Fortified Settlements

[Lukee123]

Will keep this forum post short- but something that is frustrating me throughout the game is raids on your smaller settlements when troops are too far to defend and coming to find them burnt and waiting for them to come back-

There should be an option (more possible for later game) to fortify towns- Doing so would add a small palisade/wooden defences constructed in small settlements and adding a small village garrison as would exist in medieval ages. Open to thoughts but think this would add much needed settlement depth to the game-

Not saying it should require siege equipment to attack and this would be costly/for only the most prosperous settlements but would just add something more to the game where the only defence for village settlement is currently exterior troops/armies who may or may not arrive.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Agreed, there should be upgrades make a delay before the raiding can begin (like in warband), I'd also like to set up proper patrols. If they want to make ballista that the towns and castles can shoot raiders with and passing by enemies, that's fine with me too!

 

[Lukee123]

Agreed, there should be upgrades make a delay before the raiding can begin (like in warband), I'd also like to set up proper patrols. If they want to make ballista that the towns and castles can shoot raiders with and passing by enemies, that's fine with me too!

Patrols are definitely needed! Cant remember how they did it in warband but the game could even take a portion of the garrison when over a certain amount to use as a local patrol- Surely this wouldn't be too difficult to do and would help with never ending bandits!

 

[Antaeus]

In my experience, you won't get raided if enemy factions like you. Obviously this isn't always possible tho.

In lieu of being everybody's friend, and making the developers recreate all the villages with new palisades added, it would be good if we could assign one of our parties to patrol our fiefs, take out looters and hideouts and enemy parties and not be available to armies. We have 3 extra parties, surely we can fulfil our feudal obligations by giving up 2 of them.

Either that, or if your economy can take it, it would be good to be able to up-garrison towns by seconding a percentage of city/castle troops to the villages. There could even be a slider in a city menu - how many troops are stationed in the city on one side, and in the villages on the other.

 

[Lukee123]

In my experience, you won't get raided if enemy factions like you. Obviously this isn't always possible tho.

In lieu of being everybody's friend, and making the developers recreate all the villages with new palisades added, it would be good if we could assign one of our parties to patrol our fiefs, take out looters and hideouts and enemy parties and not be available to armies. We have 3 extra parties, surely we can fulfil our feudal obligations by giving up 2 of them.

Either that, or if your economy can take it, it would be good to be able to up-garrison towns by seconding a percentage of city/castle troops to the villages. There could even be a slider in a city menu - how many troops are stationed in the city on one side, and in the villages on the other.

At this stage it is probably easier just to add patrols, I agree with the last point - Garrisons should definitely act as small/medium patrols which can be controlled in the manage castle option.

Although I don't think the whole change to recreate villages should be disregarded- This would certainly add something that is missing to the game-

That is acting as a lord and protecting fiefs outside of war time and other small but useful elements- The game is just a war and expand grind with a dynasty system which seems pointless, smithing which is not used and out of place- It's like they're are trying to create a more authentic experience with features that aren't working, are not properly implemented or just not a priority for the community.

Whilst minor details, these things like fief development, feasts etc. add a huge amount to the player experience- It's just a shame that the community has lost faith in the developers given the disconnect in communication with players and the lack of real progress that the game has made since launch.

Sorry for the rant but you do have to ask yourself- what are TW doing and where is this all going wrong? We aren't talking about a tiny dev team with a low amount of funding here?

 

[AngryPanCake]

In lieu of being everybody's friend, and making the developers recreate all the villages with new palisades added, it would be good if we could assign one of our parties to patrol our fiefs, take out looters and hideouts and enemy parties and not be available to armies. We have 3 extra parties, surely we can fulfil our feudal obligations by giving up 2 of them.

Bro, you certainly deserve the "you're smart and all..."!

I posted the same thing in a different post, it does not make sense for my troops to patrol at the other end of the kingdom while my villages are being looted.
With a max of 3 parties, one can easily be assigned to patrol one's fief and not be requisitioned by the overlord.

 

[Antaeus]

A simple checkbox on the party screen would do... "held in reserve" preventing it from being selectable by an army. Max 1 per faction.

Parties set to be defensive tend to patrol their own fiefs and do some quests already by default, so that wouldn't even need to change.

 

[AngryPanCake]

A simple checkbox on the party screen would do... "held in reserve" preventing it from being selectable by an army. Max 1 per faction.

Parties set to be defensive tend to patrol their own fiefs and do some quests already by default, so that wouldn't even need to change.

Ah...that's what it means!
So, if I have a fief and set the patrol to defensive, it stays within the fief boundaries?
What about "Neutral", "Aggressive"?

 

[Antaeus]

Ah...that's what it means!
So, if I have a fief and set the patrol to defensive, it stays within the fief boundaries?
What about "Neutral", "Aggressive"?

I don't think it means they'll literally stay within the fief boundaries, but they will tend to focus on patrolling near home and avoid chasing parties too far from home territory. Aggressive is the opposite... they'll actively attack and raid the enemy wherever.

So yeah... I think a simple aid to protect villagers that wouldn't require much work from devs would be some sort of checkbox so that we could use the existing party posture to defend our villages.

I noticed the other day when I established a kingdom and didn't yet have any clans, that leaving my brother's party unassigned (with his 240 odd troops) on a defensive posture resulted in a stream of enemy ransom requests and not many successful raids. Which left me able to focus on capturing land with my party and the remaining two spares.

