Which do you prefer: One Settlement Type or Castles & Cities?

[Kernow]

It seems to me that the OST fan bois are a bit peeved by the results of this poll.

BTW Zenith² cannons did not obsolete walls this was achieved by artillery, it changed the design of walls. What really did walls in was simply the fact that cities became to large to have encompassing walls, but citadels were still utilised and still provide significant problems for conventional warfare (unless you take the american/israeli approach cluster bomb civilians)

[Polycarpe]

Have you ever think about OST with Castles instead of cities?

[Ichon]

Have you ever think about OST with Castles instead of cities?

I wondered about that actually... though I think the public order bonus of castles might be hardcoded which is the only reason I can think of not to do it.

Castles, Fortresses, and Citadels are great for creating a defensible area on the campaign map. Where if you only had cities, your only real defense is how much land you can put between your enemies and you. In the case of real life, say you wanted to capture city "Ihavewalls", and the King, to show his command has build Keep "Keepyourcrapout" 2 days march from the capital city of "Ihavewalls". If you put up a siege on "Ihavewalls" you would most certainly be smashed up against those walls by the force from "Keepyourcrapout". So you would in fact need to siege the castle in order to capture the city. This I believe is translated well into the game.

Personally if you remove castles from the game, you destroy the Medieval of the game. Making a Castle a building in a city is silly, due to the fact quite a few, not all of them, modern cities with castle in them, started out as Castles with towns being built around them to support their infrastructure.

But all cities in MTW2 have walls? The only difference between a city and a castle is only in how many gates it has and the inner walls Citadels. AI can't really use these very well but human player can. So it is a total advantage for the player on top of all other advantages they already have.

Secondly is the recruiting factor- for most of SS campaign castles produce the better armies and AI is vulnerable to losing castle and/or forming badly composed armies due to where it puts an army and how many castle/cities near it.

Why not just make permanent forts near strategic places or allow forts to be built? The custom forts can actually be more difficult for player to siege due to smaller spaces and AI uses them as well. Then you can station an army in a fort between 2 cities similarly to what you are describing above and it works out without giving player such an obvious advantage. Cities might be a tiny bit easier for player to siege but they are much, much easier for AI to siege.

[TwinBird]

I usually have more fun defending/attacking cities rather than castles. Breaking through multiple walls is just a pain, not necessarily hard, but very time consuming. So OST for me. Also a little suggestion: Make city walls/gates stronger.

[Fred Putz]

I wondered about that actually... though I think the public order bonus of castles might be hardcoded which is the only reason I can think of not to do it.

Could be edited in the settlements_mechanics if iīm not totally wrong.

[Gorrrrrn]

It seems to me that the OST fan bois are a bit peeved by the results of this poll.

haven't noticed any fan bois or peevishness, but it does seem that some town and castle people don't properly understand how the Alltowns + PSF mods work.

[Meneth]

It seems to me that the OST fan bois are a bit peeved by the results of this poll.

Actually, I, the creator of two (OST and MSC) of the three (#3: RozMod) sub-mods using only cities, am pleasantly surprised by the amount of people voting for OST.

[ZarBoneD]

I think castles make the economic part of the game more challenging. If there were no castles, you wouldn't need settlements and cities to support them. So in effect you have no reason for effect-able incomes in provinces, E.i London and York to support Nottingham.

No Castles, no strategy. I think the people that want one settlement type, really do not see the castle for what it is. They seem not to realize the impact a castle has on the surrounding areas, look at Hamburg for example. This castle effectively keeps Denmark and Norway out of HRE for a good 50 turns. Sure you can march past it, but the fact remains that keep will stand between your army and your Kingdom, like a wolf between two sheep.

Yes, taking a Castle region can have a severe impact on the armies of the Owner. That is to say, it shouldn't? With OST once losing a "military" city, what stops from razing your buildings in another settlement nearby to 'adjust' for the loss? As opposed to losing a Castle, where you need to fight back desperately to gain the resources you have lost.

Maybe the the problem is the Battle-map itself, is there a way to make all Castle/Fortress/Citadel fights on a "castle" battlemap? In my experience if you attack a Fortress or Citadel, fighting for in multiple battles in one turn often ends up being a more fluid fighting experience. Not to mention little more like a "Simulation" than a game. As you punch holes in the walls the first battle, then having made sure you movement points before starting battle so you can withdraw your siege corpse. Next bring your breach force to bare, and attack the points in the walls where you attacked previously. I find the AI fights a lot better this way.

[Ichon]

Hmm... maybe if you play a certain way what you say makes sense and indeed might be possible given that AI has more trouble capturing castles from human players but when its AI vs AI all the castles on borders like Hamburg, Innsbruck, Strasbourg, etc using HRE for example give the attacking faction instant access to large recruitment pool in the first few victories and halves HRE's ability to recruit defending armies.

I'm more concerned with making the AI vs AI situation better as well the play style you describe is used by few players that might use castles to maximum. What I mean is that castles might give human player a bit lower losses but they would probably have won with city walls defenses anyway. If AI has enough extra numbers to capture my city then my castles will usually fall to up until Citadel which sometimes you can defend with 3 units vs entire stack since AI doesn't understand how to move siege engines through the inner walls.

[Meneth]

Yes, taking a Castle region can have a severe impact on the armies of the Owner. That is to say, it shouldn't? With OST once losing a "military" city, what stops from razing your buildings in another settlement nearby to 'adjust' for the loss? As opposed to losing a Castle, where you need to fight back desperately to gain the resources you have lost.

I don't see how losing a castle is a bigger loss than losing a militarily focused settlement except for the battle-map.

