Let\'s Change Forts
 

Wow, I'd agreed with the general principle in the last post on the matter, but I didn't really appreciate the true knuckle-gnawing frustration of it until now.

Nations are very much punished by having "good" fort types in terrain that they're SUPPOSED to be well-suited to.

Really the main purpose of a fort is for the buying of caommanders, usually mages. When you charge a nation 1200!!!! gold pieces to construct one in a forest (as Pangaea) when the normal price is 800, and 5 turns to build instead of 3... that is UNQUESTIONABLY a disadvantage.

This definitely, definitely needs a change.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

To me, the fort system is basically broken. You're rewarded for building your forts in the most abysmal locations possible because they cost less and build faster, especially for nations that have sucky troops and sloth.

Personally I would like to see a tiered system where you could pick from a number of forts for a given province type, all with different construction times, defense values, and costs.

I'd also like to see the fort's defense value mean more than just the amount of time a defender has to take ripping down the walls. Seriously, if I'm going to sink 1.2k and 5 turns into a fortress, it should be shooting FLAMING BAT'LETHS OF DOOM.

Jazzepi

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

At the least, forts should come with their own PD chaff when they're stormed.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Another option would be to raise the tax bonus from admin (admin value instead of admin value/2 %, so fortified cities would be really interesting to build on rich farmlands).

It wouldn't solve the problem of hard to build forts with low admin and hard defense.

To give them an utility, I would find logical if supply availables for besiegers were reduced a lot instead of increased by the presence of ennemy forts. When provinces are attacked, peasants should logically take refuge in the fortress, especially if it looks hard to take, instead of helping the invaders, giving them food and gold. Diminishing ennemy supplies and province income by base defense value of the fort /10 (so -70% on a province with mountain fortress) would be a good idea IMO (but may advantage too much undead or nosupply units nations).

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I think the cash is .. well a think you should accept.. you get some benefits for it after all.

I do think all forts should just be build in 3 turns, maybe the cheapest in 2.

Or... and this might be better.. make the weaker forts much weaker than they are now in admin and supply etc.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Peasants do not refuge in a fort because that would be worthless mouths to feed during a siege. Castles are reserved for fighting men and those with useful trades, like blacksmiths and coopers and such.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

The main reason forts are as they are was to avoid to see everyone building the cheapest/fastest to build forts everywhere, something which ruined many dom2 games.

If all forts are changed to have the same build time or cost I think it should be high ones, 5 or 6 turns, 1000+ gold. Or if a choice is made possible, fast to build forts should be more expensive than others.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Currently building time and cost are directly related. The faster to build, the cheaper. It could be changed, of course, but is way, way less likely than fortress modding commands.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I don't think the devs are likely to ever change this. But if they were I'd like to see forts return to the pretender design screens, but this time not as a simple choice but rather as follows:

Give default nation "thematic" fort types for different terrains. Then allow player to change those values, so that the factors of how fast it takes to build a castle, its admin and defense all count towards making it more expensive.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Personally I would think that people should have to "buy down" all the bad qualities of a fort like build time, and "buy up" all the good qualities in the pretender design screen like defense value, supply value, administration.

I think what might happen though would be that people would pick 0 for supply 0 for defense and as much administration as possible with as little cost and build time as possible. To me all this means is that supply and defense should be made more interesting and useful, currently they're neither.

Jazzepi

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

agreed. Maybe supplies could confer a bonus to income as well (smaller than admin of course).

And defense may add some national militia squads or something.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

The better forts could just have even more built in archers. And I mean lots.
Currently, those are nice, but past the earliest wars aren't sufficient to turn a battle.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

What about the Fortified City, Tel City, Great City, Swamp City, Jeweled City, Mountain City, Cave City, and perhaps the Citadels? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

"Citadel" seems to me to refer to a monstrous fortification like Helm's Deep in LOTR, designed to temporarily house enormous numbers of people, with the direct intent of keeping them all from being slaughtered by the occupational forces (and deprive them of slave labor) during the seige.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Sieges can last more than a year. At that point, defenders of the fort are usually down to eating bugs, shoe leather, and each other.

All Saruman had to do was lock them up in there for a few weeks and Rohan would have died. Then wait for Gandalf on the fifth day, and kill his ***.

