[Stormbinder]

Kel said:

Watchtowers, however, which are usually what are being built, do not. Castles DO cost a lot, that's why noone uses them.

Aghmm... I was talking thematically Kel. As you know, there is no castle maintanence in the Dom2, no does in-game population have anything to do with building castles.

Historically though castles did requre a lot of support from the surrounding villages and settlements, the richer and larger castle was the more servs/lands and taxes it needed to support it.

and it would increase fun and enjoyment from the game for all players.

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.

I am talking about mid and 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).

Wrong. Castles would still defend you from raiding, but you would actully need to think strategically where to build them, instead of just building them everywhere. I strongly beleive that this is closer to what devs had in mind for this game, not castle in every province. With my first suggestion you can still freely build castles in 33% of your territory, or even in 50+% of your territory for small additional cost. But it would become incresengly more difficult to cover every province with castles, therefore forcing you to make a strategic choices where to build castle and where not.

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.

I do actually agree with this but this has to do with the nature of the castles, not with the concept of 'madcastling'.

Making castles escalate later on in no way encourages one not to take a cheap castle as the watchtower would still be cheaper and built faster than if one had taken a Citadel of some kind. On top of that, it would still build faster (the most important point, to me) and would still cost less design points. I would rather see the cheaper towers reduce resource output (as they have reduced gold via lower admin values now) or something along those lines as far as balancing the fortifications go.

I think you are missing the point Kel. Both my suggestions would clearly discourage madcastling to the certain degree, no matter Watch tower do you use or some other castle. They are not castle-type specific.

"Madcastling" is the term that means building castles in all provinces, it doesn't refer to specific type of the castle. Although naturaly it is easer to do with cheap and fast castles, as you pointed out, and some people choose Tower/Mausoleum partly or wholy for this purpose, but not all people.