Gatling towers

**hoof** · 02-26-2006, 00:16

Does anyone know how to mod siege towers to reduce their rate of fire? Right now there's no incentive to upgrade the walls beyond stone because the next two wall sizes give the attackers towers with ballistae. This by itself wouldn't be a problem, but these towers-of-death fire 2-3 ballistae shots per second, and basically mean that you cannot have any units defending the walls, because they'll get annihilated before the assault towers get in place. To top it off, these towers don't seem to have an arc of fire, so if you're in range, you're under fire.

This didn't use to be a problem because the AI never turned tower fire on before BI 1.6, and I chose not to use it myself to avoid giving me a huge advantage when assaulting towns. This gatling-ballistae is very unpleasant, unrealistic, and frustrating. Aren't bigger walls supposed to be an asset to the *defender* as opposed to the attacker?

**symball** · 02-28-2006, 14:50

don't worry about the seige towers- just place your men one wall section across from where you think the seige tower will arrive and rush them in at the last minute

**hoof** · 02-28-2006, 21:06

Tried that, got a bunch of my guys killed like that. The reason in this situation was because the towers were coming in at an angle, and I didn't expect such a wide field of fire.

Now I keep my guys below the walls, and rush them up when the towers do their final approach (when the machineguns ... er ... ballistae stop firing). I've also got a no-large/epic walls policy now, as there is really no reason to build them except to increase siege hold-out times.

That is one option, removing large/epic walls altogether. Maybe I'll give that a try.

**magnum** · 03-01-2006, 23:54

descr_engines.txt contains that stats for all siege engines including the towers. The arrow_generator, dir, arc, and interval are the lines you are interested in.

As always, back up any file before modding it!

**Cras** · 03-02-2006, 15:21

small question... did anyone ever tried to stop the gattling towers (as an attacker) in front of the wall, at a nice distance to keep them gattling?

perhaps while you land a 3rd or 4th tower all the way to the side on the walls..

**Seasoned Alcoholic** · 03-02-2006, 15:31

The siege towers' rate of fire is high IMO, but then again the defenders get the ballistae missiles from gateways and towers with epic stone walls. These impale a few men at a time, and if you get too close whilst attacking, your units will soon be weakened even before they reach the walls.

Also, these epic stone wall projectiles can fire horizontally along the walls. So when you face melee, you will take additonal casualties from nearby enemy towers / gateways, which is another disadvantage when attacking. Its best to occupy these as soon as possible, otherwise you may not have enough units left to deal with the remaining opposition inside the settlement.

**vastator** · 03-02-2006, 18:57

Originally Posted by Cras

small question... did anyone ever tried to stop the gattling towers (as an attacker) in front of the wall, at a nice distance to keep them gattling?

perhaps while you land a 3rd or 4th tower all the way to the side on the walls..

Yep, I generally use my siege towers in groups of three - two attack while the third provides covering fire, as well as being on hand to replace a tower that burns.

**TheViking** · 03-09-2006, 11:07

Originally Posted by hoof

This didn't use to be a problem because the AI never turned tower fire on before BI 1.6

im only playing on v1.3 and when the AI attack my in my cities they use shoot with their towers.

i just put my defending wall units far away and when the towers are realy close i just ran over with my melee units to defend.

thou my archers always take heavy causulties, between 10-25 men per 80 unit, cause i have them infront of the towers just to shoot down as many as possible. or if i dont have so many of archer units i have them on the ground where the towers are heading so they can shoot on enemies when they enter my walls.

**Patricius** · 03-13-2006, 03:13

As said above the those siege towers do not hold much ammunition. I keep wall units if I am defending the wall at a distance. Only fire arrow archers are allowed near in the hope of setting them alight.

BTW

I have noticed how with epic walls the exact damage is registers on siege towers, otherwise it seems like chance to take them down.

**Seasoned Alcoholic** · 03-14-2006, 19:15

Originally Posted by Patricius

BTW

I have noticed how with epic walls the exact damage is registers on siege towers, otherwise it seems like chance to take them down.

I've noticed this as well after running a few tests in custom battles, whilst tweaking a few features in descr_engines and descr_projectile_new. What I've basically done is increased the fire_interval (as hoof has pointed out above) of each projectile, but to also decrease the projectile's damage / attack attributes.

Remember to create backups before you edit the text files.

----------

The attack attributes in descr_engines look like this (this is for the standard siege tower that goes up against standard / small stone walls):

Code:

attack_stat         8, 2, arrow, 100, 100, missile, archery, piercing
attack_stat_attr    ap

Underneath this you should see each arrow projectile that can be fired from the siege tower, as below:

Code:

arrow_generator        2 21.8 3.3
aim_dir                0.0 0.0 1.0
aim_arc                1.0
fire_interval        1.5

arrow_generator        1 21.8 3.3
aim_dir                0.0 0.0 1.0
aim_arc                1.0
fire_interval        1.5

arrow_generator        0 21.8 3.3
aim_dir                0.0 0.0 1.0
aim_arc                1.0
fire_interval        1.5

arrow_generator        -1 21.8 3.3
aim_dir                0.0 0.0 1.0
aim_arc                1.0
fire_interval        1.5

arrow_generator        -2 21.8 3.3
aim_dir                0.0 0.0 1.0
aim_arc                1.0
fire_interval        1.5

Simply change fire_interval to a higher value to reduce the rate of fire.

To edit the siege tower's health value / flamability chance, you need to edit these attributes (above the attack attributes):

Code:

engine_flammable    true
engine_ignition        0.20

And further down:

Code:

engine_health        130

Edit the same values for the other 2 siege towers, which are middle_tower (vs large stone walls) and heliopolis (vs epic stone walls).

It looks like the siege_tower doesn't use the scorpion projectiles, but instead arrows. To make it fire like the other 2 siege tower types, simply edit the following:

Code:

attack_stat         8, 2, arrow, 100, 100, missile, archery, piercing
attack_stat_attr    ap

Make it look like as below:

Code:

attack_stat         8, 2, scorpion, 100, 30, siege_missile, siege, piercing
attack_stat_attr    ap

And also change this:

Code:

projectile            arrow

to this:

Code:

projectile            scorpion

----------

In descr_projectiles_new, scroll down until you reach the ballistas / scorpions section (they're near the end of the file). There are several variations of each one, the actual ballista is the ballista siege weapon, whereas the tower_ballista is the ballista projectile used with epic stone walls.

To edit the damage impact of these projectiles, simply edit these:

Code: