Removing all siege engines - Is it possible?

[AlphaDelta]

Does anyone know how to remove all of the siege engines from sieges. I'm talking about rams, ladders and siege towers. I tried commenting out the ram from descr_engines.txt, however it's still available to build when you start a siege. The game crashes after you try to fight the siege.

Any ideas?

[SigniferOne]

You can remove all siege towers, because that's what the Native American factions have in the Americas campaign. Doubt you can remove rams and ladders. But you can make both of them cost 9999 build points...

[AlphaDelta]

Thanks changing the build point is an excellent idea. Do you know how to remove the towers? And do you know which file controls the number of build points each engine costs?

Cheers

[SigniferOne]

Don't know which file controls the build points... hmm it must be one of the .xml files, I'm sure of it.

To prevent siege towers, add "can_build_siege_towers no" to the appropriate factions in descr_sm_factions.txt.

[AlphaDelta]

Unfortunately can_build_siege_towers no doesn't work in MED2, only kingdoms. I searched the RTW modding forums and it seems this was a problem in those days too. Some people say that the build points are hardcoded.

I read though that traits could determine the build points a general has. Perhaps it would be possile to give all generals in the campaign some kind of trait that would make it very difficult for him to build siege equipment?

Cheers

[Augustus Lucifer]

Unfortunately can_build_siege_towers no doesn't work in MED2, only kingdoms. I searched the RTW modding forums and it seems this was a problem in those days too. Some people say that the build points are hardcoded.

I read though that traits could determine the build points a general has. Perhaps it would be possile to give all generals in the campaign some kind of trait that would make it very difficult for him to build siege equipment?

Cheers

There's always the possibility that it's in some obscure file in a file format that hasn't been decoded and a folder it shouldn't really be in. That being said, all of the places that siege points would be expected to be found, they aren't, such as the descr_engines.txt, export_descr_units.txt, and any number of seemingly relevant .xml files. So it's safe to assume it's hardcoded.

The trait you're referring to is SiegeEngineering. Apparently in the Vanilla files according to the Ultimate DocuDemons, the highest value attributed to it is 60. Now, 60 is obviously not the limit, just for the simple reason that you don't say to yourself "What's a logical maximum for a statistic?" "Oh, why 60 is!". There's probably a good chance that the maximum used value is 100, as most of the traits cap at either 10(for normal traits), or 100(for percentile based and miscellaneous traits), and perhaps some other instances of 5 or 25. The DocuDemons list various values, but it's clear based on a logic principle it should conform to a 5-10-25-50-100 sort of numerology scale.

The best way to test this is to add a trait set that gives various values for SiegeEngineering, and has five levels with the effects as:

Level 1 = 5
Level 2 = 10
Level 3 = 25
Level 4 = 50
Level 5 = 100

Then start a campaign and siege a settlement and take note of the build points. Then use the console command to give the general one level of the trait, and siege again, then write down this value. You might need to wait a turn in between sieges for it to take effect. Once you have all of the values plotted from levels 1 to 5 with the basic, using the same army size and general, it will be easy to determine if it is using exact number or percentiles, and where if anywhere it stops increasing.

If it is straight numbers, you won't really be able to hinder generals all that much(unless you determine it can be above 100), if it is straight numbers because they'll still be able to get a ram and a ladder in one turn with a large army, even with -100. If it is percentile based it would be more effective.

Cheers,
Augustus

[AlphaDelta]

It seems that this trait has no effect on siege equipment build times whatsoever.

EDIT: With fingers firmly crossed I think I've completley removed siege towers and ladders from ever being buildable.

I opened descr_walls.txt, and I set all wall to "siege_tower_size too_small". I thought this may just stop siege towers, but it appears to stop both ladders and siege towers.

Hopefully it's not too early for a WWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Cheers

[GrnEyedDvl]

What that trait does is give you more build points, which would mean it takes less time to build stuff. Try using a negative number.

[AlphaDelta]

I set it to Effect SiegeAttack -60, besieged a settlement with a single general, saw that a tower took 3 turns, a ladder took 1 and a battering ram took 3. Closed med2, bumped it to -100, started the game, a new campaign, sieged the same settlement with the same general and noticed no difference.. Bumped it to -500 and still no difference.

Rams I dont mind so much, it's feasible they were used in the civil war era so for now I'm happy to just be rid of towers and and ladders. Actually ladders were used, the problem is just I dont want pikemen scalling walls with an 18 foot pike in hand.

Cheers

[Augustus Lucifer]

I set it to Effect SiegeAttack -60, besieged a settlement with a single general, saw that a tower took 3 turns, a ladder took 1 and a battering ram took 3. Closed med2, bumped it to -100, started the game, a new campaign, sieged the same settlement with the same general and noticed no difference.. Bumped it to -500 and still no difference.

Rams I dont mind so much, it's feasible they were used in the civil war era so for now I'm happy to just be rid of towers and and ladders. Actually ladders were used, the problem is just I dont want pikemen scalling walls with an 18 foot pike in hand.

Cheers

Interesting about the descr_walls.txt, I had looked there but only briefly so didn't come across that line. As for the pikemen, shouldn't there be a way to use the same sort of inability to carry/use siege equipment that applies to all cavalry, and transfer that to pikemen :hmmm:

Cheers,
Augustus

[SigniferOne]

Good job. You're right, the siege_towers prohibition works only in Kingdoms. But as you've discovered, one could forbid siege towers in descr_walls.txt as well. I'm sure that there must be a file to change the build points too.