I have been thinking about the defense bonus you can get while sitting in your castle, and yet again i came to the conclusion that it is way to much.

I can understand that this defense bonus should be there when the castle is fully enclosed, and no enemy can get inside. Logically in history the people defending the castle had an advantage over the ones attacking the castle, BUT only as long as the castle had not been entered.

I cannot seem to come up with a war in which a castle/strategic point was entered by enemies, but the defenders still managed to win the battle.

Now what i would like to see, if it is possible to implement it. Is that the defense bonus does not count as soon as the defending troop is attacked by an enemy unit inside the castle.

makes sense

Its iffy hanky, alot of castles were designed so that the keep was the actual strategic point and with the outlying walls and defences as a sorta of buffer zone. Many castles were actually designed to keep the enemy outside as long as possible and once they were inside make it extremely hard to advance to the keep. I guess barracks would be the keep in this game.

Look at some japanese feudal castles or any type of feudal fortress they usually had the same concept (crudade castles are very well known for this and the kill ways used in wales were designed specifially to let the enemy in then shoot at them while they were stuck in the passage).

The game is just not intricate enough to take these construction methods litterally so i think the defence bonus does alot to take them into account.

Having trouble finding pictures take from the air to show alot of these points in more detail but I think you get the idea. Basically to get things accurate a castle would have to cover 100 or so spaces and there would have to be hight damage bonuses and ways to account for slit holes ect.

I currently run into the following situation, i'm playing in a campaign against a player. He is sitting inside his castle, it is turn 60 and we both have many,many expert troops. But i have many more. I advanced on him slowly with cats, killing some walls, trying to kill barracks(actually killed one barrack) he advances a little bit on me and kills the cats so i can easily kill his troops outside his castle.

Now i have to kill the troops inside his castle with some troops having as much as 72! defense BONUS. I don't consider this normal. Due to all the changes a normal castle siege against a good player who has ranged and his walls still around his castle has become impossible!

Req tries to make an attacking strategy better with the tribute system, but the castle defense (which is way to big) actually creates an incentive for people to just hang around in their castle, cause it makes it hardly possible to take out many troops in the same turn.

I really feel it should be changed, since the game should be estimated so that the playing having a better strategy (at least on average for the game) is able to win, and not the player who happens to sit in his walled castle.

Furthermore, the keep was the last point of resistance, but if you could name me one big historical battle where the walls where crushed but the keep managed to keep the invaders out then i will be very happy, cause you happened to teach me something. In LOTR it happened . But in actually neither Troy, Rome, Ephesus, Paris, Constantinopol (Istanbul) or any other city managed to pull of a victory by saving their keep.

Last Edited : Sunday, 17 January 2010 - 14:09

Level : 5 Ranged
Attack
69 (+49)
Defense
93 (+79)
Damage: Health:
18 - 28
(180 - 280) 110 / 110
(1100)

This is normal for a marksmen?

I attacked it with a full stack HC. it killed 4 and 2 HC got killed, and it feel it is not really fair.

I'm in a similar situation hanky, been staring at same player behind walls for a dozen or more turns, I won't charge because of that bonus. I may have more troops than him now but after fighting for 2 turns inside that castle I'll have alot less, so we sit here and stare, he won't come out because I'll cream him and I won't go in for the same reason.

I agree with hanky there is nowhere in history where the defenders had such a huge advantage 'after' the enemy has penetrated the walls so if it is necessary for a def bonus it shouldn't be any more than 5%, 25% is ridiculous.

Troy dispelled all invaders 'because' of it's walls, once the greeks got inside the city it was a slaughter.

When king solomon took jericho, he marched the ark around the fortress 3 times(a little magic here me thinks) then everyone screamed and blew their trumpets as loud as they can...remember what happened next? yep the walls fell down and samson led the charge to victory.

Every battle I've read about capture always occurred once the walls had been penetrated. I like hanky's suggestion, 25% only when attacker is outside the walls, 5% at most once inside.

Castles over here in England have an outer wall which you enter via a barbican(gatehouse) and then a keep to bring down as well, You need to Siege the castle

aha that's just the point. You spend alot of gold and time to deploy those seige machines and get them in position, generally stopping all troop production to do so. After 10 or 20 turns go by, sometimes as in my case longer, and you get those walls down finally, all the while your opp is producing new troops to kill, now you have to attack from rubble and blood spots that never go away against a 25% def.

If you were lucky and destroyed their army before they baracaded themselves up AND you got some seige there quickly enough, you may get the castle. However if they escaped inside with a decent army and have alot of time to rebuild, then after 3 turns of attack you are ready to run back to your own castle and hide.

What if players started the game with no walls at all, like a king starting his kingdom? Building walls would be a choice. Keeping other players away while doing so would keep them out in the field.

This would result in some rushes that don't happen now, I suppose, but why should players have a stronghold from turn one?

I also agree that castle defense bonuses are too high at this point.

Well, I'm kindof enjoying that bonus at the moment!

not q bad idea mog, as long as we still get the barracks at startup.

I'm not sure I agree. I mean we start with a castle and what that includes, thats just the way the game is. The stone walls and castle defense are techs you have to pay for. I think its fine the way it is. Stop your whining!

Perhaps a defence bonus rendered by the caste should not be a matter of research. I think +10 defence and or attack would be a nice bonus for the castle, getting almost 40 points bonus is rediculous.

Really Lothar, i did not mention your name because it is not relevant who is enjoying the defense bonus, it is the opinion that the game would be better balanced if the bonus was decreased.

We both cannot deny the fact that that bonus you are currently receiving is very high, and it makes it almost impossible for me to take your troops out. I agree with mog that if the bonus should remain in this game, then at least it should be way more expensive to make use of it.

Surely if you have the castle surrounded, all you have to do is take out the barracks and all the commandeers, then build more troops while your stay-at-home enemy can't? Just rush up enough cats and ballis to do that, doesn't matter if they sortie and destroy them once they have done their dirty work..

The question isn't whether a castle can be taken but rather how much it costs to take out a given position vs how much it costs to defend it.

A well defended castle should be expensive to take.

Archers_2
Medieval
Level : 1 Ranged
Attack Defense
21 (+15) 79 (+75)
Damage: Health:
2 - 4
(14 - 28) 3 / 12
(75)
Under Attack by
No da vo!!

check out that def bonus wow! I hit that thing(a simple archer!) with 2 fully tech'd ballis and I managed to kill 3 of them! expensive? that's ridiculous!

Your army, Ballista_1, attacked christw5 : Archers_2
Ballista_1(66,98) = Wounds : 0.0, Killed : 0, Exp : 55
Archers_2(69,106) = Wounds : 24.7, Killed : 2, Exp : 0.

Your army, Ballista_4, attacked christw5 : Archers_2
Ballista_4(65,98) = Wounds : 0.0, Killed : 0, Exp : 27.5
Archers_2(69,106) = Wounds : 20.3, Killed : 1, Exp : 0.

just wait, next turn I'll hit that archer with 4 ballis, that oughta finish him! well it might at least come close.

At the very least, Castle Defence should cost 6000 gold.
Compare it to the cost of Expert Defence. Yes it's only useful when defending a castle, but that's quite common and the bonus is large.

The thing is there is no counter for offence. You get +30-40 defence from the castle but no one can ever come near to matching it in attack. I guess the only down side to castle defence is that cats can tear down ur stuff but if its already cleaned out then there is no way to combat it very effectivly except to get them to attack you @.@.

The more I think of this I think the solution would be a new form of playing. Maby dumb down cats and get rid of the bonus or reduce it. Making the main form of seige was hand to hand would change the game pretty drastically...