Castles don't stop armies from advancing, right ?

[Loren]

The problem is that there is no concept of supply lines in Dominions.

How I would like to see it handled:

Wages have to be delivered somehow. Make a new commander type: Treasurer. A treasurer is completely stealthy in friendly terrain and gains the stealth status of the best commander it's with in enemy territory. It can't enter combat, it always retreats if you lose the province. You get to designate where it's going to retreat to. Should it be unable to retreat it's captured by whoever takes the province.

Treasurers only collect revenue from provinces with a friendly path to the province where the treasurer is. If your empire gets cut apart you need a new treasurer in the cut-off portion. If a province can't deliver it's gold somewhere a treasurer is automatically recruited (even if the province is also recruiting another commander) in whatever connected province has the most forces in it, or if there are none, in whatever province has the most income.

You can explicitly give a treasurer money in any castle, he can only draw from other treasurers that are in castles and connected to the one he is in.

Armies may be supplied by a treasurer that is with them even if they are in enemy territory.


The basic idea is to make logistics important when you are behind enemy lines. Allowing your army to get cut off means that you can't pay it and you get the same consequences as if you didn't pay it otherwise. Bypassing a strong point wouldn't be a good idea unless you sent plenty of money with the army.

Remember that the real power of castles was that leaving one in your rear was a bad idea because it would keep you from sending supplies or couriers through the area, not to mention raiders.


I also think you should be able to retreat into a fort if you gave your troops a "raid siegers" order. It would look like a fortress battle except without the hole in the wall, just an open gate. Any missile troops in the castle could be positioned on the walls which would give them some extra defense value. Note that battlefield spells would affect those in the castle as well.