How to make castles matter

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freeustand

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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.
 
Could also make Castles the primary place for peasants to train to become soldiers. It might be more of a challenge if nearby castles automatically produced troops, trained them and then came to the defence of cities under siege, without a character actually having to lead them... that way in order to take over a city, you'd need to "strategically" take out enemy castles before taking on a city.
 
Something really gamey like they give +autocalc and/or + movement (or -for enemy) in a radius, and have it stack to a certain amount so that fighting deeper in enemy land or sieging deeper in fiefs is always less attractive then the border. Maybe this could tie into loyalty or security stats of fiefs too, like if it gets low you lose this effect from that fief. Yes this ignores the player/live battles but the player can already dunk the AI's head in the toilet all day so this is a none issue imo.

Of course, just being able to give un-wanted castles away to a vassal would be a big improvement. But yeah I wish they did more.
 
I think there is no need to make castles matter more, just make the AI decision making arbitrarily not try to siege settlements in the interior. The player is unlikely to do it as-is because of the strategic disadvantages of owning a settlement in the enemy heartland, it's just the AI that doesn't recognize this issue.
So if TW wants a simple fix, and we know they're hard pressed to make proper fixes to stuff, they could just change the way AI prioritizes siege targets.
Relatively simple fix with little work needed.
Is it a good fix? No, but it would be *something*
 
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.

Yo, 5x food consumption isn't going to do a damned thing to a player's ability to carry enough food to roam the continent at will.
AW3zsR3.png
If you don't want to bother clicking the pic, it shows a party of 210 men carrying over three and a half years (in-game) worth of food, for a total speed penalty of -0.12.

Also, it isn't hard to get more food in the enemy interior currently. Just go to an enemy village and buy it. It will be way more expensive because an extra trade penalty is applied during wartime but food is so cheap that doubling the price (or tripling, or whatever the penalty is) doesn't matter much. Whatever you lose in denars to the trade penalty is going to be a rounding error compared to the loot you get after a successful siege.

Finally, the AI can already barely manage its own food for some reason, so you'd need to completely exempt non-player armies and parties from this system or else the No.1 winning move will simply be following behind a (much slower) enemy army until all its men starve, then swoop in for a free win once they are down to zero available troops.
 
I made a post adressing this issue several months ago:

A lot of problems discussed (mostly diplomacy) in the post have already been solved or improved. Yet the castles still remain an issue. They should at least be prioritely targeted by AI like mentioned by others here. I hope the (not so) recent addition of paths on the world map will be eventually extended with an actual use which could be giving the castles a purpose - guarding those paths and and being hiding spot for caravans.
 
Yo, 5x food consumption isn't going to do a damned thing to a player's ability to carry enough food to roam the continent at will.
AW3zsR3.png
If you don't want to bother clicking the pic, it shows a party of 210 men carrying over three and a half years (in-game) worth of food, for a total speed penalty of -0.12.

Also, it isn't hard to get more food in the enemy interior currently. Just go to an enemy village and buy it. It will be way more expensive because an extra trade penalty is applied during wartime but food is so cheap that doubling the price (or tripling, or whatever the penalty is) doesn't matter much. Whatever you lose in denars to the trade penalty is going to be a rounding error compared to the loot you get after a successful siege.

Finally, the AI can already barely manage its own food for some reason, so you'd need to completely exempt non-player armies and parties from this system or else the No.1 winning move will simply be following behind a (much slower) enemy army until all its men starve, then swoop in for a free win once they are down to zero available troops.

That is an obscene amount of food.
 
That is an obscene amount of food.

I've had that picture for months now.

Anyway, you could multiply the food consumption rate by 25 and it would still leave a player able to dive almost any holding on the map, food-wise, while also leading to the AI armies being starved all the time.

edit:
If the supply route is blocked by an enemy lord, your troops will be starving and demoralized.

Forgot to mention this before, but all armies pick up shadowing enemy parties. It's the main way they defend their stuff, with enough shadows eventually showing up to collectively out-power the army, but they'll do it offensively as well. Armies can't really do anything about them, because individual parties are so much faster.
 
