contravallation and field engineering work in Rome II?

[parthian shot]

in Rome II, will there be contravallation like in the Battle Pharsalus?

Also in Amazon: Total War mod, we have added field engineering units recruitable by some factions to be able to build a field engineering barrier (actually an array of booby traps in the battlefield installed prior to the battle, with the tactical effect similar to a minefield).

I think it would be a worth while idea to implement similar units or field engineering features (ditches, wall, earthwork, contravallation inner and outer walls, booby-trap like minefield, and so on) in Rome II.

[parthian shot]

OK so I got messages from people who asked me what is a contravallation...

[Here] is a wikipedia entry

basically, A circumvallation is a line of fortifications, built by the besieger around the besieged fortification facing towards the enemy fort (to protect the besiegers from the defenders), this is the inner wall.

A contravallation is constructed to protect the besieging army from an enemy field army allied to the enemy fort. This is the outer wall.

[Ngazi]

It is like building a fort on campaign map. Except the forts in RTW made you weaker not stronger.

[parthian shot]

It is like building a fort on campaign map. Except the forts in RTW made you weaker not stronger.

I am not sure what your point is? If we want to have a realistic custom battle of Pharsalus, what you described would hardly be anything realistic.

[Miyelir]

So are you suggesting they could add an engeneering unit to the game? I have to admit I would have liked one for napoleon total war that allowed you to build the sand walls in every battle. I am not sure how well such units would fit into the Rome 2 era but I am no expert.

[parthian shot]

I am suggesting if Rome II allows the recruitment of battlefield engineering corp unit, we can alter the battlefield (at the least) for the custom battle like the Battle of Pharsalus. That is the defining battle which won Caesar the defining victory over Pompey.

[Petroniu]

I am suggesting if Rome II allows the recruitment of battlefield engineering corp unit, we can alter the battlefield (at the least) for the custom battle like the Battle of Pharsalus. That is the defining battle which won Caesar the defining victory over Pompey.

I don't know why you give Pharsalus as an example when Alesia is the best example of military investments. Really. Anyways, you should check out the Carthage gameplay videos and see that there are walls build around Carthage and that is a sing that military investments will be used in sieges at least. Problem is though that that is a scenario battle and the typical campaign battles are still an unknown.

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

I don't know why you think that investment won the day for Caesar at Pharsalus. There were no siegeworks, traps, or fortifications at all on the plains of Pharsalus. Get you facts straight, it was Dyrrhachium where the were circumvallations and contravallations in the Civil War, and that was a battle of supplies, and weeks before the Battle of Pharsalus. A FAR better example of Siege Investment is the Battle of Alesia in 52BCE

[parthian shot]

Well! if you have to be that specific, it is the Pharsalus campaign.

The official Roman history tend to overlook the Caesar's losing battle so it is usually referred to as the Battles of Pharsalus, or Pharsalus Campaign (Pharsalos militiaeque)
Dyrrhachium and Pharsalus are fought back to back, like Waterloo and Quatre Bras, it is a single campaign with multiple engagements.
And yes the Contravallation is built at Dyrrhachium . So what is your point?

[Miyelir]

I suppose great Fortifications like the Lines of Torres Vedras and the Hindenburgh line are not likly to be buildable, would be nice to make a huge fortified line across the pyranees or somthing of the sort.

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

Sorry, but I wasn't even being specific, the two are not related in more than that they were part of a greater campaign - in this case the Civil War. The battle of Dyrrhachium was fought on the 10th July - 48, while the Battle of Pharsalus was fought on the 9th August - 48. A lot can (and did) happen in a month. You can also see from the image how far away the two were. Dyrrhachium is actually a good way away from Pharsalus


I do however like your idea, but I would put money on it NOT being in the game. A good deal of money. Battle of Carthage is a scenario, and like other TW games, they have more battle map detail than regular battles

[parthian shot]

There are multiple sources for the exact dates, the wikipedia ones (which looks like what you listed) were just plain wrong.

I agree with you that I don't think CA ever is going to have the circumvallation or contravallation in the game, after all, we are just a side of show of the side show here.

[parthian shot]

There are multiple sources for the exact dates, the wikipedia ones (which looks like what you listed) were just plain wrong.

I agree with you that I don't think CA ever is going to have the circumvallation or contravallation in the game, after all, we are just a side of show of the side show here.

But having said the above, I have to state that having the ability of contravallation walls and circumvallation walls do make the Rome II's presentation of roman military engine more complete.

[hellas1]

But having said the above, I have to state that having the ability of contravallation walls and circumvallation walls do make the Rome II's presentation of roman military engine more complete.

Hi Parthian shot,

It goes like this....

I've been playing the TW series for some time now...over 10 yrs....

It was only with the release of STW2 that we see engineering actually taking a more complex role.
The MTW2 engineering is cookie cutter.

Now, for circumvallation to take place I.E. Caesar v. Vercingetorix, this "revamped" warscape engine has got to be able to handle it and so far this is what I've seen it handle:
Naval warfare
Land warfare
Cannon
Arrows
Siege weapons
In Shogun 2 TW, The editor allows a player to create an ornate tiered structure.

