Tower and Walls

[Carl]

Thanks Foz, I'll be intrested in your results, I've been doing a lot of messing myself with limited results. On thing thats doesn't work is copying the Arrow Tower entry (minus the level line), in after/before the Ballista/Cannon lines, but without knowing how the file is formated i'm not sure i'm entering it right their.

[Foz]

Things I've tried:

EDB
- Putting two tower_level lines in the same capability section of the towers in the EDB. One was always ignored (i.e. the towers continued to only shoot one kind of ammo).
- Putting two different level numbers on the same line in the capability sections of towers in the EDB. Like "tower_level 1, 3" which CTD'd the game at startup due to parsing error. Multiple other ways also didn't work: the game simply won't take multiple numbers for a tower_level line.
- Putting two different capability sections for each tower in the EDB, using each as home to one of the 2 needed tower_level lines. This again caused the file not to parse correctly. Apparently... there can be only one.
descr_walls.txt
- Putting two stat blocks in each level{}. The game loaded and worked, but towers only fired one kind of projectile.
- Putting a cannon stat block just before the level{} entries in each wall level. Again it loaded fine, but failed to fire any cannonballs, just the usual ballista shots.

Running out of options here...

It's really beginning to look like it just won't accept the attempts to have more than one type of shot firing at the same time from towers. I would guess that either the devs didn't anticipate ever doing this so only 1 is ever looked for, or that it's an intentional design limitation to prevent any possible problems.

I did find out some good information about how things work though. I was testing in a Citadel where I had built ballista towers... then switched over to controlling Spain to go crush the place (Toulouse). First thing I noticed is that it's the tower_level line in the EDB that determines what sort of slits you get in the tower wall for shots to issue from - 1 links to the arrow ones, 2 to ballista, 3 to cannon. If we can mod that relationship at all, then I haven't seen where it is that the slit models are linked to the tower levels in the files. It also looks like those entries do point to the corresponding level{} in the walls file, and so tell the tower which ammo to select.

As expected, the tower slits have no connection to the ammo fired, which is in fact determined by those stat blocks in each level{} of the walls file.

The strangest thing was that it seemed the tower_level entries in the EDB were referring to the wrong wall levels in the wall file - specifically, I was doing a lot of changes to level 4 which should be the highest one, and used for citadels and huge cities. However, even though I set my towers to all give tower_level 3 in the EDB, and removed the cannon stat block from the level 4 wall->3rd level tower, the towers of the settlement continued to open up with cannon fire. It wasn't until I removed the other cannon entry, the one for the level 3 walls, that the settlement stopped firing. I checked several times to make sure I correctly noted the settlement's walls that were built and the other specifics - it was a Citadel, w/ a Ballista Tower that I modded to grant tower_level 3, yet none of the wall level 4 changes affected it ever. Strange happenings.

Could be that 1 is subtracted from the number before it is referenced by the game - there is much disparity in how the game numbers things. Several systems begin at 0, others at 1, so it could easily have happened that the coder thought he had to convert it, when really he didn't. Anyway it's possible some other weirdness is the source, just wanted to mention that something a bit funky is definitely going on with the way the game uses the file.

[dietre]

I noticed while playing the game that towers only fire 1 type of ammo and fire very slowly. MY fix >>>> go into walls.txt and where it says MANNED: 1

change this to 2, 3, 4 , 5 for the levels.

2 will allow 2 arrows to fire, 3 will fire 1 ballista, 2 arrows, ect

so the last will usaly fire 1 cannon shot, 2 ballista, and 3 arrows.

you can also change the reload times which could allow fast arrow firing

[Carl]

Hey, nice info, i'll try to check it out later, but thanks for that info.

[Foz]

I noticed while playing the game that towers only fire 1 type of ammo and fire very slowly. MY fix >>>> go into walls.txt and where it says MANNED: 1

change this to 2, 3, 4 , 5 for the levels.

2 will allow 2 arrows to fire, 3 will fire 1 ballista, 2 arrows, ect

so the last will usaly fire 1 cannon shot, 2 ballista, and 3 arrows.

you can also change the reload times which could allow fast arrow firing

Nice! We've all been wondering what the heck that setting was for, lol. For the sake of completeness can you actually list each value and what the towers fire when that value is set? It'd be helpful to have an easy reference chart