How to make castles matter

[ceprast]

"Prancing" means "moving."

Right and Armies of 12-20k would not go "Prancing" past castles either because it was extremely dangerous. Even the English Chevauchee's were smaller forces of around 6k.

 

[Apocal]

You need to train that trade skill good sir. You are paying a ridiculous amount of money for that food.

Pic taken outside of a besieged city, so prices are, uh, premium.

I don't know if it was in this thread, but I read a suggestion somewhere saying that governors could do the patrols. I think it would make more sense than spawning patrols of thin air, governors grabbing some of the garrison to patrol around.

I put it here, didn't seem too popular though.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/allow-governors-to-respond-to-raiding.425312/

I doubt it will happen like that just because of the way parties operate, with a fixed number of mobile parties per clan, but at least devs have confirmed that patrol commands are incoming for our existing parties.

Right and Armies of 12-20k would not go "Prancing" past castles either because it was extremely dangerous. Even the English Chevauchee's were smaller forces of around 6k.

12,000 is the number estimated fighting for the English during Crecy. (The Road to Crécy: The English Invasion of France, 1346)
20,000 is the low estimate for what the Umayyads raided across half of France with before Tours.

 

[Dradka]

Making it somewhat risky to completely drain a settlement's garrison, even in the safe interior. I already played around with Captain Oct's fix for it, where the AI focused on closest settlements, and you could cheese the AI pretty hard by jam-packing a frontline castle with about 300 garrison + militia, while running your interior holdings with minimal (or no) garrisons.

That is just the thing, it shouldn't be risky to keep the more interior garrisons running on minimal strength because it is stupid to send a massive army deep into enemy territory like how it is done in Bannerlord. The only troops that should ever be garrisoned in the interiors would be just enough to deal with raids, enforcement and protecting the lord. Basically a police force anything beyond that the value to cost ratio starts dropping off rapidly.

IRL a bunch of border castles wouldn't stop an army 12,000 to 20,000 strong from prancing across the countryside for months on end. People just don't like the way it looks or plays out in Bannerlord.

In open battle sure but there are much better ways to go about stopping a force that is significantly more powerful then yourself.

First off armies don't/can't go carrying around a year plus of supplies while they are marching like in Bannerlord.
- It slows them down and limits travel routes as you can only travel through places that will allow it. With each additional supply wagon slowing you down more then the first.
- If you are bested on the field of battle all of those supplies are now your enemies so the more supplies you send with the army the greater the loss.
- More supplies makes for a bigger target to raid and also makes it much easier to destroy larger amounts.
- Food does eventually go bad so you only carry around enough to feed your men for so long.
- Larger food stores attracts more rodents which carry diseases.
- It takes time to make and gather up supplies which you generally didn't have a very large stock pile of.

So instead you create a supply line so that you are constantly getting supplies in to replace those that were used. You only had 2 methods of transportation land and sea. Eventually though it will come by land which has it's own problems.
- Far easier to attack the supply line then the army itself and hungry soldiers aren't as effective as fed soldiers.
- It doesn't take a very large force to cause havoc raiding your supply lines which means you can kill off an army by starving it with very few men.
- The larger the army the more supplies it needs which makes it harder to live off the land for extended periods of time making them more reliant on those supply lines.
- It takes far more men to deal with an issue then it does to eliminate it before it becomes an issue.
- Due to the amount of time it takes for messages to travel to a location you had to be preemptive with emergency requests since more often then not it would have be too late.

For these and other reasons not mentioned realistically you wouldn't see that tactic working very well long term anywhere in history before the airplane. It isn't just about taking a city it is also about how do you hold and supply it. How do you continue to supply your army as it moves on, how do you protect your supply chain as you get deeper and deeper into enemy territory. How do you protect your army's back so that you don't get caught in between two or more enemy armies.

Many military campaigns ended simply due to the fact that they could not maintain proper supply chains. The only way for 12,000 - 20,000 to prance around in enemy territory for months on end is if they split up into many smaller forces that could survive off the land and what supplies they got from raiding like common bandits. Which is already what the AI does naturally and look how well it works in the game.

To actually represent how it would work in real life armies would only be running around with 1 week worth of food. They would have to have caravans running between friendly cities and the army to supply more food. Guess what would be the most efficient way to deal with armies then. That's right raid those caravans or just prevent any of them from reaching the army so they eventually starve. You only need like 40-50 troops to accomplish that and you could take out an army of 1,000+ in the game then.

 

[Apocal]

Many military campaigns ended simply due to the fact that they could not maintain proper supply chains. The only way for 12,000 - 20,000 to prance around in enemy territory for months on end is if they split up into many smaller forces that could survive off the land and what supplies they got from raiding like common bandits. Which is already what the AI does naturally and look how well it works in the game.