I think there is no need to make castles matter more, just make the AI decision making arbitrarily not try to siege settlements in the interior. The player is unlikely to do it as-is because of the strategic disadvantages of owning a settlement in the enemy heartland, it's just the AI that doesn't recognize this issue.
So if TW wants a simple fix, and we know they're hard pressed to make proper fixes to stuff, they could just change the way AI prioritizes siege targets.
Relatively simple fix with little work needed.
Is it a good fix? No, but it would be *something*
This, there was a mod (sadly outdated now) on the nexus that changed the AI so they would always priorize border fiefs to siege and it made things SO MUCH BETTER, you knew the armies of both warring factions would be massed alongside the borders so there was also more field battles aswell since they wouldn't miss each other so much by deciding each other to siege the capital deep into enemy territory.

The logic was something like army leaders would priorize taking fiefs closer to their own fiefs to increase their security by adding buffer fiefs between their heartlands and the enemy, it was simple and so effective, a shame the mod hasn't been updated in a long time and no one made a separated version just with the AI change. Party AI overhaul and Commands
 
Well first of all, castles should be a refuge for friendly party. When you chase some npc they never take refuge in friendly castle or town even if they are just front of it. They just run until you catch them... this is ridiculous.
Then Castles should have some advantage that town doesnt have, like troups or whatever.
The garrison is a real problem in this game. Garrison is only usefull to prevent siege... Garrison should be able to intervene when there is a fight close enought or at least intevene when his lord fight close enought : Castles should give you the capacity to control a territory..
 
That Party Overhaul mod sounds like a simple but effective fix. Armies could still raid villages deep in enemy territory, but would only take castles of towns adjacent to their own faction's land. There is no point in taking something that can't be defended, and that needs to be a major part of the AI's calculations.

Radius of control is another important consideration. Having up to half of the garrison race out to join nearby battles would make battles near enemy castles a lot nastier and provide some measure of "protection" and control beyond the walls, although the garrison should only send out any troops above half of the maximum garrison strength, with the other half remaining to guard the castle.
 
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Castles should be send out groups to defend the specific area around them and Attack all enemies in range. Would not prevent big Armys, but would make it harder to raid some villages. villages itself should not have that much an militia.
 
Well first of all, castles should be a refuge for friendly party. When you chase some npc they never take refuge in friendly castle or town even if they are just front of it. They just run until you catch them... this is ridiculous.
Then Castles should have some advantage that town doesnt have, like troups or whatever.
The garrison is a real problem in this game. Garrison is only usefull to prevent siege... Garrison should be able to intervene when there is a fight close enought or at least intevene when his lord fight close enought : Castles should give you the capacity to control a territory..
I could swear this is what happened in warband but i haven't played it since bannerlord came out, i remember chasing enemy lords there and if they were faster than my party they always took refuge in an allied castle or town.
 
Yo, 5x food consumption isn't going to do a damned thing to a player's ability to carry enough food to roam the continent at will.
AW3zsR3.png
If you don't want to bother clicking the pic, it shows a party of 210 men carrying over three and a half years (in-game) worth of food, for a total speed penalty of -0.12.

Also, it isn't hard to get more food in the enemy interior currently. Just go to an enemy village and buy it. It will be way more expensive because an extra trade penalty is applied during wartime but food is so cheap that doubling the price (or tripling, or whatever the penalty is) doesn't matter much. Whatever you lose in denars to the trade penalty is going to be a rounding error compared to the loot you get after a successful siege.

Finally, the AI can already barely manage its own food for some reason, so you'd need to completely exempt non-player armies and parties from this system or else the No.1 winning move will simply be following behind a (much slower) enemy army until all its men starve, then swoop in for a free win once they are down to zero available troops.
The problem in that image has nothing to do with food and everything to do with that -0.01 herd penalty. How many mules are you herding to have such a big inventory capacity? The herd penalty is supposed to be the limiter on infinite inventory but its not really working the way it should be.
 
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The problem in that image has nothing to do with food and everything to do with that -0.01 herd penalty. How many mules are you herding to have such a big inventory capacity?

Around 200, assisted by the Caravan Master (30% extra cargo for the party) perk at Trade 50. Since then, they've added another perk, Filled to the Brim at Riding 75, that gives another 20% cargo for pack animals specifically, so you can do it with less now.

The herd penalty is supposed to be the limiter on infinite inventory capacity but its not really working the way it should.

The herd penalty is barely being triggered because the party in that picture only barely as more horses and livestock than men.
 
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