A besieged city would be much, much worse. Riots, murder, disease, and cannibalism would run rampant... and then the really bad stuff would start.

So you go right ahead and hole up at Helm's Deep, buddy. I've got dibs on your leg!

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Peasants... are something to eat.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

There has been real-world sieges, of cities, that have lasted for years -- and Saruman was on a deadline. Dawdling would not be appreciated by his betters ... worsers?

Besides, even if Saruman hadn't attacked Helm's Deep head on, he would still have lost the moment the Ents showed up on the field.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Just a heads up, the soon to appear modding wishes shortlist is going to have a slew of fort modding suggestions.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Actually, Helm's Deep is a Mountain Fortress, or perhaps Cave Fort or Jervellan Wall, to Edoras' (that was the capital, right?) Tel City. Less city, more walls any way.

LA Ulm's Malediction was basically need-not-eat commanders and slaves besieging the Ulmish capital. That went well... But of course, Ulm being Ulm had something to do with it. Eating just broth and wine for a few years would be tough (potatoes... oh my God they are eating potatoes out there! Charge!), and could result in insanity and eating bugs and rats at some point, but sieges would take much longer.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Peasants - the other white meat.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Anyways, as you may or may not be aware, at some times, and especially in poorer weather areas, sieges were often broken for the winter, to resupply the besieging army. These sieges would in fact sometimes last years at a time. Honestly, I think the Dominions method of reducing supplies in the fort are harsh enough. Considering that a Roman legion typically consisted of ~10k men, and we are looking at armies of a few hundred, they should be able to live in there indefinitely. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

A Roman legion consisted of 4200 foot and 300 horse.

EDIT: I knew that because in my youth I played a little Sega Genesis game called Centurion: Defender of Rome. One of the ancient spiritual precursors to Dominions, for sure. Actually, I think the graphics were a little bit better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Modding wishes shortlist is up.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I dont think the answer is allowing people to select and/or modify forts during Pretender design. You could select forts in Dom2 and the only anyone ever picked was the cheapest/fastest one possible. Watchtowers, for the win!

IMO, the easiest fix would be to reverse the current costs for forts. Since the quality of the fort is basically immaterial, make the 5-turn forts cost 800 (to compensate for thier long times) and the 3-turn forts cost 1200. In this way, you don't force the player to always choose thier "worst" fort - but rather give them the option to build a cheap, slow, good fort, or a fast, expensive, bad one.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

The size of a typical legion varied widely throughout the history of ancient Rome, with complements of 4,200 legionaries and 300 equites in the republican period of Rome, (the infantry were split into 35 maniples of 120 legionaries each), to 5,200 men plus auxiliaries in the imperial period (split into 10 cohorts, 9 of 480 men each, plus the first cohort holding 800 men).

There were ten cohorts including the "prima cohors" in a legion. A full-strength legion contained 6,000 men though it was not uncommon for most legions to be undermanned due to previous battles. All of these numbers depended on the date


I also played Defender of Rome, on the PC (I have an emulator version kicking around here somewhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif). For some reason I remembered reading somewhere that a century was 100 men, and there were 100 centuries in a legion. Apparently those numbers are somewhat off.

But still, since an army usually consisted of several legions, and it was in fact not uncommon to see armies of 20k-40k or more, there is a bit of a scale disparity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Though one could say each of our troops represents 50 men or some such thing, but I find it odd that all 50 of them lost an eye. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

And danke Edi.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

You are mistaken there. Peasants were allowed to take refuge, because they were not just mouths to feed - they helped the defense by extinguishing fires, and doing various support works. Moreover, it was the promise of security that made the feudal life less unbearable - a feudal lord that would not protect his subject in times would face desertion/revolts/loss of prestige. What's more, peasants, even if not free subjects, were source of income and wealth and well worth protecting.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

They're also a good source of blood slaves. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

It'd be pretty nice if the amount of troops a commander had attached to him altered the build time on a fort. Also it'd make it so that nations that relied on gradually-whittled-down armies of chaff would have a bit of an extra leg up over nations that build small raiding parties, allowing them to reinforce quickly and support assaults, which I think they probably need considering that large armies tend to be harder to replace and less efficient than small raiding parties.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Seems to me that the admin rating could be used to re-balance forts. Gold cost gets repaid by admin, especially if/when you have the time and willpower to invest in building them, and choosing good spots for them.

