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.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I like that on one level, Loren. But the problem is that the current battle system forces the troops to advance.

Which means that raiding the besiegers would turn into a full-fledged storming of the castle, not a skirmish or such. And besiegers should be able to sit out of weapons range if they choose and have enough troops to block the countryside. As the battle mechanics are, fortifications AND fixed positions would be to the benefit of your raiders. While the fortifications would be nice to support your raiders, the fixed position should be a hindrance to the defender, not the advantage it would be when all the kings forces and all the kings men throw themselves up against enemy walls when all they want to do is starve the enemy out. Otherwise they would have brought some wall destroyers.

I'd be interested in a break-through command, myself, where a unit/squad tries to escape past the enemy army. Suppose the chance of being caught was a proportion of the sieging armies patrol value. Send out forty soldiers, and half might make them through. But send out just one mage, and he'll likely slip through, or face something like a small assassination team of the lesser units.

That said, castles do threaten the enemy's lines of supply if unsieged. If they take down the castle, they can focus their forces on the front lines. If they bypass it, you might strike back, and they're forced to defend on two fronts, leaving more forces behind to guide the homelands.

[Gandalf Parker]

There is a pro and con to this concept also. People complain about lack of alliance options but the present castle arrangment allows you to let ally armies pass thru your territory. Ive used castles provinces as doors thru my territory since at least early Dom2

[lch]

More micromanagement, yay!

[Kamamura]

Contrary to original post, I think that it's completely realistic that the army retreating to the castle loses control over the province.

Historically, the defender either met the invader in the field with the chance to save the villages in the countryside, or retreated to the castle. In latter case, the invader surrounded the castle, cutting supplies to the castle (siege), while his marauding parties pillaged and burned the countryside. The defender could only watch from the walls.

So the castle is not "ignored", it's besieged.