A idea: make the forts as small cities

[Principe Alessandro]

Hi to everybody
Hi to the team of Europa Barbarorum, I have a suggestion
I explain a idea conceived by Housekeeper, he create two forts and make it permanent without using troops, but with a spy that with a script isn't possible that escape, and also he make possible to recruit some mercenaries unit with this fort, this in medieval but I think that is also possible with Rome, but better is to use a sort of general or other, in this fort, for the recruitment of mercenaries troops that in many case are low level troops, and also add some commercial resources called as for example small cities, this to provide with this new mini-cities new income and as a city in order to recruit troops, clearly the troops recruitable as mercenaries will be low level and the huge city will have the monopoly for the elite units.
The general will have no bodyguards, and when one conquer the minicity replace this general or restore this with a script as a general of enemy faction.
For me this can make the game better because:
1 Some areas of map historically had many and many important cities like the Aegean Sea, for example in the zone of Lesbo there were Mitilene and Metinma, near Bizantium Abido, Cizico, Clazomene ecc., near Corinto Argo, Sicione, Megara ecc., I read the Elleniche of Xenophon and in this area the entire campaigns were a series of siege, attack to cities ecc ecc. and with this forts-minicities is possible to create this historical situation.
2 With this is possible to have a soft expansion of the borders of a empire, in Rome vanilla is very unrealistic when in a turn the border advance of hundreds of km
3 The limit of number of regions stop to have a importance
I post two screens to make visible the concept.
What do you think?

[Foot]

This is certainly not something we will do in EB1, its coming to the end of its life and we don't want to begin new concepts now that it is so close to being finished. As I understand it, Kingdoms will come with permanent forts, if so we will certainly look into this idea.

Foot

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

I've seen this discussion before. The major problem with this is that it would remove the ability to build standard forts.

In M2TW:Kingdoms, it is said that they are going to program perminant, upgradable forts. And it is theorized that EB2 could use these for minor towns, as suggested, but still keep standard forts.

[I Am Herenow]

What, so perm. forts will become minor cities in provinces and there will be no forts? :S

Edit: MAA, so will there be two different types of fort in Kingdoms, just like there are two different types of settlement in M2?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Yeah, we had a pretty good discussion of it inside the development forum about a year or more ago - I thought it had a lot of promise for sure, but losing the ability to make forts was the big problem. There may have been others, but I can't remember them. It's a very good idea though.

[Foot]

So do the permanent forts upgrade from the normal forts, then? Perhaps there will be some way to stop the player or ai from doing that, but still build normal forts.

Also, I like the idea of using a resource called "minor city", placing beside the permanent forts and then renaming the merchants to be "governors". Placing the "governors" on the "minor city" resource would add gold, representing direct administration from a provinces major city. It would also allow, as Alessandro says, a more fluid back and fro of territory changes. I wonder if it would work?

Foot

[I Am Herenow]

Maybe the fact that a fort interior is different to a city interior would also present a problem, or could you modify forts to make them actually look like small cities on the battlemap?

[Foot]

Maybe the fact that a fort interior is different to a city interior would also present a problem, or could you modify forts to make them actually look like small cities on the battlemap?

Oh yes, you can change the battlemap model for a fort. And seeing as we are going to have change battlemap models for cities in MTW2 anyway, this will form part of our work in that area.

Foot

[I Am Herenow]

Oh, OK, fair enough.

I suppose you could make the negative trade impact of an enemy fort on a region so great that people would have to conquer all a region's "cities" in order to get any meaningful amount of trade. Or make them quite small or at least bearable, so that regions can be in effect split between two factions. Plus doing this would enable you to include many more towns on the map, or condense several regions into one.

But on the other hand, wouldn't these "minor cities" still act like forts - i.e. you wouldn't be able to recruit units (unless you can in forts, not sure), build buildings (which I'm pretty sure you can't do) etc. - making them boxes to put soldiers in rather than meaningful "settlments"?

[Zaknafien]

I dont think that would be a problem at all. Recruitment is an abstract representation from the whole territory anyway, not one city.

[Foot]

Yes, controlling the major city would allow the building of infrastructure and access to recruitment. The minor cities are not powerful enough to cede from the influence of the major city.

Foot

[Hells Bells]

if the eb team wont do this, perhaps a sub mod will? It would be great as an optional feature. Also how exactly will it render building regular forts impossible? I played a mod a few years back that allowed building of stone forts and regular forts, one could choose which to build.