Dev Blog 05/04/18

[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_34_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="290" /></p> <p>Castles are perhaps one of the most iconic images that come to mind when people think of the medieval era. These large and seemingly impregnable structures dominated the landscape in which they stood and projected an image of power and authority that aimed to impress both a lord’s subjects and peers. In last week’s blog we looked at some of the tools of warfare that were used to overcome the defences of these magnificent medieval behemoths and talked about the different ways that players can approach sieges in Bannerlord. In this week’s blog we would like to discuss the thought process that goes into designing castles for the game, from the historical influences we use through to the gameplay related decisions we make, and show you how this all comes together to make a castle for the game.</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/54

 

[Ki-Ok Khan]

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Tier 2 :

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Tier 3 :

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[KhergitLancer80]

Good job Ki-Ok Khan !

 

[Innocent Flower]

Ki Ok those pictures are forbidden.

So far I've been worried about castles, and this blog has suprisingly done nothing to allay my concerns. So far, castle fortifications don't seem to offer great cover for defenders. Cue the shad video, but M+B offers really arcady defences for defenders.

 

[Kortze26]

Tier 1 :

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I can't view any of these links in my region 

 

[Rackie]

Castles are as much about projecting power and maintaining positions as they are about defending the occupants. For example, the Welsh border castles were built by the invading Anglo-Normans to deny access and subdue the eastern stretches of Wales (The Welsh Marches to the Normans), Dover Castle was built above the port city that lies closest to Europe in Britain so any invading force would have to take a longer path or else deal with the defenders in order to secure a beachhead.

Edinburgh was founded by Saxons after they had defeated the native Britons/Scots (Burgh being an Anglo-Saxon word for fortress or fortified settlement) and wanted to impose themselves upon the populace.

Europe also has a whole tradition of 'bridge-castles' which literally would be a castle built over a river crossing to both defend it and force crossing merchants to pay taxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_castle

Basically you could build a castle purely as a show of how wealthy you were and to defend yourself (some Scottish highland castles qualify) but most rulers would be seeking to use all that investment in time, money, men and resources to also give themselves a tactical advantage.

Well yes, that is true.

Although the 'tactical advantage' part is a bit simpler than you think. Can you just walk by a castle? Why yes. But will you then have an enemy force in your back? Well yes

So technically they do still present obstacles, just in a different way. They don't have to physically block a pass.

He was saying that castles were (and are) located in tactically adventageous point such as a hill, or by a lake, because its much easier to defend a castle on a hill than a castle on flat ground.

And also that there were castles located in choke points, to control a passage and thus controlling a big region. This isnt really possible if a castle is loacted in nowhere.
Not every castle/keep was for protection of farmers.

 

[lolbash]

Ki Ok those pictures are forbidden.

So far I've been worried about castles, and this blog has suprisingly done nothing to allay my concerns. So far, castle fortifications don't seem to offer great cover for defenders. Cue the shad video, but M+B offers really arcady defences for defenders.

what are your concerns in great detail?

 

[kalarhan]

(blog castle stages)

Looking at the stages now I wonder how long it will take to build (we saw a quick preview of the building process once). Both on campaign weeks/years, and in real time (how many hours of a normal campaign it takes)

from nothing to stage 1 castle (villages)
stage 1 to stage 2
stage 2 to stage 3

Interesting how long it will take for the world to change and more castles to show up around the map, and to become stronger. If a normal campaign is, lets say, 50 hours.

Of course the same applies to towns (which likely would take longer, as they are huge).

Second aspect is repairs. If damage to fortifications need to be repaired between attacks, how long does that takes (leaving the fort open for easier attacks).

 

[Innocent Flower]

Ki Ok those pictures are forbidden.

So far I've been worried about castles, and this blog has suprisingly done nothing to allay my concerns. So far, castle fortifications don't seem to offer great cover for defenders. Cue the shad video, but M+B offers really arcady defences for defenders.

what are your concerns in great detail?

defenders will get maybe half cover on the walls, when they should be getting at least 3/4 (the AI probably aren't smart enough to take advantage of merlons) Those on seige equipment should especially get more cover, when really they look more vulnerable.
Defenders need a means to attack people really close to the walls without overexposing themselves. No bannerlord castle provides enough of this.
The size of things seems pretty exaggerated. I don't look forward to thirty-foot tall taverns again, and I don't care for impossible-to-construct buildings in general. A castle should be strong because of ingenious defenses, not just how long climbing the ladder takes.  It's not fun to climb the ladder. It is not fun to climb the ladder. . Realism is a difficult currency for some people but the fact that the castle walls are too bloody high is just not good for gameplay.

