[baruk]

I was thinking that being able to take a castled province in a single turn could be a might overpowered, eg. if you have a large flying army, you could be taking a castle every turn, whilst the defender splits up his forces, or gambles, in order to try and defend them, in the same way he would if his provinces were unforted.

To make things a little less harsh on the defender, I came up with a mild variation of the "over-run" idea. Castles can still be seiged and stormed in the same turn. However, the "move and storm" order is only available when moving to a friendly-controlled province (obviously that has an enemy fort under seige). The "seige and storm" order would be unchanged.

Basically, you would still have to spend at least 2 turns trying to take the enemy fort: the first turn to take the province initially, the second to storm the castle (once the defences are at zero). However, there would be no artificial delay between the storming and seiging of the castle.

I think this way round the attacker would be bolstered by gaining the option of holding back his main castle storming force until the castle province is taken (saving them perhaps from a pre-storm magical barrage). The defender's castle network would still protect from raids, whilst being more vulnerable to concerted attacks. Any of the defender's "seiged" castles would be at risk of capture by the following turn, regardless of the state of its defences.

nb. In the event of enemy forces occupying the beseiged province in the same turn as a friendly army arrives with "move and storm" orders, the friendly army will still attempt castle storming if victorious in the battle.

Optionally: any army not beginning its move in the same province as a specific enemy fort could recieve a 50% seige penalty against that fort.

Another option: a potential benefit of a commander's aptitude to leadership could be access to more orders, such as "move and storm", "seige and storm" or even the discarded "hold and attack enemy commanders".