The AI mostly buys and carries food. It generally works fine for parties even though the amount they get from raiding isn't enough to sustain themselves. A single prosperous (600+ hearths) grain or fish village might get you 30-50 food in a raid, assuming they have it on the market, but a decent party will eat through that in less than ten days (1 unit of food feeds 20 men for 1 day) so its not really self-sustaining for the AI. But they can just dip into a neutral town and almost always buy enough for their needs before returning, without any issues or undue delays. Large armies do have some issues with managing their food, but that is because their food requirements are onerous (upwards of 60-75 units of food per day) and their map speed is terrible.

To actually represent how it would work in real life armies would only be running around with 1 week worth of food. They would have to have caravans running between friendly cities and the army to supply more food. Guess what would be the most efficient way to deal with armies then. That's right raid those caravans or just prevent any of them from reaching the army so they eventually starve. You only need like 40-50 troops to accomplish that and you could take out an army of 1,000+ in the game then.

Yes, armies should be restricted in their cargo capacity -- but they aren't and TW has given negative indication they are inclined to go this way when they introduced a second cargo capacity bonus perk. They already have issues with AI armies failing to manage food and becoming easily farmable because of it. But making cutting off supply a permanent feature would basically invalidate the whole army system because almost every single army is shadowed by individual parties capable of taking out a caravan.

 

[ceprast]

12,000 is the number estimated fighting for the English during Crecy. (The Road to Crécy: The English Invasion of France, 1346)
20,000 is the low estimate for what the Umayyads raided across half of France with before Tours.

I already explained how Crecy is in fact an example of precisely why you can't just take an army "prancing" about enemy territory. The smaller English force was forced to fight a battle on unfavorable terms because of their lack of logistic support. Since they had no supply lines they had to rely on raiding for supplies, this means the army is delayed by constant foraging operations. The fortifications which prevented resupply did their job, the only reason it is remembered today as an English Victory is that English strategic incompetence was matched by French tactical incompetence in the battle.

As for the Umayyad invasion, that was in an era before castles were used as border fortifications so is entirely irrelevant to this discussion, hell the borders barely existed at the time.

As for the game, since the AI basically doesn't have to worry about logistics, they can go besiege a settlement anywhere on the map as if it were right next door. This is not only unrealistic but leads to horrible gameplay where the AI just spends all its time taking and retaking castles with tiny garrisons.

 

[kreamy]

Currently, castles have no strategic role. Any army can just ignore enemy castles located along the faction border and directly attack the capital city located deep in the enemy territory. This is annoying, unrealistic, and not fun.

So here are my suggestions.
1. Greatly increase the food consumption per unit (at least x5 current consumption rate) so that no one can just roam around the entire continent with hundreds of army without a constant influx of food supply, which will be more and more difficult if you go deeper and deeper into the enemy territory.
2. Implement a concept of "supply train," so if you want to lead your large army to directly attack the "heart" of the enemy faction deep in their territory, you have to depend on your supply trains constantly transporting food from your castle/town/village in your territory all the way to your army's location. If the supply route is blocked by an enemy lord, your troops will be starving and demoralized.

By doing this the enemy castles will form a "natural borderline," which you cannot just ignore and pass by if you want to keep your army well-fed.

i write about this extensively in a concept i drafted this summer

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/kreamys-real-warfare-suggestions-game-concepts-faction-goods-economy-infrastructure-recruiting-policies.420919/

maybe you can add some suggestions, i havent yet updated it. I also think there is great potential for this to be part of a total mod conversion that could really redefine the game into something gritty, where strategy and considerations and can be rewarded through tactical victories which can systematically affect the course of a kingdom and wars

 

[Apocal]

I already explained how Crecy is in fact an example of precisely why you can't just take an army "prancing" about enemy territory. The smaller English force was forced to fight a battle on unfavorable terms because of their lack of logistic support. Since they had no supply lines they had to rely on raiding for supplies, this means the army is delayed by constant foraging operations.

Foraging was the typical arrangement for medieval armies, not exceptional. Caravan-based (or similar) arrangements were the exception; necessarily short-ranged because anything capable of hauling the food you need over land would also eat that food in the process and making bigger caravans wasn't an option past a certain (and fairly limited) point. The long version is in the early chapters of Feeding Mars by Creveld, which goes into some (academic) detail about how it was attempted in the medieval era but didn't consistently work out for anyone until the modern era. Instead they generally relied on a friendly local population in the region or sea/river transport (way, way more efficient) with wagons only used to transport a short distance.

