Im going to hijack this blog to put out some idea to make castles more useful. If another army can march straight to another faction's city and take it, then what is even a point of a castle? To just be there?
The little amount of medieval knowledge I posses tells me that castles/forts were used to scout enemy movement, to host a lord's family, to stand as a border between an invading army and the faction, to harass enemy armies by attacking their forager parties/scouts and so on.
Imagine this: Canada and the US go to war. Canada launches an invasion, and instead of making progress down South, they just straight up march do Philadelphia and boom. Philadelphia is a Canadian city now. Doesn't matter that it's still surrounded by hostile territory.
And that's exactly what happens in Warband. A faction takes a city from another faction, and you just have this weird blub when looking at the minimap (If u use a mod that allows you to do that)
I also don't get how armies can literally pass trough castles without anything happening. It would bring so much more depth to the game if castles kinda blocked armies from passing near them, allowing factions to hold chokepoints, like in canyons, between rivers or mountains, bridges.
I think that there should be something done about this. It would make invading another faction so worth so much more planning, rather than just clicking on a city with your superior army.
Some ideas:
- Castles would have this "defensive circle" whose raidus would depend on the number of men holding it, which would prevent any army from passing near it. So a commander could make two decisions: He could march around the settlement's "defensive circle", which would prolong his way or potentially block it if the settlement is placed between two natural barriers, or he could march straight to the settlement to take it.
- Entering enemy territory would instantly start harming your army. The longer you staid, the lower the morale of the army would get. Your food supplies would drain more quickly than usual. There would be a chance of your army getting harassed by enemy skirmish parties. So - the longer you stay in enemy territory, the higher the chance of your army being collapsed by the lack of food and low morale.