[Fred Putz]

For me the OST idea is really great for the AI. But for the player OST is making things easier because i can retrain my units in every settlement. With castles and cities thereīs much more "logistical skill" required.

On the battle map it doesnīt make a really big difference, because settlements donīt have big garrisons most of the time. They are a bit harder to conquer than a city. Of course that could be countered by script - but in those AI vs AI situations a garrison script just makes it more difficult for the AI to conquer settlements. At least that is what iīve seen in most campaigns with a garrison-script. For me as a player itīs easy to counter that, because i know that the AI will have more units when besieged. Another AI nation will get counter-attacked in the same situation (most of the time)

I think this whole discussion should lead to a better gameplay experience. I believe for the AI OST is the best solution - but for the players castles and cities are more challenging. So a combination of both is possibly the best solution. Just my opinion.

Perhaps i really donīt understand the OST-mods correctly - just read the descriptions so far and never played with them.

[Zenith_Zenith]

I don't see how losing a castle is a bigger loss than losing a militarily focused settlement except for the battle-map.

I guess he meant the following:
in castles & cities you might have only one castle (I mean, not wooden castle, but with stone walls) only. so if somebody conquers your ONLY castle, that's a BIG loss, because you can't recruit any castle-type units. Also, conversion of a city lasts long and you will also have to build all the military buildings that do not belong in a city (stables, practice range, and the higher levels) in the city you've converted, which lasts a lot. this means that if you lose your castle you may be defeated in the rounds that follow because you can't defend yourself. Also, if you defeat your enemy's castle, they will use only peasants to attack you with.

and this is AGAIN a GREAT weakness of two settlement types: you just aim at the strongest castle and you've won the war!

[Meneth]

But that potential weakness also exists with only one settlement type.
As one has a limited amount of time and money, one cannot build every building in every settlement. Therefore, to get the most out of settlements one has to specialize. Take out a militarily specialized settlement, and you've struck a hard blow to a nation's military capabilities.

[Ichon]

For me the OST idea is really great for the AI. But for the player OST is making things easier because i can retrain my units in every settlement. With castles and cities thereīs much more "logistical skill" required.

On the battle map it doesnīt make a really big difference, because settlements donīt have big garrisons most of the time. They are a bit harder to conquer than a city. Of course that could be countered by script - but in those AI vs AI situations a garrison script just makes it more difficult for the AI to conquer settlements. At least that is what iīve seen in most campaigns with a garrison-script. For me as a player itīs easy to counter that, because i know that the AI will have more units when besieged. Another AI nation will get counter-attacked in the same situation (most of the time)

I think this whole discussion should lead to a better gameplay experience. I believe for the AI OST is the best solution - but for the players castles and cities are more challenging. So a combination of both is possibly the best solution. Just my opinion.

Perhaps i really donīt understand the OST-mods correctly - just read the descriptions so far and never played with them.

You still have to build all the buildings in a city that you would in a castle so you'll more likely have some cities dedicated to cavalry, some archers, some infantry, some economics. So logistically it can actually be even more interesting than castles and cities. It also makes wars against AI more interesting as you have to send spies and figure out where their most dangerous troops are coming from and either make that campaign priority or just capture ground more slowly when the AI can have armies with more than militia built from any region it controls. Especially this should make difficulty levels scale better as now even if I capture AI highest level region its ability to recruit good armies might only go down 10% rather than the 30% or more that often occurs now as it only might have a few lower level castles and many cities producing low tier troops.

Combined with the difficulty to reach Citadel in 6.4 then Huge City/Citadel level buildings become more meaningful since most AI cities will have some professional units but only a very few will reach the best units. So you still have to have some strategy where to attack first but its not so overwhelming advantage now after just a couple victories.

[Fred Putz]

It also makes wars against AI more interesting as you have to send spies and figure out where their most dangerous troops are coming from and either make that campaign priority or just capture ground more slowly when the AI can have armies with more than militia built from any region it controls.

I donīt think the AI will develop their settlements very different. Just a guessing.

[Ichon]

I donīt think the AI will develop their settlements very different. Just a guessing.

The AI doesn't build each settlement exactly the same if that is what you mean.

[Fred Putz]

The AI doesn't build each settlement exactly the same if that is what you mean.

Almost - i donīt think the AI will build a "cavalry recruitment center" or a "recruitment center" in general. I guess the AI will try to develop their settlements more or less balanced in order to their "construction AI". But thatīs too much guessing of my own - i should play with OST a bit before saying anything about that.

[k/t]

The fact that a few castles had a few thousand defenders doesn't mean anything. Granada is a city, and Alhambra is a castle. So yeah, Granada should be a city. Go look up Bordeaux, Toulouse and Nottingham. None of them were castles. Hamburg, Salzburg, Palermo. All cities. Acre and Aleppo too. Not a single castle in this game was actually a castle, except for Alamut.

PSFs are far more representative of medieval castles than what is currently in the game.

In an all-city mod, is the economic output of each reduced to compensate for the abundance of money-making settlements?

[Zenith_Zenith]

But that potential weakness also exists with only one settlement type.
As one has a limited amount of time and money, one cannot build every building in every settlement. Therefore, to get the most out of settlements one has to specialize. Take out a militarily specialized settlement, and you've struck a hard blow to a nation's military capabilities.

not necessarily. the more developed settlements more surely have some basic non-militia infantry (at least in my way of playing). One is to be able to recruit light men-at-arms and armored sergeants and other is to be able to recruit only militia, for instance. This also means you can recruit a larger army faster. And this means that, if somebody conquers one military settlement of yours, it does not crush you as it would if it was your only castle.

[Meneth]

Sure, you might still be able to recruit mid-range units, but your high-end units would be limited if someone took out a few of your military focused settlements.