The weakest forts don't provide wall defenders or bottlenecks. This could also be developed a bit - it could be interesting if some fort types had multiple breakthrough points during storming.

Some modding might help this by giving crappy low-admin little-value forts to unthematic choices, so building forts out of your nation's element is more expensive, time-consuming and/or provides little value, to a greater degree than currently. I.e. maybe the problem isn't so much that Mountain Citadel sucks, as that the nations which have it thematically, have better alternatives in unthematic terrain. With mod commands, they could be given alternatives of questionable value in unthematic terrain, encouraging more use of thematically appropriate forts and locations.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Also since for example Swamp City is 50 Admin, and it's in a SWAMP, perhaps some nations could actually get pretty nice forts in their preferred terrain. Give "nature" based nations better forts in Forest, but remove Fortified City, and give them Fortification, or Ramparts or something in plains. By the same token, boost production somewhat in mountains/caves for those nations who reside there (maybe wastes for Abysia?). Reason being that while the terrain is rugged and inhospitable to most, it is their favored habitat, thus you would assume they've put some thought into the engineering and infrastructure to make industry more lucrative in those terrains.

Also I'd think it wouldn't be game breaking to boost underwater forts a little in production. As it is, it's abnormal to see underwater provinces with >30 resources, and poor little Kelp Fortress is only 10 Admin. To balance that, maybe say non-aquatic races can built fortifications underwater (you can leave them down there for years if they have magic items to breathe), but either disable unit creation other than amphibious and indies, or just let people train troops and have them drown immediately. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

And finally, I think that increasing the gold benefit of Admin would go a LONG way to at least somewhat altering the behavior of the players. Making the more costly forts generate a significant amount of gold compared to the more "outpost" style, would make it more of a strategic choice than it currently is now. As it is it seems most DO go only for the cheap fast forts, and if there is anyone else like me, I choose them for location only, regardless of type. Neither behavior places any value on the Admin rating, or any of the actual properties of the fort itself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I'd like to see the fort's defense rating taking an active part in the battle somehow (bonuses to the defender's recuperation, morale, precision, range and defense, free garrison/PD size or something) and give the besieger the ability to storm the castle at any point after the first turn. That way the attacker can decide whether to take the hit of the castle defenses or spend time to lower them by besieging.

This would probably mean that high-level battlemagic makes forts moot in the endgame, but that actually strikes me as thematic. Fortifications ought to play their biggest part during the early game.

Also, it would be nice to the upkeep of garrisoned units reduced by the fort's administration value.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

The upkeep idea is interesting, that alone would provide some pretty huge incentive to build more expensive castles, so you could more affordably keep garrisons available in more locations.

Only problem that I see with it though, is the sort of huge disparity in home castles, and what that would mean for research costs, as well as the fact that mage costs are relatively well balanced already, and thus it would seem to make sense to make them more expensive in that case, and that would be painful in the first year or so.


As far as defense rating, it sure would be nifty if the better defended castles had better tower defenses at least. Currently if you get 8 xbows in your towers, you get that in every fortification type that you make. This would make early kills that much more difficult, and painful, as you'd be much more likely to lose expensive sacreds or expensive leaders in the assault.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Just a thought, it'd be super cool if province defense was better in fortified provinces, with the very best province defense coming with thematic/more expensive fortifications. It certainly wouldn't fix the problem of the only meaningful attribute of a castle being the build time, but it'd go a ways toward making the more expensive castles more desirable.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I suppose this could be solved by applying the admin bonus only towards the upkeep of troops, but not commanders. A little fiddly, but not entirely unbelievable.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Well, commanders are greedy. Even though their actual operating costs are lower when they are not traveling, you do not realize that part of the savings, because you must bribe the commanders to get them to keep the soldiers in line while they are in town and not getting their "field pay". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

That's a really good idea. I'm not sure that it will ever be implemented, but it makes sense.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Here's a simple fix (conceptually) that will greatly increase players' interest in the admin value of a fort -- add it to the PD rating of the province. 50 points of PD is nothing to sneeze at! Suddenly those 1200 gold fortified cities will look like a bargain. (Consider that 50PD costs 1275 on its own)

I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to code either. When the fort is complete, add the admin value to the PD (just as special events do -- perhaps even use the special event code). More difficult will be reducing the PD value when the fort is destroyed.

