SP - General Making castles useful

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Right now castles are quite useless for a clan to have since even with all the income from the villages and rents from the castle combined they generally can't even pay for 100 elite troops. And currently the villages are defenseless without a lord patrolling around to protect them.
As it doesn't make much sense for castles to be huge economic powerhouses I think at least some of the following improvements and mechanics should be added to castles:
  • Reduce the wages of the garrisons in them by default.
  • Castles should train the troops inside them much faster.
  • Allow you to recruit noble troops from them.
  • Automatically recruit troops to fill the garrison from the surrounding villages.
  • Automatically send out troops to defend nearby villages from raids or aid nearby armies in battle.
  • Send out small patrols to wipe out any bandits.
  • Serve as a hideout for smaller armies and parties fleeing from bigger ones.
  • Have a zone of control around the castle. Small enemy parties would not dare to come close to a castle garrison that can easily defeat them.
  • NPC's you could talk to for the above mentioned functionality, your governor should be the one to do these things.
Castles should help lock down the area rather than just stand there until people siege it down as they do now.
 
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All great suggestions. These would really make castles feel like something other than a drain. I know with a really good governor with the right perks you can make them into decent places to hold troops, but without the governor the castles feel like a burden.

It doesn't have to be all of these but some such as recruiting and patrols would be small changes with big impact.
 
I fully concur with the OP. Currently, a castle is a money-sink only, if you compare taxes with garrison payments and the money needed to upgrade (ten thousands of gold).
I wonder, whether a castle training grounds could enable sparring fights with your troops like the training fields in MnB did. You could influence the training of your troops with the benefit of no one gets killed while doing so. Imagine there might be more kinds of training grounds like jousting grounds, archery range which need to be constructed first to train matching troops. Imagine having those might enable you to hold tournaments in castles to get influence and relationship with lords. There once were feasts to hold in a castle (which would give a castle stash a proper meaning -> castle armoury/larder). I also really like castles as a recruitment point for noble troops like Aserai Youths, Battanian Fians or Khergit Quangli. Build a smithy there to be able to use the smith skill at a castle...so many possibillities for them.
 
Very good suggestion(s)!
* The patruls- solution could be enforcing milita to the peasant-parties for example. Having buildings, prosperity and security influense the composition, and the village prosperity influence the size-count(as is).

* Adding low-nobility/knight notables to the castles with an improved chance of providing noble troops as well as their own branches of quests(for starters it could share some from villages and some from nobles...) The quests could often require noble interactions.

* A Recruiter and a sense of Militias as manpower-pool.
  • "Transforms" militia into regular troops over time(a toggle - What he can transform from and into is decided by military buildings)
  • "On demand transformation" - X random selected Militias is transformed into T1 regular recruits(Military buildings can change the tempalate)
  • Spawns noble troops at a slow rate, improvable via buildings
  • Sharing is caring - ability to transfer incoming militia to another fief in the faction. You gain infuence and relation with it´s holder. (There could be policies that forces you to do this - Vassal levy to the King!)
  • Domain distribution - like above but manpower is distributed within subdomain of the holder clan.

* Make T2 and T3 (military) buildings alot more exclusive or add more tiers. Top tier should be very impactfull and cost _alot_!

* I hope one day villages gets their own buildings.... They should have the production - castles should have military, infrastructure and security related buildings only. And Area of Control suggested by OP!

* Garrisoned troops costs 25% less.
 
Yes, most of these things are already in the game as mechanics:

- Support nearby firendly parties (like village milita, but with inceased radius)
- Recruit noble troops in there
- Send out small guard parties to check on the villages.
 
I agree with all of OP's points and would suggest that we have a separate garrison feature for Patrols

1) You donate troops to the Patrol pool and they would engage with any hostiles within the radius of the castles and villages.
2) This way, your garrison isn't fully depleting every time a looter party appears around villages.
3) When hostiles enter this radius, the patrol garrison will dispatch a force large enough to defeat that party and bring prisoners back to the settlement.
4) If the party is too large for the Patrol to defeat, they will simply remain within the garrison.

With the other points OP made, if you could have a slider scale for how many troops you want in the Garrison, that'd be great.
Also, I really really wish that AI parties realize they could hide from enemies inside settlements .
 
Right now castles are quite useless for a clan to have since even with all the income from the villages and rents from the castle combined they generally can't even pay for 100 elite troops. And currently the villages are defenseless without a lord patrolling around to protect them.
As it doesn't make much sense for castles to be huge economic powerhouses I think at least some of the following improvements and mechanics should be added to castles:
  • Reduce the wages of the garrisons in them by default.
  • Castles should train the troops inside them much faster.
  • Allow you to recruit noble troops from them.
  • Automatically recruit troops to fill the garrison from the surrounding villages.
  • Automatically send out troops to defend nearby villages from raids or aid nearby armies in battle.
  • Send out small patrols to wipe out any bandits.
  • Serve as a hideout for smaller armies and parties fleeing from bigger ones.
  • Have a zone of control around the castle. Small enemy parties would not dare to come close to a castle garrison that can easily defeat them.
  • NPC's you could talk to for the above mentioned functionality, your governor should be the one to do these things.
Castles should help lock down the area rather than just stand there until people siege it down as they do now.
i like this idea alot.
 
Right now castles are quite useless for a clan to have since even with all the income from the villages and rents from the castle combined they generally can't even pay for 100 elite troops. And currently the villages are defenseless without a lord patrolling around to protect them.
As it doesn't make much sense for castles to be huge economic powerhouses I think at least some of the following improvements and mechanics should be added to castles:
  • Reduce the wages of the garrisons in them by default.
  • Castles should train the troops inside them much faster.
  • Allow you to recruit noble troops from them.
  • Automatically recruit troops to fill the garrison from the surrounding villages.
  • Automatically send out troops to defend nearby villages from raids or aid nearby armies in battle.
  • Send out small patrols to wipe out any bandits.
  • Serve as a hideout for smaller armies and parties fleeing from bigger ones.
  • Have a zone of control around the castle. Small enemy parties would not dare to come close to a castle garrison that can easily defeat them.
  • NPC's you could talk to for the above mentioned functionality, your governor should be the one to do these things.
Castles should help lock down the area rather than just stand there until people siege it down as they do now.
100% agree, this nicely soms up everything I would like to see.
I like the added suggestion to have a separate pool for patrol units en upgradable military buildings.

a personal wish is that you would get the option to fight in a defensive siege in the person of you governor. This way you still can still fight in the defense of your holding (that you are invested in) while your main army is on the other side of the map.
 
I agree castles seem rather useless. I think alot of this comes from how many towns there are tho. In warband towns were much more rare so getting a castle was huge when you may have only had a town before. But yea, they probably do need to do something as they no longer have anything going for them, or, atleast there need to be fewer towns so you are just kinda 'stuck' with a lame castle until you can get granted a town.
 
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