Adding swimming units

[iamphet]

Vanilla bridge battles look too unbalanced for me so I'm thinking of adding swimming capabilities to some units.
What I don't want to do is to review each and every unit so I would prefer to do this automatically based on category, class and mass of the unit.
E.g., light and missile infantry and cavalry look like good candidates to swim unless they are too heavy or their stat_pri_armour is too high.

The extra good point is that in fact can_swim does not require BI

Any comments, ideas or even ready implementations?

[Diamondj]

I would say that the skill should be particularly common in barbarian units

[AngryAngelDD]

hmm, i would say swimming should be possible for units without heavy armor.
so nearly all NON ARMOURED skirmishers(akontistai etc.) should be able to swim.
heavier troops (Peltastai-class and up) should not be allowed to swim.

light cavalry (illyrian, german light, hippakonstistai etc.) would also do.

perhaps some light infantry (non-skirmishing ones) should receive such trait.
perhaps the roman Antesignani (from later reforms) might get this, to give them an edge over the other heavy roman infantry.


to summarize i would decide on these conditions:

scale/mail-armoured troops not possible.
none/clothes/leather armour could/should be able to swim.
linothorax(hardenend hellenic linen) perhaps, depending on unit and other factors.

heavy shield (greek aspis, roman scutum etc.) should not be able
light shield (caetra, small roman round shields etc) could be able
medium shields (thureos) perhaps, depending on other factors.


my 2cents
AADD

[I of the Storm]

Regarding the performance of swimming units in BI or other mods, I'm afraid it won't help much, since swimming is so exhausting and it seems to me that the swimming feature is somehow broken or not quite perfect. By the time they reach the other bank they're exhausted and will probably rout instantly. When they receive one or more well placed volleys while still swimming it's even worse, they rout in the water and drown. You could counter this by increasing their stamina but I'm not sure about that balancing-wise.

Apart from that, bridge battles aren't that bad in EB. When faced with proper heavies I remember having a hard time (or two) holding a bridge, even with phalangites.

[Diamondj]

I think it is purposely exhausting for the units otherwise it would be too easy, and it would almost be like not having a river at all. What you have to do is order your units swim upstream or downstream from the action and then rest on the other side of the bank.

[Pharnakes]

No archers should be able to swim. Even armoured elephants should be able to, though. An elephant can carry its own weight in water and still swim.

[Diamondj]

While Elephants are indeed incredibly good swimmers (Indian elephants can often swim from island to Island in the east indies) I think it is a little too much to expect a fully armoured elephant to be bouyant enough to make it across a river. They may be carrying several thousand pounds of armour, which of course would sink to the bottom of a river and take the elephant with it.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

An elephant can swim but it is nearly impossible to make him do so when you want him to.

[Watchman]

...then again, those animals are big enough to wade many rivers anyway...

Personally, back when I was making my BI-feature minimod for 0.8x I followed the rule of thumb that all infantry without actual body armour (starting at leather/linothorax level) or greaves, and not burdened by an overly large shield (bigger than what eg. the Peltastai have, ie. about 2 points in EDU terms = Right Out) or weapon (eg. long spears or two-handers) could swim. Ditto for any unbarded horse whose rider's war gear didn't exceed the breastplate-greaves-shield/lance level - horses are AFAIK strong enough swimmers, and that amount of war gear shouldn't burden a mount that qualifies for such heavy-cavalry duty in the first place overmuch.

[Diamondj]

An elephant can swim but it is nearly impossible to make him do so when you want him to.

Actually there are plenty of highly trained Indian elephants that do just that. Of course they may still kill you when they go into musk.

Anyways, you still may very well be correct about the 2.2 thousand year old war elephants.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I'd be interested in trying a RTW.exe mod with can_swim units. I'm both lazy and short of time to do it myself.
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[iamphet]

So far I think I would better create a "do it yourself" kit
A user downloads a program, edits config file to set desired criteria, runs the program and gets what he wanted

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Even better!
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[Markus_Aurelius]

how do you make troops swim anyways? i added can swim to a couple units but......there not swimming, what am i doing wrong here guys?

[bovi]

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I'd be interested in trying a RTW.exe mod with can_swim units. I'm both lazy and short of time to do it myself.
.

Not possible AFAIK. Only the BI executable understands swimming.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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The extra good point is that in fact can_swim does not require BI

I'd be interested in trying a RTW.exe mod with can_swim units.

Not possible AFAIK. Only the BI executable understands swimming.

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[bovi]

It's a fact that this was a new feature in BI. Did they retrofit it into RTW? That sounds like something CA would not do, ref the Kingdoms things not being added to the original M2TW campaign.

Battle Map

Improvements have been made to prevent men spilling around the base of siege
towers.
There was a pathfinding issue that made river battles very slow. This has been
fixed.
Improvements have been made to the AI when orchestrating Skirmish Maneouvres.
The AI will now use 'fire at will' with idle units so that they throw pila at
nearby enemies.
The AI will now make a decision about throwing pila before charging into combat
based on the location of enemy units.

I suppose they could have guerilla added it though.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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It may have sneaked with the patch. The only way to learn is trying but I'm *yawns* lazy...
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[iamphet]

Well, I recall I saw swimming velites in Extended Realism mod when I run it with vanilla exe (no shieldwall etc of course). There was an ugly icon instead of blue waves in unit icon.
I'm wondering whether it was because I played too long Will check.