Castle placement makes no sense.

[EmptyPepsiCans]

I've noticed that every single time there's a war the armies just wander around raiding, sieging, and meandering with no apparent plan. It seems like part of that is that there's nothing to slow, divert, or stop them. The mountain passes of Battania are wide open. The rivers are free to cross. Nobody even bothers to guard the miniscule land bridges between Aserai and Empire territory or east and west Sturgia. None of it makes any sense at all.

Kingdoms guard chokepoints. By doing so they can secure their lands, track commerce, collect taxes, and gather information. So why do Calradian kingdoms put their castles in random locations? Why don't they defend defensible locations? Why let enemies march right past them to devastate the countryside?

Somebody explain this design choice to me, because I don't get it.

 

[Spinozart1]

Location is one thing, but I'd like castles to be more strategical:
Boost nearby towns defense
Increase war cost/food consumption of enemies
This kind of things...

 

[EmptyPepsiCans]

That too. In Bannerlord castles don't actually do anything.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Some feedback topics we have been wasting our time on. Practically since the game was released 2 years ago, we've been referring to the OP's proposed stuff and other map-related issues; here are some well-rounded ones.

Is real-world inspired repositioning on a large scale worth a map revision?
Small changes for authentic bridge-, settlement- and border-placements
The world Calradia needs roads in detail, here's how.
.
.
.

But at the end of the day...Taleworlds is simply not interested in modifying any of this (or has given it an extremely low priority)... no bottleneck/strategic settlements, no zones of control, no borders, no recruitment of noble troops in castles... bla bla bla...

Two years later, not even the city of Sargot has been repositioned ... what do you expect...

---
Lucky of us we had this back then.

 

[Bratok]

Oh c'mon, leave TW alone, people!
They have better things to do than improving a stupid game! Like building a new office and investing our money in some ****.

 

[black_bulldog]

@EmptyPepsiCans ofc they're not laid out to make sense strategically, take a close look at the map. If you do you'll see that Taleworlds laid out settlements in a fairly even distribution not for any other reason.

 

[EverKira]

Not to mention the villages tied to castles or even named for castles that are so far away it would take days to get a relief force there.. Looking at you Erzenur...

 

[froggyluv]

@EmptyPepsiCans ofc they're not laid out to make sense strategically, take a close look at the map. If you do you'll see that Taleworlds laid out settlements in a fairly even distribution not for any other reason.

In Theatre they have something call a dramaturge - i only know this because i do this as a side gig for a little extra income and because its fun. What we do is look over a story, film or play and see if things both add up and ring true. Even in abstract art if portrayed as a story, we might ask why would you add an image of this type if the overall theme is of another type..etc..Obviously very abstract art can go anywhere, but generally speaking for things that especially include story you look at the historical precedence of just about everything.

So that said -what was the plan here with this overhead campaign map? It lacks strategic or even anything of pertaining to Lore. Where are the worlds interesting sites? Why are castles placed so haphazardly when in reality they were always to serve a purpose? Where are the natural resource areas that factions would normally fight over? Why isnt the map given a grid in which factions traverse and patrol in realistic ways? Its just Pacman with a medieval paintjob out there...

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I really like an idea of something like a debuff for being in enemy territory that stacks as you go deeper in (more overlapping influence areas from fiefs). Should be a speed reduction and maybe +food consumption to reflect the stress of going deeper into enemy territory. Also as auto calc but for fiefs in siege of the same sort to make deeper fiefs less attractive and less likely to be taken then outer fiefs.

Also, how about special castle troops that are even more rare and special then nobles that you can only get as the owner. They could be like a pack of say 20 that you get during war and they leave if you're at peace or you lose the castle. Something fun just to make castles not worthless..... besides making wanderer clans anyways.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Two years later, not even the city of Sargot has been repositioned ... what do you expect...

I'll never forgive them for this. ?

 

[Spinozart1]

I really like an idea of something like a debuff for being in enemy territory that stacks as you go deeper in (more overlapping influence areas from fiefs). Should be a speed reduction and maybe +food consumption to reflect the stress of going deeper into enemy territory. Also as auto calc but for fiefs in siege of the same sort to make deeper fiefs less attractive and less likely to be taken then outer fiefs.

Also, how about special castle troops that are even more rare and special then nobles that you can only get as the owner. They could be like a pack of say 20 that you get during war and they leave if you're at peace or you lose the castle. Something fun just to make castles not worthless..... besides making wanderer clans anyways.

Clearly castles could easily act as a sort of debuff/buff strategic points, but the hardest part is to integrate effectively those new effects in the AI world map decision behavior....
I'm not really for a new troop type. Just make noble troops recruitable ONLY IN castles (not even in bound villages).

 

[black_bulldog]

Clearly castles could easily act as a sort of debuff/buff strategic points, but the hardest part is to integrate effectively those new effects in the AI world map decision behavior....
I'm not really for a new troop type. Just make noble troops recruitable ONLY IN castles (not even in bound villages).

