Castles (continued)

[Eponymous-Archon]

OK, thought I'd start a castle thread since I don't see it elsewhere.

Castles should provide good defense against outsiders, but not against others inside. If we're talking more realism.

Is this do-able?

(Of course, I mean, without an excessive amount of programming work.)

[Circon]

I think I see a possible way to do it for leader castles, i.e. castles with keeps...
By default, these will provide 50% (or however many) defense.
If you have a unit on the keep tile, all adjoining castle hexes give 60% defense.

Normal castles give 60% (Only one I remember, Orcish Grunts...) so 50% seems fine for invaders. Hand-to-hand fighting inside castle corridors is not that much of a defender advantage.

[Eponymous-Archon]

Hand-to-hand fighting inside castle corridors is not that much of a defender advantage.

Right, which is why I suggest that castles give really good defense only for units within fighting units outside.

[Dave]

Hand-to-hand fighting inside castle corridors is not that much of a defender advantage.

Right, which is why I suggest that castles give really good defense only for units within fighting units outside.

This is 'realistic' however I don't think it necessarily fits the game well.

Usually you're not going to have enough units to fill up your entire castle, so I think the defensive bonus should apply to the side who has control of the keep.

David

[turin]

i am assuming this thread was missplaced...it doesn't seem to have much to do with art and music.

I think that it would be good if defenders in a castle had better defense than attackers in a castle. something like, if you are the one initiating the attack, you get less defense than the one being attacked. this would compensate for the fact that if you attack you have a huge advantage over the enemy in that you attack first. of course, this would only be for castle, to simulate their awesome defensive power.

[Christophe33]

I agree that this discussion should not really have started here with art...so I had a picture for temporary camp to answer the question raised about Konrad camps that should not be a castle in most cases...
To give a unit in a castle a good advatange against unit outside the castle you just need that the defense provided by the castle being better than the one provided by any terrain around...at least for unit who can fully profit of a castle (not mounted, not flying?, not woundland?). The defensive advantage could be increased for castle really meant for defense by surrounding it with a terrain name glacis. Here is the definition from a dictionary:
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. glacis
1a. A gentle slope; an incline. b. A slope extending down from a fortification.
ETYMOLOGY: French, from Old French, from glacer, to slide, from glace, ice, from Vulgar Latin *glacia,
----------------------------------------
I had to look in dictionaries for the equivalent of the French word...and it was exactly the same. Anyway a glacis was the outtermost layer of protection around a castle usually 300 yard to almost a mile, basically an area in slope of about 10-20 degres and cleaned of any trees-plants-holes. The dirt layer was usually removed to prevent any plants from growing and enemies to dig holes as cover.
So we could make a glacis terrain were all the units will have bad to very bad defense (from 60 to 80 % chance to be hit) and use it for some of the castle or along planed defense line.

[benj]

OK, thought I'd start a castle thread since I don't see it elsewhere.

Castles should provide good defense against outsiders, but not against others inside. If we're talking more realism.

This could be an idea. OTOH, all castles I have visited have a lot of defensive parts that do apply to the rest of the castle. Then, if enemy takes a part of the castle, he still has to conquer the rest and to pay the price for it.

[Eponymous-Archon]

So we could make a glacis terrain were all the units will have bad to very bad defense (from 60 to 80 % chance to be hit) and use it for some of the castle or along planed defense line.

This seems like one solution, though it may be that it makes castles too big on the map.

(Apologies for starting this in art. Didn't notice when I did it. )

[Christophe33]

This could be an idea. OTOH, all castles I have visited have a lot of defensive parts that do apply to the rest of the castle. Then, if enemy takes a part of the castle, he still has to conquer the rest and to pay the price for it.

This is what I observed too. And the keep is usually totally independent, with it own well for water.
The central keep in the tower of London is a good example. It stand alone in a central court with no building (at the time it was used for defense) closer than 100 m. The door to enter it was at about 30 feet above the ground level and accessible only through a narrow wooden stair which could have been destroyed in a few minutes if required.
With the present system if a unit attack another one from inside a castle both will have good defense, leading a quite long fight witch is reasonnable.
I guess it was proposed before that the keep provide some healing, maybe like a cure (4 HP/round). It would be a good way to simulate the added defense/importance of the keep.
Another point. When you kill an enemy leader in his keep, would it be possible to harvest his gold: if you kill a leader who had 30 gold left, you should be able to put your hand on it or part of it.

[turin]

first of all, a cure is 8hp, not 4. a heal is 4hp.
i like the idea of a keep healing, but this may be too powerful. maybe someone could test it out and then find out if it works.

[miyo]

Making defenders on castle have better defense than attackers with keep giving healing. How many turns would you need to slaughter leaders in keeps after that?

- Miyo

[Christophe33]

Making defenders on castle have better defense than attackers with keep giving healing. How many turns would you need to slaughter leaders in keeps after that?

- Miyo

With a great mage and/or a marksman to help? maybe one turn
Hey, these units have the special power to have at least 70% or 60 % chance to hit in any case, so it's the perfect time to use it.
The trick with unit that gain HP every round by healing or regeneration is to crush them as fast as possible with the most powerfull troups available (easier said than done).

Anyway I'm not in favor to give a special bonus for defenser in a castle attacked from another castle terrain. It had unnecessary complexity in term of coding for little advantage.
I just want the castle (or fortification represented by a castle terrain) to give a good defensive bonus in comparison to "natural" terrain, at least for units that can profit fully of such advantage. It could be done by having the castle "over" a terrain and giving an additionnal defense bonus (like 10% to 20%) or by making the bonus for castle terrain better than the one for other terrain t for the unit at ease in castle. The second solution is the easiest since it just involved changing a few numbers in an aleady existing table.
In addition I think that a terrain providing bad defense for most units, called "glacis" (can be called moat or pit) would be a good addition to the game. It can be place around castle when the scenario designer really intend it to be well defensed. Like that ther is a good flexibility in term of how hard it is to attack a castle, just by playing with witch terrain you place nearby.
By the way, is there any interest in my temporary camp as alternate for castle/keep?
If yes I will make a "keep" version, probably with a smooth dirt ground, a flag and/or a tent. Using a bunch of tents would be a good alernative too to simulate temporary camps used as recruiting/recalling area.

[Darth Fool]

I like the idea of having a "defensible" camp ala what the roman legions did: for example see
http://www.roman-empire.net/army/camp2.html or
http://www.romanarmy.com/Content/Travel ... /Camp1.jpg

The key would being to have tents inside a ditch/palisade that surrounds the whole thing and
not a bunch of hexes each with its own palisade...I guess the ditch/palisade could be done as a transtion?

[MrMorose]

Instead of giving the defending units a defensive bonus, why not force the opponents to stop before scaling the walls. This would slow down an offence slightly while giving the defender some kind of bonus. The defender could, usually, stop one unit from entering the castle using two units.
I hope that this will not make castle defence too easy, but I dont think it will. Also, you might want to cancel this effect for flying units, but this might make them a little too powerful.

[miyo]

Instead of giving the defending units a defensive bonus, why not force the opponents to stop before scaling the walls. This would slow down an offence slightly while giving the defender some kind of bonus. The defender could, usually, stop one unit from entering the castle using two units.

This can already be achieved with ZoC.

- Miyo