New Idea - Wall Trebuchets

[leo.civil.uefs]

Well... I had an Idea...

Cannon towers are not used in TATW, but they are there in the engine (the maximum you can have in TATW are ballista towers).

I though about adding trebuchet models tied to walls, like the ones you see in minas tirith in the movie.

I suppose the functionality would be 100%, it would fire rocks and we could change the sound from cannon shots to trebuchet ones.

The only problem is that there would be no animations for these engines. I dont think this is such a big problem to ruin the main idea.

I belive places like Minas Tirith, Carn Dum and maybe one or more two would fit well for this.

It would be perfectly integrated in the engine, with building icons, descriptions and all.

But Im still thinking about... manifest yourselves please...

[paradamed]

It loooks neat! Nice idea! I wouldnt mind the animation problem.

[baz44331]

I think it would look great and add the look thats missing,

[Nariac]

I think these could be cool.

[Woold]

Why didn't anyone think of this before?! (kidding)

Would fit perfectly for some of the cities. Otherwise, would it be possible to give trebutchets some space on the walls? I know that it is impossible for the siege engines to be placed upon walls but shouldn't it be possible to add like a one-sided hill or something so that they can be placed alongside the walls before battle? The trebutchets would not be able to be moved anywhere but the crew could flee down a very small and narrow path if needed.

Since I don't know anything about modding, would this be possible?

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

Otherwise, would it be possible to give trebutchets some space on the walls? I know that it is impossible for the siege engines to be placed upon walls but shouldn't it be possible to add like a one-sided hill or something so that they can be placed alongside the walls before battle? The trebutchets would not be able to be moved anywhere but the crew could flee down a very small and narrow path if needed.

Can we consider this ^ also, just have small bastions that arent too obvious in the minas tirith map would certainly make me and others very happy

[leo.civil.uefs]

Otherwise, would it be possible to give trebutchets some space on the walls? I know that it is impossible for the siege engines to be placed upon walls but shouldn't it be possible to add like a one-sided hill or something so that they can be placed alongside the walls before battle? The trebutchets would not be able to be moved anywhere but the crew could flee down a very small and narrow path if needed.

Since I don't know anything about modding, would this be possible?

No. That involves pathfinding and AI behavior way too strange for the engine, I dont think it worth a try.

Can we consider this ^ also, just have small bastions that arent too obvious in the minas tirith map would certainly make me and others very happy

Bastions? Could you please repeat in other words? I cant understand.








PS: Who voted "stupid idea"? SHOW YOURSELF!

[SupplyWagon]

PS: Who voted "stupid idea"?

Gothmog, most likely

[gaunty14]

No. That involves pathfinding and AI behavior way too strange for the engine, I dont think it worth a try.



Bastions? Could you please repeat in other words? I cant understand.
PS: Who voted "stupid idea"? SHOW YOURSELF!

Actually it is kind of possible to mount siege engines on walls, the Thirty Years War mod team tried it out, it was quite buggy and it might have been pulled for more polishing but it is possible.

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

Actually it is kind of possible to mount siege engines on walls, the Thirty Years War mod team tried it out, it was quite buggy and it might have been pulled for more polishing but it is possible.

Erm. If this is seriously possible, the 10 year old in me just woke up and went a bit crazy. Cannot imagine anything cooler ahaha

[leo.civil.uefs]

Actually it is kind of possible to mount siege engines on walls, the Thirty Years War mod team tried it out, it was quite buggy and it might have been pulled for more polishing but it is possible.

I know what are you talking about.
Its a buggy process that limitates all the settlements in the game, no way.

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

Sorry Leo, I meant maybe if it would be easier for placing the trebuchet unit in an area in certain maps to be useful and not a hinderance. But as you have said, its not worth a try so no worries.

[chriskourou]

Totally agree! Major cities should have extra defenses (and upgraded units from round 1), especially those which had them anyway.

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

Best idea i've seen in a long time, this is my first time commenting on these forums so I want to say that LEO YOUR WORK IS *** AMAZING. Honestly I hope you do this and your work and ideas are truly amazing. Please do this.

[Woold]

Best idea i've seen in a long time, this is my first time commenting on these forums so I want to say that LEO YOUR WORK IS *** AMAZING. Honestly I hope you do this and your work and ideas are truly amazing. Please do this.

I'm not alone then! Huzzah!

[Bladvak]

Great idea, mate.

Hope to see this in practice.

[RubiconDecision]

Leo,

Here's how I did it a long time ago but naturally without altering the depiction of the siege artillery on the walls.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...when-defending

There's a screencapture of what it looks like from the attackers point of view. The way I altered it, I put ballista in some of the roboarcher positions, but the main gate towers were manned with trebuchet. What this does is allow some angles of attack to be better than others. In other words, a smart attacker would attack a different side and in a certain order using tactics in order to penetrate and perform a breach of the walls with an attacker's own siege artillery and/or using ladders to gain access to certain sides. It would certainly be smarter to build more than six ladders in some cases as well as towers. Towers can easily be destroyed upon approach to the fortified settlement with trebuchet shot especially flaming.

