How can castles be made important in your opinion?

[nibblot]

I think the problem with castles is caused by the party system. Currently, the logical way to play is just run around with a full party as your 'army'. There are lots of ways to make money trivial, so you can always afford to do that.

I would remove the limits to party size completely, and just make it ruinously expensive to move a large party around. Now castles are very valuable - that's where your party/army is stationed, with costs drastically reduced. They're also key strategic goals, because if you just wander past one you know there's a good chance a large force can sally out to attack or harass you. And because you're bleeding money the whole time, you can't afford to have your campaign constantly derailed like that. To make this playable, I would allow any noble to store troops at any friendly castle.

So: enemy decides they want to take a city. There are two castles in the general area between them and the city. They raise an army of 1500 (I'm imagining in this system each lord would be responsible for the upkeep of each party in the army, and the army commander is paying for his party and an 'army premium' to keep the logistics working). Every day this army is in the field, that kingdom is losing money, so do they take the time to take the castles or not? If not - a friendly lord can raise an army between their party and the two castles and attack while they've sieged the city. He can afford this because he only has to pay for this army for 2-3 days maybe. If the enemy does take the castles, it's expensive and difficult maybe, but now your kingdom has to march an army much further to counter attack.

 

[sir Gregor Clegane]

I don't think that's the case. You can fund an endgame party just by selling loot from all the battles you win.

You explain your brilliant ideas to AI so that it keeps normal garrisons in cities and castles, and not garrisons of 20 - 30 people! Players have no problem maintaining castles! The players have a problem in the expediency of maintaining possession, this is complete nonsense if in the feudal era the possessions of the feudal lord cause more costs for their maintenance than income from them ... The only reason I keep castles is to ensure uninterrupted provision of my cities

 

[Apocal]

You explain your brilliant ideas to AI so that it keeps normal garrisons in cities and castles, and not garrisons of 20 - 30 people! Players have no problem maintaining castles! The players have a problem in the expediency of maintaining possession, this is complete nonsense if in the feudal era the possessions of the feudal lord cause more costs for their maintenance than income from them ... The only reason I keep castles is to ensure uninterrupted provision of my cities

I said I don't think most players get most of their income from blacksmithing.

Previously I said (maybe in this thread) that castles should give a bonus to garrison wages, specifically to help the AI not faceplant financially.

 

[VVL99]

1. The castle is the personal estate of the lord, where his whole family lives ...
2. The castle is an outpost for the passive maintenance of the army ...

 

[JunKeteer]

I tried one of those movement mods for castle/AoE zoning - they don't really work well with this game; with how the rest of the basic cat&mouse thinking is with parties/armies on map.

 

[Bluko88]

I'm probably in the minority saying this but I really really don't want to be able to order armies and lords. It would probably make the late game completely trivial. I would however like the AI decision making getting improved overall and be able to suggest lords to attack/defend a specific settlement by chat checks à la Warband.

I remember the devs discussing the ruler offering "bounties" on settlements with gold and/or influence rewards similar to Majesty some time ago, and this suggestion got declined because it would make the game too easy (and more lifeless probably). Don't get me wrong, I would still like the late game to be made "easier" by cutting down on the grind and making it so that factions get destroyed much more easily.

Not Lords, just Armies themselves

And I wouldn't envision it beyond

Attack this Town/Castle
Raid this Village
Defend this Fief

You still wouldn't control the army and what happens to it would still be largely up to chance. It's more to stop an army from sieging some fief on the other side of the map when you're trying to attack a particular region. I see this less as "too easy" and more not having to lead massive armies to make any progress.

I tried one of those movement mods for castle/AoE zoning - they don't really work well with this game; with how the rest of the basic cat&mouse thinking is with parties/armies on map.

I didn't think I was going to like movement penalties for zones around Castles (think it's in War and A.I. Tweaks) but it actually works rather well. Now you're able to catch that raiding party and or slip away from enemies in friendly territory. However it also means if you get beat up in enemy territory you can't run away quite so effectively. So there's a real good chance even if you have horses and all that, you might get caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

The only issue is like most movement debuffs it isn't communicated terribly well or obvious on the map itself.

Honestly if I were making my own M&B style game I'd place a much greater emphasis on party movement. Probably implement something like exhaustion too, so you can't move around at max speed indefinitely.