I get that the Battanians are doomed to fail, but it would be really easy for them to just hire an engineer to build them forts competitive with everyone else. There's not much sense restricting yourself to wooden castles when you could readily access stonemasons from any direction. It's a weird fantasy sort of thing to have a huge technological disparity between neighbours, and I don't think M&B is that high enough of a fantasy to ignore that. It'd be much cooler if talewords though about what would be the logical result of "batanian" culture at a current tech level than just restricting them to what their inspirations died with.

Also, just a hunch, but the tower in the second building has too many arrow slits. Each arrow slit means a place where the wall is thin, and the bottom arrow slits sort of suggest a structural weakness. Maybe this is helped by the whole -everything's oversized- deal but it's just no good either way.

 

[MArdA TaleWorlds]

hizliresim.com is not accesible but Turkey it seems.

I want the game. I do not want more blogs.

We all want the game but we need to understand why this is getting longer than expected. We don't have anything else to do but support TaleWorlds at this point. Have a little faith in them.

 

[Ki-Ok Khan]

hizliresim.com is not accesible but Turkey it seems. I uploaded them to another site.

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I have already fixed the links 4 hours ago.

 

[MArdA TaleWorlds]

Oh, It seems i saw the links from the quoted post. Thanks for pointing out.

 

[BayBear]

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Ki Ok those pictures are forbidden.

So far I've been worried about castles, and this blog has suprisingly done nothing to allay my concerns. So far, castle fortifications don't seem to offer great cover for defenders. Cue the shad video, but M+B offers really arcady defences for defenders.

what are your concerns in great detail?

Defenders need a means to attack people really close to the walls without overexposing themselves. No bannerlord castle provides enough of this.

Clarify what you mean. Having the higher vantage point is already a huge defensive advantage, and the 2016 sieges demos demonstrated more than sufficient merlon protection. Bannerlord is set 500 years too early for proper star forts.

A castle should be strong because of ingenious defenses, not just how long climbing the ladder takes.  It's not fun to climb the ladder. It is not fun to climb the ladder. . Realism is a difficult currency for some people but the fact is it's just not good for gameplay.

Ladders are just one of many tactical methods of assulting a castle. They are a cheap and quick to build. They won’t be ideal in all situations but they allow for quickly storming lightly guarded castles or opening multiple siege points.

 

[Jason L.]

Tier 1 :

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Thanks for the images ki ok.
Can anyone  see where the main external gate is in tier 3 castle?

 

[lolbash]

A castle should be strong because of ingenious defenses, not just how long climbing the ladder takes.  It's not fun to climb the ladder. It is not fun to climb the ladder. . Realism is a difficult currency for some people but the fact is it's just not good for gameplay.

Theres more than just ladders. Theres battering rams, siege towers and trechebuchets too.

 

[Silen]

Thanks for the images ki ok.
Can anyone  see where the main external gate is in tier 3 castle?

It appears to be hidden by a tower, at the bottom.

 

[BayBear]

Tier 1 :

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Thanks for the images ki ok.
Can anyone  see where the main external gate is in tier 3 castle?

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This picture displays the front entrance of the tier 3 castle. I can’t tell if there is a gate at the front entrance. The gatehouse is just beyond (see overhead view).

 

[Roccoflipside]

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I think somewhere I saw they tried to design the maps so a building a castle would have meaning, i.e. natural choke points that make it necessary to take the castle rather than ride by, but I could be mistaken.  My issue isn't with enemy lords, but rather the bandits who raid my villages while I'm on a siege with most of the lords.  If castles had, say, an area around them in which they would send part of their garrison to defend the village from any party less than, say, 50 troops.  This could also be used as an attacker, sending a small party of men to attack a village to draw a response from the garrison, then attacking the castle while they're out.  This has been something I've been thinking about for a bit, and if there isn't a feature like that I plan on trying my hand at modding it in.

About the first one, not too many castles were built that way. Indeed, I don't even know of any, but they probably existed. Most of them however were built not to protect a position but to protect the people inside of them, which would generally be the lord.

