A suggested change on fortresses and seiges

[SelfishGene]

I'd like to see damage done to fortress walls not dissapear once a fort is captured or the seige lifted, but carry on into the following turns. Repairs should need to be made as usual.

So once you captured a fort, you would need to garrison it for a while (or some time) in order to improve its defenses again. This would work against the defenders as well, as even if they drove off an attack they would still need to fix the damage caused for a few turns afterwords.

Probably would merit some additional fortress graphics. Possibly two new ones for a 66% state and a 33% state. Or, if that gives too much information to the besieger, just a single 'broken' graphic indicating a fort has fallen.


This would imo make high defense forts somewhat more valuable (paradoxically) and low defense forts less so. Right now there is virtually no reason to raze a well placed fort - but if these changes were made a more scorched earth attack might be more commonplace as an attacker burns a fort he suspects he'll be unable to defend against a counterattack.

Thoughts?

[Norfleet]

Well, presumably, forts are only difficult to build and repair when enemies are actually shooting at you. If nobody's around to stop you, a fort can be built from scratch in a single turn by a lone scout, apparently assisted by contracted peasants, the undead, etc. Since the attacker only destroys gates of forts, rather than levelling the entire place to the ground in the process of attacking it, the timeframe involved for such a repair certainly cannot be greater than constructing an entirely new fort to begin with!

Thus, the present system works, and seems to be applied in most games that have sieging: The effects of sieging tend to disappear quickly after the siege is lifted.

[Cainehill]

Hmmm. I admit, I don't think I've _yet_ razed a fortress, but I've considered it and come close, when someone else had mausoleums or watchtowers and I had ... something decent.

It would make more sense, imo, if the forts didn't come right back at 100% strength. Given the month between turns, the least someone should expect to see is a fort at 50% (for a 2 turn fort) when attacking. Then again - maybe it should require a commander to do the build command to rebuild a fort? I mean - it may make some sense for them to be able to repair a fort when it was their territory to begin with - lots of peasants (or corpses) to do the work, but an invader that took it by storm should face some work.


I'm not sure this would diminish the lesser forts that much - 12 defense tends to stall an army just as well as 25 does. It might actually diminish the value of capturing high ranking fortifications, thus improving their value.

After all - right now, I could have ... mausoleums. But as soon as I storm a mountain citadel, or a fortified city, I get a great fortress, in 100% condition, that I'm not going to give up ever if I can avoid it. (This is actually the case in one of my MP games - I have watchtowers, I'm conquering castles and building my temples there. I am _so_ not building watchtowers until all his castles are gone! )

This means that having a high end fortification can be a drawback - your enemies can build cheap forts, and conquer yours and get full benefits immediately. If it takes 5 turns to build a fort, that fort shouldn't be able to be at full strength overnight, imo.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Well, presumably, forts are only difficult to build and repair when enemies are actually shooting at you. If nobody's around to stop you, a fort can be built from scratch in a single turn by a lone scout, apparently assisted by contracted peasants, the undead, etc.

Er - name me a fort that can be built in a single turn. Even the watchtower and mausoleum take two turns (as can the wizard tower, but that's presumably assisted by magic).

Since the attacker only destroys gates of forts, rather than levelling the entire place to the ground in the process of attacking it, the timeframe involved for such a repair certainly cannot be greater than constructing an entirely new fort to begin with!

Thus, the present system works, and seems to be applied in most games that have sieging: The effects of sieging tend to disappear quickly after the siege is lifted.

Bah. I've studied medieval warfare, sieging et al : they did _not_ only damage the gates. Catapults , onagers, trebuchets, etc, damaged the walls mostly, and the buildings when they overshot the walls. Even greek fire, tossed via catapults, was aimed at the city in general - not the gates, because they couldn't target the gates well enough. That's why they used gauntlets and battering rams. (Once they had half decent cannons - well past the renaissance - they could better target something specific like a gate, but that was _well_ past what is represented in the game. Maybe if Ulm had siege engines.)

Damage was wide spread, and in general, it was easier to build something with a friendly population working for you. Invading and conquering a fortified city, unless the previous masters had been very unpopular, you were more likely to have sabotage than progress in rebuilding the walls, towers, parapets, gates, cisterns, and other things that all played a vital part in castle defense.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Er - name me a fort that can be built in a single turn. Even the watchtower and mausoleum take two turns (as can the wizard tower, but that's presumably assisted by magic).

Yes, but that's building the entire fort from scratch. Presumably, you'd only need to destroy the front half to get in.

I've studied medieval warfare, sieging et al : they did _not_ only damage the gates.

This isn't an argument about medieval warfare. I *KNOW* about the kind of indiscriminate destruction inflicted by lobbing large rocks with only a modest amount of aim at something. In Dom2, however, at the time of storming, it is clear that the fort walls are mostly intact. It'd be cool if there *WAS* some added wall deformation and holes blown through the thing, but apparently, there isn't. Look to that in Dominions 3, with all new castle-sieging action.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cainehill:
I've studied medieval warfare, sieging et al : they did _not_ only damage the gates.

This isn't an argument about medieval warfare. I *KNOW* about the kind of indiscriminate destruction inflicted by lobbing large rocks with only a modest amount of aim at something.[/QB]

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Heh. I forgot about your hobbies.

