Placement of Permanent Stone Forts

[Loose Cannon]

I've managed to get PSFs installed in near record time for me. Have just looked over the map so far-no playing-and I've got some observations and ideas.
1. Only for early era?
2. 4 forts in wales/border area is 2 too many Suggest deleting forts at 46, 219 and 60, 220
3. Move the following forts move 55, 229 to 59, 231, move 87,214 to 85,215 move 91, 211 to 92,210
the last two are in the way of the "chunnel" that I intend to put in as soon as the budget allows
4. add a fort at 35, 237 (home of future Irish-Scots highway tollbooth)
More suggestions to come (like why don't we put 6 forts in the Sofia-Thessolonika-Constantinople triangle area like DLV does-

[Gorrrrrn]

impspy - dabbling with hex editors I leave to people who know what they're doing!

the bz and holy fort and pyramids entries were done by wolfslayer I believe - I've not tried using them - by the sound of it probably just as well
at the moment.
(Correction - the pyramids are vanilla kingdoms!)

tx for info re stone fort e being the same as stone fort a. That gives us 4 working northern stone fort varieties, plus the 2 middle eastern ones
and the knightly order one if it works (not had a battle with one of those yet,
plus the wooden ones whch I suggest we use in Russia and the less developed parts of eastern europe.

if we can assume that the 2 me forts and the 4 stone ones (b,c,d,e) are working (and stone fort a works for wooden forts - more protected camps)
the only one likely still to be a problem is the knightly order one, hopefully that can be tested in the next day or so.

after that we can check locations work (no floating forts or moats in inappropriate places.

[Gorrrrrn]

Thanks for responses - will need to fire up the game and check co-ords etc before responding.

(The good thing about this "mod" is that people can always move the forts to wherever they want them for their own games.)
--
OK:
impspy - thanks for all that - all looks a bit complicated but will give it a try!

oh do we need to have unpacked all the files?
if so this may take some time.
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(from Loose Cannon)
I've managed to get PSFs installed in near record time for me. Have just looked over the map so far-no playing-and I've got some observations and ideas.
1. Only for early era?
2. 4 forts in wales/border area is 2 too many Suggest deleting forts at 46, 219 and 60, 220
3. Move the following forts move 55, 229 to 59, 231, move 87,214 to 85,215 move 91, 211 to 92,210
the last two are in the way of the "chunnel" that I intend to put in as soon as the budget allows
4. add a fort at 35, 237 (home of future Irish-Scots highway tollbooth)
More suggestions to come (like why don't we put 6 forts in the Sofia-Thessolonika-Constantinople triangle area like DLV does-

LC -
1) only for early era at the moment - I can only work on one campaign at a time. best to get the details working on one campaign first. once that's 100% we can look at the other campaigns. Or PB can put them in. Currently I'd prefer them kept as an option as other people do like to plonk forts on the map themselves during the campaign.

2) Welsh borders - The Chester fort is used by the AI frequently, but I've shifted back a little to 56 230. The two in the south might come into play but so far I've not noticed the AI use them, but then I haven't seen any rebellions in Wales yet and there is both a Peasant uprising and later a mini Wars of the Roses scenario in the 15th century in the Campaign script. So it's likely having a few forts in England and Wales would be handy for those scenarios. I'll look see what those co-ords refer to. The only one that is possibly surplus is Carmarthen. The Chester one can be moved slightly as suggested, but I'll keep the Cardiff and Gloucester forts as they are.

3) If you ever get land bridges sorted you can always move or add the forts on your personal map. The "Dover" fort is regularly used by the AI, the "Calais" one not so far (but it is part of the Bruges area and the garrison is quite capable of expanding and deploying outside the town.) Although the land bridges don't exist yet moving them as suggested shouldn't be a problem, but there's no point in adding the Irish fort without it.

4) I removed 2 forts from the Corinth area as they were never used by the AI. I've never noticed the Byzantines placing temp forts in the area you mention when that option is open to them. They always move troops through that area as quick as possible or mooch around Adrianople. The fact that another mod places forts there isn't relevant. I will however add one up near the border with the Cumans 271 160.
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If we're going with perm forts I'm not going to cover the map with forts just to suit particular factions but we do have to consider what might human players want, E.G. The AI never uses the Khwarezm or Cuman forts along their border but I suspect human players might find them very useful.

