SP - General Suggestion: Make castles harder to conquer

[Dannydehz]

Right now, what is the difference between a castle and a town? A town has a market and is usually richer, no more. If you can choose between owning a castle or a town, a town is always better, period.

Suggestion: Make the siege battle map for castles harder to conquer/easier to defend. I don't know how this would be implemented... maybe add more siege weapons for defenders? Make it harder to reach the walls with ladders/towers or battering ram, so that the defenders have more time to fire arrows? (This can be done, for example, by adding more zig-zag route for the battering rams, or the towers) Add more fire pots, more murder holes, add "greek fire", etc. Maybe allow lockable doors in towers, that the attack has to hack apart. There are many ways to creatively design the siege map to make it harder for the attacker. I leave it up to you to come up with methods that work best, but I believe there should be a large difference between the difficulty of sieging towns on the one hand, and castles on the other hand.

 

[federally]

You missed a difference in your first paragraph.

Right now castles are significantly easier to conquer.

They are the complete push overs, where sometimes cities really require some effort to take.

 

[Dannydehz]

Is it? Why is that? Higher food production allowing for larger garrisons and higher prosperity boosting militia?

 

[federally]

Is it? Why is that? Higher food production allowing for larger garrisons and higher prosperity boosting militia?

Well there is some room to figure out the whys, however what I know from my experience playing the game.

If I don't want to spend influence putting together an army, I can grab all my companions and put together a force of about 750 troops. In my current campaign on 1.4.1 the only places we can reliably capture are castles. The smallest defenses I see on cities is 600 men, yet there is always an abundance of castles with 300 or less defenders.

I'm betting it has a lot to do with castles currently being a resource sink, and as far as food is concerned relatively unsustainable. However I can't say for certain.

 

[Dannydehz]

Ok, I agree, castles tend to have smaller amount of defenders. That makes the need to give them a defensive boost even greater. And it doesn't make sense to give them more villages/prosperity as castles were all about excerting military control over an area, not about being an economic center. So I think the best way to do that, is to make significant changes to the siege maps of castles. Castles are supposed to be smaller and better/more easily defended, compared to cities.

 

[William7667]

Yes castles should be much tougher to attack and should only need smallish garrisons to hold them they should have large grannaries capable fo feeding the reccomended garrisons for a few months put more in then they run out of food quicker making starving an overpopulated garrison during seige posible but a reccomended level of garrison would take a long time. lvl 1castles with a reccomended 50 garrison should hold off 200 with ease. lvl 2 with a 100 garrison should hold off 600 or so with ease lvl 3 with a 200 garrison should hold off 1600 or more with ease.

If your army visits the castle it of course eats its own food and doesnt eat from the granary unless its out of food.


lvl 1 and lvl 3 castles are basically the same except for the hieght of the wall lvl 2 and 3 should have a metal portcullis making a door entry impractical meaning more seige towers/ ladders needed and more casualties sustained, lvl 3 should have a moat making it harder still. Walls should take a lot longer to demolish making it a tough option to take.