CREATING A MAP WITH MULTIPLE SETTLEMENTS

[STELLover]

Hi HSP team

I am STELLover and this is my 5 year making custom battles (funny thing to say)
I have some documentation to the developers of this awesome team, that it is surely possible to incorporate multiple settlements in a single map- as Jan has also discovered. This would surely be to some degree useful when imitating huge medieval cities like Constantinople, London, and Bagdad.



Here I have included 3 settlements: A Citadel on the Top, a Huge City on the Right, and a Castle at the Bottom

All you have to do is:

1- After emplacing a settlement. Save and turn off the game

2- Go to the Map Folder in World/Maps/Custom and open Descr_battle

3- In the following scripted lines following: delete the following
+++++++++++++ settlement {blah blah blah} ++++++++++++

4- Save and Close

5- Open the Battle. Your city will still be there but will be merely a placeholder, but can still function as a city.


Please give credit to Jan and KingTheoden1 also

Thanks,
STELLover



PS: MULTIPLE SETTLEMENTS=MAJOR LAG!!!! (Thats why I turned down all shadows and filters)

[Walkman810i]

Very nice

+rep

[Hengest]

This would be good for places such as Cairo/Fustat. Also in Cilicia there were three massive settlements about 20km apart from each other.

[Monarchist]

! Imagine the bloody drain on men that would be entailed in committing to battle there. This map makes me think of the First World War, with German attempts to take Verdun frustrated by two huge forts. Perhaps a medieval version of that sort of battle could be attempted. +rep when I am able to give out more.

[Treize]

But can you place men in all three as a defender?

[STELLover]

But can you place men in all three as a defender?

Yes, I tested, and all mechanics work, its just that when you place multiple settlements, only one will be the primary objective for the AI, and the rest just become stage extras

[Treize]

That's very cool!

Maybe you can block of the approach to a main city with a stone fort or something like that?

[Meister Röhrich]

@STELLover: Man, you are a big help and I think in the name of our team I can say we are very thankful for that, now it's getting really epic! But I have one question: wouldn't it be more simple to just place a settlement without ownership but as ambient? That way there shouldn't be any entries about it in descr_battle also or am I wrong?
PS: If you know also a method to implement created settlements in campaign, please let us know too!

EDIT: works also without changing descr_battle as I described above!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

@IPA35: should be possible in my opinion but have to be tested!

[Goodfella]

This would be good for places such as Cairo/Fustat. Also in Cilicia there were three massive settlements about 20km apart from each other.

Also, Constantinople could be improved to resemble something like this.



Obviously the section of the city i've highlighted would be the 'multiple' settlement.

[Meister Röhrich]

OK, I've tested it now with an ambient and a normal settlement on one map, trying to get the AI to attack both of them, actually some of the results were really strange:
I made the map that way to force the AI to advance the castle through the city.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

First: Both armies can go through the gates without collision, so the AI didn't need to take the city, anyway pathfinding between the buildings was fine.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Second: I could not "man" the towers, so they would shoot arrows, they seem to keep almost neutral, although the ownership (turks) was confirmed when pointing at them.
Third: the castle gate, maybe for that reason, was at first locked but after I moved out and in again with my bodyguard unit it didn't closed so enemies could walk in easily!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

All in all it seems not to be very promising to use ambient settlements as a "second defensive" but maybe STELLover has s.th. to offer?

[Ma'ahes]

Also, Constantinople could be improved to resemble something like this.



Obviously the section of the city i've highlighted would be the 'multiple' settlement.

Wouldn't it be better to just have that as a PSF? From the images I've seen of ancient Constantinople, there were two bridges going from that side to Const. Perhaps that would be the easier way to conquer the city, rather than going through all those other walls.

[STELLover]

Hmm? are you sure about this Der?

What you said above, it is possible to have them belong to a certain ownership but also as ambient.
Yes, I have also faced some problems like this as well, but at least I can defend my gates!!


EDIT:
About implementing custom maps into campaign

KingTheoden1 has seeminglessly worked hard to try to attempt this, as achieving this feat was near impossible in Medieval 2
engine. Rome works fine, but it is hard to do in medieval because of the new engine. Every unique mod wanted to implement its own unique settlements, but was not succesfuly able to do this on campaign.

