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The value of Castles vs Towns
- Thread starter Jagati Khan
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Yes Castles are useless, you can't even truck in food to them to make sure your garrison is okay.
It's kinda sad that we really wanted to build our own castles, they teased it, they dropped it and now castles are ever worse then Warband's because food.
They need a distinct use that towns don't offer, like other have said raising/recruiting troops or special troops would be good, plenty of other special things could be good if/when we get things in the game in general.
It's kinda sad that we really wanted to build our own castles, they teased it, they dropped it and now castles are ever worse then Warband's because food.
They need a distinct use that towns don't offer, like other have said raising/recruiting troops or special troops would be good, plenty of other special things could be good if/when we get things in the game in general.
9yearsago
Sergeant
They should spawn some patrol groups maybe, if your manpower is above a certain level etc. or have the option to send out patrols.
And compared to cities they definitely need to give more xp to stationed troops through training fields and player party should benefit from that as well. Castles are strictly military settlements after all.
And compared to cities they definitely need to give more xp to stationed troops through training fields and player party should benefit from that as well. Castles are strictly military settlements after all.
Yes, give castles more meaning and value.
Good ideas throughout the thread *thumbs up*
Good ideas throughout the thread *thumbs up*
Training arenas that you can use for your troops and improve your skills are a must in a castle and should be able to be a build up option in villages. Tournaments should be able to be held in castles if you have the influence and money to dish out the expenses and rewards (thus rewarding you relations and influence). Tax policy, culture prosperity, and security should add to allowing the village to grow as well as your investment in improvement structures like walls, inns, halls, gardens, infrastructure, etc. It would be rewarding to see you be an actual lord of your estate and grow loyalty and strength based on your upkeep of your town/castle. Quest for villages should also include handling corruption within your own estate.
thank you! totally forgot that one at the moment.
thank you! totally forgot that one at the moment.
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This would make them valuable.
Castles just lesser towns in Warband too, and I always wished for them to be more useful. Some good ideas here for making them better.
I particularly like something along these lines:
That sounds like a sensible way to allow limited cultural recruitment flexibility. Stays within the realms of realism and gameplay consistency, and gives us just that little bit of customisability and a way to offset the problem of maintaining your own culture when the fiefs you gain are routinely not of the culture you initially vassal for.
I particularly like something along these lines:
That sounds like a sensible way to allow limited cultural recruitment flexibility. Stays within the realms of realism and gameplay consistency, and gives us just that little bit of customisability and a way to offset the problem of maintaining your own culture when the fiefs you gain are routinely not of the culture you initially vassal for.
Well the entire point of castles in history was to have fortifications that guard access to villages and towns. In reality, you couldn't just lay siege to an actual city when it is surrounded by castles. They were usually built in strategic locations that either physically blocked access to important areas, or at the least provided a lot time for cities and villages to know an invasion was coming. It was castles, not actual cities, that were the real defense of a realm. Towns actually fell pretty easily, because the real fighting was done at the castles and cities tend to grow too large to completely wall off and protect.
So yes, the way to make castles function properly in the game is to require all castles connected to a city to be taken before the city can be besieged. And villages should not be "raidable" unless its castle is under siege or its town is accessible for being besieged. That would clean up warfare quite a bit and add actual strategy to the game.
Many towns grew up around castles. I don't know why this has never been implemented in M&B games. They should basically be small towns.
They should at last be counted as village.
Castles are not entirely useless atm. They are a more stable garrison than towns as towns could have severe food penalty causing the garrison to flee rapidly. Now I always stack up my tier 5/6 troops in my castles at choke points of the map, and put trash recruits in towns. When I need top tier troop to fight hard battles, I go to the nearest castle and get the troops I stored previously. This is helpful during the multi-front war phase of the initial expansion of the player's own kingdom.
Adding unique production and troop training to castles sounds both historically accurate and fun. Castles should serve as a base for a lord and a clan and switch hands much less frequent. I'd like the idea of assigning castles to clans as their "heirloom". Huge relation penalty for ripping their castles off them. This also might, just might, provide a solution to how easily the lords are switching grounds and don't value loyalty at all.
Adding unique production and troop training to castles sounds both historically accurate and fun. Castles should serve as a base for a lord and a clan and switch hands much less frequent. I'd like the idea of assigning castles to clans as their "heirloom". Huge relation penalty for ripping their castles off them. This also might, just might, provide a solution to how easily the lords are switching grounds and don't value loyalty at all.
I like the unique troop production ideas. I saw someone mention elsewhere that villagers should take refuge in castles when they are getting raided, and if they manage to survive then your village will recover faster.
Overall I'd say it's probably better to own a castle than no fief at all.
They do already play an economic role to nearby towns. Villages bound to castles will take their goods to the markets of nearby allied towns (in most cases). So taking castles from the enemy means their villagers will start rerouting to your towns instead and provide extra goods to the market, and therefore more money.
