Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

Sure, but is realism (or the lack of it) the real issue here? I thought the discussion was motivated by some people's opinion that:

1) Blanket castling is the only way to effectively defend territory; and
2) Blanket castling leads to boring endgames.

So boring endgames is the problem we're trying to fix, and on the face of it, you could do it by making either (1) or (2) untrue.

My preference would be to nip it in the bud by making (1) untrue (perhaps by beefing up PD, but I'm sure there are other ways as well) rather than making (2) untrue, the reason being that strategic placement of castles sounds more interesting than blanket placement.

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

No matter how strategic of a great location for a castle... some territories should be prevented from building castles for other reasons. One this will allow map makers to be more creative with designing maps thus having provinces exist where no castles can be built... otherwise map makers won't have this option. Two it's realistic that certain terrain exists where no castle will remain standing from the effects of the land and mother nature. Three this will provide an additional obstacle within the game where players will have to be more creative in defending these provinces.

I agree about improving province defense as well... here's a copy of my ideas posted from the Dom3 wishlist:
Improving Province Defense

One or more of these ideas can be used for improving province defense:

A) Provinces adjacent to the main capital and including the main capital have very powerful defenders for its province defense. These units should have much higher morale, defense, magic resist, and protection.

B) More unique and stronger defenders as provinces defense increases. Province defense(1_thru_10) basic units, Province defense(11_thru_20)average units added with basic units, Province defense(21_thru_30)strong units added with basic and average units, and so on...

C) For province defense beyond 20... adding a commander with a standard(+8) and additional commanders with standards for every additional 10pts of province defense.

D) Some unique powerful unit(depending on the race) added for any location with province defense of 50 or more.

E) Increase resources in a province when the province defense goes beyond 25, yet doesn't work on capital. This would give province defense a second value. Province defense beyond 25 is an investment of over 350 gold.

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

I do not like the suggestion to prohibit castles on some terrain, but I do like the suggestion of "nocastle"-flag similar to the "nostart" flag! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif This would enforce nothing but would open up a lot of possibilities for mapmakers!!!

Especially scenarios with preset castles would benefit form a "nocastle"-province-flag!

I wish this flag existes, so that I can prhibit castle building on the bridges in my own Chandrea map...

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

Yes the "No Flag" suggestion could also work. For maps which are randomly generated perhaps this "No Flag" setting could be randomly added among the provinces. Something like one out of ten provinces and maybe more common for swamp territories.
Chazar's suggestion is better for map making since more options will be available.

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

In terms of RL analogies, I can't see an unfinished fort having any defensive or admin value. Visit a construction site where a building is half-finished and think about how useful it would be as is. If a Roman army was interrupted in making a fortified camp, did it ever use the unfinished fort to good effect? Any ancient history buffs here? (By the way, the Roman armies built a fort every night as standard operating procedure.)

To make the larger forts more attractive, allow units to stack efforts in fort construction. A fortified city would take one commander five turns to construct, or five commanders could do it in one turn.

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

'Stacking' castle building was possible in Dom:PPP. It was common to have some extra scouts build the castle. I don't know if it would be beneficial or not, but maybe building the castles could actually require some units as well as commander and (virtual) local workers?

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

Which would actually be an effective "No Castle"-Flag for swamp provinces etc., if numbers of needed local workers are set high enough ..

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

And would mean the death themes can't build any castles...

Re: Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3
 

Its not the lone commander that build those Fortified Cities... I except that he hires some workers with that money. Or then forces the local farmers/soulless to build it for him, in which case he needs some guys with whips or some necromancers with need for money. I didn't mean that some population would actually be required.