SKM Development: The Fortress

We’re still in theory-crafting, which is nice because it doesn’t require me to start having to crunch numbers too hard.

Anyway, we decided last time that the stronghold mechanic was going to be rejiggered from a fortress in every hex ‘domain’ to a stronghold granting control over the surrounding adjacent hexes.

We also decided that a stronghold should provide a long term investment option and give a bigger return on our “Security Value” aspect then hiring huge swaths of soldiers.

We’ll need to revisit the specifics of that when I start shoring up actual values for ‘Security Value’ and the like (I’m toying with the idea that adjacent fortresses provide a synergy effect to one another to incentivize some crazy guys to build them everywhere).

However, that’s the ‘macro.’ At the micro level, we still have to build the sodding things.

ACKS, again true to form, gives us a dizzying array of indepth, detailed and ala carte options. We can customize our strongholds with extra parapets, huge walls (in different heights), moats, dry moats, extra doors, murder holes, arrow slits, battlements, crenulations, interior temple complexes, gatehouses, barbicans, and palisades. About 21 separate differences just for basic stronghold stuff (which got more complex when you started being able to modify doors, gateways, portcullises, cottages, smaller support buildings, and so on).

This is great. If you’ve got one stronghold to worry about. Also perversely, because you needed a stronghold that measured in gold piece value, you could feasibly have defended a hex with a fortress consisting of nothing but a 450ft long 20’ high wall. This is again because my theory is that the stronghold is really a big fancy tax for having the income from the domain.

Also, ironically enough if you have 22,500gp worth of piled dirt in your palisade, that’s just as difficult to upkeep as if you had 22,500 worth of portcullis equipped gatehouses or a tower. This got me thinking to maybe simplify the stronghold component list, and also make it ‘more complex’ by adding on individual upkeep costs for it instead of having it be a base ‘percentage.’ This would make our spreadsheet (which I have to make peace with the fact we’re not getting rid of it) easier. And makes the costs and value of an individual component more obvious.

Also, we can make each component grant Security. This means that while a fortress is being built, it slowly starts to augment the security in the area as opposed to going from nothing to a fully fledged fortress.

And as for a cut off to prevent a player from putting up a rickety 20 foot wall somewhere and claiming the surrounding hexes? We just make a required security value to secure the surrounding hexes.   A reasonable expenditure to secure seven hexes shouldn’t be as bad. Even if you have to spend 20k in gold to do it, it’s a hell of a lot better than needing to spend 157.5k gp to secure a bunch of nearby hexes (or 210gp for wilderness).

And again, by uncoupling its value from money, we can allow for that ‘research tree’ my players are so keen on, without the fear that if they can build portcullises easier then all of a sudden they’re less useful.