There are also certain castles around the map that are really important for keeping towns well fed. For instance, Urikskala Castle provides both grain and fish to Tyal. Without Urikskala Castle, Tyal has trouble keeping a food surplus. So there's some strategic value to them in that manner.
If nothing else, the "training grounds" improvement also provides a little bit of passive experience to the castle garrison, and you still get the income from them and their bound villages.
Overall I'd say it's probably better to own a castle than no fief at all.
They do already play an economic role to nearby towns. Villages bound to castles will take their goods to the markets of nearby allied towns (in most cases). So taking castles from the enemy means their villagers will start rerouting to your towns instead and provide extra goods to the market, and therefore more money.
There are also certain castles around the map that are really important for keeping towns well fed. For instance, Urikskala Castle provides both grain and fish to Tyal. Without Urikskala Castle, Tyal has trouble keeping a food surplus. So there's some strategic value to them in that manner.
If nothing else, the "training grounds" improvement also provides a little bit of passive experience to the castle garrison, and you still get the income from them and their bound villages.
I don't think I'm saying anything that hasn't already been mentioned in this thread. Just my $0.02.
Castles don't need to be as good as towns. They just need to be a little different, and provide something that towns don't provide...or provide it differently. I think castles could jump in value a lot by providing "normal" stuff also available elsewhere, but somewhat owner- or faction-restricted. I can see them playing a niche role, being useful during vassal or ruler stages of the game, while remaining pretty much useless as they are now during early-game.
I'd like to see:
- Noble troop recruitment...only open to the castle's owner or perhaps only members of his/her faction. So, for example, if I'm a Battanian vassal, I can recruit Fian-line nobles at, say, Ab Comer castle, but I cannot ride down the valley and also get Banner Knights from Talivel Castle. Maybe the additional benefit for ownership is that the troops are relations-locked in higher slots just as everywhere else, and only the owner automatically has access to all slots, whereas other Battanian nobles are limited by whatever their relations are with me. And if I'm a mercenary or otherwise an unaffiliated adventurer, then no castle-recruited noble troops at all, I have only the villages like now.
- A smithy. It's pretty obvious that any self-respecting castle would have weapon- and armorsmithing capacity. But it's also pretty likely that they're not just going to let any old flea-bitten adventurer waltz in and take over their forge. It would be reserved for the owner's use and possibly others within the faction. I'd like for this castle smithy to have something that differs from the current town facilities, although I don't have any firm idea on what that would be. Maybe stamina depletes more slowly in one's own castle smithy, reflecting that the work area is arranged and stocked just how the castle lord likes, and is more efficient? Or maybe there's always a few extra smithing materials there, like, it spawns a few Fine or Thamaskene Steel occasionally?
- Strategic significance. I don't think every castle needs to have some paramount strategic value, but a few should. Garontor and Tubilis castles on opposite sides of that western-desert land bridge are an obvious example. Requiring possession of both castles for an army or war party to pass might be a bit much...but preventing passage of enemy caravans seems realistic. So, for example, I can go north with an Aserai army and take Ortysia, but if I don't also take Garontor, then no Aserai caravans are going to be able to transit back and forth...gimping Ortysia's economy and not contributing anything to the larger Aserai economy either. (yes, I'm aware I'm just restating a very similar idea already posted further up the thread).
Game mechanic-wise, could be implemented as some sort of "zone of control"; at a certain distance, caravans move away from a hostile castle just like they currently do from a hostile field force. For many castles that are just out-of-the way or in the middle of easily traversible territory, it won't mean much; caravans just aren't in the area anyway or will find a way around. But castles at chokepoints would have very significant value. Perhaps the ownership benefit of such a chokepoint-castle could be a peacetime passage toll for all caravans not of the owner's own faction?
Castles don't need to be as good as towns. They just need to be a little different, and provide something that towns don't provide...or provide it differently. I think castles could jump in value a lot by providing "normal" stuff also available elsewhere, but somewhat owner- or faction-restricted. I can see them playing a niche role, being useful during vassal or ruler stages of the game, while remaining pretty much useless as they are now during early-game.
I'd like to see:
- Noble troop recruitment...only open to the castle's owner or perhaps only members of his/her faction. So, for example, if I'm a Battanian vassal, I can recruit Fian-line nobles at, say, Ab Comer castle, but I cannot ride down the valley and also get Banner Knights from Talivel Castle. Maybe the additional benefit for ownership is that the troops are relations-locked in higher slots just as everywhere else, and only the owner automatically has access to all slots, whereas other Battanian nobles are limited by whatever their relations are with me. And if I'm a mercenary or otherwise an unaffiliated adventurer, then no castle-recruited noble troops at all, I have only the villages like now.