So essentially, IF R2TW is able to do so, it will do so on the back of S2TW and in-game S2TW tiered castles were pretty good. Circumvallation is altogether different because of the nature of height with each tier's respective "booby traps" like lilies, post for archers to fire from and the like. Also, consider the circular but jagged approach per se the Romans had. It was not Vauban-esque styled with sharp angles, nor was it curved like S2TW tiered Castles either.

Also, what about pathfinding & A.I. issues moving people from one point of the circumvallation to the next or to a breach in the circumvallation???
Pathfinding & A.I. have always been TW problems...Big time, as you probably know.

Just food for thought while we speculate on your great idea!

Thanks,
hellas1

[parthian shot]

Hi Parthian shot,

It goes like this....

I've been playing the TW series for some time now...over 10 yrs....

It was only with the release of STW2 that we see engineering actually taking a more complex role.
The MTW2 engineering is cookie cutter.

Now, for circumvallation to take place I.E. Caesar v. Vercingetorix, this "revamped" warscape engine has got to be able to handle it and so far this is what I've seen it handle:
Naval warfare
Land warfare
Cannon
Arrows
Siege weapons
In Shogun 2 TW, The editor allows a player to create an ornate tiered structure.

So essentially, IF R2TW is able to do so, it will do so on the back of S2TW and in-game S2TW tiered castles were pretty good. Circumvallation is altogether different because of the nature of height with each tier's respective "booby traps" like lilies, post for archers to fire from and the like. Also, consider the circular but jagged approach per se the Romans had. It was not Vauban-esque styled with sharp angles, nor was it curved like S2TW tiered Castles either.

Also, what about pathfinding & A.I. issues moving people from one point of the circumvallation to the next or to a breach in the circumvallation???
Pathfinding & A.I. have always been TW problems...Big time, as you probably know.

Just food for thought while we speculate on your great idea!

Thanks,
hellas1

As you said, if S2TW can handle Vauban-esque style structures, then the R2TW can certainly handle half side of Vauban-esque style structure to simulate semi-circular walls, albeit in a more jagged representation. And we can perhaps leave the curvilinear wall designs alone for the contravallation walls. So as to force the contravallation wall to be more linear and pointy in its representation. Perhaps this can be easier to do than the S2TW castle siege work.

At each turn of the campaign, the player can be asked to update the layout plan of contravallation walls as well as the circumvallation walls, section by section, say leaving certain sections to be simple earthwork, and others to build towers or higher wall.

But also as you said, I too feel that AI would be a great challenge, but they can be reduced to the following critical considerations.

1. Fire cover
2. Fire suppression
3. level of ease of access
4. Primary objective

And therefore building a topological tree dynamically to solve a given traffic condition and then re-construct a new tree when the prior mini-objective either failed or achieved. The nodes of the tree would dictate the traffic and routing of the units approaching, inside, or attacking the walls.

This is just my thoughts on the first path.

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

Once again, as much as this is a great idea and would be cool to recreate famous battles, it's a game breaker (as it would make it too easy for the human player to win), and won't be implemented by CA. You gotta think about in overall game terms. If you're asking that the player should play ANY role in designing these fortifications, you can forget about it. Rome 2 is going to be revolutionary enough as it is. They're experimenting with river battles. Try to appreciate how hard that would be! I'd concentrate on more practical suggestions, but still - I love this idea.... it just ain't gonna happen

[Argon Viper]

I think this would be a really cool feature, but I agree with Thomas Cochrane that we probably won't see it this game. All of the other stuff they're adding seems cool enough for me that I guess I can forgive them for that, and it looks like we are going to see walls and trench-works in sieges if the Siege of Carthage video is any indication.

[Duncan III]

It looks like the seige fortifications may be auto-generated by seige length- nice if we could do this manually but maybe asking for a little too much, would be quite a lot of work to get it right I think.

[parthian shot]

I agree with Thomas Cochrane too that CA probably will not be able to do in the first release.

But after I posted the AI routing comment, I gave some more thoughts about it, and I realize that, in Amazon Total War 7.0, we are introducing wagon warfare, and part of the headache was to try to implement the idea of Wagon Fort (or Laager, aka Tabor). So the logical first step for us is to create a new skin that makes a fort looks like laager (i.e. wagon as walls, stacked up wagons as tower, wagon on the side for protection, and so on). But after a while, I realized that, if we can have a new wagon formation, they are just as good as the artificial wagon fort with the not so real wagon skins).

Why is this relevant to the OP? because if we can mod a new (for lack of better term, wagon) unit, allowing each wagon to be like a lego building block, in effect, each "wagon" is in fact a segment of contravallation/cirumvallation walls, then we have the basic ingredient to animate the investment walls, so a section of the "walls" is really a special wagon formations. Having an arrangement of about 16 to 32 different such "formation", you would have a very decent investment wall allowing different connection angles and different shapes when multiples of such units are connected with each other, each with different "formation".

We can also have different variety of lego building blocks, some for berm, low earthwork, others for towers, still others for taller walls and so on. So now the contravallation walls can have different stage of construction. But inreality, they are just different type of legos with different type of formations.

The next step would need to allow a unit of soldiers or even cavalry (yes I know the history did not record this, but it is a possibility) to be able to walk/climb/jump from one lego block to the next lego block.

But that would have to be another post.

[AngryTitusPullo]

Even with 40 units per stack we will not be able to do it in-game. There's not enough units available to fully circle any settlements in Total War.