Feature Requests

[Centurion Varricus]

First let me state that Im NOT connected to the EB Development Team. I'm just a fan, but I thought I'd start a thread where fans can post ideas for what they would like to see in EB/EB2

The team can then do as they will with the ideas. Here's mine for what its worth

I would like to see some kind of additional units added to the defenders army when a city is under seige. I would like to link it to a "garrison building" if possible. The units would be free (effectivly paid for by the building) and number of units and quality would be based on level of building.
Is this feature possible and would you want to implement it? Personally I find taking cities too easy when in reality, a direct assault very rarely suceeded.
Imagine tring to storm Sparta only to find it has a level III Garrison and 4 units of spartan hoplites, 2 units of cretan archers and a unit of cavalry added to whatever was already stationed there. (For example)

I also like the idea that if my assault is repelled, then there is a force ready to launch a "revenge " attack almost instantly, plus, a city that is under seige often, can spawn a large army. This may help the AI as well in so far as it wouldnt drain city resources for low level troops.

Thanks for listening

[HistoryProf]

I like the idea, but I would think such quickly levied units would be of poor quality.

So, imagine you though you just had 4 or 5 top quality units to deal with and now they are backed up by a unit of slingers, one of archers, a few hoplites and a crappy cavalry unit. Seems more realistic, and just as challenging.

[Centurion Varricus]

I was actually thinking the other way round. You think your facing a few weak units and then you find yourself up against some veterans (cause of the garrison) Your attack is therfore repulsed. As soon as you lay seige again, additional units are raised making it even harder to capture.

[Admetos]

The problem with this idea is, IIRC the units the RTW engine can't disband the units, so basically you're giving the ai free units everytime you siege. This would not be a problem if it was a human player, as you can play with a house rule to always disband them after the siege is broken, but the computer cannot be made to do this. I mean, AS already manages to send full stack after full stack at you every turn without improved money scripts, imagine what this would do...

[HistoryProf]

Elite troops don't just pop up out of nowhere, is my point. It takes time to train Spartans, like your whole life. A spy sent into a city would know what was there, most of the time. Training requires extensive barracks, fields, armories, stables, mess halls, money. A governor, in real life (historically speaking) could only quickly raise crap units - as a general rule. There were exceptions somewhere, to be sure.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

IIRC, M2TW can disband units through script. So it may be possible to script it to to make units during a seige and disband the units after the seige.

Though, I could see problems. Like the AI gets units, lifts the seige, then moves their levies out of the town, then the script can no longer find them to disband them. Or the script being unable to handle multiple turn seiges.

[Bootsiuv]

Couldn't you make them a unique unit that is unbuildable and have the script check to see if it's outside of a city at the end of any turn, it gets disbanded automatically?

My knowledge of scripting is about zero (but I do find it interesting), so I'm not sure if this is even possible.

[bovi]

I think you have to tell the game exactly where the unit is. I don't know of any way to get that information if it moves away from where it was spawned.

[Centurion Varricus]

To HistoryProf, I guess in my mind they aren't "popping out of nowhere", but are troops sent to garrison an occupied town like the Spartans did in the Cadmea at Thebes. It doesnt necessarily have to be elite troops, I just tried to give an example.
I think there are two kinds of garrison here. Troops stationed in an occupied town to control the local population or local roops/militia raised to help defend their own city against an invader.

Maybe the garrison type could be linked to the government type chosen for that city, I dont know!

I think if this feature was introduced, it would need some balancing on the part of the game developers. Although I'm sure it could produce some interesting "random" results.

I tried to imagine what impact this idea would have on the game. I figured that cities that usually get attacked quickly would have a chance to defend themselves and retaliate creating a tougher challange for the player. Seiges would be harder and have to be more carefully chosen because of the consequences of failure. The consequesces of repeated failure being even more severe.

Maybe this could be an optional feature when installing.

[Centurion Varricus]

Sorry, that should say troops/militia not "roops"

[bovi]

Sorry, that should say troops/militia not "roops"

Check out the Edit button.

[Bootsiuv]

Check out his membership....junior members can't edit posts.

[bovi]

He's a member...?

[Bootsiuv]

He was a junior member when he posted it....I'm sure of that, because thoughts of the edit button went through my mind, but then I noticed he was a junior member.

Meh....whatever. :)

[HistoryProf]

Like I said:

"I like the idea, but I would think such quickly levied units would be of poor quality.

So, (conversely to your suggestion) imagine you just had 4 or 5 top quality units to deal with and now they are backed up by a unit of slingers, one of archers, a few hoplites and a crappy cavalry unit. Seems more realistic, and just as challenging."

It's a good idea, on it's face, my only contention is that the quickly raised militia should be third rate.

[johhny-turbo]

I think that M2TW can disband units by script, I think there's a mod that does something like that when attacking cities like Jerusalem.

Anyway even if that can't be done, could it be made that those units would have zero movement? I know some units move faster or slower on the campaign map so I assume it wouldbe possible to make them not move at all.

[bovi]

Yes, I think you can disband by script if you know where they are. If they move away from where you expect them to be, you have no way to find them again.

You cannot assign movement to specific units, I think it's a setting per unit type (IE infantry, cavalry, artillery, ship).

[Bootsiuv]

What if instead of a group of units popping up, a general with an enormous bodyguard of peasants shows up in the city, and give him a trait which forbids movement?

[BozosLiveHere]

You cannot assign movement to specific units, I think it's a setting per unit type (IE infantry, cavalry, artillery, ship).