I'll probably remove the 2 Hamburg forts next as the AI never uses them. (If I haven't already done so.) The Danes however like theirs.
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And then I'll see if i can implement impspy's ideas.
I've avoided the cliff castle so far - however it would be ideal for Dover, so will see if it works (not an easy one to test on the campaign map - unless I plonk a rebel army in there.)

Talking of which I'm thinking of putting 1 spear militia unit in each fort at start up.
I've not done so until now as I want to sure that the forts are in the right places (approx)
--------------------

OK can confirm that the knightly_order forts work on battlefields.

now to see about Mr Cliff Castle

update: installs very simply and works beautifully on the battlefield
so am using for Dover and Calais and Alnwick (approx)

[Gorrrrrn]

just a minor update.
tried the holyr_fort_b as it looked like it had most of the necessary files - but whereas it appears on start map as stone, on battlefield
it's the same old wooden camp. oops -

my bad - the holyr is for the HRE faction only. I'll try placing it in HRE territory to seeing if it appears as stone on the battlefield.

update: nope even in HRE territory it's a wooden fort.

(I've been checking out wolfslayer's thread from 2008 on stone forts -sadly all the files seem to have disappeared.)
also instructions on making faction specific stone forts.

There's some interesting stuff there incl a Khwarezm giant fort!
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Given the quality of wolfslayer's work i assume I'm missing some files that need copying from somewhere
(probably unpacked m2tw / kingdoms files.)

[Loose Cannon]

Roz, I've had a chance to play 20 turns as France, turning off FOW every other turn then finally leaving it off and running some turns to check Ai fort usage. I only saw England use the Dover fort & only for 1 turn. The other forts on Britian have not been used as far as I can tell. The KOJ, however, loves the fort east of Jerusalem. They've got 6 or 7 units in it every turn even with a jihad called on Jerusalem. Iberian forts are also being used by the AI.

That comment about DLV is because I am strong with the sarcasm. They've got 199 regions like SS but 2,000 forts on their maps. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a PSF full of rebels in that mod. I guess that why they think their mod is difficult? I've played it, its boring, not difficult.

Can't stand early era. My armies are spear militia,spear milita, levy archer, and more spear militia.
I never reach the 13th century, let alone the 15th.

[Gorrrrrn]

LC
thanks for that - yes the jerusalem fort is a fave -the Fatimids actually captured it from jerusalem in one game.

I nudged the scottish east coast one down a notch to avoid any issues with diplomats.
Rushed an English army up there which triggered a war.
Result - Scottish king by-passed it and took York from me.
A follow-up Scottish army then attacked the fort. smart - for the AI.

L-C likes it forts apart from the one for Burgos - it has to be on the wrong side (right) of the bridge
or else it will completely block the road. (No fort should block diplomats etc.)

Never played that other mod you mentioned.

Have worked out (by using the unheard of method of actually reading the thread more thoroughly) (but I just want the files <wah>)
and discovered that the reason the holyr fort doesn't work is that it's a buildable fort, not a pre-placed one.

Here's some extracts from wolfslayer's thread:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

some notes the woldslayer stone forts thread:

I reuploaded the Byzantine fort with different textures; if you want to restore stock textures, just delete or move the blockset/textures/faction_variations/byzantium files-folder.

The same for other factions; if you want to use Teutonic brick textures, say for Poland, create a new folder blockset/textures/faction_variations/poland and copy all the teutonic_order textures, along with the /winter subfolder into the new poland folder.

The faction_variation texture folders should work for all forts built by that faction and preplaced in it's regions, and for all settlements created by that faction in descr_strat.txt ("faction_creator"").

from: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...19#post3044519

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The main download has all the fort models, you need these as a base for buildable ones like the Holy Roman Empire fort; then download

the HRE fort and the Byzantine fort, they should all work ok as long as you have the main download installed (top of this thread) and SS6 installed (KK included the 1.5 Crusades stone forts) .

Zuma added the Crusades stone fort fort strat models I think in his mod, but I can add too to mine if needed.

