Fort, Motte, & Bailey

I'm a little confused on how the Castle/Fort upgrades work. If you build a Fort, Motte & Bailey and then build a keep, will it benefit the keep or the future castles at all? And if you do the wall upgrades while building up your castle, does the final Fortification have any of those upgrades?

Hello yoyolll,

The Fort upgrades should be considered temporary at best. You can either a upgrade a Fort's wall defences or you can upgrade directly to a Keep and get all the benefits of a Fort, Motte and Bailey plus the strength of a Keep. The same goes for any later fortifications (Keep, Castle, Citadel, Fortress) and their wall defences/towers.

Personally I never upgrade the wall defences. I almost always upgrade Forts directly to Keeps as soon as possible. The only exceptions are that, in certain provinces, I may build the Fort and Motte or the Keep and Curtain Walls. I never build any of the tower upgrades. The Fort and Motte is cheap and goes up in one year. It's advantage is that it provides a height advantage for your troops in a siege. I would only build this as a temporary solution on the front lines if I think a province is going to be attacked. I build Curtain Walls around Keeps in bleak border provinces that I don't intend to upgrade any further.

Another reason you may want to build the upgrades, as a sort of an exploit, is that if the province is conquered and the Castle is razed down one level by the conquerors, it may be that only an upgrade will be "knocked off" as it were. This is better than having a Keep brought back down to a Fort.

^ ^ ^ What he said.


Unless you have a Fort/Keep in a province that either: 1.) you expect to be attacked in the very near future, and/or: 2.) you have no intention of upgrading any further, there's almost no reason to build any of the castle add-ons. In the long run, simply upgrading to the next castle level is a better and more worthwhile investment.

Which means I've been wasting my money. Thanks for the answers though.

The only reason to do one of these 'intermediate' upgrades is that some units are dependent on an upgraded fort (in VI, iirc) so you might get them sooner if you can't afford a keep. Gnerally I don't bother, just go straight to the next level. Intermediate upgrades cost you more gold and more time in the long run.

I also believe that it helps your governor to attain "builder" traits faster. This has no proof of course. Just speculation based on playing the game for years. You can do it yourselves by playing 2 campaigns for certain amount of turns, one skipping upgrades and the other with upgrades. Twenty turns are good enough.

A motte in Norway, Denmark and Sweden enables you to build Viking Landsmen. Not the best unit ever but building requirement are really, quite worthwile if you need axemen and do not play as the Danes.

Curtain Wall does boost the defense of a keep in significant way since it implies the replacement of the outter wood palissade by a stone wall so that the enemy can only enter through the gate if it has no siege equipement. Can be handy from time to time and only costs 200 florins and only takes two turns to build.

Other improvements are not really worth the trouble and the time even though assaulting a castle with catapult towers can be costly even if you have siege equipment (the catapult in the castle are much more accurate at least when the AI uses them so be careful with your general) ...

Noone has mentioned the number of losses sustained during a seige. I was under the impression that if you were beseiged, having fort improvements would lower the numbers and increase the lenght of the seige. Also I seem to recall something about other improvements had less chance to be destroyed? Does anybody know?



/KotR

Originally Posted by Knight of the Rose

Noone has mentioned the number of losses sustained during a seige. I was under the impression that if you were beseiged, having fort improvements would lower the numbers and increase the lenght of the seige. Also I seem to recall something about other improvements had less chance to be destroyed? Does anybody know?



/KotR

As far as I know improvements have no bearing on the losses incurred during a siege. On the campaign map, the difference between castles is garrison size. Upgrades are the same as castles, it's difficult to explain unless you've been involved in modding, but the Fort is referred to internally as "CASTLE". All upgrades (including whole new castles such as the Keep, Castle, Citadel and Fortress) are referred to as "CASTLE2", "CASTLE3", "CASTLE4". When you build a Fort (CASTLE) you have the option to upgrade to "CASTLE2" followed by "CASTLE3" (Upgrades) or you can jump to "CASTLE4" (the Keep). This is a simple matter of building dependencies. To summarise, all "Castles" and their upgrades are actually Castles. There is no difference. What gives the illusion of the upgrades is the "jumps" i.e. from CASTLE to CASTLE4 to CASTLE7 etc.

