It seems weird to me that you get gold for destroying a building with a catapult. Also removing a building for the gold is too easy.

So, how about we change the recycling of building value as follows:
When you remove or destroy a building, you gain no gold.
Instead, the rubble, instead of disappearing after 5 turns, becomes a harvestable resource (like gold pile, but you can move onto it). If the building was removed by the owning player, the rubble is worth more (to reflect fact that building was demolished carefully, with a view to recycling the building materials), but you still have to commit units in order to get the gold. (Maybe change the useless "Construction" tech to increase the % of a removed building value that can be recycled).

This will stop you being able to easily recycle the value of buildings that you know an approaching enemy will capture.

I would recommend that commandeers are more effective at recycling (because of their building experience). Let's say only commandeers can harvest rubble for the max value, other units always harvest at the lower "destroyed by enemy" rate.

It also means the enemy has to decide whether to commit units to harvest the value, or push on in attack and pick it up later.

This will also have the advantage of reducing the cash bonanza you get from taking over an empty castle. You can still get the gold, but it will take time and units to collect.

well if i destroyed my tool shed... will there be a pile of gold waiting there?

would if you could actually repair a building when under attack

i like this idea. but i would want to take it furthur, such ad having to "walk" a supply wagon back to the castle to turn it in for "resouces" which dont have meaning anymore (sigh) and as such be required to have a marketplace at which to trade this reclaimed resource for gold or tribute.

this also allows the enemy to capture or destroy the supply wagon of course.

on a realistic note... who thinks Req will add this complexity to the game if he already removed most of the wonderfully enjoyable complexity that existed before? It is a nice thought but it seems this game has followed the trend of old time wargames, which is to say: sacrifice complexity, depth, and immersion for "ease of play".

Not that im bashing Req or this game. I wouldnt be here still after all these years if i didnt love it!

No, I don't like the idea of having to manage extra "resource" units by hand.

I prefer the idea of "lines of supply" that can be cut.
Basically, mask out all non-moveable hexes and all those hexes that can be reached in one turn's movement by the enemy.

If you can trace an unbroken line of hexes from the resource source to a castle then you get the resources.

Req has previously stated that calculating lines of supply is too difficult with SQL statements.

But I'd be happy to do the server-side code - it would require building the map in an array and working out the lines of supply from that.

The answer, of course will be "wait for WoK..."

I might code a WWII blitzkrieg game this summer...
Be something to do.

What would be interesting would be to have supply lines work for resource buildings as well. If your under siege it'd be reasonable to assume that your enemies won't let you just walk gold into your castle.

This could get complex though. With multiple castles it'd be impossible to really do that without surrounding it. Could put a limit on how far away the resources... 30 hexes maybe being the max.

Could also have auto moving caravans (kill them and you can steal their resources) which would automatically move to a castle and then pay out on arrival... couple of problems with this idea though.. probably too complex.

I really like the idea of line of supplies, I think this game or a game like it could benefit a lot from making raiding a staple. Maybe we could even have an alternative in this game where you can "raid" resource buildings (do less damage but steal resources).

Thanks for the encouragement. Watch this space. Will need a good graphic designer for the unit graphics. Have to say, the Medieval units in this game are beautifully designed.

I'm not a graphics designer. Anyone that is and wants to contribute, let me know.

If your willing to pay a little for it I could probably find someone around here. My university is pretty big on graphic design (though almost every one is now-a-days). Might find a friend that'd be willing to do it for free as well.

i used to dabble with pen and paper gane design and have considered learning flash so i could make my own games. (im an old Basic language guy myself since i went to college in the early 1990's). being (now ex) military and having been combat branched as well, i enjoy the WWI, WWII, or Modern Warfare style of games but find most to be very poorly done in terms of realism. usually "playablity" wins out over plausablity or realism.

i'd be interested in your game Ham, playing it or testing it or whatever, or if you should you need input in any way.

On the Supply Lines concept, I agree. that would be a good way to handle things. I once factored supply lines and blockading into a territorial wargame i was working on but it was quite cumbersome for the casual player. (but so was the whole game)

The character designs in this game were from Microsoft clip art. Req is using a different supplier for his coming (I know... when?!) game.

Finding someone who can and will make them is a task. If you pay for them it can get quite expensive.

Yeah, I don't think Req makes a huge amount of money from this game... I would was thinking in terms of an open-source project that someone would contribute their time to for free.

But back to topic - do we all agree that we shouldn't get gold automatically when we destroy or remove a building, we should have to harvest it from the rubble?

I don't think that adds much to the playability of the game but it does add to basing the game on some reality. I'm indifferent as to which is chosen.