My list of suggestion for minor Fort rework(and other minor military related stuff)

[Zerodv]

So with the early 1.19 dev diaries it was excepted a new area based system for the ZoC, followed by a reduced fort maintenance, this didn´t end up as planned given community feedback, so both have been reverted.

Now though even if the previous bugs around the AI ignoring some ZoCs have been removed the cost of forts is just too overwhelming, and if I´m not wrong the AI still ignores fort maintenance for forts neighbouring other countries.

If one wants to have someone explaining why exactly forts cost too much, I suggest this video:

Said that, there is my list of suggestion:

• Fort Maintenance is divided into 2, 1 is the cost of maintaining the fort itself(depending on the fort level) and the second is the cost to maintain AND reinforce your garrison(that would take manpower from the pool).
  
  
• Instead of the current mothball system, you can reduce the garrison size of a given fort, thus reducing the cost of supporting this garrison.
  Let´s say you have a fort in Normandie as England, in peace time you can reduce the garrison to 500, so that even if France declares war the fort will resist somewhat. If you don´t feel like 500 is enough you can increase it 250 or 500 more(I would think that a 250 +/- button for garrison size would be relatively easy to do), they would of course take time to reinforce.
  
  
• When you besiege a fort, some of your men in the army besieging it go in it as garrisons, with a limit to 5% of the army or half the max garrison size, whatever is the smaller.
  This way a 10k army doesn´t lose too many men in garrisons given they need them), so besieged forts are not totally weak when they are just captured.
  
  
• You can put regiments in or out of a province if that province has a fort, that is limited by the fort level(let´s say max 2 regiments for fort level) and the effectiveness of the fort is capped at 1000*fort level like it is now, this would let you shelter an army inside a province giving the enemy more reason to siege forts down. This would substitute and expand the sortie system.
  
  
• Remove assaults, they are gameplay-wise nearly useless, don´t make historical sense and nobody uses them anyway(I mean I did use them 1 or 2 times, but they are still too damaging to be used in 99% sieges).
  
  
• If you, while sieging a province, win a battler against the enemy relieving force it should demoralize the besieged province, thus guaranteeing you easy faster siege(so maybe 1-3 dice roll bonus depending on the size of the enemy destroyed).
  
  
• Remove or rework disease outbreaks, right now they are affected by a siege speed and related to dice rolls, but that doesn´t make much sense, instead increase attrition of sieges in general and remove the 5% limit on it.
  
  
• Instead of requiring a minimum of men to siege a province you can have up to half of that(so 1.5k for fort level, 500 for unforted provinces) but the fort defense goes up, up to double. Like in our beloved Victoria 2.

This is the realistic part, something I/we can maybe see added, now some more points harder to implement:

• Provinces when a siege start have rations, so food that would be used by the garrison inside them.
  This would be a limiting factor to siege´s durations, the bigger the garrison the faster rations are consumed.
  The capacity of the enemy to provide food for their besieged cities depends on the size of the besieging force(6 times the fort level would block any rations from coming in for example) and nearby friendly controlled fortified provinces(so a line of forts becomes strong).
  
  
• Provinces with forts have pseudo generals. Those generals have personalities, thus they affect stuff like use of rations, garrison growth, roll dices, fort defense, enemy attrition etc. They are either random or you can use one of your general in a specific important province.
  
  
• Depending on the unrest of the province a fort can surrender easily if the enemy is the same rebel group as the province´s one or culture group in case of separatist(same goes for religion).
  
  

I posted this in the general forum so that more people could see this and to discuss over those suggestions, all in all the current neighbour-based ZoC system is good and if the system is not going to change drastically having just maintenance reduced is fine.

