Options when defending a settlement

[Jambo]

What might be good is an option to sack your own town before retreating, burning down infrastructure and so on to deprive the enemy of it. A sort of "scorched earth" policy. On the other hand, I don't really think you should ever be able to capture enemy military infrastructure anyway, it just doesn't doesn't make sense, so maybe all such buildings should be eliminated by the game automatically whenever a settlement changes hands.

This is how STW and MTW used to work and believe me, you don't want to back there from an AI point of view. Do you not remember the AI factions knocking each other back into the Stone-age in these two games by repeatedly taking and destroying each other's regions over and over? The human player could better defend their key provinces and this feature wouldn't impact on their empire and so what we had in the end game was chivalric knight based armies vs peasant and spearmen armies.

The method they adopted in Rome was pretty good in this respect, where buildings could be damaged or destroyed, but repairing them took only one turn as opposed to the original time to construct the building from afresh.

[screwtype]

Hmm yes good point. You could get around that easily enough though simply by making it that the infrastructure is only destroyed when the human player takes a settlement. Or you could even make it that the military infrastructure built up in an AI settlement simply isn't accessible to the human player who always has to build his own. But it will be available to the AI again if it retakes the settlement.

But really you raise a good point, which is that the military infrastructure system is pretty silly anyhow. After all, what do you need for training troops? Nothing much but experienced teachers and maybe some spare armour and weapons to train them with.

It would probably make more sense to dump the whole military building paradigm and replace it with something else. Unfortunately, CA seems to be in love with their building paradigm, so I guess we won't be seeing a change any time soon.

[Bob the Insane]

Well infrastructure is not destroyed in RTW when a settlement is taken. Sure things are damaged but things are not destroyed (not sure about that newer sack feature in BI though).

[Sun of Chersonesos]

But really you raise a good point, which is that the military infrastructure system is pretty silly anyhow. After all, what do you need for training troops? Nothing much but experienced teachers and maybe some spare armour and weapons to train them with.

Well i dont think the only thing you need is a teacher and spare armour and weapons, you'd need an area in which to do it in, if they did it in the streets with the teacher then with those men running wild, some civilians are bound to get injured.

[Nathanael]

I don't understand why you think you shouldn't be able to use another factions' buildings - it's not like it's Starcraft or something where the different factions use wildly different technology. A blacksmith is a blacksmith, and a practice range is a practice range, no matter who is using the building. There might be slight variations in amenities and architecture, but the basics are the same.

[screwtype]

I don't understand why you think you shouldn't be able to use another factions' buildings

Because the game is too easy, and if you weren't able to capture all that juicy infrastructure it would be harder.

it's not like it's Starcraft or something where the different factions use wildly different technology. A blacksmith is a blacksmith, and a practice range is a practice range, no matter who is using the building. There might be slight variations in amenities and architecture, but the basics are the same.

What I'm saying is that all these different buildings for training different troop types is not realistic. All you need to train troops is a barracks for them to live, some open space for them to practice fighting, and some experienced soldiers to do the training. All these different buildings really only exist to add interest to the game. I mean, take the Romans in RTW. First you can build hastati, then after a few upgrades you can get principes, and after a few more you get triarii. How does this simulate reality? It doesn't. The Romans didn't field armies of hastati, only later adding some principes and after that triari and so on. All the different troops types were available to be trained from the outset, the only cap on availability was cost and equipment availability and so on.

So the building tree is really only there to maintain interest, oh gee, I'm only a few more building upgrades from getting some triarii and I really want to see how good they are and what I can do with them. It has very little if anything to do with the way armies were actually raised.

And therefore there is no reason at all that capturing a foreign city might suddenly allow you to build a bunch of units you couldn't build before, just because it has some buildings that supposedly allow you to do this. I think that is just an absurd mechanic.

[Bob the Insane]

RTR has a nice mechanisim in which barracks are replaced/enhanced as culture and political integration buildings (to abstract the control and eventual domination of the conquroring culture)...

So factions of the same culture can use each other's buildings but when the Romans turn up (for instance) they have to start building up their own infrastructure, government and administration. The first level of building gives you a law boost, the second level gives you some access to the cheapest and lightest local troops and so on... You have to progress to the 4th level before you have Romanized the place sufficiently to build Roman style troops there, but once you do you get to build them all (as long as you have the Stables and Archery ranges to support those troop types).

[Polemists]

This sounds pretty good. I mean yes a blacksmith is a blacksmith. However don't expect the archery range in Antioch to know how to train english longbowmen haha :)