Amen. I've been saying this for over a year. There needs to be a reason for the player to want to get castles instead they feel like a burden to get because there's no upside to them besides maybe a bit of cash if you don't get raided.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Amen. I've been saying this for over a year. There needs to be a reason for the player to want to get castles instead they feel like a burden to get because there's no upside to them besides maybe a bit of cash if you don't get raided.

I'm not really for a new troop type. Just make noble troops recruitable ONLY IN castles (not even in bound villages).

Well, not all noble troops are even good, in fact most kinda suck. Sure maybe the great rebalance foretold in the ancient text will fix them, but when will that ever come? Until then I'll be a bit mad if I get castles and my reward is some POS vlandian squires and such.

 

[black_bulldog]

Well, not all noble troops are even good, in fact most kinda suck. Sure maybe the great rebalance foretold in the ancient text will fix them, but when will that ever come? Until then I'll be a bit mad if I get castles and my reward is some POS vlandian squires and such.

Ok I'll give you that, but my point still stands there is absolutely nothing appealing about castles outside of maybe storage. There's nothing to do or see in them, and the income that they can provide is pitiful at best and that's assuming your lands aren't getting raided every other day.

 

[Sgtskywalk]

Definitely need to have castles blocking access to certain regions requiring them to be taken in order to proceed past them

 

[niekdegrijze]

Clearly castles could easily act as a sort of debuff/buff strategic points, but the hardest part is to integrate effectively those new effects in the AI world map decision behavior....
I'm not really for a new troop type. Just make noble troops recruitable ONLY IN castles (not even in bound villages).

100%. this is the idea for a mod i hope to make one day, (still going through lesser scholars tutorial series at the moment)

Step 1: have a small pool of nobles replenish over time. You can recruit them through the menu(at first) only when you own the castle or are very friendly with the owner. This would represent the training of high born sons at the lords castle by the weaponsmaster.

Step 2: have the option to have practice fights in the castle.

Step 3: let the campaign AI consider the garrisonstrenght as if it where a stationary party on the campaignmap. This way smaller parties will avoid a castle, basically allowing castles to choke points to block enemy trade and small raiding parties.
Not sure how doable this is?

I think the above features would give castles a strategic, more combat oriented worth that is different from cities

 

[Spinozart1]

Step 1 and step 2 are easily feasible... No doubts you will be able to implement them in no time once you feel confident enough with the modding basics.
Step 3 is another story...
You could influence AI parties decision by adding the conditions you mentioned but I'm pretty sure they will enter in some kind of endless loop... going backward/forward between 2 castles etc...
To avoid this you have to give the AI alternative path to reach the destination it was initially aiming to.
Caravans seem to do this correctly (so you probably have to study the way it is coded), but I know that sometimes they end up behaving strangely...

 

[Antaeus]

Zones of control is all that is necessary. Most castles would then have strategic significance and create bottlenecks that must be taken to progress a war. Castles near rivers or mountain passes or land bridges would then need to be attacked directly rather than bypassed. Total War has this mechanic down. I'm not sure if it is in keeping with Bannerlord's jack-of-all-trades approach to RTS though.

But meh. AI factions already go after castles first - so the well located ones tend to switch hands a lot anyway.

 

[Sgtskywalk]

I do also really like the zones of control idea as seen in Total War games in order to create bottlenecks, seems like the easiest way to implement the feature. While in an enemy zone, an army could suffer attrition and run the risk of having the enemy garrison sally out, while being unable to exit the zone without sieging the castle/town. Something along those lines at least!

 

[svelok]

Primary function of castles is providing friendly forces a safe place to hide from superior enemies. That has a really meaningful impact on how wars play out as-is. There's also internal logic (ex, AI stuff) that pushes NPCs to avoid messy, snakey borders.

100%. this is the idea for a mod i hope to make one day, (still going through lesser scholars tutorial series at the moment)

Step 1: have a small pool of nobles replenish over time. You can recruit them through the menu(at first) only when you own the castle or are very friendly with the owner. This would represent the training of high born sons at the lords castle by the weaponsmaster.

Step 2: have the option to have practice fights in the castle.

Step 3: let the campaign AI consider the garrisonstrenght as if it where a stationary party on the campaignmap. This way smaller parties will avoid a castle, basically allowing castles to choke points to block enemy trade and small raiding parties.
Not sure how doable this is?

1. Is this different somehow from recruiting nobles from villages? Or exactly the same, just adding a recruit menu to castles with only noble spawns? If so, that's not hard.
2. Is this just like arenas? Or? Also not that complicated.
3. That... kinda sounds like a catastrophe. Making the AI dumber is going to frustrate players a lot, and it's likely to create a lot of unintended consequences. Wouldn't it both make more sense and be more interesting to just create some sort of patrols? Small/medium, relatively slow-moving parties that are leashed to stay within a certain short distance of the castle but otherwise just act like any other normal friendly party, attacking stuff that draws close.