As for the game, since the AI basically doesn't have to worry about logistics, they can go besiege a settlement anywhere on the map as if it were right next door. This is not only unrealistic but leads to horrible gameplay where the AI just spends all its time taking and retaking castles with tiny garrisons.

It does not do that in my experience; if nothing else, the food issues prevent it from going very deep often, although early in a war they'll sometimes try to dolphin dive the capital if it has a weak garrison, which is fine.

 

[niekdegrijze]

I was thinking about hopefully a simple solution to the probleem that castles don’t block narrow passes to enemy parties and caravans. Parties avoid enemy parties if they think they are outclassed. Would it be possible to make the ai see the garrison as an enemy party? This way only strong enough parties can pass.

This problem was extra obvious when I owned the castle between vlandia and battania and there was a constant stream of enemy vlandia caravans through the pass right in front of my Walls.

 

[Harkon Haakonson]

2. Implement a concept of "supply train," so if you want to lead your large army to directly attack the "heart" of the enemy faction deep in their territory, you have to depend on your supply trains constantly transporting food from your castle/town/village in your territory all the way to your army's location. If the supply route is blocked by an enemy lord, your troops will be starving and demoralized.

I agree that some way to enforce a supply train mechanic is key to make castles relevant. Why did medieval armies in Europe not just ignore castles across the landscape of enemy realms, and just go straight for the richest towns, wanted territories or the capital? Because if you tried to do that, sure, your main big army would first move along fine. But its food wouldn't last long and it would need to be constantly supplied by detachments. But what happens if you try to send a supply train to an army along the horizon of an enemy castle you left on its own? The enemy castle then sends a sortie in force to sack your supply train, rob you of goods and leave your overextended army to starve.

It's always been strategically frustrating in Mount and Blade that relative location of lands matter so little as the enemy is entirely arbitrary in regards to what castle or town it beelines to. And why shouldn't it be when they don't get punished for it, as they can freely march through several castles and towns deep behind enemy lines with no penalty. Of course it's still a dumb choice because then they capture one territory deep inside enemy territory that they'll surely lose fast. So it's conducive to bad gameplay in more ways than one.

 

[ceprast]

Foraging was the typical arrangement for medieval armies, not exceptional. Caravan-based (or similar) arrangements were the exception; necessarily short-ranged because anything capable of hauling the food you need over land would also eat that food in the process and making bigger caravans wasn't an option past a certain (and fairly limited) point. The long version is in the early chapters of Feeding Mars by Creveld, which goes into some (academic) detail about how it was attempted in the medieval era but didn't consistently work out for anyone until the modern era. Instead they generally relied on a friendly local population in the region or sea/river transport (way, way more efficient) with wagons only used to transport a short distance.



It does not do that in my experience; if nothing else, the food issues prevent it from going very deep often, although early in a war they'll sometimes try to dolphin dive the capital if it has a weak garrison, which is fine.

Yes all armies of the time foraged, armies of major states continued to forage until WWII where Germany, Japan, and the USSR were well known for it. That does not mean that they weren't still dependent on lines of communication to receive supply. Nor does the inefficiency of wagons for overland transport alter this, it simply limits the operational range of an army and if anything means that going beyond the limits of support is an even worse idea, as the inefficiency of wagons in the baggage train does not simply go away while plundering.

Yes they also relied on water transport that is simply another form of logistics and the reason why fortifications were often built on rivers. Fortifications were not just used defensively but offensively as forward magazines from which to draw supplies from and as a jumping off point for a campaign. An army could not be sustained without supplies being brought to it, whether in friendly territory or not. The local area would become exhausted within days. Furthermore requisitioning supplies from friendly locals is a very different affair from pillaging an enemy. The former can be done by local officials without using the army, while the latter requires the army to split up and expose itself to danger. This is precisely what allowed the much larger French armies to catch up to the English. Another example is the march of King Harold from Stamford Bridge to Hastings in 1066. In one week his army covered hundreds of miles in good order without becoming fatigued, because they had logistical support along the route.

I don't know where you are getting the idea that medieval armies would ignore their lines of communications, but it's wrong. Those that did almost invariably ended in disaster rather than something like Agincourt. Fortresses were used from the Medieval times until even modern times specifically to protect lines of communication and period sources explicitly stated that fortresses were obstacles to armies because they threatened the lines of communication.

As for the game, you seem to be having a different experience from most if you aren't seeing the AI ignore logistics, because everyone else here including OP seems to notice that they just ignore distance and attack castles on the other side of enemy territory as easily as if they were attacking next door. The reason is simple, the extra day or so of an army marching to get there doesn't matter much when armies can carry food for much longer than they need.

