I figured out a way to separate the city walls improvement into two parts. Go into the improvements.txt, and duplicate the section on city walls. Then change the first "city walls" to stockade, with a cost of 200, upkeep 1, defense improvement 10, and delete the line about stopping conversion (don't change any of the other places "city walls" is written). Don't forget to increase the number of improvements at the top of the file. Finally, go over to LANGUAGE\gamedata\gl_str and add a line in the improvements section called "Stockade".
Then I went and made city walls available with engineering, with a cost of 600, upkeep 5, defense improvement 30.
This splits up the original improvement, making it easier to get up something to stop slavers, while getting rid of the annoyance of assalting phalanxes behind walls with samurai. I think this annoyance was why CD made archers so powerful in his mode. By breaking things up, archers can be put back closer to their original value, giving more balanced open field battles. You end up paying twice as much in cost and upkeep with these two improvements, but the protection is worth it, I believe.
I don't know much about modding, so if any of you more advanced modders want to come up with the changes that would give the stockade its own sprite, library entries, etc., I would greatly appreciate it. Feel free to include this idea in any mods you put together of your own, though a mention in the readme would be appreciated.
BTW, it occured to me that this division might be good for the fortification improvement also, with the primitive version called earthworks (or parapet), and the advanced version a fortress, with defense bonuses equal to the stockade and walls, and corresponding PW costs. Unfortunately, I couldn't even find the files where you would try this. For those of you who would know, again feel free to try it and let know if you have any luck.
Then I went and made city walls available with engineering, with a cost of 600, upkeep 5, defense improvement 30.
This splits up the original improvement, making it easier to get up something to stop slavers, while getting rid of the annoyance of assalting phalanxes behind walls with samurai. I think this annoyance was why CD made archers so powerful in his mode. By breaking things up, archers can be put back closer to their original value, giving more balanced open field battles. You end up paying twice as much in cost and upkeep with these two improvements, but the protection is worth it, I believe.
I don't know much about modding, so if any of you more advanced modders want to come up with the changes that would give the stockade its own sprite, library entries, etc., I would greatly appreciate it. Feel free to include this idea in any mods you put together of your own, though a mention in the readme would be appreciated.
BTW, it occured to me that this division might be good for the fortification improvement also, with the primitive version called earthworks (or parapet), and the advanced version a fortress, with defense bonuses equal to the stockade and walls, and corresponding PW costs. Unfortunately, I couldn't even find the files where you would try this. For those of you who would know, again feel free to try it and let know if you have any luck.
Comment