Destroyable walls

[Markus_Aurelius]

Is it possible to make walls a building that can be destroyed???

[iberus_generalis]

I think the answer is yes.. because there is a mod, called the Burningmod by archer, in TWC, that makes almost everything burnable, wall inc..so if walls can be burned, i guess destroyed too...

[eadingas]

I think you mean destroyed on camp map, not in battle... no matter how much time you spend trying to destroy all parts of the wall in battle, the only thing you get is it gets damaged to 0%. I don't think you can completely destroy the wall as a building.

[iberus_generalis]

anyway why would anyone want to anihalate a wall?

its so fun to siege a settlement, knock down the walls, and storm the streets...and its easy too if you know how to storm a city with little casualties....breach walls at multiple places...then send in a unit to be killed...sometimes, they are able to survive...when the enemy divides its forces, send in troops through the other places...surround the enemy, and slaghter them all! simple...

[eadingas]

I can easily think of a reason to destroy a wall: you have a city with huge unrest that's going to rebel soon - you'd want to remove the wall so that when it does rebel, you have easier time getting it back.

[Warlord 11]

Or if you plan on permanently abandoning the city

[Trithemius]

Indeed! I would love to be able to trash "buffer settlements" by burning fields, demolishing walls, and obliterating palaces. Maybe I just have "issues" though.

[Zaknafien]

I agree with the theory, I'm often razing captured settlements to the ground in anticipation of a treaty with the enemy and giving the cities back; or destroying them and letting them turn back to rebels as buffer states, as you called them

But if you think about it, destroying walls is not that easy. A palisade is one thing, but dismantling stone ring walls brick by brick is a little unplausible. Possible, but would take a tremendous amount of organized effort.

[Trithemius]

But if you think about it, destroying walls is not that easy. A palisade is one thing, but dismantling stone ring walls brick by brick is a little unplausible. Possible, but would take a tremendous amount of organized effort.

Labour intensive, yes; but each turn in EB is three or so months! Walls can be reduced by sapping, presumably, and I assume its's a lot easier to dig a big ditch along one edge of the wall when the defenders are not shooting or dropping stuff on you.

It probably should not get you any cash though (and might even cost some...).

[Zaknafien]

I believe Lysander ordered the demolition of Athens' walls? Anyone know of this?

[Reverend Joe]

After the end of the last Peloponnesian Wars, yes, the walls of Athens were torn down. Quite impressive walls, as well; reached all the way to the sea, unless I am (and I very probably am) mistaken. It's a shame.

[O'ETAIPOS]

You are not mistaken, but the walls were rebuit few years later.

[-Praetor-]

its so fun to siege a settlement, knock down the walls, and storm the streets...and its easy too if you know how to storm a city with little casualties....breach walls at multiple places...then send in a unit to be killed...sometimes, they are able to survive...when the enemy divides its forces, send in troops through the other places...surround the enemy, and slaghter them all! simple...

Yeah... but just one time . At the 10th time you do the same thing, it becomes a little annoying.

But if you think about it, destroying walls is not that easy. A palisade is one thing, but dismantling stone ring walls brick by brick is a little unplausible. Possible, but would take a tremendous amount of organized effort.

Yeah, remember Carthage??? We should only call Scipio and his pals to do the job.

[Zaknafien]

Carthage wasn't destroyed though to the extent commonly thought by many today..

[edyzmedieval]

Carthage wasn't destroyed though to the extent commonly thought by many today..

No, the Romans just wiped every building off the face of the earth, burnt down the harbour, and then they brough massive amounts of salts and sprinkled it over the city and the surroundings.

[-Praetor-]

Carthage wasn't destroyed though to the extent commonly thought by many today..

Oh, this is insteresting.

Why is that?

I actually trusted the version that edyzmedieval said (that is, the most commonly believed).

[MSB]

No, the Romans just wiped every building off the face of the earth, burnt down the harbour, and then they brough massive amounts of salts and sprinkled it over the city and the surroundings.

I thought that the salt thing was just something Scipio said to his troops after Carthage was captured.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Salt was more expensive than precious metals, why would you was so much (probably more than could be found at one time) in one place?

