Realistic City Defense

Reworks all world city defenses to make them more qualitative and realistic without adding free extra difficulty. City walls on demand. Places traps and bastion artillery.

** You need to end turn to see the new garrisons!

Update v5.1.2 – Historical Artillery and fixes (click below for details) NEW, June 30
Update v4.1 – Tuning pack
Update v4.0 – Eastern factions update (including the new Walls on-Demand system)
Update v3.0 – Greeks update
Update v2.0 – Barbarians update

Click here for patch details

This mod is very big and I want to apologize if something was not perfect at the start. Now, after 4 expansions, the mod is complete (see discussion below).

It won’t add new mechanics or change the basic gameplay of your matches so don’t expect fireworks! On the contrary, it will work in "background" to ensure that garrisons exist and grow up in line with reality, culture traits and populations’ strength. Should you like it, please rate it.

A city defense is the sum of its garrisoned units, walls, workshops, bastion artillery weapons, defense morale, deployable barricades, fireballs, spikes, sulphur and other kind of traps. This mod elaborates each of these factors for each culture so that the resulting mix is realistic and more enjoyable.

For example, let’s suppose to play Republican Rome :

1. You have a good variety of troops in your garrisons but you will now need barracks for trained units. Trained units are led by a General and are able to fight in tactical formations like manipular lines (hastati/principes/triarii)
2. Rome had a solid ranged fire power, which was essentially due to Velites (weak but massive) and skilled auxilia corps (strong but elite). This mod will place Iberic, Balearic or even Cretan Archers in cities with auxiliary camps to make the Roman fire power real and playable during assaults.
3. Roman cities – I mean, civil colonias – were the place where patricians and local aristocrats had their primary houses, where consuls, tribunes, senators and other public institutions lived so they realistically help defending their properties with Praetorian Guards and Noble Cavalry.
4. Roman minor cities were often reinforced by province capitals so they actually get semi-good garrisons, but you won’t find Praetorian Cavalry here. Such minor cities may also get 8m walls if a Siege Worskshop is built there.
5. Let’s not forget that Romans had important gladiator schools and arenas which were contributing to some defense duties if required (and paid) so you will get gladiators in garrisons by building such facilities.
6. Your military ports contribute to the city defense with land units as well, together with water or manufacturing facilities (protected by Vigiles). Also, all kind of ports are now better defended by more qualitative garrisoned ships
7. Training camps for ranged units will now give some arrow-shooters like Cheirobalistas (mobile scorpions) for example, according with the historical diffusion of artillery in that period.
8. Siege workshops will greatly reward your garrisons, activating additional weapons and even the "legendary" Polybolos, a semi-automatic portable ballista able to shoot 8 projectiles per minute.
9. All garrisoned untis will be automatically upgraded when reforms are issued.
10. The Roman research "Tactical Drills" will allow you to dynamically deploy traps at the beginning of the assault.

The game experience is of course different if you play with another culture. For example, towns’ garrisons grow up with specialties that are faction specific. Here’s the complete table :

• AFR Large presence of Cavalry (Numidian as well)
• ARA Large usage of Camel Cavalry (4 units in lv4 settlements)
• BRI They defend their families and land with honour (+1 units in all settlements levels)
• CAR x3 Noble Shock Cavalry units in lv4 settlements
• CEL Devastating Axe power with warriors and horses.
• DAC Falxmen in all settlement levels + 1 additional unit of Falxmen at Lv4
• EAS Strong missile cavalry and massive presence of units due to eastern cultural traits
• EGY Larger incidence of stronger ranged forces
• GER Strong melee units at all levels. No cavalry. Limited archery.
• GRE Hoplite walls domination
• IBE More excellent ranged units.
• Ill Marines based defense (being skilled seamen!).
• ITA -1 less units per settlement level but more qualitative than average. 4 Nobles at Lv4.
• ROM Most of the units deployed in settlements are upgradable to trained ones
• STE Excellent and massive Cavalry
• THR Combination of Peltasts and wild melee Cavalry

MAIN FEATURES

• Garrisons are filled with units that are now strictly related to buildings, culture and playability.
• New garrisons become significantly stronger over time in both, numbers and quality but they retain a proper mix of units so that players can actually use them for fighting.
• All Barracks will place a General or Leader in that garrison.
• Attack and Defence Training camps give garrisons super elite units
• Iron or Bronze sources provide Armoured units (like Armoured Legionaries for Rome)
• Horse facilities give better Horse Cavalry classes (especially for Eastern factions).
• Religious buildings might provide special "inspired" units (like Wodanaz spears for Germans, Numidian Nobles for Africans, Sobek Cultists and many others)
• All onagers, excepted Roman ones (only obtainable after Siege IV) have been removed for historic accuracy.
• Artillery removed from Barbarians excepted Dacian Scorpios.

REFORMS

• Tactical Drills, Large Defences and Tactical Flexibility provide barricades, fireballs (only for germans), sharp stones, spikes, sudes and sulphur as defense tools. They can be used under siege. Romans obtain single deployable barricades after Manipular Organization and advanced barricades after Cohort Organization (Marian Reform)
• Barbarian "Siege" technologies are now 2x faster.

WALLS

• Eastern, Greek, Barbarian and Roman province capital cities automatically receive walls from Cities Lv2
• Eastern, Greek and Roman minor settlements can have modded walls if players build a "Military Siege Workshop" Lv3. Hopefully sieging ladders work now.
• Barbarian villages can’t have walls

COMPATIBILITY

This mod works with other mods that don’t do the same thing or remove vanilla units. Works with Radious (forced march temporarily active). It’s not integrated to DEI.

For a further focus on city defenses you can add "Your People’s Trust" scripts to your game that will allow you to gain special buffs when parking Generals in cities to defend.

Please note that Total War Rome II seems to need at least a turn to recalculate garrisons even if you start a fresh game.

Please report eventual issues in this chat and I will take care of them. Thanks Ragnar for your support!

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