I got those idea from @Seimour and his post:

Spoiler: Seimour`s post

Another thing that would make a lot of sense to me would be to remove automation from fort garrisons. Rather than have a set amount of troops in a fort that regenerates by magic, you should be able to put actual units inside with a limit depending on the level of the fort. In essence, this would make forts expensive to defend by adding both a cost to maintaining an active fort and to pay a large garrison. Forts were often very poorly staffed unless an actual war was going on. In an offensive war, you would be forced to sacrifice troops to guarding forts and having to decide if you merely want to occupy it with one unit or a very large garrison. Either your army shrinks down or you leave forts poorly defended that can then be taken back. In an awesome world, forts would have rations that would limit their maximum resistance. Several factors could be taken into account, the amount of food left, maybe powder supply or the presence of a nearby relief force? Active garrisons could be taken out of the forts to form an army proper that could downright cut you off or reinforce a battle. If you know a particular line of defense wont hold, you could pull back garrisons further down to reinforce the second line. Likewise, the enemy could use troops(it's a shame we don't have more unit types) to block your garrisons while he moves on rather than besieging everything. The possibilities are endless.

If we had a basic character system, each fort would have a governor with a personality which would determine how long he lasts. You just lost a major battle near the fort? Garrison morale drops fast. You just won a battle nearby, they won't surrender just yet. The governor is a coward or an incompetent buffoon? Well, he surrenders on day 2. He's a crazy bastard that would rather cut off his ball-sack then surrender an inch of of ground? He holds for 4 months and drives the besieging commander to suicide. There's a breach in the fort? The commander could negotiate his surrender with honors and be allowed to walk out with his garrison, saving your troops but giving up the fort. Seeing as this was often done without asking the ruler, it could be random. Maybe you could pre-authorize surrenders at certain points of a siege. That would be a good way to use shattered retreats.

When it comes down to stupid things a commander won't do, I suppose one has to take into account the consequences of failure. Most officers would be risk averse on a grand scale. If you screw up, your king can condemn you for betrayal and drive you into exile. He might condemn you to death. Your career can be ended by doing something so walking around doing nothing of note for a few months is awfully tempting.
Governors might even sympathize with local rebels and open their forts to uppity nobles and peasants making a rebellion far more difficult to handle, especially in a desperate war.

 

[Zerodv]

I should have added that I would count for the force limit the garrisons inside the forts, given the fluidity of the system given you can move your army from provinces into forts and vice versa.

 

[Zerodv]

*cough* please say something *cough*

 

[Seimour]

*cough* please say something *cough*

The problem with such posts is that it's pretty much something everyone can get behind. There's nothing inherently wrong or stupid with it and it is entirely uncontroversial. The end result is that it's not worth commenting or adding anything which means it will inevitably fall into oblivion. That's the reason dual wielding threads keep popping up for Warband while more interesting ones die out alone. Changes everyone can agree on are not very interesting to discuss.

 

[Zerodv]

Ok let me say something controversial:

I actually find the combat width change quite good!

I don´t

 

[Seimour]

Ok let me say something controversial:

I actually find the combat width change quite good!

I don´t

Looks like this died in its infancy. Told you =P

 

[Zerodv]

If everyone agrees then it must be a good thing that could be implemented though! This is so weird. Maybe a clickbait title...

 

[Zerodv]

bump!

 

[Gratak]

So with the early 1.19 dev diaries it was excepted a new area based system for the ZoC, followed by a reduced fort maintenance, this didn´t end up as planned given community feedback, so both have been reverted.

Now though even if the previous bugs around the AI ignoring some ZoCs have been removed the cost of forts is just too overwhelming, and if I´m not wrong the AI still ignores fort maintenance for forts neighbouring other countries.

If one wants to have someone explaining why exactly forts cost too much, I suggest this video:

Said that, there is my list of suggestion:

• Fort Maintenance is divided into 2, 1 is the cost of maintaining the fort itself(depending on the fort level) and the second is the cost to maintain AND reinforce your garrison(that would take manpower from the pool).
  
  
• Instead of the current mothball system, you can reduce the garrison size of a given fort, thus reducing the cost of supporting this garrison.
  Let´s say you have a fort in Normandie as England, in peace time you can reduce the garrison to 500, so that even if France declares war the fort will resist somewhat. If you don´t feel like 500 is enough you can increase it 250 or 500 more(I would think that a 250 +/- button for garrison size would be relatively easy to do), they would of course take time to reinforce.
  
  
• When you besiege a fort, some of your men in the army besieging it go in it as garrisons, with a limit to 5% of the army or half the max garrison size, whatever is the smaller.
  This way a 10k army doesn´t lose too many men in garrisons given they need them), so besieged forts are not totally weak when they are just captured.
  