[Zaknafien]

No, the Romans just wiped every building off the face of the earth, burnt down the harbour, and then they brough massive amounts of salts and sprinkled it over the city and the surroundings

Thats actually not true, edyz. You can look up some good archaeological studies of the sites involved and the insulae still below the surface today with whole neighborhoods, etc.. suffice to say, the walls of Carthage were immense--entire units of infantry and cavalry were garrisoned within the barracks built inside the walls.

And yes, the salting the earth nonsense is a later invention.

[Avicenna]

MAA: supposedly salting the earth prevented people from growing crops on it later on.

Another example I can think of is Megalopolis, I think, the helot state created after Leuktra. Did Corinth get its walls destroyed?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Yes, I know why they illegibly did it. My point is that salt was an extremely valuble resource that was very hard to come by. You wouldn't waste it in such a manner, if you could even get that much together in one place. The salting part of the story didn't even appear until later retellings anyways.

It is widely believed, these days, that the majority of Carthage was not destroyed and that the salting of the soil was completely fictional. (Though the Romans may have publicly thrown a hand full of salt onto the Carthaganian soil to symbolize the death and inablity of rebirth of the state of Carthage.)

[O'ETAIPOS]

Isnt this what is standing today ruins of ROMAN town build some 50 years later on ruins of Carthage, when romans found out that this is the best port location on the whole west mediteranean African coast?

Edit: Remember Romans had tens of thousands soliders plus slaves to do the job...
Alexander was building fortified cities with his army in about a month.

[Avicenna]

Could you salt with water from the ocean/sea?

[Zaknafien]

Sources aside, lets be a little realistic here.

Carthage was a huge and well-fortified city, surrounded by over 20 miles of circuit walls. Difficult to approach and with its own harbor, it was very hard to be surrounded and blockaded by Scipio's army to begin with. An especially strong tiple line of defence was based principaly on a wall 30 feet wide and 50-60 feet tall, fronted by a 60 foot ditch and timber palisade, running across the 3 mile wide isthmus approaching the city. The wall itself had two stories of rooms containing on the ground floor accomodation for 300--yeah, 300!--elephants, and above stables for 4000 horses and barracks for 20,000 foot and 4000 cavalry. True, in 149 the defenders lacked a well organized army and no evidence suggests they had any numbers of animals, but numerous volunteers ensured the defences were properly manned nontheless.

Yes, Carthage was destroyed. Sources say a senatorial comission arrived to supervise the systematic descruction--much of the city had already been destroyed by fire, and even today the archaeological site has burnt material still revealed. alot of the remaining buildings were destroyed, but it was not as complete as usually suggested. Archaeologists have discovered walls still standing several yards high beneath the Roman city. The earth being salted is a much later invention.

[Pelopidas]

In antiquity, generally, " destroying walls " wasn't smashing down every inch of stone of the wall.
Usually, te conqueror simply make holes in the structure, and that was all...and that's why they can be rebuild so easily.

[Imperator]

let's not be literalists here- Carthage wasn't completely obliterated into a pile of fine-grain dust, but it was pretty roughed up. As I understand it, it was burnt down, with the walls pulled down (of course, not literally, but probably pretty knocked up to prevent them from ever being usable again. The site was then formally cursed and abandoned- so I see a huge smoking city that is completely uninhabitable- but not denigrated or something.

note- when I said abandoned, I mean abandoned for a hundred-so-odd years until re-settled...

[Cheexsta]

In answer to the first question: no, you cannot destroy walls as far as I've seen. In export_descr_buildings.txt, there are a certain number of hardcoded prefixes for building complexes; these include temple_ (denotes temples, obviously - allows the system of having only one temple in a settlement), hinterland_ (makes a building indestructable, like farms, roads and reform buildings) and, of course, defenses, which are also indestructable. I don't believe one can make walls have anything other than the building complex prefix "defenses", though admittedly I haven't extensively tested this.

Then there's the other problem: gaining money for destroying the walls. Honestly, destroying a wall should cost you lots of money rather than the other way around.

In short: no, I don't believe it's possible.