sicily, the Carthaginian army on the island attempted a siege in Syrakousai.
They were of course wiped out and with a land border established, a total war was inevitable. I took all of Sicily and landed a couple of spies in Africa, where I saw that Carthage and the two closest to it cities were garissoned by a total of five units of troops, two of which were generals' bodyguards, clearly no match for my own greek generals' bodyguards. The temptation was irresistible. So, when I took Carthage it had a population of 26000 more or less and only one unit in it's defence. Now, does anybody else, besides me, see something wrong with this picture?

So, here is the suggestion. A city that is being sieged/assaulted should get a number of defending units drafted out of it's population automatically (zero turn emergency) and with some cost to the economy (regardless of current account) due to the mobilisation of otherwise productive workforce and their number and quality should depend on the number of the residents and the level of the barracks. After (if) the sieging army is defeated the emergency draftees should get disbanded and the city's population restored, minus the casualties. I mean come on! Think realism. A foreign army comes to destroy your world, murder you and your old parents, castrate and enslave your sons and brutally gangrape and enslave your wife and virgin daughters, not at all unlike the traditional Roman way. In situations like these it is normal to expect a total citizens defence. Everybody that is strong enough to hold a rock should be on top of the walls throwing stuff at the attackers, not to mention the ground fighters inside the walls who, by the way, should get a huge moral boost effectively ensuring that all of them will fight to the death. It is unacceptable that I took, perhaps the most populus city on the map at the time, with only two units, which were also enough to depopulate it and plunder it after the battle, regardless of how many units I needed afterwards in order to garisson it.

If this change can be implemented, I strongly postulate that it should be. It will be a major improvement and an upgrade of the game difficulty, especially when it comes to blitzing.
I am looking forward to reading some feedback.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Very good idea... but you should have put this thread on the Europa Barbarorum II forum... i believe EB official upgrades are halted for EBII development...

I find it a very good idea and a deterrer for small armies armies attacking a single unit in a city with over 10000 citiziens

~Jirisys (meh... the true soldiers will be enough, i don't think 5000 men can hold 162 cavalry efficiently without them all dying)

[Hooahguy]

ETW has the same system, pretty good actually. but as jirisys said, work on EBI is done.

[anubis88]

What is ETW?

Empire Total War

[Belisarius II]

M2TW can be modded to do what you're suggesting. There are varies garrison script floating about that some mods have used, so it's not impossible for EBII, and may very well be a feature in the mod.

[paleologos]

M2TW can be modded to do what you're suggesting. There are varies garrison script floating about that some mods have used, so it's not impossible for EBII, and may very well be a feature in the mod.

Which part do you reffer to?

[stratigos vasilios]

M2TW can be modded to do what you're suggesting. There are varies garrison script floating about that some mods have used, so it's not impossible for EBII, and may very well be a feature in the mod.

I think DLV implimented this in their mod with some relative success? But as WinsingtonIII mentioned there problems after the siege (to reiterate: they dont disband, AI can go bankrupt, no diversity in the garrison).

Sorry to slightly move away from the OP, as the "People in Flight" event can be modded (or maybe it's there to begin with?) in MTW2, will that be a likely function with factions in EB2?

[paleologos]

Very good idea... but you should have put this thread on the Europa Barbarorum II forum... i believe EB official upgrades are halted for EBII development...

I find it a very good idea and a deterrer for small armies armies attacking a single unit in a city with over 10000 citiziens

~Jirisys (meh... the true soldiers will be enough, i don't think 5000 men can hold 162 cavalry efficiently without them all dying)

I meant a variety of troops, mostly militia quality, even in cities with high level MICs, invariably missile units and apeleutheroi and a few units with good equipment if the MIC allows it but definitly not elite troops, they should not be allowed in zero turn.

Also there is one thing I do not like about M2TW in relation to RTW. IIRC recruitment in M2TW does not draft people from a settlement and retraining will not be as quick as in RTW, where you can replenish the soldiers or reequip them of up to nine units in one turn. I believe RTW is the one for me, unless M2TW can be changed to resemble RTW in this one.

ETW has the same system, pretty good actually. but as jirisys said, work on EBI is done.

What is ETW?

[paleologos]

...In situations like these it is normal to expect a total citizens defence. Everybody that is strong enough to hold a rock should be on top of the walls throwing stuff at the attackers, not to mention the ground fighters inside the walls who, by the way, should get a huge moral boost effectively ensuring that all of them will fight to the death. It is unacceptable that I took, perhaps the most populus city on the map at the time, with only two units, which were also enough to depopulate it and plunder it after the battle, regardless of how many units I needed afterwards in order to garisson it...

I meant that every city in the game should have the ability to defend itself, even with crappy militia units. It is not normal that their population would not be willing to "die for their families", or to defend their world, their way of life. Even player owned cities that are loyal enough to only need a garisson of one unit for police duties should be able to mount a citizens defence in case of threat. The Hellenes were famous for that and as a matter of fact the concept of the hoplite was generated because of the need for defence in the absence of the ability to sustain a standing professional army. By the way, because they did not sustain a standing army they all had stone walls, even smaller towns, but not villages. What I meant to say is that this is not a matter of difficulty and challenge alone. It has to do with overall realism, for example depopulating a conquered city yields profits that are proportional to the population size. But if half the population die fighting the profits will be less. I don't think that an army that is conjured up from thin air is enough remedy.

I am afraid that we are not about to see what I am posting about, which is an automatic recruitment of a zero-turn-to-recruit militia army by the A.I. in emergencies and also the same option available for player owned cities. With work being done mostly, if not only, on EBII, realism may take another hit; IIRC M2TW does not reduce the population of a settlement when a unit is recruited. Personel in that game IS conjured up from thin air. Anyway, what are you gonna do?

[WinsingtonIII]

realism may take another hit; IIRC M2TW does not reduce the population of a settlement when a unit is recruited. Personel in that game IS conjured up from thin air. Anyway, what are you gonna do?

I actually think the M2TW recruitment system is more realistic than the RTW one. It doesn't make sense to be able to recruit the same unit over and over again simply depending on overall population. The individual unit pools in M2TW that limit how often you can recruit that unit type are much better. This way we probably won't be seeing AS Agyraspide spam because Agyraspides will only be recruitable once every 12 turns (who knows how long it will actually be, but we'll see) or something like that.

[pikeman]

I bought M2TW and I find it very hard to get used to compared with RTW....

[moonburn]

i remmeber playing an old strategy game and in that game every city and fort had a kind of "invisible" army in it wich was the garrison so maybe create such a kind of army for every city with the region basic unit of militia could work ? make it like 10% of the population automatically spawns in the city when a batle is started and then disapears once the batlemap ends ?

i mean i don´t know how that could work but it sure added a nice level to the gameplay, also for balance issues those militias shouldn´t appear if the city had recently been taken (in the last 10 turns) or if the attacking faction shares the same culture as the city udner attack and the defenders are from a diferent culture

also these militias shouldn´t contribute to the "garrison" level of a region

if it could be implemented that they only appear in the batlemap it would work great imho but ofc in the automatic resolve batle it would have to be tweaked properly

[WinsingtonIII]

i remmeber playing an old strategy game and in that game every city and fort had a kind of "invisible" army in it wich was the garrison so maybe create such a kind of army for every city with the region basic unit of militia could work ? make it like 10% of the population automatically spawns in the city when a batle is started and then disapears once the batlemap ends ?

You can make them spawn, but you can't disband them afterwards; engine limitations unfortunately. I think you can disband every single unit of a certain type through a script, but that's not really helpful unless there is only one type of garrison unit used for all factions... and that wouldn't be very historical