Let's Change Forts

[TheMenacer]

Just a thought, it'd be super cool if province defense was better in fortified provinces, with the very best province defense coming with thematic/more expensive fortifications. It certainly wouldn't fix the problem of the only meaningful attribute of a castle being the build time, but it'd go a ways toward making the more expensive castles more desirable.

[Leif_-]

JimMorrison said:
Only problem that I see with it though, is the sort of huge disparity in home castles, and what that would mean for research costs, as well as the fact that mage costs are relatively well balanced already, and thus it would seem to make sense to make them more expensive in that case, and that would be painful in the first year or so.

I suppose this could be solved by applying the admin bonus only towards the upkeep of troops, but not commanders. A little fiddly, but not entirely unbelievable.

[JimMorrison]

Well, commanders are greedy. Even though their actual operating costs are lower when they are not traveling, you do not realize that part of the savings, because you must bribe the commanders to get them to keep the soldiers in line while they are in town and not getting their "field pay".

[Lingchih]

TheMenacer said:
Just a thought, it'd be super cool if province defense was better in fortified provinces, with the very best province defense coming with thematic/more expensive fortifications. It certainly wouldn't fix the problem of the only meaningful attribute of a castle being the build time, but it'd go a ways toward making the more expensive castles more desirable.

That's a really good idea. I'm not sure that it will ever be implemented, but it makes sense.

[krpeters]

Here's a simple fix (conceptually) that will greatly increase players' interest in the admin value of a fort -- add it to the PD rating of the province. 50 points of PD is nothing to sneeze at! Suddenly those 1200 gold fortified cities will look like a bargain. (Consider that 50PD costs 1275 on its own)

I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to code either. When the fort is complete, add the admin value to the PD (just as special events do -- perhaps even use the special event code). More difficult will be reducing the PD value when the fort is destroyed.

The concept makes sense too. Isn't a fort an excellent repository of arms for militia members, as well as an incentive for them to do battle (knowing their families are hiding inside)?

[JimMorrison]

I'm afraid a straight conversion would be a bit ridiculous in the early game, and would also confer far too large an advantage to those who CAN make Fortified Cities, as opposed to those whose best castle is 30 Admin, and hard to find a spot for.

People would just push the PD to 30+ at strategic locations, so the completion of the castle would push it over 80, which would be just insane for most nations.

Also bear in mind that just adding PD numerical value also has an enormous disparity between nations, some nations get little of value even at such extreme numbers. Niefelheim would especially be hard hit, with poor PD AND max Admin of 30 in their castles.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah you cant straight convert. Its too powerful in the early game and still weak in the late game. Having a fort add +10 to effective value of PD could be interesting.

Personally, I still think that the only thing you need to do to fix forts is to invert the costs. Make the fast forts expensive and the slow ones cheap. That way, if you really really want that fort up 2 turns earlier, or in a key mountain prov, you can do it. But otherwise, you will take the slow and steady route to build the fort that is "traditional" for your nation.

[thejeff]

But inverting the costs won't happen. It's not thematic to make the largest slow to build forts cheap.

It could be rationalized as thematic to give cost/speed discounts on a nations "traditional" forts. C'tis is much better at building in swamps so they get a good fort there for the cost/time of a lousy one. That would actually be a decent bonus, not a penalty as it is now.

[Zeldor]

The problem is that in real life C'tis would have really big population in swamps. So it would make sense to build city there. Now they get expensive Fortified Villages.

National forts could give Growth bonus. +1-5%, only when a said nation controls that fort. Stackable with normal Growth of course.

[Ironhawk]

No, I disagree thejeff. IMO, inverting the fort costs is more likely to actually happen than most of the suggestions in this thread. The reason being that it would take only a moment of JK's time to switch around a couple of integers, instead of coding up some new formula.

And things being thematic doesnt really concern me - you can make anything "thematic" just by wording around it properly. What matters more is giving interesting choices to the player that promote more fun and better gameplay. This does both.