construction on the strategus map for 4.0

[Farrix]

I've got a bit of an idea:

Alot of us are fan of the Total War series of games. Within these games the generals had the option of building forts and watchtowers within their territory. I think this would be a marvelous addition to strategus.

I think if we took the construction sites that are currently available and add the ability, with accumulation of enough of these sites, for a leader of a clan (rank say 8 or above) to collect enough of these sites and have the ability to build a fort or watchtower, it could expand the functions of clans and even factionless people. Say perhaps a fort could have a maximum of lets say 150 soldiers in it. Expand the area that a fort could interact with hero's to lets say 2000 meters. This would allow a fort to protect the borders of a clan. On top of this, allow a watchtower to include up to lets say 20 soldiers and expand its vision to lets say double that of the wandering hero.

These additions would allow members of a clan to forgo patrolling their borders and scouting which would allow them to instead focus on crafting or recruiting soldiers. There have been many complaints that the pace of the game in 3.0 is too slow. These improvements would allow the economies and armies of strat to expand more quickly thus increasing the pace of the game as a whole.

This is the basic concept.

A more ambitious and I'm sure more time-consuming goal that could be an eventual result of this would be to start cannabalizing the nature of the native campaign's rpg functions as far as the skill sets are concerned. Eventually make it so that engineering could be a requirement to build one of these sites. Make it so that Leadership is a requirement for larger armies, so that prisoner management could allow a portion of a conquered army to survive under the control of the victors. This could allow many more diplomatic intrigues such as paying to recover the tickets that are prisoners of the victors, or the victors, with enough persuasion skill to convince them, or bribe them to join the victors.

The reason why I have enjoyed this game for so very long is because I recognized how expansive the possibilities of this game truly are. This I believe is an idea that could be implemented and could lead to much greater possibilities.

Thoughts?

[Beefymongoose]

I like this idea I would only worry about these forts being spammed all over the map :/

[Muki]

I like this idea I would only worry about these forts being spammed all over the map :/

Fort wars I bet I can spam more forts around your fief

[Farrix]

yeah I worried about that as well. Maybe make it so that the upkeep for each fort or watchtower was rather high, say like 450 an hour with a full garrison of 150 in a fort and increase upkeep exponentially according to how many forts the faction has: 1st=450 2nd=900 3rd=1350 etc. Or what could be simpler: start out at 450, and each additional fort will increase the upkeep of every fort by 1.5x, so one fort costs 450, 2 forts costs 1350 total, 3 forts costs 3037.5, etc.  This way small clans could still maintain 1 or 2 forts and bigger clans would be limited from the increasing costs as well. It would greatly increase the importance of the economic system. Strategic placement would be key and I am no programmer, but i would think that the changes needed to implement such an addition would be relatively simple for the improvements in "advanced gameplay" that chadz has seemed to stress with strategus.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

I think a neat idea would be to have 4 types of castle that are region orientated. So Japanese style castles in the steps. Norman castles in the Nord, Vegar. Germanic style castle through Rhodok and that other one with the xbows, can't remember its name. And then Arabic style castles in the sarranid and desert area.

You have the 4 types of castle and then you can upgrade them twice, so each type of castle has 3 levels. Once a clan controls a castle a 4th option opens up and people can work on upgrading the castle.

That way we have a bug proof castle to attack but because it can be upgraded it shouldn't become a boring repeat.

[engurrand]

how about you have 4 base types of castles + players can build one and they can be "accepted" after a period of community review....

[Farrix]

how about you have 4 base types of castles + players can build one and they can be "accepted" after a period of community review....

Naa no way. Thats trying to establish permanent structures within the strategus map. I like the idea of improving castles that are already there, but building one out of construction sites just seems like that would be a step that is many many strats away. Especially with "community review" thats not really feasible at all.

Forts and watchtowers on the other hand can just be a uniform structure for everyone that would just have to be imported to all the different environments we see in strat. One map for steppe, one for hills, one for mountains, one for plains, etc. This way you'd only have to build a watchtower and fort map for each type of environment.

You start trying to build castles and then people are going to want a new map for every single one.

Forts/watchtowers are a temporary thing in that they stay there until attacked and destroyed by an enemy. Victor could recover lets say a third of the construction sites required to build them.

[The_danish_lost_viking]

Maybe one fort for one village

[Farrix]

I like the idea of trying to get people without factions to be more heavily involved in strat. The problem with tieing the forts to #'s of villages is that you'd have to have a village to build one. If the upkeep however is exponential according to how many you have, Big clans could build a few as appropriate to their size, and small clans/factionless people could build one, perhaps two.

Imagine the effect when a lone person could save enough gold for one and place it in the middle of a trade route. They could actually function like a bandit and would require the larger clans with trade routes to play the role of "manhunter" to maintain these routes.

The economic system is a wonderful improvement to strat and this idea of mine would increase playability and risk in terms of the economic system that the developers have already introduced.

chadz and other developers, I hope you read this thread and consider the possibilities. Keep in mind the poll and the community support that the idea has seemed to generate.