Heavy Onagers

[Communist Bacon]

Lately, in order to spice up my latest campaign I've been going through the game files and tweaking some things as per my taste. Although I'm only doing things that others have confirmed work alright because I don't trust myself to just change things at will.

What I want to is whether it is possible to edit the heavy onager unit to have more than 2 onagers per single unit. On the huge unit scale, a roman heavy onager has 64 soldiers, but only 6 actually move and fire the onagers themselves, (3 each) and so I'd like to put some of those other 58 slackers to work. 4-6 onagers per unit would be ideal.

Plus I've always felt that onagers were an underrated unit that should be a part of any proper campaigning army simply because of how invaluable they are in sieges. And it's very aesthetically pleasing for me to see a line of legionary cohorts with friendly onagers hurling fire pots over their heads toward the advancing horde of barbarians.

When I go into export_descr_unit, I see this:

type roman heavy onager
dictionary roman_heavy_onager ; Heavy Onagers
category siege
class missile
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_crew, 16, 2, 0.8
engine heavy_onager
attributes sea_faring, hardy
formation 1.5, 1.5, 3, 3, 3, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 4, 2, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 63, 2, big_boulder, 300, 30, siege_missile, blade, blunt, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr ap, bp, area, launching
stat_pri_armour 7, 3, 0, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1050, 120, 110, 160, 1050
ownership romans_julii,romans_brutii,romans_scipii,romans_senate

Based on the explanations at the top of the document, is it just a matter of changing the red 2 into a 4, or am I over-simplifying this? I feel like the fact that the default number of soldiers being 16 is probably going to be an issue.

[SavageFeat]

Should have asked in the Rome workshop not here. Most here aren't modders and I don't know about that sorry...

[LD1977]

I have a separate question and the topic has the appropriate name (sorry for the thread intrusion).

What exactly makes onagers valuable in sieges? I have tried using them (in DarthMod - dunno if that changes their usefulness) and they can knock down an epic wall only if they expand almost all their ammo. Since walls can be easily knocked down with rams/climbed with towers, I don't see how they bring anything to the table.

As for the whole "knock walls with no losses" thingy, yes but they take up a unit slot - if that unit existed and pushed a ram/tower, result is the same.

What am I missing here?

[mesor]

Onagers are more use for smaller city's where they can take down a wall and still fire a few shots off after to make the enemy back off.
On huge city's like that i only use them really to cover my towers by bombing the walls nearby to there landing spots so the enemy will move there infantry back to keep them safe then by the time they come back ive landed half a unit if not more on the walls so ive got 2 beach heads secure to keep pumping men into then if they have any ammo left i tend to bring them into the streets and let them fire off there final shots into the enemy sitting in the town centre while my infantry are moving through the city blocking all the escape routes so i can totally encircle the enemy and force them to fight to the death.

Outside of a city there main use is simply fire a couple volleys at enemy general one good flaming hit is very likely to kill the general or fire them at enemy shock infantry or missile units just to thin them out and they can keep bombarding enemy missile units along with your missile units once the enemy infantry have hit you line.

But my favourite use is bridge battles .

Couple heavy infantry then 2-4 onagers 2-4 scorpions 6 archers then normally my general and 3 more cavalry units.

The 2 infantry hold the bridge the missile devastate the enemy on the bridge and the moment they start to brake my cavalry charge 1000+ enemies trapped on a bridge with no space to avoid my cavalry means enormous casulties in seconds .

[dude21862004]

They are excellent for destroying towers and preventing losses to your siege towers, etc.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

I think that's correct (the bit about modding). You are not over-simplifying it. You can also modify that variable to change the number of dogs or chariots in a unit.

The default number of soldiers might be an issue. Several things could happen:

• The game crashes upon loading.
• The game crashes when trying to move artillery (since there isn't enough soldiers to move it all). I don't think that would happen though, since when the soldiers of the unit die, they just ignore artillery that they can't man.
• Nothing happens (most likely).

[TWWolfe]

Lately, in order to spice up my latest campaign I've been going through the game files and tweaking some things as per my taste. Although I'm only doing things that others have confirmed work alright because I don't trust myself to just change things at will.

What I want to is whether it is possible to edit the heavy onager unit to have more than 2 onagers per single unit. On the huge unit scale, a roman heavy onager has 64 soldiers, but only 6 actually move and fire the onagers themselves, (3 each) and so I'd like to put some of those other 58 slackers to work. 4-6 onagers per unit would be ideal.

Plus I've always felt that onagers were an underrated unit that should be a part of any proper campaigning army simply because of how invaluable they are in sieges. And it's very aesthetically pleasing for me to see a line of legionary cohorts with friendly onagers hurling fire pots over their heads toward the advancing horde of barbarians.

When I go into export_descr_unit, I see this:

type roman heavy onager
dictionary roman_heavy_onager ; Heavy Onagers
category siege
class missile
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_crew, 16, 2, 0.8
engine heavy_onager
attributes sea_faring, hardy
formation 1.5, 1.5, 3, 3, 3, square
stat_health 1, 0
stat_pri 4, 2, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 63, 2, big_boulder, 300, 30, siege_missile, blade, blunt, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr ap, bp, area, launching
stat_pri_armour 7, 3, 0, metal
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 2
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1050, 120, 110, 160, 1050
ownership romans_julii,romans_brutii,romans_scipii,romans_senate

Based on the explanations at the top of the document, is it just a matter of changing the red 2 into a 4, or am I over-simplifying this? I feel like the fact that the default number of soldiers being 16 is probably going to be an issue.

I haven't done this in Rome, but modding the same line in M2 does what you want without the game crashing, so it should work the way you want it to.

[Chris Death]

I've just taken a look into vanilla edu and compared it to Roma Surrectum 1.5 edu;

Vanilla:

type             barb onager dacian
dictionary       barb_onagers_dacian      ; Onagers
category         siege
class            missile
voice_type       Light_1
soldier          barb_crew, 16, 2, 0.9
engine           onager
attributes       sea_faring
formation        1.5, 1.5, 3, 3, 3, square
stat_health      1, 0
stat_pri         4, 2, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr    no
stat_sec         53, 2, boulder, 300, 30, siege_missile, blade, blunt, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr    ap, bp, area, launching
stat_pri_armour  0, 3, 2, flesh
stat_sec_armour  0, 0, flesh
stat_heat        0
stat_ground      0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental      4, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 730, 110, 80, 110, 730
ownership        dacia

Roma Surrectum 1.5

type             barb onager dacian
dictionary       barb_onagers_dacian      ; Onagers
category         siege
class            missile
voice_type       Light_1
soldier          barb_crew, 25, 5, 0.9
engine           onager
attributes       sea_faring
formation        1.5, 1.5, 3, 3, 3, square
stat_health      1, 0
stat_pri         8, 5, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, knife, 0 ,0.75
stat_pri_attr    no
stat_sec         53, 2, boulder, 200, 30, siege_missile, blade, blunt, none, 0 ,0.5
stat_sec_attr    ap, bp, area, launching
stat_pri_armour  1, 12, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour  0, 25, flesh
stat_heat        0
stat_ground      0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental      15, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 300
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        2, 1300, 460, 80, 110, 230
ownership        dacia, britons, gauls, slave, spain

~S~ CD

[Spike]

as long as there is 3 men per 1 engines, that would be fine (men counted on Normal unit size)