Wishlist for September

[quantum_mechani]

I just have one suggestion, an all light cavalry army moving under the 'magical' movement stage (or possibly between the two stages). Oh, and one request is already solved; checking magic/undead/normal leadership.

Good list.

[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

[Kel]

Stormbinder said:Castles reqiure a lot of resourses and population to build and maintain

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

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. 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).

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. That may not have the desired impact on madcastling but like I said, it hasn't been a problem in my games.

- Kel

[Zapmeister]

I don't think it's unrealistic that a structure of some sort should appear in each province. In fact, I think it unlikely that a conquering nation of any competence (in the real world, even) would leave its new acquisitions undeveloped.

What is unrealistic is that a nation can only build one kind of structure, so we never see, say, a castle in one province and watchtowers in the surrounding ones, as one might expect in the "real" world.

Also, and here's the problem that gives rise to madcastling, watchtowers are just as effective as citadels in a most important respect defensively. Their presence means that it takes at least two turns to capture the province. I think that if you fixed this (also unrealistic) property of the cheap fortifications, you would fix madcastling.

[Stormbinder]

Zapmeister said:
I don't think it's unrealistic that a structure of some sort should appear in each province. In fact, I think it unlikely that a conquering nation of any competence (in the real world, even) would leave its new acquisitions undeveloped.

What is unrealistic is that a nation can only build one kind of structure, so we never see, say, a castle in one province and watchtowers in the surrounding ones, as one might expect in the "real" world.

Also, and here's the problem that gives rise to madcastling, watchtowers are just as effective as citadels in a most important respect defensively. Their presence means that it takes at least two turns to capture the province. I think that if you fixed this (also unrealistic) property of the cheap fortifications, you would fix madcastling.

I agree Zap, but how exactly do you propsoe to acomplish that? If Watch Tower would take less than 2 turns to capture, that would mean 1 turn, right? Than it would not be a fort at all. And increasing the Defense value of citadel even more would not make Watch Tower easier to capture than it is now.



I completely agree with you that it would be great to have more different province imporvments to build, like Watch Towers that would actually do what what they say, rather than being "real castles", and so on. But I think it is highly unlikely that something like that could be added that late after game's release, since it would requre major recoding.


Making castle price flexible on the other side is very easy to do, and would require minimal changes to the code. (especially considering that AI doesn't build castles anyway ) I am trying to give suggestions that have a chance of being implemented in the patch, if devs will decide that it is worth it.

Regards,
Stormbinder

[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.

[Cainehill]

Stormbinder said:
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 historically, castles brought in more profits and riches to the owner, as villages and settlements grew around the castles, all of whom were taxed in coin, material, or labor.

Indeed, where a fortification was built was often the only place where permanent civilian settlements would spring up, especially in contested areas. (For instance, Florida, mid 1500s to ... very early 1800s. The oldest continuously occupied settlement in North America is Saint Augustine, which also had one of the earliest forts.)

Other settlements predated Saint Augustine - but were burned down and depopulated, because they didn't have any fortifications.

Profits should thus accrue to provinces with fortifications.

The exception would be very low population provinces, places like deserts, swamps, wastelands where even the peasants won't move. Also, I'm not sure but what that watchtowers and mausoleums shouldn't have their resource / gold bonuses lowered or even removed. I don't see towns springing up around a crypt or watchtower.

But this goes back to the way Dom2 essentially makes a nation use one castle type, conquest and high level spells excepted.

[Cainehill]

Kel said:

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

Nor for that matter do mausoleums require much to build and maintain - look at crypts and mausoleums hundreds of years old in this world. Similarly, one doesn't really expect a Wizard Tower to demand much population / physical resources to maintain or build.

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. 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).

Indeed - even _with_ castles, it can be a real hassle trying to catch raiders. I've been trying to nail some Vanheim raiders for about 6 turns in one of my games; without my towers, I'd've lost temples as well as time, PD, mages, and troops.

For that matter - one could argue that _raiders_ being too powerful is the problem, and "mad castling" the unfortunate solution.

If initiative / movement sequence was random, so there would be a 50/50 chance of catching the raiders in their current provinces, castling wouldn't be so critical.

As is, the raiders _always_ move on to the next territory first, not counting magic army (usually magic _commander_) movement, after already burning any temple in the province and jacking taxes to 200%.

And, just like in the real world, Europe in particular, it's perfectly reasonable to have a castle, tower, fortress, palace, walled city, in every bloody province if one can afford it.

And finally, most of the castle types that can be "mad castled" are pretty easy to kick down.

If the argument is that "they stand up long enough for the VQ / AQ / BL to teleport in and kill the army", I think it's more about people's frustration with army-killing single SCs, and not about the castles.

Possibly the slower, more expensive castles could use some improvement - but that'd require a big rebalancing that I wouldn't expect to see until a Dom3 is more than a twinkle in the players minds.

[baruk]

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

I don't personally find mass castle building too bothersome, but I had an idea for a possible solution.

The main exploit, as I see it, is using a castle as an extra 1 turn speedbump to an invasion force. Often the castler will not have significant garrisons in the majority of his fortifications. He can use the extra turn to gateway in a garrison.

The idea is to give commanders an additional attack order: move and attempt to storm castle. It would become available when a commander is ordered to attack a castled enemy province (in the same way move and patrol becomes available when moving to a friendly castle). A force given this order would storm a castle the same turn they attack the province, as long as the castle defences were knocked down (the turn order would need to be: province battles, seiging, then storm castle battles).

I think this would make using hordes of cheap, undefended castles somewhat less useful, perhaps making the endgame against a fortified opponent more fluid. It would also have the effect of making defence values of castles more important, if a lightly defended fortification can be lost the same turn it is attacked.

[Endoperez]

Some threads about suggestions/improvements that I thought would be good to mention atleast once, and decided against bumping all these threads. Hopefully IW has already memorized these threads, but just in case they haven't...


New Water spells, including interesting Waterways (coastal-to-coastal teleport) and ideas for different summons (from Nessie to Yeti to Nymphs to Crocodiles).

Suggestions to improve the Water Magic Discipline, another Water thread, many ideas seem same. Longer, has more ideas, but also more non-topic discussion. First mention of the Waterways above

New Item SuggestionsStarted by Saber Cherry back then. Some interesting ideas, many overpowered ideas and Arms of Steel.

AI thread (20 pages), started as AI improvements but turned to discussion about AI

AI troop building algorithm Not Tested

AI castle building algorithm Not Tested

Also, the Wishlist I made and linked to once, from my previous post. I thought about a thread, but decided against it.

Unfortunately I remember only those threads, and the 20-paged one didn't end so I had to give in looking through "suggestion" search.