About that second part, yes it is possible but not very likely. Sure you can draw the garrison out, but to do that they must not know there's an army nearby, otherwise they're not stupid enough to exit the castle. Which means that you would try to besiege a castle with only a handful of men, with no siege equipment whatsoever. Considering taking a castle with an entire army was hard enough, doesn't seem like a valid tactic at all. Just a few defenders can hold a castle a very long time. As a general rule of thumb, a castle with 10 times less people can still hold it rather well (don't quote me on that, I remember hearing it from someone. Seems logical enough)

So having it in game would probably just lead to a lot of exploits, which uses auto resolve to completely negate the defensive capabilities of the castle.

Obviously it would have to be balanced so they wouldn't leave while an enemy army was in view, but if you hung just outside of their view range and attacked as soon as the other party left, you could catch the castle with, say, 100 less troops. Then if those troops return to help the castle, you can fight them separately outside the castle, while the defenders either can't help or have to sally out to help, possibly helping your siege, or maybe even harming you if the defenders sally out too and you have to defend yourself on both sides.
As far as building castles at strategic points, it was very much a thing that happened in the medieval world. I think what TW means by saying they want castles to have meaning is that building a castle in a certain village should have benefits and drawbacks, i.e. build one in the valley that serves as a road from opponent's kingdom to yours so you can build farms, etc. in the villages on the plains rather than building a castle at every single village.

Which brings me to a big question I've had lately: How does one capture territory in BL? In WB, every village was connected to a castle or town, but in BL every village can have it's own castle. Does that mean that I can't conquer a village before it has a castle? If so, at what point is the village conquered? Also, does that mean I could bumrush my opponent's towns before any castles are built and knock at least one faction out of the game extremely quickly? I'm hoping this blog is a foreshadowing of blogs to come which will discuss these newer features and how they fit into the game we already know and love. Keep up the good work, look forward to seeing more, and eventually the finished game!

 

[kalarhan]

Can anyone  see where the main external gate is in tier 3 castle?

there isnt one, there are two, so a battering ram alone is not enough, as you still need to break the second gate (which would put you inside the wall a easy target for the defenders). Murder gate 

 

[DanAngleland]

The size of things seems pretty exaggerated. I don't look forward to thirty-foot tall taverns again, and I don't care for impossible-to-construct buildings in general. A castle should be strong because of ingenious defenses, not just how long climbing the ladder takes.  It's not fun to climb the ladder. It is not fun to climb the ladder. . Realism is a difficult currency for some people but the fact is it's just not good for gameplay.

Wait, at first it seems you are arguing that the walls are too high for real life, then you say that realism is not good for gameplay, as if you had actually been arguing in favour of high walls rather than other historical means of making it hard to assault a castle (I imagine from the rest of your post that you had in mind arrow slits in either merlons or tower rooms, allowing archers to shoot across the face of those walls likely to be assailed by ladders).

Bah, it doesn't matter; but it irks me to so often see people saying there is a black and white choice between realism and gameplay. In this example, to be realistic ladders probably would most likely be used only when the defenders are vastly outnumbered and the attackers have no other options to get on the walls, or even used only as a sneak attack (to try and get someone up, perhaps at night, before most of the defenders are aware an assault has begun). So blaming 'realism' seems nonsensical to me.

I get that the Battanians are doomed to fail, but it would be really easy for them to just hire an engineer to build them forts competitive with everyone else. There's not much sense restricting yourself to wooden castles when you could readily access stonemasons from any direction.

Who says that they are the only ones with wooden castles at tier 1 (or that it is meant to define them as backward)? It would be strange and historically inaccurate if they were, and in any case it seems a natural way to make tier 1 significantly inferior to tiers 2 and 3. The Normans and classical Roman Empire are two examples that I know for sure built wooden versions of their castles (and walls and forts in the case of the Romans) before making later stone ones. I expect it is a characteristic that was virtually universal across the world for fortifications.

What does look a bit like the sort of pre-Roman Celtic defenses that I've seen in TV documentaries (I am unfamiliar with post Roman 'Celtic' fortifications) is part of the outer wall, where a broad stone section is topped only with earth, rather than battlements from which men can fight (the section that seems to include an opening leading toward the proper gatehouse, which is behind the outer wall). I like that touch a lot.

Whoops, I just realised that it isn't earth on top of the front gate/opening, but I think it is actually a thatched roofing that has a low 'eave' just above the crenellations.

 

[KhergitLancer80]

Will we be able to burn tier 1 castles instantly ?