- A smithy. It's pretty obvious that any self-respecting castle would have weapon- and armorsmithing capacity. But it's also pretty likely that they're not just going to let any old flea-bitten adventurer waltz in and take over their forge. It would be reserved for the owner's use and possibly others within the faction. I'd like for this castle smithy to have something that differs from the current town facilities, although I don't have any firm idea on what that would be. Maybe stamina depletes more slowly in one's own castle smithy, reflecting that the work area is arranged and stocked just how the castle lord likes, and is more efficient? Or maybe there's always a few extra smithing materials there, like, it spawns a few Fine or Thamaskene Steel occasionally?
- Strategic significance. I don't think every castle needs to have some paramount strategic value, but a few should. Garontor and Tubilis castles on opposite sides of that western-desert land bridge are an obvious example. Requiring possession of both castles for an army or war party to pass might be a bit much...but preventing passage of enemy caravans seems realistic. So, for example, I can go north with an Aserai army and take Ortysia, but if I don't also take Garontor, then no Aserai caravans are going to be able to transit back and forth...gimping Ortysia's economy and not contributing anything to the larger Aserai economy either. (yes, I'm aware I'm just restating a very similar idea already posted further up the thread).
Game mechanic-wise, could be implemented as some sort of "zone of control"; at a certain distance, caravans move away from a hostile castle just like they currently do from a hostile field force. For many castles that are just out-of-the way or in the middle of easily traversible territory, it won't mean much; caravans just aren't in the area anyway or will find a way around. But castles at chokepoints would have very significant value. Perhaps the ownership benefit of such a chokepoint-castle could be a peacetime passage toll for all caravans not of the owner's own faction?
You sometimes see looters and bandits fleeing from the garrison of a castle or town. Given the game's current mechanics (garrisons might as well have their feet set in concrete if there is no lord around to lead them), this is pretty comical. But of course, if the mechanics of the game in relation to garrisons was a bit more sophisticated, it would make perfect sense.
As the player, what are some mechanics that might convince you guys to take a castle that is between you and the town you want before you move on to the town? So rather than hardcoded limitations that force the player to take a castle first, like artificial barriers that block movement (i.e. 'chokepoints'), what are some dynamic things that might make you hesitate to campaign beyond that castle?
Like, what if enemy castles had a 'zone of slowness' around them that only applied to your army's movement speed, making a pursuing army more likely to catch you in case you're forced to retreat from deep within enemy territory? Would you decide that venturing too far is risky?
Or maybe if an enemy town was further from your nearest fief than an enemy castle (meaning the town is 'past' the castle), your army consumed double or triple food during sieges. That would mean only besieging border fiefs would be viable if you want to consume the normal food cost. (That might simulate your 'supply lines' being in jeopardy).
If you start doing things like 'binding' castles to towns and forcing the player to take those first you might end up with weird cases where a castle is actually further away than a town, but you must take it first anyway.
I personally don't think the game should gate you into taking castles first if you really don't want to. Just introduce mechanics that make it riskier to bypass castles so the player decides that taking a castle first is strategically the better option. Then you can pick out the ones that you can feasibly program an AI into accounting for and implement those.
Like, what if enemy castles had a 'zone of slowness' around them that only applied to your army's movement speed, making a pursuing army more likely to catch you in case you're forced to retreat from deep within enemy territory? Would you decide that venturing too far is risky?
Or maybe if an enemy town was further from your nearest fief than an enemy castle (meaning the town is 'past' the castle), your army consumed double or triple food during sieges. That would mean only besieging border fiefs would be viable if you want to consume the normal food cost. (That might simulate your 'supply lines' being in jeopardy).
If you start doing things like 'binding' castles to towns and forcing the player to take those first you might end up with weird cases where a castle is actually further away than a town, but you must take it first anyway.
I personally don't think the game should gate you into taking castles first if you really don't want to. Just introduce mechanics that make it riskier to bypass castles so the player decides that taking a castle first is strategically the better option. Then you can pick out the ones that you can feasibly program an AI into accounting for and implement those.
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Agreed. Adjustments like this are more meaningful than introducing restrictions.
Great thoughts but this just violates the realistic idea of the game. The troops are not gonna eat triple amount because they are sieging. Not able to buy in enemy towns is already a soft restriction in this respect.
Another soft approach in my opinion would be, making the invading army/party that goes too deep into enemy territory (like going past two castles/towns) visible to all lords in the kingdom, and nearby lords would actually gather to fend off the invader. But considering the scouting distance feature right now, this could be a bad idea.
How about this: If you besiege a town, without first taking the closest enemy castle, the castle sends out a force to harass you, causing you to lose troops from attrition faster than you would otherwise. In this case you will be leveraging the possible losses of troops due to sieging and taking the castle you don't want against losses to attrition caused by not taking it when you besiege the town you do want.
drallim33
Sergeant
I think the garrisons should be mobile, if you have a governor there, and patrol around killing bandits, protecting nearby villages from raids, and so forth. Then only turtle up when a big army is approaching. They should get a big sight range so they have time to get back inside when an army comes. Help out nearby towns that are under siege. Perhaps even the ability to bring them into your army when you are close to the castle, and then they depart when you move too far away. Probably will never happen but I think it would be cool.