Due to a typo in the game files, building the Demi-culverin towers upgrade to the Citadel gives you early access to the Master Foundry, keeps you from having to build the Fortress.

I generally don't do those upgrades. I can see their use in provinces that are threatened, but if my castles are being attacked or sieged, I'm doing something else wrong.

how about after you've built a fortress? is it best to go ahead and add the upgrades then?

Sure, no harm in doing that. When you reach fortress level you're settled anyway, I guess.

I wouldn't build the cannon towers because they have a nasty habit of hitting your own walls and troops during a siege.

If the enemy make it as far as the gates, the cannon towers will keep firing and hitting the gates. The same goes for catapult and ballista towers.

Castle sieges are complete bloodbaths, so either way there's gonna be a lot of losses. I disagree, Asai, I think cannon towers do a lot more good than bad. Also, what's the deal with CASTLE4_1 kind of thing? What does the second number mean?

what's the deal with CASTLE4_1 kind of thing? What does the second number mean?

The first number is the castle level (eg fort, keep, castle etc), the second is the upgrade.

eg plain fort = 1_0, fort + motte = 1_1, fort + motte + bailey = 1_2 - this system is used to define the maps for castle assault battles. Of coursee it's slightly different in VI

Originally Posted by Asai Nagamasa

As far as I know improvements have no bearing on the losses incurred during a siege. On the campaign map, the difference between castles is garrison size. Upgrades are the same as castles, it's difficult to explain unless you've been involved in modding, but the Fort is referred to internally as "CASTLE". All upgrades (including whole new castles such as the Keep, Castle, Citadel and Fortress) are referred to as "CASTLE2", "CASTLE3", "CASTLE4". When you build a Fort (CASTLE) you have the option to upgrade to "CASTLE2" followed by "CASTLE3" (Upgrades) or you can jump to "CASTLE4" (the Keep). This is a simple matter of building dependencies. To summarise, all "Castles" and their upgrades are actually Castles. There is no difference. What gives the illusion of the upgrades is the "jumps" i.e. from CASTLE to CASTLE4 to CASTLE7 etc.

Originally Posted by macsen rufus

The first number is the castle level (eg fort, keep, castle etc), the second is the upgrade.

eg plain fort = 1_0, fort + motte = 1_1, fort + motte + bailey = 1_2 - this system is used to define the maps for castle assault battles. Of coursee it's slightly different in VI

Ok but you two contradict each other.

As far as I can see, Asai is saying CASTLE2 and CASTLE3 are upgraded forts, and CASTLE4 is the keep.

Unless it's different in-game and in the text files?

In the .lbm files, they're numbered keep1, keep1b, keep1c, keep2, keep3 etc.

Ahh, I'm sorry this is getting needlessly complicated.

Originally Posted by yoyolll

I disagree, Asai, I think cannon towers do a lot more good than bad.

I've never seen their benefit, perhaps you could enlighten me?

Originally Posted by yoyolll

Ok but you two contradict each other.

As far as I can see, Asai is saying CASTLE2 and CASTLE3 are upgraded forts, and CASTLE4 is the keep.

Unless it's different in-game and in the text files?

In the .lbm files, they're numbered keep1, keep1b, keep1c, keep2, keep3 etc.

Ahh, I'm sorry this is getting needlessly complicated.

There is no contradiction. The difference is battle map and campaign map. The numbers you are referring to, instruct the battle map as to which type of fortification to use in a given battle. It is exactly how Macsen describes it. The numbers I was referring to are used only for the campaign map technology tree.

The .lbms you refer to are different also. These are the battlemap fortification, texture images.

