The Citadel

It might be a good idea to start putting some thought on which buildings are we going to add to the game. At the moment there are no buildings but the base value ones (it has to be like that for balancing purposes), but eventually we'll want to add them back.

Of course, we could just put all the vanilla stuff back in and run with it. The result would be a pretty crazy Westeros after just a century or so, but it might make for more interesting/fun gameplay. We could do this for our first release, if nothing else. If we decide to change it, we could still leave this option for people who don't care about stagnant Westeros and prefer an experience close to vanilla as some kind of "sub-mod".

Another idea would be to leave more or less the buildings as they are in vanilla, just nerfed. This would keep Westeros recogniseable even after a lot of time has passed, but might make buildings not worth building.

So how about changing the approach? There are still pretty useful things that would let Westeros still "look" somewhat stagnant, but they'd nonetheless give your domain great benefits. For instance:

- Bigger and better defenses for your castles (this is kind of a given, and we could just use the vanilla buildigs).
- Decrease the reinforcement time for your levies (this would give you a lot of staying powers in wars without actually giving you more troops).
- Add more troops of the stronger type, while (maybe) decreasing a little the weaker ones (for instance, you get more heavy infantry or more knights instead of light infantry). These troops make you stronger while keeping your manpower more or less static. We could also even try implement a specialisation system where you can focus on a certain type of troops in a settlement at the cost of forfeiting other types (a castle could specialise in cavalry, another in pikemen...) by making highest-tier buildings mutually exclusive.
- Get ships. This should probably be very expensive (and limited to coastal provinces, of course).
- Some sort of Winter preparations. This should be left until we implement Winter mechanics.

Any more ideas?

for the first release i think we should make it vanilla buildings untill we get a aplha/beta version up

but there should be ports to increase trade icome/tax

We can add some culture AND terrain filtered buildings:

Gold Mine for mountains or hills for westerlanders.
Iron mines the same for ironborns.
Vineyards in plains for reachmen.
And so on. Even make chains for each one of them.

Cabe, I think we should first decide on what do we want to put in initial version. Making new building system will take time. Do we have it? If yes, we should go for new system with options you presented + additional ones (eg. Rodri's culture specific or very strong and prestigious buildings who have a tradeoff of costing you serious amounts of money to upkeep).
But if we want to release initial version asap we need to focus on nerfing existing buildings.

I personally prefer first option bc all time & effort put into adapting old system would be, in the end, wasted as we introduce new system.

-Rodri- wrote:We can add some culture AND terrain filtered buildings:

Gold Mine for mountains or hills for westerlanders.
Iron mines the same for ironborns.
Vineyards in plains for reachmen.
And so on. Even make chains for each one of them.

Good idea but vineyards are more valid for hills (&Dornish beside reachmen)

ThePiglet wrote:Cabe, I think we should first decide on what do we want to put in initial version. Making new building system will take time. Do we have it? If yes, we should go for new system with options you presented + additional ones (eg. Rodri's culture specific or very strong and prestigious buildings who have a tradeoff of costing you serious amounts of money to upkeep).
But if we want to release initial version asap we need to focus on nerfing existing buildings.

I personally prefer first option bc all time & effort put into adapting old system would be, in the end, wasted as we introduce new system.

-Rodri- wrote:We can add some culture AND terrain filtered buildings:

Gold Mine for mountains or hills for westerlanders.
Iron mines the same for ironborns.
Vineyards in plains for reachmen.
And so on. Even make chains for each one of them.

Good idea but vineyards are more valid for hills (&Dornish beside reachmen)

As of now, I believe the plan is to release the first version when most of the things in the "To Do" sticky are completed. At the very least, we won't release anything until patch 1.05 is out; there are rumors that it might come out in two weeks or so, but since this is not assured and since we seem to have a few people eager to do things we might as well begin planning for some new buildings. Still, if we kept the vanilla buildings for our first release we wouldn't really have to spend so much time; it would literally be a matter of copy-pasting them.

Patch is due April 17 IIRC

-Rodri- wrote:We can add some culture AND terrain filtered buildings:

You could also have dynasty specific buildings. I don't know if there could be any use for it, but it's possible.

Just to clarify, when we are speaking of stagnant Westeros and buildings, we basically mean that we do not want buildings to influence income and perhaps the number (not the type) of troops in any meaningful way? Might be good to straighten that out in the beginning

Based on that, I think all of your ideas sound very good. It would be interesting to know the limits of what buildings can actually do. I am spontaneously thinking of buildings that affect things like your spy-master or chancellor's chances of success in their missions (embassies, thieves guild), perhaps an alchemist guild doing something with sieges, Rookeries influencing LOS and fog of war aorund the province, perhaps a Dragonpit doing god knows what... just some crazy ideas, I guess alot could be tied in with events aswell.

I guess the overarching theme would be buildings that give various advantages (Prestige, information, chance of success, etc) without doing too much to the economic core (gold & troops) of the realm.

Im just a tester and I realise this has been discussed heavily before, so I dont want to unintentionally rip up old discussions.