For now I would install his first for the strat models and descr_cultures* (fort cost) and some extra Crusades settlement textures, and then install mine second.
.....

bz_fort_m.zip Buildable me_fort_a for Byzantium

holyr_fort_b.rar Buildable stone_fort_b for HRE

Knightly_Order_Fort_P.zip Placeable/permanent version of SS6 buildable north_european culture's default stone fort (Crusades knightly_order_fort_b).

from: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...78#post3063978
-----------------

Here's the .worldpkgdesc file from the buildable HRE fort I made from one of the British Isle forts.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...95#post3025295

Every entry must be proceeded 3 hex spaces by the exact hex value of the following text entry. You can see here "07" is the hex value for the number of characters in "culture". "hre" is proceeded by "03", etc..

Online hex/decimal conversion http://www.easycalculation.com/decimal-converter.php

Each faction fort or any fort/settlement (plus most of all the battlemap models) can have 4 different texture variations in the blockset/textures folder

/data/blockset/textures
/faction_variations
/hre <---default textures
/winter <---winter textures
/variations
/middle_eastern <----subfolder(s) in /variations
/south_european

I only included the default and winter skins in this version of the HRE fort.
You can download and check out the file structure for an example.

The knightly_order_fort_a in original Kingdoms- Crusades has defective plaza placement , making it pretty much unusable, but the patched kingdoms version is usable, with just a few minor pathfinding bugs in the plaza (doorway leading up to the wall).

Here's some examples I was working on before the Kingdoms patch, but haven't released some of these yet.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...59#post2788659

The patched Crusades stone_fort_a is the same model on a smaller hill, so there are 2 usable forts here if you have the original and rename them.

You can make preplaced forts out of any settlement model, even a village, with the "fortificationlevel" in .worldpkgdesc indicating what kind of siege gear is needed to attack it ( and to tell the AI what to build):

(note : this section needs confirming, my files show "none" as the value for no wall, and 0 for wooden pallisade)

none = no wall or siege gear needed (village)
0 = pallisade (stock wooden fort) - rams
1 = wooden wall (stone_keep) - rams/small towers/small ladders
2 = ? (large_town or level 1 city?)
3 = castles - rams/large towers/ large ladders
4 = huge city only? (I've never made a fort from one) - rams / huge siege towers


Buildable forts should always use the "variant....wooden_fort" in .worldpkgdesc

Preplaced forts should always repeat the the name of the fort.

Example for stone_fort_z : "variant....stone_fort_z"

Another example:

You could take my Kwarezm fort (me_castle with modified pathfinding) and hex edit the faction from "07...kwarezm" and change it to "03...any" and it would become the default buildable fort for all factions that are middle_eastern culture.

You HAVE to have packagedb.txt in the data folder of the mod you are using custom forts/settlements in.

This file makes the game check all the .worldpkgdesc files when you start the game and verifies they are legit. Any errors in the hex values = CTD.

This file also forces the game to recognise and use settlements in the mod folder, otherwise it may default to vanilla models; it runs once on game start and keeps the mod settlement path in memory the entire time you have the game running."

from: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...09#post4195509
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Will get back when I've finished unpacking all my m2tw and kingdoms files.

I'll have a look though Master Zuma's thread and those referenced by wolfslayer too in due course.
Hopefully we can pick up useful information on how to implement the files.

Did anyone download his Lithuanian and Khwarezmian fort files?

[Loose Cannon]

Roz, I've played all the major M2TW mods-LtC, BC, TATW , DLV, C2, etc. Not one is as enjoyable as SS. That's why I volunteered to beta 6.2 last year. And why I'm trying to learn to mod so I can help improve the game.

Got to go try a KOJ campaign-early era today
edit: all the mods have some useful ideas

[impspy]

no, i didn't have to unpack my files in order to get the wooden strat fort

[Gorrrrrn]

impspy - thanks for that - I've unpacked them anyway to see if there's anything else we could move over to SS.

maybe the teutonic order castles? maybe a good idea as it's unlikely the prog will find them in another mod folder.

any ideas of how to do this (note placeable not applicable for early era but suitable for all later ones?)

