[Stormbinder]

A lot of good suggestions here.

Few from my own mental wishlist.


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


It is still the issue in almost all of my MP games. Here are two simple suggestions, any of them (or both) if implemented could really help this issue.


A. Make the price of each of new castle increase, after the level of "madcastling" pass the certain "safe" limit. Something like "My Lord, the economy of your nation is strugling to support the numerious castles that you already have build."

For example - say the original castle cost is 300 GP. While less than 33% of player's territory is covered with castles, they all cost just nominal 300gp to build. After 33% limit passed (light case of madcastling) each new castle cost slightly more than the previous one - 1st one to build over 33% cost 330GP, next 360GP, etc. After 66% of your territory is covered with castles (bad case of madcastling, happens VERY often in MP games unfortunately) the price of each new castle will start to raise more sharply.

Very simple system, takes 10-20 minutes max. to implement in terms of coding, no hard limit on the ammount of castles , therefore the players can still chose to persue this strategy as far as they wants. You want to cover the 400 provinces map with castles? Sure, you can do it, but it'll cost you some extra.

As it is now, there is no reason to NOT madcastle in the competitive MP, especially in the mid/late game where money becomes lees and less important. And playing on the map where each province is covered with castles is *not* fun and quite boring(for everybody other than madcastler of course), as all players that I spoke with agreed.



B. Another and more time consuming suggestion is to make temples burnable only by special commander order. So when enemy rides your province with temple but without castle, he needs to keep it for *at least 1 turn*, so his commander could issue the order "Destroy building" to destroy his enemy temple (temples and monasteries often had a very strong walls for this very reason historically). As of now one of the main reason for madcastling (although of course not the only one) is to protect your temples agaisnt raiders.

This suggestion, if implemented, could make madcastling somewhat a bit less powerfull strategy, and would not force all other players to madcastle when one start madcastling spree, as it currently happens in MP games. Also this change, if imlemented, makes raiding more interesting and complex activity as well, by adding anohter level of choices. For the Raider: "Should I stay in this privince for one more turn, to burn this Temple and kill the priests hiding behind its thick walls? And risk enemy retaliation? Or should I keep moving, raiding another province and stayng 1 step ahead of enemy persuit? Or should I lay trap for my enemy, burning temple while summoning massive reinforcemtns to meet the temple - rescue force?"

For the Defender: " Should I try to help the monks in the temple before it got burned? Or should I concentrate on catching the raiders, since I don't think they would dare to stay in the temple province and face my wraith? Or is it a trap, designed to lure me in and destroy my "fire brigade"?" Et cetera...


Now I reilize that suggestion B may reqire some significant recoding, since there is no concept of "enemy building" in the province, other than Fort, as of now. So it may be difficult to implement. But IMHO suggestion A is very simple since making price of new castles flexible is very easy to do, and it can go a very long way toward making madcastling less notorious.


I would very much like to hear what devs think about it. Several current MP games are trying to limit madcastling with house rules, but it is very hard to do using house rules, since it requires constant recalculations each turn, which is very annoying for some players. While having soft limit on number of castle is very reaslitic (how many castels can your Empire support after all??? Castles reqiure a lot of resourses and population to build and maintain) and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players. I don't believe that devs have intended for the castles to cover each and every province, as it happen very often, and for most peaople to play with Mausoleum/Watch Towers.

With best regards,
Stormbinder