If only. We can set movement point for captains and generals. The cavalry/siege modifier is hardcoded.

[alpaca]

Yes, I think you can disband by script if you know where they are. If they move away from where you expect them to be, you have no way to find them again.

You cannot assign movement to specific units, I think it's a setting per unit type (IE infantry, cavalry, artillery, ship).

No, it works differently. Firstly you have to use kingdoms, and secondly what you do is apparently disbanding all units of a certain kind a certain faction has.

I only have the scripts for Kingdoms so I can't tell you more, especially not about how you define the kind of units to be disbanded.

Here's a half-baked idea I'm considering for II: You could create a few special bodyguard units for this script. You then spawn a few characters with armies consisting exclusively of one of these units in the city (since you spawn them you'll know the name). These characters could then be removed using the kill_character console command.
You need the special units anyways, even if you use kingdoms (because of the unit kind thing mentioned above), so the sacrifice in resources is minimal.

[Bootsiuv]

What if instead of a group of units popping up, a general with an enormous bodyguard of peasants shows up in the city, and give him a trait which forbids movement?

Would something like this be possible? Or am I totally off my rocker?

[HistoryProf]

Feature requests? Re-emerging factions!

Nothing like MTW VI, playing the Scots and having a couple of stacks of Picts pop up in the middle of your kingdom. That'll teach you!

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Feature requests? Re-emerging factions!

Nothing like MTW VI, playing the Scots and having a couple of stacks of Picts pop up in the middle of your kingdom. That'll teach you!

One of the things we are hoping to do is to have every faction capable of reemerging, unless this causes them to do something stupid.

[bovi]

No, it works differently. Firstly you have to use kingdoms, and secondly what you do is apparently disbanding all units of a certain kind a certain faction has.

That sounds like a... somewhat odd functionality to implement. For making old units obsolete perhaps ? I can't understand why they'd make that feature and not a way to disband specific units. But I haven't explored this much, so I bow to your expertise .

Here's a half-baked idea I'm considering for II: You could create a few special bodyguard units for this script. You then spawn a few characters with armies consisting exclusively of one of these units in the city (since you spawn them you'll know the name). These characters could then be removed using the kill_character console command.
You need the special units anyways, even if you use kingdoms (because of the unit kind thing mentioned above), so the sacrifice in resources is minimal.

That sounds like it could work! More evidence of your genius, beyond what revolutionizing concepts you've posted about in the AD/II forum. Will these special units take up EDU space though? They'd need the attribute that they are general's units right? EDU space is at a premium in EB .

[Vorian]

One of the things we are hoping to do is to have every faction capable of reemerging, unless this causes them to do something stupid.

A full stack of elites of a defeated faction appearing out of nowhere is stupid imo. If there is a rebellion I would imagine swarms of peasants and levies.

[BozosLiveHere]

That sounds like a... somewhat odd functionality to implement. For making old units obsolete perhaps ? I can't understand why they'd make that feature and not a way to disband specific units. But I haven't explored this much, so I bow to your expertise .

It is used to disband pagan units in the Teutonic campaign.

[alpaca]

Would something like this be possible? Or am I totally off my rocker?

Yeah sorry I didn't have the time to read the whole thread. That's basically the idea I had in mind, too. There's a maximum unit size though so you'll need multiple of them.

That sounds like a... somewhat odd functionality to implement. For making old units obsolete perhaps ? I can't understand why they'd make that feature and not a way to disband specific units. But I haven't explored this much, so I bow to your expertise .


That sounds like it could work! More evidence of your genius, beyond what revolutionizing concepts you've posted about in the AD/II forum. Will these special units take up EDU space though? They'd need the attribute that they are general's units right? EDU space is at a premium in EB .

Yep Bozos gave the right answer, CA only used it (along with the destroy_building command which has the same caveat) to mark the transition of Lithuania from their original religion to Christianity.

And yes, the extra units will take edu space. I know it's a problem for many mods (well for II it's not such a large problem because the area is of course much smaller, but for AD it'll probably be), so you might want to limit it to a few generic units and call them levy spearmen or something. They'd just be levied to the army in short time to defend their homes and would probably not be very well equipped. Maybe some veterans, too (i.e. you give them experience).

The complexity of the script itself depends on what exactly you want to do. Most people use monitor_conditions to observe whether a settlement is under siege - I'd do it a bit differently but as I said I didn't work on garrison scripts yet.

Well you seem to be reading our forums anyways so you'll see when I start on it. If you like what I come up with you're of course welcome to use the system. Otherwise, GrnEyedDvl over at the TWC is working on a garrison project and there are some existing takes on it that your scripters could check out, too.

@Re-Emergence: An example for this written by Red Spot iirc and my general explanation of how it can be implemented can be found in the script-o-rama. The only minor problem is that it requires giving every faction the ability to horde (but if you don't give them any horde units that doesn't matter) so that they can "stay alive" and be spawned a new army.

[Bootsiuv]

Thanks Alpaca....I actually had a good idea involving some sort of mod!

w00t!

I am not utterly useless.

[antisocialmunky]

Can we have more RPing elements? Characters are one part of TW that are about as bland as ever :(. Also, is there anyway of tweaking unit cohesion in M2TW? It would be interesting to see an obvious difference between well disciplined units and point and click hack and slash units.

[HistoryProf]

One of the things we are hoping to do is to have every faction capable of reemerging, unless this causes them to do something stupid.

Thanks for the response. Perhaps you could link it to whether or not any princesses were on the roster at the time of the last generals death? Or link it to the unhappiness of the populations in the defeated factions Type I areas?