This does in some way make it much more difficult to penetrate the fortification's defenses. Truly this means altering the autoresolve values in order to approach something closer to realistically defeating the defenders.

Note: the standard battle a.i. will deposit the AI attackers as close as possible to the border to the settlement. This is the biggest stumbling block. When the attackers are TOO CLOSE to the edge, they are immediately within shot of the defending siege artillery since they are naturally elevated and the arc of the trebuchet artillery would thus give the defenders an advantage do to the way the shot is lobbed. That means that since the AI places their units too close that the attacking AI can end up severely damaging or losing their siege artillery units as well as taking much more damage than normal.

So this is the biggest problem. While it's wonderful to finally have siege artillery on the defending side, unless you can figure out how to get the AI to place their units further back, then the attacking AI will have a real disadvantage.

In my opinion, as a human player, it's far more thrilling to play a siege battle as the attacker by placing my units as far back as possible and inching my way up and using the range of artillery to gingerly approach and damage the walls and towers and gate. Too often the strength of the walls, gate, and towers are too weak and easily demolished when in fact these should take an enormous amount of damage and still repel invaders. It should be by skill from the commanding general with artillery and LUCK that a wall comes down.

This means that the traits "GoodSiegeAttacker", "GoodSiegeDefender" "Good ArtilleryCommander" are VITAL for attack and defense in siege battles. It means that certain buildings in the EDB might result in the AI getting these traits and/or gifting them to them. By doing so, it results in additionally factoring into the success or failure of a breach.

The only time it makes sense to have the units deployed closer as the attackers would be a night attack and IF the commanding general has very high ambush and night battle skill in order to get their units so CLOSE undetected.

If you can find a balance between the range of the defending trebuchet, the strength of the fortifications, the deployment of the AI attackers so they are FURTHER out in general....then it would make for a SUPERIOR and REALISTIC siege battle.

Because the robotowers (that normally shoot arrows) can be adjusted to shoot anything, then this means that one could have ballista, trebuchet, crossbow bolts, longbow bodkin arrows, whatever fire from them, and since each has different damage effects, animation, range, and so forth, then altering this fundamentally alters siege battles.

With someone like you who knows how to utilize IWTE so well, then not only could that happen, but what's more, pools of water could be placed limiting the approach of the attackers such to CHANNEL the attacker's path so they had to enter from certain sides and thus enter the range of artillery placed upon the battlements. This is why a pool of water, say a lake, might be on a certain side of a settlement and force the attacker to alter their plans to determine what would be the best tactics for attacking certain settlements to that they could reasonably breach certain settlements.

Think about that. Because artillery must be pushed forward just like siege towers, then it moves SLOWLY and so it makes proper placement of the attacker's siege artillery to be crucial, and so if there is a body of water (or a cliff as some vanilla fortifications are unapproachable from certain sides), then this adds a whole new factor into besieging such that one can negotiate placement of artillery and not have them utterly destroyed by the defending trebuchets.

I hope you jump upon this idea. It's something I've been discussing for a long time. Long ago I've had the defenders have siege artillery on the walls such as trebuchet as well as experimenting with bodkin arrows or crossbows.

Because of the "superweapons" in the MOS submod, one could make such a superweapon as a defensive artillery unit spewing out certain ranged weapons that would be utterly devastating to the attackers. I would certainly think these would be appropriate for Mordor to prevent some of the hardest and most famous fortifications from being taken. This would also be a game changer and why Mordor cannot be easily destroyed even with overwhelming forces but only "checked" to prevent expansion.

[leo.civil.uefs]

OK.

Good news, the concept works.
I can also edit the range of them, means they will fire quite far, allowing me to place them on Minas Tirith walls. I can also increase the control range, meaning there will be no problems in placing units near them to make them fire.

I also managed to include both cannon (now trebuchet) and ballista tower buildings in a single settlement in stratmap.
I need now to test if it is possible to keep normal (arrow/ballista) towers in the first line of walls of Minas Tirith while having also trebuchets in the second level. Problem is that when you alter the defense level of a settlement you do it for all towers so I dont know if it is possible to do that. I think there is a possibility by editing the settlement in IWTE.

Anyway it seems to work so well that I even consider removing arrow/ballista towers and keeping only the trebuchets.

Only time will tell, wait for news.

[MOS-Lukas-Dwarf]

Can't wait to see this progress, its nice to see you modding again Leo, you really help add depth and the middle earth environment comes to life I shall patiently await progress

[Araval]

Sounds great!
In Minas Tirith it seems to me that there are trebuchets also on the first level. http://images2.fanpop.com/image/phot...85-960-404.jpg