  
• You can put regiments in or out of a province if that province has a fort, that is limited by the fort level(let´s say max 2 regiments for fort level) and the effectiveness of the fort is capped at 1000*fort level like it is now, this would let you shelter an army inside a province giving the enemy more reason to siege forts down. This would substitute and expand the sortie system.
  
  
• Remove assaults, they are gameplay-wise nearly useless, don´t make historical sense and nobody uses them anyway(I mean I did use them 1 or 2 times, but they are still too damaging to be used in 99% sieges).
  
  
• If you, while sieging a province, win a battler against the enemy relieving force it should demoralize the besieged province, thus guaranteeing you easy faster siege(so maybe 1-3 dice roll bonus depending on the size of the enemy destroyed).
  
  
• Remove or rework disease outbreaks, right now they are affected by a siege speed and related to dice rolls, but that doesn´t make much sense, instead increase attrition of sieges in general and remove the 5% limit on it.
  
  
• Instead of requiring a minimum of men to siege a province you can have up to half of that(so 1.5k for fort level, 500 for unforted provinces) but the fort defense goes up, up to double. Like in our beloved Victoria 2.

This is the realistic part, something I/we can maybe see added, now some more points harder to implement:

• Provinces when a siege start have rations, so food that would be used by the garrison inside them.
  This would be a limiting factor to siege´s durations, the bigger the garrison the faster rations are consumed.
  The capacity of the enemy to provide food for their besieged cities depends on the size of the besieging force(6 times the fort level would block any rations from coming in for example) and nearby friendly controlled fortified provinces(so a line of forts becomes strong).
  
  
• Provinces with forts have pseudo generals. Those generals have personalities, thus they affect stuff like use of rations, garrison growth, roll dices, fort defense, enemy attrition etc. They are either random or you can use one of your general in a specific important province.
  
  
• Depending on the unrest of the province a fort can surrender easily if the enemy is the same rebel group as the province´s one or culture group in case of separatist(same goes for religion).

I posted this in the general forum so that more people could see this and to discuss over those suggestions, all in all the current neighbour-based ZoC system is good and if the system is not going to change drastically having just maintenance reduced is fine.

I got those idea from @Seimour and his post:

Ok. You wanted critic. Here is some:

The suggested mothball replacement coupled with removing assaults is bad. You could simply "almost mothball" forts (having like 20 men left) and the fort would be at half costs and still hold quite a few month. Garrison strength is mostly irrelevant except when it's zero or the enemy assaults. The attacker only gets one extra siege modifier for half garrison strength.

Everyone hates disease outbreaks (except when it happens to the enemy). But don't think they'll change this.

Sending men into garrison: I wouldn't want to do this. The starting garrison of a newly conquered fort is fine

Hiding regiments in forts: Should certainly be in part 2 (harder to implement...). And would probably mostly add micromanagement (and leads to losing track of your own and enemy regiments).

Your "harder to implement" part on the other hand sounds better. Making sieges less random would be nice.

 

[Zerodv]

Ok. You wanted critic. Here is some:

Thank you SO much!

The suggested mothball replacement coupled with removing assaults is bad. You could simply "almost mothball" forts (having like 20 men left) and the fort would be at half costs and still hold quite a few month. Garrison strength is mostly irrelevant except when it's zero or the enemy assaults. The attacker only gets one extra siege modifier for half garrison strength.

Not totally sure but I think you need at least 100 soldiers in the garrison to prevent immediate victory after a tick, in any case I was thinking about making 250 the minimum, given you can only increase the garrison size in 250 steps(250-500-750 etc.), I guess that if you remove assaults you should treat a siege like a battle, that way if you don´t feel your gaps with your garrison you get overwhelmed by the sieging army. Remember that sieges in the era were nearly never a waiting game, they went in 2-4 months(that would be at least triple or 4 times that in game given we siege big provinces with different forts).

Everyone hates disease outbreaks (except when it happens to the enemy). But don't think they'll change this.

Well they would be replaced with bigger attrition, I think is a good trade off.

