Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3

[Tuidjy]

> BTW, has there ever been a comment from a dev that indicates that they think
> blanket castling is even an issue?

Thanks the Powers that Be, no. I would even go further - there aren't that
many players that think that ubiquitous casles are a problem. Last time I
made a survey about this, the votes were overwhelmingly against making mad
castling impossible. Many players said that they hated it, but it was part
of the game, and one had to learn to deal with it.

Speaking for myself, I do not see a problem. All a castle does is provide
the defender with one turn of safety. People go on about the attacker being
subject to remote spells, as if the defender is somehow protected. I think
that, as Yvelina said, anyone who want to conquer a strong empire should be
able to deal with a defended castle. In my book the attacker still has the
advantage.

Castles, just like hoarding, or building mages, or any useful stratagem have
a cost and a return. In my ongoing game, I gave someone a three turn warning,
and when I attacked, about two thirds of his provinces were castled. So?
I have two gatecleavers, and two sizable armies. Five turns later, most of the
castles are mine, and in two or three turns, they will all be. Saves me the
cash to build them, and makes me wonder how many additional Niefel Jarls I would
have had to face, were the money invested otherwise. In the same game, Ermor
had a castle in each province of his. At some point, there were about ten of
them. According to my scouts, right now he has exactly one left.

It is turn 50 in that game. Most of my castles used to belong to someone else.
The ones I built were raised around temples, bloodhunter labs, or particularly
impressive magic sites - a sound investment to protect a valuable ressource.

Where is the problem?

Well, if there is a problem, it lies in the fact that most of the existing
fortifications are improperly priced, or simply extremely ineffective, which
leads to only watchtowers and castles being used in multiplayer games.

Instead of proposing ridiculous, poorly thought-out anti-castle measures, which
would create horrendous problems, like a 'move and storm' command, something
should be done about making castles more varied and useful.

A couple of ideas, none of which are mine...

1. Castle upkeep. A watchtower needs maintainance. All it has is a skeleton
watch, so someone should pay for replacing the stones and fixing the roof. Ten
gold per season. A wizard tower has some magic going which keeps it nice and
shiny all year long. No upkeep. A fortified city not only has plenty of
manpower for maintainance, but also can earn some extra cash. Twenty golds of
additional income.

2. Domain shift. For example, a fortified city could give a tiny population
boost to the province. Plus one to the life scale. A Mountain citadel can
be made of ice, so it can cause a cold shift. A castle has a strong garrison,
so its presence would lead to an shift towards order.

3. Extra units. A wizard tower could add some kind of magic familiar to the
build list. A castle may train units with a bonus to defense. The ice of a
mountain citadel may be caused by some cold generating critters, and maybe
an industrious pretentder will figure out how to train them.

4. Gem income. A bigger type of kelp fortress could generate nature crystals,
an ice citadel would create water gems, a wizard tower may bring astral pearls...

5. Permanent fortress defenders, similar to province defense, who always fight
in castle battles. Imps for the wizard tower, ice elementals for the montain
citadel, well armoured men-at-arms for the castle.

6. Additional ranged units on the towers.

All of these will serve to make the castles more varied, and will make it less
of a no-brainer to go for the watchtower. And of course, building a fortified
city which actually generates income will take a long time, and cost a lot, so
we will probably no see them built in every province until the very late game.

As for castles being too hard to take, give me a break. Any task force that
cannot weather a storm of fireballs and a dozen of ghost rider squads will not
take one of my castles anyway.

Oh, and a question for those hypothetical whinners who find it too hard to take
castles right now. What in the world makes you think that after you change the
rules, I and my ilk will be slow in addapting to them? We will formulate a
winning strategy and make you cry 'Cheese!' before you have finished patting
yourself on the back for the latest nerf.

Zen's mods are well thought-out, and do a good job at eliminating no-brainers.
But did someone notice powergamers doing worse under his conditions? I doubt it.
When the dust settles, there are two kind of players standing - the proud
powergamers and the closet ones.

