Accurate Towns In Rome Total War Mod Suggestion!!!

[Myrddraal]

Eadingas hasn't actually tested it I believe. It would be interesting to see if the city does get upgraded on the map if you place it as the city type in battle...

[eadingas]

Using custom plan sets you can do following things to the city map (every city map):
- change height of the base (hills, valleys, ditches, earthen embankments, etc.), and textures of the ground (out of several given ground types)
- modify street plans , walls, buildings and environment (with certain restrictions - walls must form a closed polygon with four gates on four sides, for example)
As long as you don't need to add anything else (like, a river or a sea cliff), you don't need to use battle editor. The city will also grow and upgrade as normal (you need to provide a city model for every city level, though)

I tried to start a settlement plan editor project at TWC, but none of the programmers there has time for it. It would be a project open to all modders, of course, not just EB members. Anyone willing to give it a try with me? I know what to do, but I don't know how... this would be a great help for all full conversion mods out there.

The idea with water as structure is actually quite a good one... though since you can't add animation to buildings (or can you?), it will look kinda weird.

I have the "test settlements in battle editor" on my to-do list, but the list is a rather long one :) so if anyone manages to test it before that, please do.

The minimum distance between cities is at least two tiles, since a city can't be adjacent to a province border. It might be more.

Sorry if some of this has been already said, just noticed this thread and didn't yet have time to read it through.

[Lonely Soldier]

eadingas - this is all very interesting (and seemingly good) news! Does this ability to edit cities (heights etc.) extend to making a city of multiple tiles? If you check some of my earlier posts (regarding multi-tile suggestions) you will see the main stuff I had in mind.

Epistolary Richard - Thanks for the link!

[eadingas]

Nope, and I would avoid anything of the sort, unless you're doing a very specific mod. For example, ME:TW guys could afford doing campaign city models that were larger than one tile because all their cities stay the same and never expand, so they have full control over what is where. But if you get a city model larger than one tile on regular map, coastal cities will get half-submerged in water, and it will look like Venice on a rainy day :) And before you ask, no, you can't get city-specific campaign map models...
As I said, minimum distance between two cities is at least two tiles, if not more.

[Lonely Soldier]

eadingas - Swordsmaster seemed to think it may be possible, but how much of this he guessed is unclear. Have you read the earlier posts? Post No.s 19, 20 and 21 are the main posts regarding the multi-tile concepts.

[Myrddraal]

Well on the campaign map, the minimum distance is two tiles as you can't have a city on a border...

[SwordsMaster]

eadingas - Swordsmaster seemed to think it may be possible, but how much of this he guessed is unclear. Have you read the earlier posts? Post No.s 19, 20 and 21 are the main posts regarding the multi-tile concepts.

I said I never tried, and that I wasnt sure if the cities had to have a minimum distance. Apparently you cant have more than one city per province, and if you cant have them closer than 2 tiles apart, then thats it.

What you could do although it would require an impressive amount of work, is have a "city" (as it is now, 1 tile) representing the city center, and then the 9 tiles around it representing the "urban area" you would create with the battlemap editor, and represent on a campaign map substituting dense forest tiles for village.

You could probably reuse some of the work from one city to another, but You would still need a few dozen different maps.

This is all just theory and brainstorming of course, but I dont see any reason why it shouldn't be possible.

[SigniferOne]

eadingas, would it be possible to change the height within the city (ie. to imitate Rome's seven hills for example)?

[eadingas]

Yes. Just remember that you can't put buildings on slopes, there must be flat surface on top of the hill to put a building there.
BTW, check out Myrdraal's custom tiles thread for interesting news.

[Myrddraal]

Hm, doesn't the whole city flatten it out....

[eadingas]

Not if you edit underlay. Look at any barbarian city, what do you see in the middle? A hill.

[Myrddraal]

oh yeah, but you can't make custom hills in the battle editor?

[eadingas]

oh yeah, but you can't make custom hills in the battle editor?

Not if they are in the city.
These are, I guess, two stages of making a successful city map: first, edit everything around the city in battle editor, second, edit the city itself using manual methods or, if we ever have it, the settlement editor.
Everything outside borders of the city (marked by underlay, I suppose, or by borders model, they're pretty much the same) has to be edited by battle editor. Everything inside has to be edited manually.

[SigniferOne]

Pardon my ignorance here, but what is this "underlay" you guys keep talking about?

[Lonely Soldier]

What you could do although it would require an impressive amount of work, is have a "city" (as it is now, 1 tile) representing the city center, and then the 9 tiles around it representing the "urban area" you would create with the battlemap editor, and represent on a campaign map substituting dense forest tiles for village.