The concept makes sense too. Isn't a fort an excellent repository of arms for militia members, as well as an incentive for them to do battle (knowing their families are hiding inside)?

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I'm afraid a straight conversion would be a bit ridiculous in the early game, and would also confer far too large an advantage to those who CAN make Fortified Cities, as opposed to those whose best castle is 30 Admin, and hard to find a spot for.

People would just push the PD to 30+ at strategic locations, so the completion of the castle would push it over 80, which would be just insane for most nations.

Also bear in mind that just adding PD numerical value also has an enormous disparity between nations, some nations get little of value even at such extreme numbers. Niefelheim would especially be hard hit, with poor PD AND max Admin of 30 in their castles.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Yeah you cant straight convert. Its too powerful in the early game and still weak in the late game. Having a fort add +10 to effective value of PD could be interesting.

Personally, I still think that the only thing you need to do to fix forts is to invert the costs. Make the fast forts expensive and the slow ones cheap. That way, if you really really want that fort up 2 turns earlier, or in a key mountain prov, you can do it. But otherwise, you will take the slow and steady route to build the fort that is "traditional" for your nation.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

But inverting the costs won't happen. It's not thematic to make the largest slow to build forts cheap.

It could be rationalized as thematic to give cost/speed discounts on a nations "traditional" forts. C'tis is much better at building in swamps so they get a good fort there for the cost/time of a lousy one. That would actually be a decent bonus, not a penalty as it is now.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

The problem is that in real life C'tis would have really big population in swamps. So it would make sense to build city there. Now they get expensive Fortified Villages.

National forts could give Growth bonus. +1-5%, only when a said nation controls that fort. Stackable with normal Growth of course.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

No, I disagree thejeff. IMO, inverting the fort costs is more likely to actually happen than most of the suggestions in this thread. The reason being that it would take only a moment of JK's time to switch around a couple of integers, instead of coding up some new formula.

And things being thematic doesnt really concern me - you can make anything "thematic" just by wording around it properly. What matters more is giving interesting choices to the player that promote more fun and better gameplay. This does both.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

It may be easier, but while being thematic may not concern you, it does seem to concern both devs.

I can't speak for them, of course, but the impression I've gotten is that this is a thematic issue for them. Maybe thematic isn't quite the right work. Suspension of disbelief issue?

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

I like the adding admin to PD idea - the whole amount is excessive, so what about adding half? Half admin would never be more than 30, which would rarely be more than the cost of the fort itself (actually, I don't think any of the admin 60 forts are buildable at all).

Except it shouldn't be explicitly added to the purchased amount, it should be added at the last minute when the actual PD forces are generated for a battle. That way it doesn't matter whether you buy the PD before or after you build the fort (but on the other hand, someone who conquers your fort gets the fort-PD for free, in addition to whatever PD they immediately buy for cheap.)

That still only benefits nations with worthwhile PD, though. Unless someone implements a mod that gives all nations reasonably decent PD, or Illwinter reviews the PD system and replaces/adjusts PD for the nations with useless PD.


Another option would be to simply standardize construction times (probably 3 turns), while leaving the cost differences in place. Twice as many laborers build twice as big a fort in the same amount of time. You could still build in bad terrain to get a cheaper fort, but you wouldn't get a faster one, and you'd still have low admin and be relatively easy to siege/storm.


Another option would be to add a second commander slot to all forts over X admin - which would include capitols - but that's more of a radical change and might require coding changes too. It would help with the "I don't care about the fort itself, I just want to build more mages" problem, though. One good fort is cheaper and arguably more defensible than two crappy forts; if it was also just as good for making commanders, as well as troops, it might be the preferable option.


If the problem is big enough, more than one of these solutions might be appropriate.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Didn't we already have this topic? I'm totally burned out on this subject now. I've been ranting about it for a while.

Re: Let\'s Change Forts
 

Link to previous thread (I think it's the one Sombre is talking about):

Post#593365

-Max