But the moment I added clans I couldn't do this because my brother got snapped up. The ransom notifications stopped and the raids became more successful.

 

[archaicwarrior]

I don't believe in FARM-FORTS, not realistic. That's what castles are for, to protect the nearby farms. So PATROLS are the answer.

.

 

[Danny5]

Farm forts aren't a bad idea though, at least having walls surrounding the village, so that troops can be stationed there to defend.

 

[niekdegrijze]

In my experience, you won't get raided if enemy factions like you. Obviously this isn't always possible tho.

In lieu of being everybody's friend, and making the developers recreate all the villages with new palisades added, it would be good if we could assign one of our parties to patrol our fiefs, take out looters and hideouts and enemy parties and not be available to armies. We have 3 extra parties, surely we can fulfil our feudal obligations by giving up 2 of them.

Either that, or if your economy can take it, it would be good to be able to up-garrison towns by seconding a percentage of city/castle troops to the villages. There could even be a slider in a city menu - how many troops are stationed in the city on one side, and in the villages on the other.

Both options would be good and realistic to implement. I don’t think it is realistic to expect all those extra scenes.

 

[Lukee123]

Both options would be good and realistic to implement. I don’t think it is realistic to expect all those extra scenes.

To be fair- The wooden walls/basic settlement defences may not even need to be implemented in a visual design way- maybe you could pay to have them constructed and it would act as a local village perk, which would mean longer time was needed to successfully complete a raid. I seem to remember there was something similar in warband with schools etc?

 

[Antaeus]

I've collected the ideas in a suggestion: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...ce-of-home-and-hearth-hardening-fiefs.448911/

 

[SOku]

There should be scouts to begin with.
I'm not talking about the perk here obviously. Someone riding a horse to look up the recent movements around your settlements and give you reports. If it's in danger or not. It could work well if you run a Caravans too.

And let's push the needle further with spies to get some intels on the AI Lords, but surely it would need a proper topic on itself.

Basically all my suggestions I have in mind is to deploy more " things " as a King / Vassal, because surely the game lacks a lot of things on that segment. Honestly the scouts should be doable, it's just another bunch of men you hire around your settlements, nothing really fancy.

 

[Antaeus]

Basically all my suggestions I have in mind is to deploy more " things " as a King / Vassal, because surely the game lacks a lot of things on that segment. Honestly the scouts should be doable, it's just another bunch of men you hire around your settlements, nothing really fancy.

At this stage, suggestions probably can't be about what is 'doable', but rather how quickly and easily they can be done. How easy is it to rationalise one of our 'wants' on top of the existing development timelines and responsibilities (= development costs).

We've been successful with suggestions in the past where the solution might only require 5 lines of code. But an entirely new party type, while certainly good and helpful, might not be achievable. I feel the same about suggestions of having palisades in villages for defence - they've been working on maps for years, it seems unlikely they'd be interested in going back and doing them all again, no matter how compelling the experience case might be.

 

[Lukee123]

I've collected the ideas in a suggestion: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...ce-of-home-and-hearth-hardening-fiefs.448911/

Nicely worded and thanks for referring!

 

[Lukee123]

There should be scouts to begin with.
I'm not talking about the perk here obviously. Someone riding a horse to look up the recent movements around your settlements and give you reports. If it's in danger or not. It could work well if you run a Caravans too.

And let's push the needle further with spies to get some intels on the AI Lords, but surely it would need a proper topic on itself.

Basically all my suggestions I have in mind is to deploy more " things " as a King / Vassal, because surely the game lacks a lot of things on that segment. Honestly the scouts should be doable, it's just another bunch of men you hire around your settlements, nothing really fancy.

Interesting suggestion but not sure is desperately needed in the current version of the game but more as a nice add on-

I think a 'spies and secrets' theme would be quite a cool dlc for the game where you would have the option of infiltrating other dynasties, blackmail, intel etc!

I guess the idea of these suggestions was more around defending against raids and anti raid elements which are currently lacking in this current version!

 

[SOku]

At this stage, suggestions probably can't be about what is 'doable', but rather how quickly and easily they can be done. How easy is it to rationalise one of our 'wants' on top of the existing development timelines and responsibilities (= development costs).

We've been successful with suggestions in the past where the solution might only require 5 lines of code. But an entirely new party type, while certainly good and helpful, might not be achievable. I feel the same about suggestions of having palisades in villages for defence - they've been working on maps for years, it seems unlikely they'd be interested in going back and doing them all again, no matter how compelling the experience case might be.

That's what I meant by doable in that context. Sorry my English is poor sometimes.
And yeah I agree with you, totally.

Interesting suggestion but not sure is desperately needed in the current version of the game but more as a nice add on-

Well for sure there are some upper priorities, but I think this one has it's fair share to defend. And honestly that's just a tidbit of my suggestion I'm thinking about, but procrastinating hard to make a proper topic.
To give a little bit of context, my first character is around 62 or so, she has a bunch of children full grown, and I just can't see what would I do with those.
I have a feeling the devs didn't bother adding this use-case for now as they ( rightly so in my opinion ) focused on early game to mid-game features to add. Not saying my case is unique per se, but it feels like I'm in a dead-end, I just have nothing to do with it, and that's exactly how I started to think how they could expand on that.
So I started to specialize them, one being a merchant, one a soldier, one a Quatermaster and so on ... and then comes the Roguery. Boom, what if I could train a Spy ?

But enough talk I'm derailing already, suggesting to add a bunch of scouts is good enough for me, for now.