Too absurd to continue

[Zom]

I really regret what I am about to say. I have so much enjoyed this mod now for many weeks. But I just cannot continue, based on the absurd result of my most recent battle.

I was sieged. See my other post about how I fight outside my walls. In this battle, the attacking force was reduced to a single ladder. Above on the wall, were four slinger units, set to die in place. Below, there was a hoplite (light) unit attacking the mob at the bottom of the ladder. A single unit of spearmen, average quality, about half strength despite being out numbered, surrounded, seeing their mates running, became the Incredible Hulk. They got mad... and you know what happens when the Hulk gets mad. They no longer have moral. They cannot be broken. They just climbed that ladder, impervious to losses, and broke the defenders without ever waivering.

Now, I do not expect that slingers can stand up to the most average spearmen in the field. But with a single ing ladder, and being attacked from the rear, I would expect those average spearmen to seriously think about running. Especially when all their other siege weapons have been destroyed and they see their mates running.

This is too preposterous. Please make a correction to the siege script. Email me when it is corrected, so I can play this otherwise wonderful mod again.

Well, wonderful except for the Diplomacy. Why is it that enemies will fight to the death instead of making peace? Not historical. Not real.

[Deathkorpsman]

Heya Zom,

I empathize with your frustration over the result of that siege battle. Sieges have always been very eccentric in R:TW, both in their balance and with the specific mechanics. I really hope you don't allow the oddity of one battle outweigh the awesome mod we have access to, which is otherwise a fantastic bit of coding on the part of the devs.

I recently vented a bit on the weirdness of sieges in this thread, where I was informed by one of the RTR team that they hadn't tweaked the siege AI at all. So basically this a problem with the core game. I can't remember back far enough to recall if I'd noticed this in vanilla, at least some of the oddities, but I do remember that sieges have always been screwy.

Personally, I almost always sit out sieges when I'm assaulting and try to sally when defending if I have any chance of winning. The results of doing it another way are usually infuriating and/or wildly crazy. Heroic victories where a loss should have been inevitable, crushing defeats where it looked like I had the advantage, those are all risks with this game system's siege mechanics.

Basically, I wouldn't hold sieges against RTR. The changes they made were largely to everything BUT sieges, if I'm properly interpreting their responses. So we just have to grin and bear it as best we can. If they could have made drastic changes to the way sieges were, I'm sure they would have. Everyone has issues with them.

-DKM

[Mausolos of Caria]

But those Spearmen weren't Spartan Perioikoi, were they? That would explain it...

The diplomacy is broken in Rome and doesn't work in any mod. But you can use the cheat console with force_diplomacy, there's a mod which makes it work for RTR VII.

[mcantu]

1. what version of RTR are you playing?

2. what battle difficulty level are you using?

3. there is no such thing as a 'siege script'. there is nothing that i am aware of that we can edit to alter units behavior on walls

[Zom]

I am not quitting the Mod. I spoke hastily, in frustration, and also a bit in my cups. I really do enjoy this Mod too much to quit. Fortunately, I save before every turn ends, so I went back and sallyed to break the seige, which I was able to do handily.

It is too bad about the lack of diplomacy. It has been so long since I played vanilla I don't remember what it was like. These factions fight until the death, it seems. I have taken from Sparta all of Greece, yet with only a few territories left it still will not agree to peace. Same with Carthage. In reality, Rome took as much territory during the Republic in its peace treaties as it conquered. I am offering trade rights and they will not take it. Not only that, but factions with whom I had alliances break them to attack me, rather than attack a weakened mutual enemy.

[mcantu]

if you have territories that are part in the AI factions' victory conditions, they will keep attacking those territories. the AI has the same goal as you do...