 

[TheViviansen]

Even something "simpler" would be nice like for every castle bounded with a town you get +100 garrison and +100 militia. Also you get a bonus to refill garrison/militia 50% faster in that town. Also some type of patrol unit which deals with brigands.

 

[mortache]

Castles in warband and bannerlord are basically just crappy towns, half way between a village and a town, which is really stupid and means they add nothing to the game. Towns should be the real moneymakers, but should have crappy garrisons and surrender almost immediately. Then Castles should be used to defend them on the strategic level by having very large patrol armies around them.

For this reason I think castles should actually cost money. In an ideal world the player and AI could actually build and demolish them, which really shouldn't be that hard to implement, but in warband the absurd spaghetti code made this way harder than necessary, so who knows what it's like in bannerlord.

But castles really often were just crappy towns, other than isolated frontier fortifications. And they already give reduced garrison wages. Any existing system can always be improved, but I don't see how you plan to accomplish this in the timeframe of the few decades that we play a campaign. I guess they could take a page out of Improved Garrisons' book and have the garrisons fight bandits and raiders, but the game is based on character actions, especially parties.

 

[JunKeteer]

I didn't think I was going to like movement penalties for zones around Castles (think it's in War and A.I. Tweaks) but it actually works rather well. Now you're able to catch that raiding party and or slip away from enemies in friendly territory. However it also means if you get beat up in enemy territory you can't run away quite so effectively. So there's a real good chance even if you have horses and all that, you might get caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

The only issue is like most movement debuffs it isn't communicated terribly well or obvious on the map itself.

Honestly if I were making my own M&B style game I'd place a much greater emphasis on party movement. Probably implement something like exhaustion too, so you can't move around at max speed indefinitely.

It's just weird to hit that 'wall' in certain areas of the map. Especially if the AI have no clue how to handle or compute around that added 'debuff'; and all the mess with how there's always that small party that engages, so the main army can catch up.

Some logistical penalty in some form is needed for going deeper into enemy territory.

 

[Totalgarbage]

Some logistical penalty in some form is needed for going deeper into enemy territory.

Then instead of giving a movement debuff to hostile parties/armies, there could be a debuff that increases food consumption for travelling hostile parties/armies (not for parties/armies that are sieging a settlement). But I personally oppose adding any such features to castles because they would make the game less snowbally, which in turn would make the already bad late-game worse. I would much prefer giving castles the ability to form patrol parties.

 

[JunKeteer]

Then instead of giving a movement debuff to hostile parties/armies, there could be a debuff that increases food consumption for travelling hostile parties/armies (not for parties/armies that are sieging a settlement). But I personally oppose adding any such features to castles because they would make the game less snowbally, which in turn would make the already bad late-game worse. I would much prefer giving castles the ability to form patrol parties.

For patrol parties, there is a lot more balance adjustments to prevent the weaker lords from getting wiped out too often/easily (~13-15 party ones we see).
I can see that Improved Garrisons mod is very popular, but maybe a very, very simplified version of that - without too much micromanagement to the extent it can be easily player-abused.

Set garrison wage, set patrol wage, tweak troop replenishment respawn accordingly (maybe a player option to fund quicker troops - much like funding build projects), garrison threshold has to be met first before patrol unit one starts (so 'old' castles get patrols, newly exchanged ones don't), patrol can only be kingdom troops (and maybe mercs) and require X T3/T2 units to be created. Or something like that.

 

[Totalgarbage]

For patrol parties, there is a lot more balance adjustments to prevent the weaker lords from getting wiped out too often/easily (~13-15 party ones we see).
I can see that Improved Garrisons mod is very popular, but maybe a very, very simplified version of that - without too much micromanagement to the extent it can be easily player-abused.

Set garrison wage, set patrol wage, tweak troop replenishment respawn accordingly (maybe a player option to fund quicker troops - much like funding build projects), garrison threshold has to be met first before patrol unit one starts (so 'old' castles get patrols, newly exchanged ones don't), patrol can only be kingdom troops (and maybe mercs) and require X T3/T2 units to be created. Or something like that.

I would like something simple that's compatible with the existing UI, but useful in keeping the surrounding villages and villager parties safe. I don't care if small enemy parties get captured by castle patrols, if they have that low of a number and are trying to recruit men in enemy territory because they don't have any friendly fiefs they can recruit from, they should have already defected their faction a long time ago. If anything, them being captured would be better for the late game.