[Oversway]

For Dom 3, these arguments could go away if modding castle types was available. Being able to specify layout, cost, defense, storage, etc. would be kind of neat. Especially if build time could be specified seperately from cost. I know other people have suggested this as well, but I couldn't find their posts with a quick search.

[Chazar]

Tuidjy said:Instead of proposing ridiculous, poorly thought-out anti-castle measures, which would create horrendous problems, like a 'move and storm' command, something should be done about making castles more varied and useful.

No need to get rude! I immediately agree with you that being able to put a castle in every province is nothing that should be prohibited at all! Actually when I proposed a "move and strom" command myself, it was in another thread with the topic about diversifying the castle types and making other castle types more interesting. Sorry for being stupid, but I think of this forum here as a place for brain-storming and therefore not everything written has to be developed and balanced to the edge already for me!

The "move and storm" command that I had in mind was meant to diversify the game and to be almost inapplicable to non-watchtowers (somehow, maybe by requiring to exceeding defense twice or more): So let's just state it the other way around, and propose merely the watchtower being weakened to be the only castle type to be vulnerable to "move and storm" in the sense of your other fine suggestions: This would give us something that would protect temples and bloodhunters against teleporters, lone SCs, and ghost raiders and their friends, while not being already a full fledged castle. So players would have a new choice: something cheap for the mere purpose of protecting blood hunter and temples, or choosing a proper castle like mausoleum or wizard tower or...

So I was talking about adding even more variety to Dom2 rather than prohibiting something, just inspired on the fact that I felt it somewhat unfitting that an almost unoccupied watchtower prevents an army of 500 militia men from pillaging an entire province. It is okay for a proper castle or a fortified city to do feats like that, but a mere watchtower? But this is not a real problem: I am capable to rename the watchtower in mind and think of it as the central keep of a half-built castle or something else which is able to do the things the watchtower does now and fits its stats. My suggestion was just inspired by that name...

[NTJedi]

Another idea to add... imagine 4 magic sites exist on this one province: Magic site A, B, C, D

Some magic sites should be consider outside and others inside. For example those sieging a province would gain control of magic site A & C... and those inside the castle control magic site B & D.

[baruk]

Chazar said:

No need to get rude! I immediately agree with you that being able to put a castle in every province is nothing that should be prohibited at all! Actually when I proposed a "move and strom" command myself, it was in another thread with the topic about diversifying the castle types and making other castle types more interesting.

On making castle types more worthwhile, what if the building process was altered, so that after every turn of the build, the province gets a fort with a fraction of its final capabilities.
For example: after the first turn of building a fortified city, the province would get a "stage one fortified city", which would have one fifth the stats of the finished product: 10 admin, 100 supply and 20 defence. I would suggest that the 100% increase in resources only be available to the finished version of the fort.
This would change things quite a lot, and I imagine that the forts would need to be repriced.
If an attacker was to capture an unfinished fort, he would be able to continue construction at no extra price.

[NTJedi]

It's not realistic to say castles can exist anywhere with the type of technology used in this game. Terrain types such as 'swamps' should be impossible for building castles since they would obviously sink into the land. Also other terrain types should delay the building time since very very few resources are nearby such as Wastelands.

[Zapmeister]

NTJedi said:

It's not realistic to say castles can exist anywhere with the type of technology used in this game.

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.

[NTJedi]

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.

[Chazar]

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! 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...

[sushiboat]

baruk said:
On making castle types more worthwhile, what if the building process was altered, so that after every turn of the build, the province gets a fort with a fraction of its final capabilities.
For example: after the first turn of building a fortified city, the province would get a "stage one fortified city", which would have one fifth the stats of the finished product: 10 admin, 100 supply and 20 defence. I would suggest that the 100% increase in resources only be available to the finished version of the fort.
This would change things quite a lot, and I imagine that the forts would need to be repriced.
If an attacker was to capture an unfinished fort, he would be able to continue construction at no extra price.

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.