Wishlist for September

[Zapmeister]

I don't think it's unrealistic that a structure of some sort should appear in each province. In fact, I think it unlikely that a conquering nation of any competence (in the real world, even) would leave its new acquisitions undeveloped.

What is unrealistic is that a nation can only build one kind of structure, so we never see, say, a castle in one province and watchtowers in the surrounding ones, as one might expect in the "real" world.

Also, and here's the problem that gives rise to madcastling, watchtowers are just as effective as citadels in a most important respect defensively. Their presence means that it takes at least two turns to capture the province. I think that if you fixed this (also unrealistic) property of the cheap fortifications, you would fix madcastling.

[Stormbinder]

Kel said:

Watchtowers, however, which are usually what are being built, do not. Castles DO cost a lot, that's why noone uses them.

Aghmm... I was talking thematically Kel. As you know, there is no castle maintanence in the Dom2, no does in-game population have anything to do with building castles.

Historically though castles did requre a lot of support from the surrounding villages and settlements, the richer and larger castle was the more servs/lands and taxes it needed to support it.

and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players.

I haven't had the same experiences you have and I rarely see the kind of castles you are talking about until the late game.

I am talking about mid and late game.

If there was no defense, even temporary, from raiding, it would make my game less fun, not more fun. Your first suggestion, at least, would strengthen raiding and weaken the uses of dominion (at least any that required the use of temples).

Wrong. Castles would still defend you from raiding, but you would actully need to think strategically where to build them, instead of just building them everywhere. I strongly beleive that this is closer to what devs had in mind for this game, not castle in every province. With my first suggestion you can still freely build castles in 33% of your territory, or even in 50+% of your territory for small additional cost. But it would become incresengly more difficult to cover every province with castles, therefore forcing you to make a strategic choices where to build castle and where not.

I don't believe that devs have intended for the castles to cover each and every province, as it happen very often, and for most peaople to play with Mausoleum/Watch Towers.

I do actually agree with this but this has to do with the nature of the castles, not with the concept of 'madcastling'.

Making castles escalate later on in no way encourages one not to take a cheap castle as the watchtower would still be cheaper and built faster than if one had taken a Citadel of some kind. On top of that, it would still build faster (the most important point, to me) and would still cost less design points. I would rather see the cheaper towers reduce resource output (as they have reduced gold via lower admin values now) or something along those lines as far as balancing the fortifications go.

I think you are missing the point Kel. Both my suggestions would clearly discourage madcastling to the certain degree, no matter Watch tower do you use or some other castle. They are not castle-type specific.

"Madcastling" is the term that means building castles in all provinces, it doesn't refer to specific type of the castle. Although naturaly it is easer to do with cheap and fast castles, as you pointed out, and some people choose Tower/Mausoleum partly or wholy for this purpose, but not all people.

[Stormbinder]

Zapmeister said:
I don't think it's unrealistic that a structure of some sort should appear in each province. In fact, I think it unlikely that a conquering nation of any competence (in the real world, even) would leave its new acquisitions undeveloped.

What is unrealistic is that a nation can only build one kind of structure, so we never see, say, a castle in one province and watchtowers in the surrounding ones, as one might expect in the "real" world.

Also, and here's the problem that gives rise to madcastling, watchtowers are just as effective as citadels in a most important respect defensively. Their presence means that it takes at least two turns to capture the province. I think that if you fixed this (also unrealistic) property of the cheap fortifications, you would fix madcastling.

I agree Zap, but how exactly do you propsoe to acomplish that? If Watch Tower would take less than 2 turns to capture, that would mean 1 turn, right? Than it would not be a fort at all. And increasing the Defense value of citadel even more would not make Watch Tower easier to capture than it is now.



I completely agree with you that it would be great to have more different province imporvments to build, like Watch Towers that would actually do what what they say, rather than being "real castles", and so on. But I think it is highly unlikely that something like that could be added that late after game's release, since it would requre major recoding.


Making castle price flexible on the other side is very easy to do, and would require minimal changes to the code. (especially considering that AI doesn't build castles anyway ) I am trying to give suggestions that have a chance of being implemented in the patch, if devs will decide that it is worth it.

