Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3

[Chazar]

I would still support that overrun rule which promotes Non-SC, Non-teleport troops and stronger castle types!

I mean, Ermor AE can be strong at sieging: Undead never tire to tear at the walls or to catapult themselves over the fences... And if it doesnt work out, well then making mindless bad at both defending and sieging seems to me to be a minor sacrifice...

[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".

[Zapmeister]

baruk said:

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.

Alternatively, the smaller fortresses (mausoleum, watchtower, wizards tower) could be roofed, which negates the flying siege bonus.

EDIT: Oh, I see. You're referring more to the mobility of flying forces rather than the siege bonus. Fair enough.

[baruk]

Yep, my thinking is that big flying armies with their strategic move 3 would become the next Cheesy annoying tactic, if the province take, seige and castle storm were doable in one turn.

The seige bonus for flyers I imagine derives from their ability to fly above the fort and drop heavy rocks on it, roof or not. With no roof, perhaps flyers could storm the castle without knocking the walls down, as in the HoMM games.

The seiging system in Dominions superficially resembles that of the Total War games (shogun, medieval etc.), where there is also a 2 step process to taking a castled province: taking the province, then seiging/storming the fort. The difference is that in Total War, you can attempt to storm the fort any time you want, there is no defence value to knock down first. Laying seige to the fort over several turns has the effect of causing severe attrition to the defenders inside (about 10 to 50% losses a turn), until eventually you gain control of it automatically when the defenders surrender, or when all have starved to death.

The Dominions castle seiger has it tough, comparatively, needing to breach the defense value before being allowed to storm (the order to storm, as discussed before, only being allowed to be issued the turn after the defences hit zero). The rate of defender attrition during seige is comparitively slow (1hp a turn once they pick up the disease affliction), and easily bypassed by the use of non-eating forces, which would include all commanders.
Add to this the potential for strategic magical nastiness as an effective tool against both seiging forces and un-forted provinces, and you have a recipe for blanket castle coverage as a simple, effective tactic.

[Huzurdaddi]

Again it seems that the reason for mad castling is it's far better price/performance vs. PD.

If PD were boosted considerably then people would castle less.

For example ( and I *NOT* am asking for this change ) if PD were composed of 1 abombination per point of PD I would wager that people would buy a lot of PD ( and games would be very boring ).

Edit: Whoops said I was asking for 1 abomb/PD point. That's insane. I meant *NOT*. I do think PD should be boosted though.

[Zapmeister]

Has anyone mooted the idea of charging maintenance on castles? If the ongoing cost was prohibitive, no-one would be able to lay down a blanket of castles. You would also need to beef up PD as Huzurdaddi (I am, BTW) says, so that flyers don't get a field day.

Maybe also make the maintenance cost of a building increase with its age, making you think about maybe demolishing some of those inner-kingdom castles that are not currently needed for defense of the perimeter.

[Zapmeister]

BTW, has there ever been a comment from a dev that indicates that they think blanket castling is even an issue? If not, I'll stop worrying about it

[NTJedi]

Zapmeister said:

Maybe also make the maintenance cost .....

I really like the idea of a maintenance cost for castles and it's realistic as well. Another idea would be placing some adjustment margin for the weekly maintenance cost where paying a higher maintenance would give troops better morale. For example- a well furnished room, with excellent food and services would do much better for morale then a cold floor, blanket with bread and water.
High Maintenance cost = 5 gold per turn
Average Maintenance cost = 3 gold per turn
Low Maintenance cost = 1 gold per turn

Oversway also has an excellent suggestion.