Whie browsing the ideas in this forum, I came up with possible use of the castles, that would not harm current state of the game as much (I think).
Core idea
The castles, now useless, may become a way to reinforce your party, by having mercenary parties/sergeants/notables residing in them, just the way they exist in villages and cities. The difference would be that they are always of the culture of the kingdom that owns them, and change in case of a conquest. Reason being that different culture's garrison is now manning the castle, hence different mercs come to help them. This would also work well as highly requestes feature of the culture change, as the castles would provide element of such.
They may have their respective quest lines, again, as the normal notables do, but the difference would be in the soldiers you are able to recruit. They have high chance to be higher tier (T2-4), and may come in bigger quantities, as normal bands of mercs do, compared to village volunteers. To even out the pros of recruiting in castle, there could be a much higher price for them (recruitment cost), so that villages would still be in use. The rate of spawning those troops may be lower a bit, to reduce the pros.
Player exploitation
In presented case, player may overuse the mechanics by not joining any kingdom, and recruiting more and more high tier troops. To prevent this, there can be a restriction, of being able to recruit from castles only if you are in the same kingdom OR you are the owner. Latter case may present much needed higher value to owning the castles, compared to cities, but can create a gap between rich and poor clans. Either way, player would not be able to overuse the mechanics as much, with the ownership restrictions being better, obviously.
What with the notables after the conquest?
Here I have couple of ways to resolve this:
Other way to do this is for mercanary sergeants to always travel across the castles of the said kingdom, the issue being that it removes all the consistency of having a castle, and is impossible to implement good with
Core idea
The castles, now useless, may become a way to reinforce your party, by having mercenary parties/sergeants/notables residing in them, just the way they exist in villages and cities. The difference would be that they are always of the culture of the kingdom that owns them, and change in case of a conquest. Reason being that different culture's garrison is now manning the castle, hence different mercs come to help them. This would also work well as highly requestes feature of the culture change, as the castles would provide element of such.
They may have their respective quest lines, again, as the normal notables do, but the difference would be in the soldiers you are able to recruit. They have high chance to be higher tier (T2-4), and may come in bigger quantities, as normal bands of mercs do, compared to village volunteers. To even out the pros of recruiting in castle, there could be a much higher price for them (recruitment cost), so that villages would still be in use. The rate of spawning those troops may be lower a bit, to reduce the pros.
Player exploitation
In presented case, player may overuse the mechanics by not joining any kingdom, and recruiting more and more high tier troops. To prevent this, there can be a restriction, of being able to recruit from castles only if you are in the same kingdom OR you are the owner. Latter case may present much needed higher value to owning the castles, compared to cities, but can create a gap between rich and poor clans. Either way, player would not be able to overuse the mechanics as much, with the ownership restrictions being better, obviously.
What with the notables after the conquest?
Here I have couple of ways to resolve this:
- Traveling mercenary notables
Other way to do this is for mercanary sergeants to always travel across the castles of the said kingdom, the issue being that it removes all the consistency of having a castle, and is impossible to implement good with
- Hiding mercenary notables
- Notables changing upon a conquest
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