No wooden walls & (hopefully) enhanced naval battles minimod for DM

[bighead]

I removed all wooden walls to make enemy more agressive and thus game more difficult. You have to see it yourself - you will lose your cities to AI attacks. Other important thing is that there are far less siege battles. AI now protects his borders instead of cities. In the past 80% of battles I fought were siege battles. Now (unless the city has stone walls) I can leave sieges for automatic as the hardest part is to actually reach the town.

Experimental:
Ships now take more time to build and cost more while also suffer higher causalities. Idea is that ships no longer present ships but entire fleets. Result of this is that you can now repeal naval invasion at sea and it will take some time to rebuild fleet for new attack.
Note: This is beta. It is very simple modification so it won't cause any CTDs. However changes were made very roughly so game could be imbalanced.

- removed wooden walls and wooden palisades from game
- ships now take more time to build and cost more (e.g. bireme: 4 turns, 2800 denari)
- ship stats has been tweaked for higher causalties in battles (increased attack and morale, decreased armour)

Installation:
You have to start a new game.

to install no-wooden-walls minimod:
copy export_descr_buildings.txt to your ROME - TOTAL WAR\DATA folder
copy descr_strat.txt to your ROME - TOTAL WAR\DATA\MAPS\CAMPAIGN\IMPERIAL_CAMPAIGN folder

to install naval minimod:
no-wooden-walls minimod must be installed
copy export_descr_unit.txt to your ROME - TOTAL WAR\DATA folder

[repman]

Some remarks:
- your stone walls are not expansive enough, so later in the game the ai will start building walls
- darth is not using landbridges, so if the ships are weak and expansive,how can the AI expand over the sea?

But maybe in real game your changes work as you want

repman

[bighead]

@repman: I don't want walls to be removed entirely from the game. If town is large enough to have stone walls I don't mind if it builds them. I just didn't like the fact that every village had walls and had to be sieged. This was tested and works well.
As I mentioned before I was afraid that if I make ships more expensive AI reacts strangely but so far it looks good. Actualy everybody uses naval invasions like mad. I played a test game watching AI and Julii didn't even attack gauls but went straight to conquest sardinia and other islands but were stoped by numidian (?) naval counter-invasion. I don't know if darth changed something to make them act like that or what but ...

[repman]

Interesting the numidian naval invasions because the settings in file desrc_strat.text for numdia are:
-AI character: fortified genghis
-no starting ports
-no starting ships/admirals

Maybe the original small map of the imperial campaigns is the best to use for AI naval expansion (as darth has decided to use). I'm using a bigger metric one and experience less naval expansions.

repman

[vorlone]

Thanks bighead
I will test it.

[DARTH VADER]

i have modded except from others the desc_smfactions.txt that has a new attribute available in new patch of ca to force AI factions to do naval invasions more.
So this is why you see that. I generally wait testing for this you say bighead and if it is goes well why not to include it finally to DarthMod_7.0
But if ships are too expensive how can the AI built them to use the force naval invasion I used?
Interesting to see.
As for walls it sounds good ...will see

[repman]

Darth, thanks for the information about this flag prefers_naval_invasions yes . I didnt't know this.
What is the meaning of ?
- romans_julii, spawns_on_revolt gauls
- parthia, spawned_by seleucid
I don't have BI and this are BI commands

thanks for the answers

repman

[DARTH VADER]

These commands enable (hopefully) Gauls and Parthia to re-emerge in a riot that occurs in Julii, Seleucid lands respectively.
It is a 2 way command that means the spawner have to spawn smthg and vice versa.
Single command will not have effect .(As I know)

[DARTH VADER]

Is anyone testing this? Is it better?Since I have new patch maybe you have to re-do minor changes to adapt to new patch

[vorlone]

Is anyone testing this? Is it better?

I have tested it a little bit,and yes the KI is a more agressive without wooden walls and wooden palisades.It is now still more dynamics in the Game.However, not all walls should be removed, because some lands thereby grow too fast or they are extinguished.In my case were the Thraker and the Armenians after 60 round extinguished.This Mod should, however easily weakened,be inserted.
The naval minimod does not like me.The ships are too expensive construction period too long ...

[bighead]

I agree, I made ships too expansive. In the campaign I mentioned earlier it was quite balanced but then I decided to increase cost and build time even more. This time I went too far. However cost and build time isn't the only change. I tweaked ship stats for higher battle causalties (increased attack and morale, decreased armour). This is a good step as ships are destroyed during battles (not only "pushed back").
Darth, if you are going to test this I recommend you keep my ships stats (which has been tested and work well) and multiply cost and build time by two (In the files I uploaded it is multiplied by four. In my previous campaign it was multiplied by three and I can say that it improved gameplay). I would test it myself but I'll be busy this week and I won't be able to.
Concerning walls ... I didn't notice this first as I played julii, fought gauls and didn't care much about rest of the world. Playing as scipii now, I also noticed that some factions develop differently. Game plays great with this mod but it's strange to see cartaginas almost destroyed by numidians. It's obvious that some important border cities should be given stone walls from beginning to keep game historically accurate.

[vorlone]

Yes, the 2 to 3 most important cities per country should get a wall.

[Checkers]

Tried it for a short while and I liked it. Seige battles are less tedious because it is not the same old breakdown down the wall and squeeze your units through a small opening. In fact, I found that the AI more often would sally forth rather just sit back in the core of its city. The fact that all the city entrances were wide open gave a lot of strategic options in how you attack the city. On the campaign map, I also had to be more defensive against a surprise attack and could not keep minimal garrisons in towns as you expanded, and had to commit more manpower to defense which should slow down expansion. I think it is worthwhile and adds challenge although balancing issues have to be addressed in all likelihood(I didn't concentrate on that).

[wipeout140]

Two things i found good for AI expanding while making RTR CE. If take away the walls from all rebal towns and reduce garrsion abit they expand like mad making it harder for the player