Whats the use of having a castle?

[Jungleninja]

Hi, just asking, I own a castle and a town. I have it heavily fortified, food in stock, etc. Even though I know you dont need food in there. What can I then do? I cant do nothing! I cant invite people to a  party, I have no servants there, I cant do extra things, etc. So...whats the use of it? Only to generate money? I cant send someone on a party, nothing. When I was a king, I couldnt even do much, let alone being a lord.

Please some advise, for I think this is a shame. It could have been something real good. As we where promised it to be a big thing, having our own castle and lands, etc.

 

[Orion]

You can do all kinds of crap with a castle. A lot of the social functions require that you're married, though. Even in reality, castles were fortifications before anything else. It's supposed to be there to intimidate the peasants and protect your land. Not to mention in Warband you only pay half wages to troops garrisoned in them, and you can store prisoners & captured lords there.

 

[Lord Rich]

Well at the moment it does indeed fail on a couple of those points, social functions aside the castle does not intimidate or have any influence at all on the surrounding area. Also the half wages thing is broken at the moment so you pay full wages for all your men all the time. There doesnt seem to be much point to putting captured prisoners in there besides lords, you cant convert them while theyre in the castle or anything, theyre just irrelevant. As for capturing lords the castles seems to let them escape quite often even with a prisoner tower.

I would really like it if castles had an area of influence dependant on what units you have garrisoned, any enemy war parties or bandits that would come inside that area would be challenged, similar to the newer total war series campaign forts. Thats what castles were meant to do, control a region, they werent the hidey holes they seem to be now. You might actually have a reason for putting cavalry in castles then aside from just using them as a barracks.

At most the castle is a strategic position which gives you ownership over 1 fief, however given the financial situation that fief and the castle are unlikely to be able to give you enough money to actually garrison the castle to a degree where it is defensible.

Prisoner towers should make it impossible for lords to escape by themselves as well.

 

[Maegfaer]

THE feature of castles/towns is that you can have more soldiers than fit in your party.

 

[TatteredBanners]

You can do all kinds of crap with a castle. A lot of the social functions require that you're married, though. Even in reality, castles were fortifications before anything else. It's supposed to be there to intimidate the peasants and protect your land. Not to mention in Warband you only pay half wages to troops garrisoned in them, and you can store prisoners & captured lords there.

Damn no wonder why my wages are like 3k a week./

 

[Ominous_Penguin]

Agreed.

As you say Lord Rich, they are currently little more than hidey holes.

 

[moe5512]

Damn no wonder why my wages are like 3k a week./

AMON AMARTH \,,/

 

[Therion_Prime]

And you get a stash to put your stuff in, right?

 

[Konrad von Richtmark]

Don't underestimate the ability to have a place where you can leave troops, and return to pick up them later.

In my current game, my modus operandi is to run around with a 40-strong party of pretty much only knights and companions most of the time, for fast travel, fast trading and for being able to efficiently hunt down isolated enemy parties. When the enemy is moving in force, though, I return to the castle to pick up the infantry and make a max-size field army.

 

[Eluqqa]

Are you sure you only pay half wages to garrisons? Because I'm pretty sure I have to pay the full price. Even in vanilla M&B it was supposed to be half price but never was, to my knowledge. My memory of vanilla is fuzzy and tainted by all the mods, though.

The main use of a castle, for me, is the ability to store troops there. If I want to go raiding, I can take a contingent of mamluks (and holy **** are they ever lethal) and not move like the snail I would be with infantry in the party. If I want to go siege things I can take a bunch of strong infantry.
Also, as my castle is near both the Khergit and Rhodok borders, it gets sieged quite a lot. It's a bit of a double-edged sword since there's nothing I can do if a thousand enemies show up, but otherwise it enables me to dispatch armies much larger than I would be able to handle on the field.

 

[Rad]

Yes, castles are still very weak in their possibilities amusing nature for players and could be improved anyhow. 

Form this aspect of possibilities of castles, towns, taverns, villages and quests I really awaited something more from Warband. Why must be  modders always one pace before regular developers?   

In garrisons should be paid half-wages but it seems to me too I am paying too much. If it is true then it is another serious bug. A lot of people complain at their financial ruining here. 

 

[Pingupower]

Catles are also usefull to retreat. Is is much easier to defend a castle against 5 time more enemies than to defeat them in open field. I hold a castle with 70 troops against 600 Swadians. by the end of the battle (which was pretty long) they were all routed and a fair amount of my troop remained.

Plus castles provide you a safe place against bandits/deserters whatever for free.

 

[Rad]

I think anybody who play M&B knows that you can withstand huge superiority and this way substantially reduce enemy power but I still think management and possibilities of castle could be improved. I don't believe that if you will be having several towns you will keep some castles simultaneously because in this stadium of game castles only draw off your money.   

 

[OndGud]

A few military buildings for castles only would be nice. Like, a general training ground that slowly adds xp to units garrisoned. One could also do like in rus XII century(dunno if other mods do this as well) and make castles the place for uppgrading into heavy cavalry/huscalrs. Endless possibilities but probably mod fodder I guess.

 

[Wilm0chimp]

It even says in game that garrisoned troops only get half wages, but afaik its been full wages ever since castles were first implemented in native

Would be nice to see this fixed.

 

[Rad]

I quite like such an idea but on the other hand If I can imagine how enemy troops are improving it their castles and maybe even their towns, so, from this point of view I don't have a good feeling about it. 

 

[Garisi]

Nah, it was definitely half price in native. I used to store cavalry and junk there when I wasnt using it, was much cheaper that way.

You could also mod the discount, so it was actually 75% off for me.

 

[Wilm0chimp]

Ah right, guess someone must have been drinking on the job for warband then. Anyone else noticed that castles now pay you rent, I noticed just now.

 

[newtype0083]

From the ease with which people seem to be capturing castles and the personal difficulty I have in defending them, I vote that castles be harder to conquer or siege be made harder in general.

Think about it: having your entire attacking force heading up ONE ladder? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. I understand just having one siege tower, but one ladder can just be pushed back down. There is a reason why most sieging armies have historically avoided an all-out ladder rush.

 

[lazylogs]

From the ease with which people seem to be capturing castles and the personal difficulty I have in defending them, I vote that castles be harder to conquer or siege be made harder in general.

Think about it: having your entire attacking force heading up ONE ladder? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. I understand just having one siege tower, but one ladder can just be pushed back down. There is a reason why most sieging armies have historically avoided an all-out ladder rush.

I think the ladder idea (as stated in other threads) are for gameplay reasons only. Something about it being to difficult to defend if they were more. Neverthless I find the idea of a assault tower rather a nice one.

"There is a reason why most sieging armies have historically avoided an all-out ladder rush"

yeah but they usually starved the castles to submission, can you do this ingame?