Strategus City Improvement Project

[Spawny]

More importantly, how are you going to defend a city like that?

It takes a few minutes, if not less to build a few catapults and take out the walls.
After that it becomes a streetbrawl with a longer route to the fight for the attackers. I could be wrong, but as I picture the battles, you don't need 2x or even 3x the attackers to be able to win anymore.
Imo, that's a bad thing. Cities should be damn hard to take and not require a few catapults an equal amount of tickets and some gear to outfit your soldiers with.

[Wookimonsta]

hmm, once i am done with all the driving theory, i should be able to get into mapping. I used to do bf vietnam mapping AGES ago, but warband can't be too difficult. Maybe i'll be able to do the occasional map.

[PhantomZero]

If town maps were expanded, you would also need some sort of standard to make sure they are still fair.

In addition, with the spawn being so far back for attackers, there would need to be a way to not only take down enemy spawn flags, but capture them. Otherwise you would never make any progress into the town and fights would drag on for 6-7 hours at 20k vs 20k.

Not to offend, but most of the custom siege maps are terrible.

[Jacko]

I bugged the devs on IRC for some kind of guidelines for remaking of the city scenes, so far nothing. The only thing said was by cmp and he simply thought it was too big.

One big issue when remaking these scenes are to keep them easily defendable, yet increasing them in size. You have to keep in mind that the longer the wall the harder it will become to defend. The fights are only 60v60. We also talked about HOW one defends a big city. Adding Outer and inner walls? Built in choke points? Is the map made to be used in a fight or simply to be a city?

I'm remaking city scene 10, will post some picture when I have something to show for.

[Warcat]

As I talked about in previous posts, being made to be used in a fight was one of the main focuses I had when making this. The walls are on top of a slight slope with spikes along much of it, similar to the way the city was  already set up in it's smaller version. So access to the walls with ladders and towers is still somewhat limited and the defenders have very good access to it. If catapults do destroy the walls, there are numerous choke points that the  defenders can use to defend at. Also keep in mind that defenders have the ability to choose their spawn points by using their spawn flags. And defenders also have the ability to use catapults which have the ability to one hit hit other catapults, killing the crew around them.

As far as issues about size being to big causing lag, if you are referring to the number of items in the map, I checked and it is smaller than several of the current very playable MP maps that are used. The actual size of the map is exactly the same as what it was before.

I also did a few time tests to see how long it takes to get places in this map. All the times are approximate.
Back of defense area to the top of the closest wall (most defense spawns however are far closer to the walls): 24sec
Attacker spawn#0 to top of nearest wall: 24 sec
Entire width traveling on walls: 55 sec
Entire width traveling behind the walls: 40sec

Throughout the whole process I intended to keep it as a difficult objective to take, but ultimately either side should need better organization, teamwork, and skill to win a battle.

Ultimately the only way to know a map works well for sure it to do some real combat tests on it with organized factions, but I've been playing strat since before any cities were taken the first time, so I think I've made a map that should work well.

In case you're interested at looking at it in person

[Warcat]

I'm remaking city scene 10, will post some picture when I have something to show for.

Tulga, that's a good one, it already has some of the city feel that I like, I look forward to seeing how it comes out.

I'm moving on to work on Town 6, Praven should be a fun one to work on, it's already practically a medieval Omaha beach. Can almost entirely forget about approaching these walls with siege towers.

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[chadz]

This map looks pretty impenetrable, actually

Just for the record: it is not at all necessary that all maps have the same difficulty. This one looks a lot harder, and that's perfectly fine. You have to get it first while it's harder, so it's just fair that you can defend it with the same advantage

[cmp]

The one above (Ichamur) is way too big to be usable in Strategus battles. The vanilla one was tight for 60 defenders, two or three times as large would be ok, but yours is ridiculously oversized (impossible to defend).

[Warcat]

The one above (Ichamur) is way too big to be usable in Strategus battles. The vanilla one was tight for 60 defenders, two or three times as large would be ok, but yours is ridiculously oversized (impossible to defend).

I'll cut out some of the side areas, make it only about 3 times bigger than original

[gazda]

hmm did you take a look at this
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,132920.0.html
it has all the native city sieges redone, they look good, maybe if you take that it will save you some time

[Warcat]

Updated it to a smaller version. Because it curved back to the attackers direction, the far left was one area where the attackers  likely would've had a time advantage over the defenders if they quickly shifted their attack in that direction

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Also another thing I want to note, some of the buildings look further away than they are, they're only 50-75% of their normal size.

[Jacko]

So, my take on Tulga (sorry for the shitty image quality, don't know why it doesn't wanna look like ingame):

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Basicly 2.5 layers of defence integrated with the city, and a "drill square" on the top. One gate to the drill square and one side door. I think there is a total of seven gates around the city. As it is now, the only way for attackers to gain entrance to the inner city is to use siege equipment (the one ladder left from the original map I kept in). Do you want me to throw in additional ladders for the attackers, or leave it as it is? As for spawn points, I have yet to place any, because I'm unsure how you guys want it.

[Tears of Destiny]

I think every city/castle in Strategus needs to have intact walls and no ready ladders or siege equipment for the attackers. After all, that is up to the army without a time limit to do.

It is also fair, because yes it will be easier to defend, but on the other hand, it will be so much harder for the attacking faction to take it in the first place.

[Warcat]

You're Tulga looks really good to me. I like how you seem to have built off of the city built around a hill approach that it had initially. It somewhat reminds me of a total war map. Not absolutely sure, but I think spawns work they same way in cities as they do in villages. Main difference is cities use a lot more spawns.

[Jacko]

Thanks Warcat! Lots of TW Siege map towns are on hills, and kind of built upwards like mine, with a "square" on top. Guess it's natural (and easy in TW's case to reorganize routing troops, which I'm hoping it will be for cRPG as well). I simply built around the terrain that was already there. Yeah I figure it's the same as Villages (probably some more defender spawn points?). I'll wait with ze siege equipment and spawn points, will finish it up later and upload it.

Word from the equus africanus asinus Lord is No pre-placed siege equipment.