Sending men into garrison: I wouldn't want to do this. The starting garrison of a newly conquered fort is fine

Yeah it being automatic is not good, I think the starting garrison is 250 strong, so I guess depending on the situation using the other mechanic you could put a regiment inside to reinforce it.

Hiding regiments in forts: Should certainly be in part 2 (harder to implement...). And would probably mostly add micromanagement (and leads to losing track of your own and enemy regiments).

I think it would be visible on the map, both for you and the enemy.

I wouldn´t call it micromanagement, I mean yes you have more things to do but it adds so much depth into the military part.

Your "harder to implement" part on the other hand sounds better. Making sieges less random would be nice.

Not only less random, less "unexplained" randomeness also is reduced.

Thank you for the feedback.

 

[Gratak]

Thank you SO much!


Not totally sure but I think you need at least 100 soldiers in the garrison to prevent immediate victory after a tick, in any case I was thinking about making 250 the minimum, given you can only increase the garrison size in 250 steps(250-500-750 etc.), I guess that if you remove assaults you should treat a siege like a battle, that way if you don´t feel your gaps with your garrison you get overwhelmed by the sieging army. Remember that sieges in the era were nearly never a waiting game, they went in 2-4 months(that would be at least triple or 4 times that in game given we siege big provinces with different forts).

Good to know. I though any amount of soldiers is enough. But yeah, usually you wouldn't reach below 100. Still, that mostly mothball to 250 would be a lot more effecient than the old one and might be OP. I agree that sieges (especially late game) are A LOT too long. Utterly unlreastic that with massive amounts of cannons they wouldn't fall directly. Even at the end of the 100 years war, France was already able to take down forts within days, not years... In my opinion they should reduce the fort maintenance by half and make them a lot weaker. Maybe keep the low level forts but high level certainly need a huge nerf. And all that without letting the AI build more forts. They could use that saved money for more troops.

Well they would be replaced with bigger attrition, I think is a good trade off.

Yeah. That's what I mean. They wouldn't increase attrition because AI is so bad at avoiding it. They reduced it for exactly this reason...

I think it would be visible on the map, both for you and the enemy.

Yes, but you would have to make it clear which soldiers are running around and which are in a fort. On the other hand, that might work similar to the new "fleet is avoiding combat" symbol.

I wouldn´t call it micromanagement, I mean yes you have more things to do but it adds so much depth into the military part.

Well it sounds as if you want to reduce the ZoC system. Because with the current strong ZoC (in most cases...) I do not really see a use for garrisoning regiments in forts as you can better hide them behind your forts. And if you reduce the ZoC system is would be hell of a micromanagement to watch for those small armies that might appear behind you all the time.

 

[Zerodv]

Good to know. I though any amount of soldiers is enough. But yeah, usually you wouldn't reach below 100. Still, that mostly mothball to 250 would be a lot more effecient than the old one and might be OP. I agree that sieges (especially late game) are A LOT too long. Utterly unlreastic that with massive amounts of cannons they wouldn't fall directly. Even at the end of the 100 years war, France was already able to take down forts within days, not years... In my opinion they should reduce the fort maintenance by half and make them a lot weaker. Maybe keep the low level forts but high level certainly need a huge nerf. And all that without letting the AI build more forts. They could use that saved money for more troops.

Yeah siege time are just too much.

Yeah. That's what I mean. They wouldn't increase attrition because AI is so bad at avoiding it. They reduced it for exactly this reason...

But that´s kinda bad for an excuse, I mean is the AI able to handle diseases?

Yes, but you would have to make it clear which soldiers are running around and which are in a fort. On the other hand, that might work similar to the new "fleet is avoiding combat" symbol.

Ah of course, there would be surely more symbols for that.

Well it sounds as if you want to reduce the ZoC system. Because with the current strong ZoC (in most cases...) I do not really see a use for garrisoning regiments in forts as you can better hide them behind your forts. And if you reduce the ZoC system is would be hell of a micromanagement to watch for those small armies that might appear behind you all the time.

Is not meant to substitute the system but to complement it, there are times you don´t have a place to hide and in those times as a small country you hide inside a fort and wait for the right oppurtunity to strike back.

 

[Zerodv]

Bumpity bump.