[PvK]

Ignoring for the moment that real castles took years or decades or lifetimes to build... yes it's true a castle would often take a lot of damage in the process of being taken by force. On the other hand, both the defenders and the attackers would likely have prepared a lot of extra defenses - new interior and exterior walls, seige engines, etc., and after the defense fell, all that survived would be in the hands of the victorious attackers. A prudent commander expecting a counter-attack could re-arrange it all for a new defense, and perhaps have it as strong, or stronger, a position as it was originally. Just a thought.

All in all, it seems like a lot of speculation about an abstract system. Perhaps the ideal way to handle it would be a random table of possible outcomes of a fort capture, such as:

25% Fort is destroyed by the capture.
10% Fort is crippled and acts at 25% in all ways, until a commander takes time and spends gold (75% original time/cost) to repair the fort.
10% Fort is badly damaged - as above but 50% and cheaper (50%) to fix.
10% Fort is damaged - as above but 75% and 25% to fix.
10% Fort defends at full strength but has no administrative or supply effects until 50% of original fort cost and one turn is spent.
25% Fort is essentially captured intact.
10% Fort is now a stronger defensive position than it was before the seige, due to added defensive works, equipment, and practical experience retained by the new castellan - add 25% to defense value.

Or, just call it a wash and leave it as is.

PvK

[SelfishGene]

My whole thinking is momentum.

Basically if you capture a fort, your army keeps moving on while your new fort stays in your rear working hard for you instead of your opponent. If your pushed back again, your new fort is just as defensible as it was in your enemy's hands.

If players were forced to repair it after capture, the victorious army has a choice of moving on, and leaving the fort vulnerable to recapture (Mongol Horde! Charge!), or staying and solidifying their hold on the province (Teutons!).

The problem with paying gold for repairs is that it means its cheaper to stay under seige if you have sufficient troops - unless, of course, your now paying to repair during a seige as well.

The reason i like the defense/repair mechanism is that its already in the game to some degree and so shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

As for the turns to build v repair, one could argue (perhaps not very well ) that its harder to repair than to build from scratch, and second that a slow free castle > fast costly castle.

[edit] Oh and it might help to not think to literally . Walls don't just mean walls. Supply lines, observation Posts, magazines and auxilliaries, local contacts, peasant labor and supplies, all might be part of the generic 'fortress' we have here.

[ July 11, 2004, 04:28: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Cainehill:

quote:

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Originally posted by Norfleet:
Well, presumably, forts are only difficult to build and repair when enemies are actually shooting at you. If nobody's around to stop you, a fort can be built from scratch in a single turn by a lone scout, apparently assisted by contracted peasants, the undead, etc.

Er - name me a fort that can be built in a single turn. Even the watchtower and mausoleum take two turns (as can the wizard tower, but that's presumably assisted by magic).

Since the attacker only destroys gates of forts, rather than levelling the entire place to the ground in the process of attacking it, the timeframe involved for such a repair certainly cannot be greater than constructing an entirely new fort to begin with!

Thus, the present system works, and seems to be applied in most games that have sieging: The effects of sieging tend to disappear quickly after the siege is lifted.

Bah. I've studied medieval warfare, sieging et al : they did _not_ only damage the gates. Catapults , onagers, trebuchets, etc, damaged the walls mostly, and the buildings when they overshot the walls. Even greek fire, tossed via catapults, was aimed at the city in general - not the gates, because they couldn't target the gates well enough. That's why they used gauntlets and battering rams.

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Don't forget tunnels. They were likly at least as eficient as all other siege machinary together in destroying castles defenses.

If done right, the tunnles could collapse castle's walls completely, at several places at the exactly the same time, totally unexpected for defenders (it was typically done by replacing stones in different parts of the walls basement with oiled wood blocks, than setting them all on fire at the same time). Not to mention using different expolsives in combination with tunneling, long before age of cannons.

Unlike castle siege machinery, that could be destroyed by defenders machinery or during succefull raid (sometimes during the night) by the fortress defenders, tunnels were very difficult to destroy, or even detect. And unlike complicated siege machinery you don't need any resourses to do it, all you need to have is a lot of time and manpower, as well as few engineers to direct these efforts. And time and manpower is something that siegers usually possesed in large quantities.

[ July 11, 2004, 06:27: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Boron]

hm you all forget the fantasy part of dominions ihmo . in middle ages building forts was really taking a long time and if a fort was badly damaged i agree the rebuilding needs almost the same time as building a new one .
but that's in the middle ages .
while in dominions you have powerful mages / your pretender god . they are so powerful it should be an easy task for them to let their minions like demons .... build / repair a castle in no time . you even have some spells for this .
in almost every major rpg great wizards let devils/demons build their great wizard towers during one day
but pvk's idea is nice . but you could implement additional spells then , best one earth magic and one blood magic spell which lets you repair your fortress via ritual . so you have the choice e.g. pay half of the fort's building costs or pay e.g. 5 earthgems or 10 bloodslaves to let it be repaired .
some nations like ulm who are good castle builders should get a discount and only pay 25% .
ermor perhaps should pay nothing cause they have upkeepfree population . cause the gold you pay are mainly the wages for your workers who build the castle while you get the stones ... for free ( at least in the middle ages ) .