 

[Apocal]

I don't know where you are getting the idea that medieval armies would ignore their lines of communications, but it's wrong.

Firstly, my argument was that wagon-based supply caravans weren't standard in the context of offensive medieval warfare and the idea of a frontline (as opposed to a less vaguely defined frontier) is the unrealistic one, not armies sometimes dolphin diving holdings.

Secondly, I named my sources. For the specifics of the Crecy campaign, including their forces living mostly off foraging (by which I mean taken from people on or near their march route), it was Road to Crecy: The English Invasion of France, 1346 by Mary Livingston and Morgen Wiztel. For the claim that (on the offensive) medieval logistics were generally based on local area forage (not supply caravans), Feeding Mars by Martin Creveld.

As for the game, you seem to be having a different experience from most if you aren't seeing the AI ignore logistics, because everyone else here including OP seems to notice that they just ignore distance and attack castles on the other side of enemy territory as easily as if they were attacking next door. The reason is simple, the extra day or so of an army marching to get there doesn't matter much when armies can carry food for much longer than they need.

AI armies only carry a few days' worth of food on-hand and usually begin to starve in enemy territory. Armies starving constantly has been an issue before and continues to occasionally be an issue now.

 

[Cheesus]

What if each castle was linked to a main city, So if an attacking force was to attack a city and not take over the "linked" castles. Then the city defenders could have the advantage of having say 100 extra tier 4-5 soldiers to help with the defense of the city per linked castle that hasn't been taken over. This could make each castle an actual strategic position to hold and fight over for both the attacker and defender.

 

[Reiksmarshal]

Castles need a Master of arms notable that allows you to recruit nobles and better quality troops.

 

[Askorti]

How about equalizing the status of castles against towns? Currently towns are superior to castles in all possible ways. What if towns were made much less defensible (easier to capture) to offset their economic advantage? Then castles would have the role of actually holding ground for your kingdom. Then adjust the AI so that it doesn't siege interior lands as readily, and you could have castles work as your frontier to protect the more economically valuable towns that cant defend themselves as easily.
Also give castles better "militia"(T3-T4 at least) so that they're actually harder to capture despite not having such big garrisons.

 

[niekdegrijze]

What if each castle was linked to a main city, So if an attacking force was to attack a city and not take over the "linked" castles. Then the city defenders could have the advantage of having say 100 extra tier 4-5 soldiers to help with the defense of the city per linked castle that hasn't been taken over. This could make each castle an actual strategic position to hold and fight over for both the attacker and defender.

I like this idea. But you have to imagine the logic of this system running in de background

 

[niekdegrijze]

Castles need a Master of arms notable that allows you to recruit nobles and better quality troops.

+1, castles need to be more military beneficial. Cities have their use as economic centers.

 

[Dradka]

Since in the game castles are closer to military forts there really needs to be more militaristic benefits to them to off set the lack of economical benefits to them.
- Make it so that the villages bound to the castle produce noble troops more and they increase in quality faster.
- Castles and their bound villages tend to have more higher tier militia as well as a higher base militia.
- Units inside of castles gain a good amount more experience.
- Castles give other surrounding friendly towns and villages more higher tier militia and base militia.

Would also be nice if garrisoned troops had reduced wages without perks to correlate to the reduced danger they face.

 

[stevehoos]

Castles need a Master of arms notable that allows you to recruit nobles and better quality troops.

Immersion? Who would have imagined that?

 

[vonbalt]

Since in the game castles are closer to military forts there really needs to be more militaristic benefits to them to off set the lack of economical benefits to them.
- Make it so that the villages bound to the castle produce noble troops more and they increase in quality faster.
- Castles and their bound villages tend to have more higher tier militia as well as a higher base militia.
- Units inside of castles gain a good amount more experience.
- Castles give other surrounding friendly towns and villages more higher tier militia and base militia.

Would also be nice if garrisoned troops had reduced wages without perks to correlate to the reduced danger they face.

Agreed in all, castles should be our main source of noble recruits just to start making them worth something and would also be nice to have reduced wages for garrisoned units without perks like you said, this was a base feature from warband, maybe make the perk reduce it even further but keep the base reduction.

 

[Deathmacabre]

Imo castels were tactical constructions for controlling certain area. You could theoretically pass it and advance into enemy territory but then your suppy lines would be disrupted and you could be attacked by skirmishers.
How to make them important? Maybe they could block pass so you need to conquer castle to pass, lower speed of army if it passes near castle, add attriction so army will lose soldiers from frequent skirmishers that were launched from castles they wished to ignore.

Also as mentioned before castles should be more big source of soldiers and some source of income while le towns shoulf be source of big income and small source of soldiers.