It is not the curved walls or huge leveled castles- its the implementing that is making everyone's pain in the back

Yea , i tried adding the custom Helm's Deep map to the settlement tile HD is on in the camp-map , but i crashed . Than , i had the idea of making a script , but unfortunately , there is no command 'give_settlement' , thus it's not possible/pretty hard to make a script for it .

Unfortunately , noone knows how to add custom settlements to custom tiles that have cities on them . I think that some mod team was able t do it , but i don't know which one , or i don't know if they're still active ..

There is a way to script it though , although it's not really practical . But it is possible

EDIT : This would be the script :
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Code:
scriptdeclare_counter HBscriptmonitor_conditions I_SettlementOwner Helms-Deep = milan set_counter HBscript 1end_monitormonitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal and I_CompareCounter HBscript == 1 and I_CharacterTypeNearTile france named_character, 1 157,167 engage_armies Ugluk, Erkenbrand if I_WonBattle france move_character Erkenbrand <somewhere on the map> end_ifend_monitorwait_monitorsend_script





Explanation ? I would put Helm's Deep behind a unmoveable Rohan army . Whenever a named character of Isengard is 1 tile away from that army , they engage . I put the Helm's Deep custom map (made by jan) on the tile the Rohan army is on . Whenever the Isengard army is near , i spawn a general in it , so it's easily scriptable . then i let them fight . If Isengard wins , they'll be able to siege Helms-Deep .

I know it's far from perfect , but it's a way

A mere test to import the Helms Deep custom map made for TA:TW, but failed with a crash on mine also- saying it has multiple script/campaign errors and also the Hb0112 code error which means an engine failure.

[Meister Röhrich]

Yeah, it's a strange thing about the gates! I have to test more, maybe I did it wrong somehow, I'll also test your method to be sure there is no difference between them.

For campaign: Since it seems nearly impossible to implement our settlements into campaign we have to discuss if it is still useful to create new ones, except for historical battles! So everyone of the team and of course others too, is welcome to post his opinion how to act next: creating a few, but important and accurate historical siege battles like Constantinople 1204, that would later become part of Dots and waiting for a solution to implement further ones in campaign OR should we go on finishing the most important cities with the risk that in the end all work was for nothing?

[Sutman]

In my opinion you should continue, because there are some really talented people trying to solve this problem and they probably will once they turn their attention completely to fnding a solution, and once that's solved there'll be a collection of great cities waiting to be implemented so it'll give some motivation to those people

[Treize]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question;
Is it impossible to ask CA?

[Meister Röhrich]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question;
Is it impossible to ask CA?

Don't know, can't imagine whom to ask, but also I doubt that they would help us to create "MTW III" and make them unemployed!

[retep219]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question;
Is it impossible to ask CA?

Oh, of course it's possible. How many years to you want to wait for?

[Meister Röhrich]

Oh, of course it's possible. How many years to you want to wait for?

Nah, don't be so sarcastic he just wants to help, and I have to confess, I also thought about contacting CA!

[Achilla]

Nah, don't be so sarcastic he just wants to help, and I have to confess, I also thought about contacting CA!

Tbh I think they don't know themselves ...

Plus, it's practically impossible to contact any people who worked on M2TW and M2TW:K, whether employed or not. Lots of dead links on the site, SEGA support unauthorized and unqualified to give you any answer, corporate and private e-mail's under protection ...

Even if you pester currently employed ETW crew over official forum you will get nothing as a response. If you ask me, that's very pathetic of them, but you know, there seems to be some unofficial hate and prejudice towards modders in general both over CA and especially at SEGA, who see our activity as a threat to their brilliant DLC business and game development skills.

Either way, consider contacting them a waste of time. If there is something modders won't find out themselves, there is no one who will figure it out for us. Just like no one will figure out all of the caveats of Battle AI and scripting through campaign_script.

I would be very much surprised if after release of DOTS and EBII in the future M2TW modders could improve on any area and make any discovery.

So, as to say, the peak of modding this engine has almost been exhausted to death.

If by 2012 modding tools for Empire won't be released, then expect a decline of modding TW series in general.

[Goodfella]

Hold on a minute, im puzzled.
So basically what the problem is, you can't implement the maps you've made into the campaign map?
If this is true then that sucks.