Regards,
Stormbinder

[Cainehill]

Kel said:

Watchtowers, however, which are usually what are being built, do not. Castles DO cost a lot, that's why noone uses them.

Nor for that matter do mausoleums require much to build and maintain - look at crypts and mausoleums hundreds of years old in this world. Similarly, one doesn't really expect a Wizard Tower to demand much population / physical resources to maintain or build.

I haven't had the same experiences you have and I rarely see the kind of castles you are talking about until the late game. If there was no defense, even temporary, from raiding, it would make my game less fun, not more fun. Your first suggestion, at least, would strengthen raiding and weaken the uses of dominion (at least any that required the use of temples).

Indeed - even _with_ castles, it can be a real hassle trying to catch raiders. I've been trying to nail some Vanheim raiders for about 6 turns in one of my games; without my towers, I'd've lost temples as well as time, PD, mages, and troops.

For that matter - one could argue that _raiders_ being too powerful is the problem, and "mad castling" the unfortunate solution.

If initiative / movement sequence was random, so there would be a 50/50 chance of catching the raiders in their current provinces, castling wouldn't be so critical.

As is, the raiders _always_ move on to the next territory first, not counting magic army (usually magic _commander_) movement, after already burning any temple in the province and jacking taxes to 200%.

And, just like in the real world, Europe in particular, it's perfectly reasonable to have a castle, tower, fortress, palace, walled city, in every bloody province if one can afford it.

And finally, most of the castle types that can be "mad castled" are pretty easy to kick down.

If the argument is that "they stand up long enough for the VQ / AQ / BL to teleport in and kill the army", I think it's more about people's frustration with army-killing single SCs, and not about the castles.

Possibly the slower, more expensive castles could use some improvement - but that'd require a big rebalancing that I wouldn't expect to see until a Dom3 is more than a twinkle in the players minds.

[Zapmeister]

Stormbinder said:
Than it would not be a fort at all.

Not in the existing sense. But it would still be a structure of value, since it would still improve resource collection, provide supply etc.

[Cainehill]

Stormbinder said:
Aghmm... I was talking thematically Kel. As you know, there is no castle maintanence in the Dom2, no does in-game population have anything to do with building castles.

Historically though castles did requre a lot of support from the surrounding villages and settlements, the richer and larger castle was the more servs/lands and taxes it needed to support it.

And historically, castles brought in more profits and riches to the owner, as villages and settlements grew around the castles, all of whom were taxed in coin, material, or labor.

Indeed, where a fortification was built was often the only place where permanent civilian settlements would spring up, especially in contested areas. (For instance, Florida, mid 1500s to ... very early 1800s. The oldest continuously occupied settlement in North America is Saint Augustine, which also had one of the earliest forts.)

Other settlements predated Saint Augustine - but were burned down and depopulated, because they didn't have any fortifications.

Profits should thus accrue to provinces with fortifications.

The exception would be very low population provinces, places like deserts, swamps, wastelands where even the peasants won't move. Also, I'm not sure but what that watchtowers and mausoleums shouldn't have their resource / gold bonuses lowered or even removed. I don't see towns springing up around a crypt or watchtower.

But this goes back to the way Dom2 essentially makes a nation use one castle type, conquest and high level spells excepted.

[Endoperez]

Okay okay, I will add madcastling/raiding to the list...

edit:
Added it, as well as light cavalry moving before other armies and False Horror being weakened a little.

But here's a big-problem with this sort of thing. Endoperez has done an excellent job here, but are the developers to take this list as an expression of the consensus of players? Because I don't wan't to see a "solution" to mad-castling on any list that represents me. I don't see it as a problem.

[Endoperez]

Well, then you just express how *you* feel about it. However, if you check the "enchancement"-thread under this one you will notice that IW isn't necessarily going the same way as people seem to.

A voice from Sweden boomed:
"High impact on the gameplay is not necessarily a good thing",
and thus hath the Developer spoken His will for all worthy to listen.

[Kristoffer O]

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