Wishlist for September

[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.

[baruk]

"1. Something *really* need to be done with madcastling. (And it has nothing to do with cheating for gems/money/whatever.)"

I don't personally find mass castle building too bothersome, but I had an idea for a possible solution.

The main exploit, as I see it, is using a castle as an extra 1 turn speedbump to an invasion force. Often the castler will not have significant garrisons in the majority of his fortifications. He can use the extra turn to gateway in a garrison.

The idea is to give commanders an additional attack order: move and attempt to storm castle. It would become available when a commander is ordered to attack a castled enemy province (in the same way move and patrol becomes available when moving to a friendly castle). A force given this order would storm a castle the same turn they attack the province, as long as the castle defences were knocked down (the turn order would need to be: province battles, seiging, then storm castle battles).

I think this would make using hordes of cheap, undefended castles somewhat less useful, perhaps making the endgame against a fortified opponent more fluid. It would also have the effect of making defence values of castles more important, if a lightly defended fortification can be lost the same turn it is attacked.