rethinking garrisoning and defences

[Zarax]

Redfox gave me inspiration about a new idea on how to represent city defences and garrisoning.

Right now we have a pretty linear development, where walls, defences and city reserves are upgraded at the same time with no differentiation at all, plus defences are tied to city level.

We know that historically this wasn't the case and to an extent defences can be modded.

So, what about separating walls (which includes storage), garrisoning (tower strenght) and so on?

We could make it so heavy defences can always be built at a cost (garrison upkeep, could also bring a law bonus) and so can the rest.

This way it would make sense to have your fronties heavily defended while the interior could be relatively unfortified to save on upkeep cost.

What do you think?

[Dog Fart]

I agree with fortifying the frontier instead of keeping the army in the city. It fits well with history as armies were prefered to be kept in the field. I think upkeep cost for all of these additions would do well as long as you have a decent law bonus to keep the army out. Otherwise your just getting ripped off.


I think it's good.

[Scutarii]

I like it. The current city defense line of buildings is pretty bland, and not particularly accurate, as you said.

[Zarax]

DBH, what do you think about some overhauling?

[Webba]

This sounds like a great idea but I have just one small reservation about it. I've noticed that the AI can't handle tax penalty buildings at all. It's possible it even thinks they are tax bonus buildings.

I noticed this with the new line of garrison buildings that CV put into XC, which have large tax penalties. Of course these buildings were designed to be used in remote parts of large empires but the AI has no way of doing that. When I conquered Egypt the Ptolemies had build, on average, a lvl 2 garrison structure in all their cities, a faction with territories so small they didn't even need to build it in any of their cities. At 80+ turns into the game Alexandria and Memphis both had Guards buildings (lvl 2 garrison -12% tax income) but not paved roads! This says to me the AI has serious problems with tax penalties.

It works fine for the high lvl buildings, because large and huge cities can handle the penalty but I think it would be a wise idea to refrain from using tax penalties for any buildings at large town lvl and below and from too many buildings in general. I can just imagine the AI building high lvl defenses for all the towns in their empire that don't need defending at all and killing their economy and the game balance with it.

I would suggest using high inital costs and other penalties to offset the advantages of these buildings instead.

[Zarax]

We could put a small farming penalty to prevent AI abuses, it usually works quite well

[DimeBagHo]

Is the idea to have a separate building that upgrades towers (and perhaps carries other bonuses)? AFAIK that isn't possible, because wall and tower strength are defined together in descr_walls.txt but. I'd be interested to know if it can be done though.

[Zarax]

Is the idea to have a separate building that upgrades towers (and perhaps carries other bonuses)? AFAIK that isn't possible, because wall and tower strength are defined together in descr_walls.txt but. I'd be interested to know if it can be done though.

It's a lot less refined than what you're thinking DBH.

Basically we know that walls are described in EDB with 4 settings:

wall_level
tower_level
gate_defences
gate_strength

Basically the idea is to have them upgraded by separate buildings, so that you could have large city with huge but unmanned walls (no tower fire) without upkeep or a small town with elaborate defences (stone walls and firing towers) but with a costly garrison.

The only doubt in all this is: can the lower city levels support stone walls?

[DimeBagHo]

The stuff in EDB has no effect as far as I know. That's also what the EDB guide over at the .org says.

[4] defensive capabilities seems to come with the wall_level regardless of what value they are given!

It is possible to mod the defensive characteristics of different wall levels, but I don't think it's possible to split off the tower capabilities into a different building.

[Double X]

For more garrison units I just drop the price cost of the lowest unit on the faction's roster (Vigiles from 400:200 to 200:100, etc.). Is this a bad thing? It also helps barbarians in Europe amass larger armies and I always like helping barbarians.

[DimeBagHo]

Not necessarily a bad thing. The AI will tend to recruit more of them because they look like a better deal, but otherwise it won't do any harm.

[htismaqe]

But is it really desirable for the AI to recruit even MORE garbage units? They spam endless stacks of worthless units the way it is...

[Zarax]

Redfox found otherwise:

In EDB Under building capabilities:

       capability
            {
                tower_level 2
            }

This would determine the destructive capability of towers ( 1 arrow, 2 ballista).
If you have a building with this, the settlement towers will shoot ballista arrows that cause a lot more damage.

Level 0 means no shooting towers.

[CaesarVincens]

I want to see that, I did some tests and found that it doesn't seem to work that way, at least with epic stone walls. It may be that you can improve the wall defenses, but not reduce.

Still, if it does work, that would be awesome.

[Zarax]

Hmm, I guess Redfox could give us a few tips...

[Dom9127]

I think it would work LOTR-TW has tower fire enabled in certain cities, but the others have none.

[Roman Warlord]

For more garrison units I just drop the price cost of the lowest unit on the faction's roster (Vigiles from 400:200 to 200:100, etc.). Is this a bad thing? It also helps barbarians in Europe amass larger armies and I always like helping barbarians.

Prehaps a more widespread use of the garrison script would be more benifical?

So that at least there is a low level milita to defend the walls, if you were really clever you would scale the number/quality to the wall defenses.

[DimeBagHo]

Prehaps a more widespread use of the garrison script would be more benifical?

So that at least there is a low level milita to defend the walls, if you were really clever you would scale the number/quality to the wall defenses.

That is possible, but not really practical without using a background script.

[Haratio]

"can the lower city levels support stone walls?"



have you ever seen Corinth in vanilla Rome tw it has a stone wall but it is only a large town

[htismaqe]

Prehaps a more widespread use of the garrison script would be more benifical?

So that at least there is a low level milita to defend the walls, if you were really clever you would scale the number/quality to the wall defenses.

You create a multitude of balance issues by doing that, not the least of which is the possibility of bankrupting the AI or the player by triggering garrison scripts and overloading them with worthless troops.