--------------------

Idea for the future: replace all castles in regions with towns and add permanent forts as well.
(not an original idea btw!)
split the castle recruited units between AOR / specialists as mercs from forts and more general troops from towns.
Big problem is knowing if the AI would realise it needs to get certain troops from forts
(hence suggestion only local mercs - added bonus to basic troop types.)
would however mean every region gets the chance to have public order buildings, markets, and variable taxes.

-------------------

re the buildable holyr fort
if:

Buildable forts should always use the "variant....wooden_fort" in .worldpkgdesc

Preplaced forts should always repeat the the name of the fort.

Example for stone_fort_z : "variant....stone_fort_z"

if the holyr worldpkgdesc file is edited from "variant....wooden_fort" to "variant....holyr_fort_b"
and a suitable set of textures added would be have a workable placeable HRE stone fort?

what's the best prog to edit worldpkgdesc files with?

---------------
had a look at the stone_fort_a we have in the northern_european folder.
the worldpkgdesc not only says wooden fort but also culture is southern european

again would the necessary edit to stone_fort_a and northern european culture work?
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have DL'd: http://www.hhdsoftware.com/Products/...itor-free.html
will report back

[Gorrrrrn]

Damn und blast

it seems unpacking the m2tw and kingdoms files has wrecked my SS installation.
The early campaign starts with only 8 factions and the system log error reports makes no sense at all -says england not a playable faction.

so back to square one with the uninstalling, re-installing.
-
this may take a few days as my hands are freezing up indoors (RSI) and with snow forecast I'd
better lay off this machine for a while.
-
(really annoying as I managed to change the stone_fort_a file with the hex editor -
and it wasn't that that caused the problem either - i replaced it with the original version and had the same error report.)

here's the replacement stone_fort_a worldpkgdesc file:

Attachment 66181 -see if you can make it appear as a stone fort on battlemaps.

[impspy]

That's weird, the same thing happened to me a while back after I had edited descr_strat.

I fixed it by copiying an older version of dercr_strat over my current one, and that solved the problem.

[Gorrrrrn]

Tried an earlier descr_strat but no joy.

have copied the entire unpacked m2tw/kingdoms to another hard drive so won't have to that again.

have you tried the stone_fort_a worldpkgdecr file above to solve stone_fort_a wooden (the version in my files was the variant wooden fort one.)

[impspy]

I just tried it, and no, it didn't fix the problem

EDIT: Interestingly enough, the new forts show up fine in the battle editor:



EDIT: darn, didn't read this

Buildable forts should always use the "variant....wooden_fort" in .worldpkgdesc

Preplaced forts should always repeat the the name of the fort.

Example for stone_fort_z : "variant....stone_fort_z"

[Mr. Tornado]

Looks great! I think you guys need to come up with an installer for this that works with stainless steel 6.1 real recruitment!

[Gorrrrrn]

Out of curiosity has nayone tried gigantus stone forts fix?
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...48#post3156148

instead (?) of the zuma /wolfslayer one?

[Loose Cannon]

Haven't tried gigantus's fix yet. Have managed through "cut & paste" to get PSFs in Late Era campaign but only played a few turns. Haven't had a battle at a fort yet, either but play time has been limited.

Did you know that forts can have a moat and stakes deployed outside the walls to limit an attackers pathways to the gates/walls? Seen that elsewhere.

I think the "line of sight" of the forts is too small. Is there a way to increase this?

[Gorrrrrn]

Agree about LoS - be good if it was the same as watchtowers.
sounds like a visit to mod workshop is called for.

[szelbisz]

I remember some time ago a couple of guys were working on fort models for the British Islands. Can find the thread unfortunately but i belive it was somewhere in ss forums. If you could find them maybe you could use them because they rocked.

[Loose Cannon]

Well, it looks like line of sight is hardcoded for buildings. Now, if we could get the game to read them as "watchtowers" for LoS purposes and "forts" for campaign and battle map then we'd have something.

[Gorrrrrn]

LC - interesting idea.
only needs to be read as watchtower on strat map.
alternatively - we could just plonk a watchtower next to permanent forts
(the AI is usually pretty smart with watchtowers, it sometimes does this.)