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.