I think having an even simpler system than what you're suggesting is better; give all castles the ability to form 1-2-3 patrol parties (number could be determined by a new building and every building tier gives +1 patrol party) from the clan tab using 15-40 or so of the castle's garrisoned troops (which we are able to select the specific troops or it could be made more simple by automatically selecting troops that are towards the bottom of the castle garrison's party roster or something) that constantly hunts bandits and small enemy parties around the castle, the castle's villages and the castle villages' trade-bound towns. If we choose to disband an existing patrol party (be it through the clan menu or by talking to the party on the game map), they should go back to their garrisons, similar to parties heading back to a clan garrison after their party leader dies. If patrol parties go below a certain number of troops (for example 20), they should recruit new soldiers either from the castle villages or the garrison automatically.

The obvious advantage of having patrols is that there will be less bandits and small enemy raiding parties, and as a result towns and villages will have higher security and prosperity/hearths. The downsides would be patrol parties being more expensive than garrisoned troops due to not benefitting from castellan upgrades and castles having less soldiers inside the garrison, thus making them more vulnerable.

 

[Insta_Buzz]

While the addition of the castellan building and the change to trade bound settlements have helped castles a good deal, there's still little purpose in owning one over a town. In my opinion, to make castles actually worth it to own, both castles and fief ownership in general needs several changes:

First, and most importantly, you shouldn't even be considered as a candidate for owning a town unless you have a lot of renown and influence within the faction. Being able the own a town on the first day we pledge allegiance to a faction as a tier 2 clan is immersion breaking (unless we had a significant amount of relations & influence beforehand) and it badly affects the progression of the game. Owning towns should of course be better than owning castles, but the fact towns are given out to any rando like candy makes it pointless to own a castle.

Secondly, castles are mostly defensive fortifications rather than a proper settlement. It's theoretical purpose is to provide security to the nearby domains of it's holder. Castles shouldn't even have loyalty and security since they can't even rebel (and therefore no fairgrounds and no loyalty boosting daily). But more importantly, castles should have unique buildings that provide bonuses to its villages. A village with a castle a building should make villages harder to raid (by having more militia and/or it taking longer to raid), another building should increase hearths or village production, and another should for example increase the size of the villager party, etc..

What do you think? What would you suggest to make castles better than

While the addition of the castellan building and the change to trade bound settlements have helped castles a good deal, there's still little purpose in owning one over a town. In my opinion, to make castles actually worth it to own, both castles and fief ownership in general needs several changes:

First, and most importantly, you shouldn't even be considered as a candidate for owning a town unless you have a lot of renown and influence within the faction. Being able the own a town on the first day we pledge allegiance to a faction as a tier 2 clan is immersion breaking (unless we had a significant amount of relations & influence beforehand) and it badly affects the progression of the game. Owning towns should of course be better than owning castles, but the fact towns are given out to any rando like candy makes it pointless to own a castle.

Secondly, castles are mostly defensive fortifications rather than a proper settlement. It's theoretical purpose is to provide security to the nearby domains of it's holder. Castles shouldn't even have loyalty and security since they can't even rebel (and therefore no fairgrounds and no loyalty boosting daily). But more importantly, castles should have unique buildings that provide bonuses to its villages. A village with a castle a building should make villages harder to raid (by having more militia and/or it taking longer to raid), another building should increase hearths or village production, and another should for example increase the size of the villager party, etc..

What do you think? What would you suggest to make castles better than they currently are right now?

Assign boundaries to them, land boundries. Like Crusader Kings. Allow more customization such as focusing on farming, hunting, training to support the larger towns. Not at war? Focus on growing, building. Then be able to set it to military focus to start pumping out troops for your wars.

 

[Irfan Ross]

Be an obstacle the prohibits travel by enemies further into the area, they must take the castles first.
OR grant auto calc bonuses to fiefs behind it, so attacking deeper in fiefs is always less attractive.
Castle has a small and large patrol, large patrol will actively join in battles near it castle, small patrol will capture bandits and small lord parties.
Castle can fire ballista at enemy parties in a certain range, this and the large patrol means fighting near castles is an advantage.
Castles provide a NEW elite troop in small supply to the owner or faction ruler.
Castles have a training barraks (separate from garrison) where troops can be stored and will gain exp and rank up at a modest cost. Can by-pass mounts needed but mounted units cost more, reason being if you have to keep microing to upgrade mounted units this become useless, it's only good if you can drop of low tiers and come back later and pick 20 t6s.

Perfect Suggestion