Another reason you may want to build the upgrades, as a sort of an exploit, is that if the province is conquered and the Castle is razed down one level by the conquerors, it may be that only an upgrade will be "knocked off" as it were. This is better than having a Keep brought back down to a Fort.

oooooohhhhhh... I wondered what the hell was the pattern... like 90% of the time it's downgraded but 10% not, couldn't make head or tails of that but makes complete sense now...

I always hated this feature btw, castles are the one thing that should not get downgraded by conquest. This is especially sore if there is hardly any battle going on and the defenders are starved out. Exactly how is looting supposed to make a big castle into a smaller castle or a stone keep into a wooden fort? I'd understand if the downgrade happened when the whole building was actually demolished in a siege battle, and I'd understand if you had to repair the castle if damage was done, but the whole thing getting sacked with starving out a couple of defenders...? Hate that. Oh well.

I always hate when I'm one turn off a huge build, like a citadel, and then some marauding AI attack the province and force me into the castle. Next turn the province is relieved by my armies, but the work on the Citadel can start all over. No battle took place, but somehow the intruders got away with an awful lot of stones. Bugger!

/KotR

Here's how I see it:

Fort - no upgrades are worth it unless they let you build more units (vikings)

Keep - curtain wall worth building as it's fast and provides an extra, mandatory gatehouse as well as stone walls. Balsta towers not worth it, they suck.

Castle - upgrade to extra walls and catapult towers. cat. towers are very worthwhile, as is the extra wall surrounding the whole castle. this means they have to break 2 walls to get to you or two gate houses, causing significant losses. Also, the build time for a Citadel is a LONG time, and if you get attacked while it's getting built you want to have decent defenses.

Citadel - Barbican unless you are planning to go Fortress on it. If you are, just go straight for the beast and save yourself some time. Barb is pretty cool, but takes a while to build, which could just bring you that much closer to the Fortress.

Citadels are pretty good to defend, as are fully improved Castles. a 1 x unit of Halb's, 1x spears, 1 x heavy infantry 1x xbow/arb or even better, Handgunners/Arq's and it's going to be very tough to dislodge you. You'll also be able to hold out a long time with such a small garrison.

There is a crucial difference in building the first upgrade in the fort level IIRC; this is that the whole castle is set up on a hill. If you jump from Fort to Keep without building the first upgrade (the second is irrelevant to that), then your castle does forever stay on flat ground. However if you do it it stays elevated in all its susequent incarnations.

Seriously??? That's absurd!

Just try it out. All other upgrades past the keep level add rings of walls or defenses like the ballista towers, the barbican etc. The only one that sets your castle on a hill is the first upgrade of the fort level.

I personally dont find it absurd; it kinda makes sense to build up upgrade upon upgrade to the original location the fort was set on, as this is most likely what it aimed to represent.

I never knew that. I assume this effect is hardcoded somewhere on the Motte building name, any idea on how this affects modded campaigns or the Viking Invasion?

Good find!

Just guessing, but there must exist a trigger atfer building the first fort upgrade (or as you say the upgrade is the trigger) that activates the elevated series of castle maps.

As far as i know in the VI campaign (and various medieval era mods i've played) it works the same.

That's odd. The game must keep track of the upgrades that were built even when superseded by a keep...

I'm guessing it triggers on the Motte building then. There are no upgrades for the pre-Fort "castles" in VI. Maybe the game sets a variable on the Motte being built and the map is chosen from the hilltop set after.

I guess one test would be on provinces that have a pre-built Keep at the start. This should be flat, but if a Curtain Wall is built, does it become a hilltop Keep? This would verify that it triggers on the first possible upgrade, or just a Motte.

Originally posted by drone
This should be flat...

Not necessariliy, for example Constantinople is set on a hill although it starts as a Citadel. The map series choice have been pre-made but apparently it was still a choice as to what series of maps was chosen.