BUT: after playing the mod a while now I am seriously missing building buildings. Playing as the north it can get tedious not being able to upgrade and somewhat upgrade your realm. I realise that Westeros is quite stagnant, but that should not offset some buildings. I think it is porbable that the lords of the land at least upgraded their castles in peace times, and built new things If they could. The big difference to Euopean middle ages is that there is no new technology. But you should be able to for instance build a city as the Dragon conqueror built King's Landing (admittedly a one-time happening), but it represents the fact that some things are upgraded.

Maybe exempting some high-end buildings could work? I like the fact that you can build new holdings, I just feel that the vanilla system should be used (exploited) more. Such as the region specific buildings would add a great flavour to the game. Perhaps Tourney lists for the reach, Vale, Riverlands, Jinetes for Dorne and Italian-type buildings for the north? (pikemen, fewer heavy cav.)

Its not the intention to disable all buildings for the actual release, we just disabled everything so we can test troop strength easier.

Okey, thanks for clearing it out =)

Would it be possible to give certain regions specific buildings that cannot be built anywhere else? Like Bloody Gate. Would add some for authenticity.

Komodo wrote:Would it be possible to give certain regions specific buildings that cannot be built anywhere else? Like Bloody Gate. Would add some for authenticity.

We already have that.

On playing the mod a bit without buildings I actually like how streamlined it is. I would spend a great deal of my actual playtime in vanilla micromanaging buildings, which got tedious, and detracts from other elements of the game. So if I had a vote, I'd go for a simple system with few buildings, but add upgrades. So that it would be possible to grow your cities/castles but not turn a backwater into the new King's Landing. I also like the idea of mutually exclusive upgrades, giving choice and individuality.

How about having 5 building chains (instead of vanilla's like 10)?

sounds good to me actually...

Maybe elaborate on these chains?

For example, one castle chain could start with a militia barracks producing light inf, archers and a few heavy inf. You could choose then to upgrade it to specialize in heavy inf, pikes, or say archers. I didn't see anything like this in vanilla though. Is it possible to have multiple upgrade paths? Or another way would be to have 3 mutually exclusive building chains, with the unused 2 being somehow made unbuildable when the choice is made. Issue number #1 is the AI.. if it made the same choices all the time it could be easily countered.

On a related but unrelated topic.. in my own modification I drastically increased the effect of combat tactics (like X 3), and further increased specific buffs that certain tactics have vs others (for example stand fast having a 50% modifier vs charge). Now you have something that could really be fun (and I think realistic if balanced right). An English longbow heavy army could (and did) wipe the floor on a French cavalry heavy force in the hundred years' war. I prefer the dynamics this approach brings.. where it isn't just a straight numbers game that can be predicted before it starts.

So connecting these ideas together is the idea that focusing on a specific unit type in your building choices (say pikes) would give you the opportunity for more powerful tactics, since it is more likely pike-based tactics would proc, and since pikes are a much bigger % of your force you get way more bang for yer buck with those tactics. On the other hand you may just get decimated by a force not dominated by cavalry, or because your idiot general chose something stupid (also very realistic).

Whatever gets done, my hope would be that it reflects in general what you consider important. All modifications I have made in games I craft to maximize the fun. And the fun is spending more time on things I like to do and less on tedious things. Managing buildings tended to be one of the grindy, tedious things in CK2.

SO what is the heart and soul of this mod? That's where you want people spending their focus and time. I'm gonna put my vote in for the plotting and scheming element. If there is anything that defines AGOT it's the scheming.. I mean cmon, The game of thrones=the plotting and scheming to get to the top. I really hope that plots become a MAJOR part of gameplay.. not just a little side game. There's a lot of possibility there. I hope it gets maximized.

Another idea for handling buildings, not so much as 'buildings' but as measures of the economic/military might of the province: I remember in the CK1 AGOT mod that buildings were destroyed during sieges, occupations, and rebellions. I think this accurately reflected the cost of war. It also presents an opportunity to do sieges in an interesting way, by having events for the breaking down of walls/downsizing of castles. Economic upgrades then should be quickly destroyed by prolonged war in the region. The amount of troops a region can field is linked to the manpower and health of the region.. thus sacking and ruining your enemies land should in the long term cut off their manpower/economic power. Vanilla CK2 has this endless reinforcement thing going on. I don't like it.

So by handling buildings in this way you could have one representing the outlying agricultural area (villages), one for the core (castle, town, chapel), and another that represents manpower more directly. Events then could be tweaked to dictate how easily these buildings would be downgraded by enemy forces. Choices in events could allow players to choose NOT to pillage (gaining honor or some nice guy traits).

One should be able to make really big Town if one have the power or Money. If lets say The Lannister get the Iron Throne but Want to make Casterly Rock as big as Kings Landing, they should be able to make al sorts of building like Grand Temple for the Seven and, other Greater buildings of power and prestige? No?

I'm not so sure about that one: it'd both be a major (and risky) departure from tradition, and a recipe for trouble further down the road. It is "King's Landing", after all. Apart from the symbolism of the whole city and its history, the Great Sept of Baelor, the Red Keep, the Iron Throne, and everything else of significance in the city, it might not necessarily be the best idea to go around using up the treasury to build up cities to compare to your new capital that you plan to hand off to blood relatives. Who might, say, have a legitimate claim to your throne.