You could probably reuse some of the work from one city to another, but You would still need a few dozen different maps.

This is all just theory and brainstorming of course, but I dont see any reason why it shouldn't be possible.

Swordsmaster - Thats exactly what I had in mind. Many ancient cities had their important buildings located around their central point, so doing this could be quite applicable!

[SigniferOne]

Nahh I don't think that idea is practicable. That way a besieger somehow gets automatic access to the core of the "city", and the siege battle really starts inside, with you besieging the final citadel. You will not be able to start outside of the city and storm the outer walls, but already inside it. I don't think this really justifies the cyclopean effort that will go into making those 9 surrounding tiles. I am really excited and interested in implement the 1 tile city idea, and will offer my help and contribution to the project.

[Lonely Soldier]

dsyrow1 - thanks for the offer!!! Many of the cities will probably only be one tile anyway. If you refer to some of the maps on my image placeholder post you will see what I mean. So you could possibly help with these single tile settlements while others work on the multi tile options. Also, if you check some of the earlier posts, you will see what we had in mind for the wall issue.

To anyone interested - Do any of you know the dimensions of a single campaign tile or battle map? This information would be useful in determining which cities needed the multiple tile treatment. We may in fact find from this that too few cities would need it to be bothered with.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hi, I'm starting a new mod and I'd like to cooperate with your mod if you're interested. The new mod is described here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=45319
You'll of course get all the credits for the accurate towns part. If you're interested, please post a reply in that thread.

[Lonely Soldier]

Thanks for the offer Legio! I have answered in the affirmitive on your thread! Of course this will remain the thread for the Accurate Towns project - but I am happy to discuss with Legio on his thread if he wishes! And everyone, please try not to clog his thread with discussion of this mod!

[dclare4]

Hi there Lonely Soldier,

I was wondering about this too for the mods I'm working with - WASP and ZTW. Particularly for WASP where I want to have cities like London, Paris, Berlin/Potsdam, Vienna, etc. - like the Londinium map in the custom battles, why can't we fight THERE when we fight in London in the campaign game?

There's supposedly a way to do this but it's really complicated or something. I think it was on another tw forum.

Comte de Clare

[Myrddraal]

Well Dclare, thats what weve been discussing. It was at this forum, in the general forum. Its sticked at the top of the page "Putting features on the Campiagn map (custom tiles)". Its something I worked out using obselete files in the prologue.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=43149

[Lonely Soldier]

Myrddraal - Very interesting! Especially the ports etc.! Hopefully useful for us!

[eadingas]

Possible suggestion for putting water-like thing inside the city:
There is ground_types tga map for every settlement plan. This is responsible for putting certain textures and ground types on the city map. I'm not sure where the textures are stored for these ground types, or which colors respond to which ground types (this needs to be researched), but it may be possible to use one of the colors for a "watery" texture and put good looking water on the map.
To make it impassable, you have to edit pathfinding model. This is a map of paths that units can follow in the city, and if you put the water outside these paths, units won't be allowed to enter it.
This won't work well for rivers (as pathfinding model only affects things within city) but it should be possible to add moats, ponds, small lakes etc. this way...

[SigniferOne]

Why can't we just lower the ground level, i.e. make a very deep ditch, into which the game itself fills water in, as it happens in the Battle Editor? Or make a shallow ditch, but raise the water level.

And also, no one still explained what the "underlay" was that eadingas mentioned some posts above.

[eadingas]

Is this really what happens in battle editor? I tried that, but it didn't work for me...

[Simetrical]

To anyone interested - Do any of you know the dimensions of a single campaign tile or battle map?

A single campaign map tile is 24-30 km (15-20 mi), while a battle map is 2 km (1.2 mi) square, with 1 km (0.6 mi) squared playable for normal battles and something like 1.5-1.7 km (0.9-1 mi) squared playable in city assaults. As you can see, there's a pretty dramatic discrepancy.

-Simetrical

[Lonely Soldier]

Simetrical - Thanks for this. With this in mind we may find that many of the cities are in fact small enough not to have to use multiple tiles for! This doesn't mean that we give up on the multiple tile system though!!

[Lonely Soldier]

This mod seems to have died .

But now I have a new project:

The Age of Mankind: Total War

[SigniferOne]

Not at all, I have begun a very very long term project of recreating historical Rome, with hills and all. Other people should pick up other big projects, Athens, Syracuse, Carthage, etc. We don't have to be able to add new buildings to do this, we can just be able to edit old ones.

Come to think of it, maybe I'll do Athens first, for it will be the easiest.

[shifty157]

You should put the city center on top of the acropolis. Thatd be so cool and add that much more strategy and difficulty.