Tweaking the range of siege engines

[Abriael]

What would I have to edit to tweak the range of siege engines? Would changing the range stat on export_desc_units be enough?

If yes, would it be savegame compatible?

It's a minor issue, but one that I find could be improved. Some siege engines, like the trebuchet, feel a bit too short on the range side, and since the AI suffers a lot from the habit to sit on their rear uphill and wait for the player to attack (wether they are attacking or defending), a bit more range to siege engines might help encourage them to go on the offensive a little more.

[Ferdiad]

Yes
Yes

[SirRobin]

I don't see the problem.

Siege engines are aready out of the range of archers on walls, arrow towers, even ballista towers. The AI siege engines fire away from long range until they run out of ammo or the player sallies.

Longer range would not affect those things as far as I can see ..


It would, however, make the siege engines less effective, as the longer the range, the less the accuracy.

.

[Abriael]

I would not say it's a *problem*. It's just a matter of taste

Most siege engines have a quite limited range, which means that their use is extremely limited. If the enemy is on the defensive, you will need to move the whole army just to cover the advance of the engine up to range (which doesn't exactly look realistic, since siege engines were very rarely moved at all during medieval battles). If the enemy attacks, the window of opportunity to use the siege engine is extremely limited between the moment they enter firing range to the moment they get in contact with your troops, when the siege engines have to be stopped to avoid friendly fire. This tends to be exaggerated by inaccuracy, that means that in order to avoid friendly fire, you'll have to stop firing quite a lot before the enemy even gets in contact with your line.

Pair inaccuracy with small range of fire, and you get siege engines that are good only to break walls.
I don't personally enjoy that, so I tweaked it a bit. That's all

[Théoric HämmerHörde]

the siege engine speed should be cut down to a mere crawl. sometimes when i run the game in 6x speed i feel like im playing with tanks instead of catapults