City Occupation

Another idea would be to change what the seige does. Instead of destroying the city when a seige is over it weakens the city to where its easier to capture. The seige could kill the soldiers in the city but not a lot because that would be unfair. But it instead of destroying the city it would only make it easier to capture.

I don't want buildings destroyed here! the whole reason for this was to have a way to hit someone where it hurts WITHOUT them loosing lots of valuble pop which will take months to rebuild!

I say keep it simple:  occupation of a city is the same as occupying a square, except it gives you control of the city's trade and prevents new military units from being recruited.  The occupying force then has the ability to manually ship all the resources to other cities (an operation which in future can be intercepted by other parties) and the defending party cannot mount an internal military revolt.  However, diplomatic operations continue as normal, and once diplomats can be attached to armies, assassination attempts can be made on occupying commanders.  And regardless of any manual intervention, regular automatic revolts make holding a city prohibitively expensive on anything but the very short term.  As an added kindness, disallow the occupying force access to as many resources as fit in the vault.

Occupation then becomes a favorable way to commandeer economic output, especially lucrative when large undefended stockpiles are found.  But defenses include a healthy military that enjoys full benefit of the walls and ability to limit and/or delay the benefit of an occupation.

With a mechanism this simple, think of all the means left to the vassal's disposal (depending on varying amounts of foreknowledge, quick reaction, or preparation):  ship away all the horses then disband all the caravans before the occupying force arrives (occupation will spend a long time/sustain high losses while facilitating all that transportation);  while caravan count is limited, tie them all up in long-distance drops of 1 stone; ship all high-value resources to another location before occupation; keep resource stockpiles at a single city constantly defended by multiple others; intercept (or have allies intercept) caravans sending goods back to the occupying force's home; blockade your own city for the same purpose; tie up all the resources in construction and production queues (which can still be controlled even after the occupying force arrives); ship away all gold then mess with taxation to ensure no monetary profit; attack or have other allies attack the occupation from other cities; and I'm sure there are others...

And yet it's still worthwhile a stratagem, because if the target is sloppy and/or loaded, you can get a quick payoff by holding a short term occupation just to clean out the resources.  Unprotected gold is an especially lucrative hit-and-run since it only requires a very short occupation and one caravan available.  But what you won't do is hold the city over a long-term basis or repeatedly (at least very frequently).  Those revolts will trash your troops and give you no experience, and there's nothing to gain by sticking around...especially if the taxation is low.

I guess I wasn't overly explicit about this point, but the attacker would control caravan production.  It was implied in that he controls trade.  The occupied player still owns the city and can do anything he wants with it except: trade/ship resources, produce or destroy caravans, and form armies.  He can even still queue troops to tie up resources--he just doesn't get the troops until the occupying force leaves.  Everything else works as implicitly/intuitively defined.  The occupied player still owns the city, so he can set taxes, build/destroy stuff (except caravans), queue resources, queue troops, build and use diplomats (including recalling troops in the field which would then attack the occupying forces on return), control sovereignty, cast/recast spells, etc.  The occupying player can take liquid resources using existing caravans, or build caravans to do it.

You can send already thieves to steal your own resources now, so having the city occupied would be no different.  Another point I didn't clarify was attacking an occupying force and how the wall applies, and again, the normal/default behavior works and makes sense...the occupying army gets the benefit of the wall just the same as friendly troops would.


Edited by HonoredMule - 26 Jan 2011 at 04:49

HonoredMule wrote: I say keep it simple:  occupation of a city is the same as occupying a square, except it gives you control of the city's trade and prevents new military units from being recruited.  The occupying force then has the ability to manually ship all the resources to other cities (an operation which in future can be intercepted by other parties) and the defending party cannot mount an internal military revolt.  However, diplomatic operations continue as normal, and once diplomats can be attached to armies, assassination attempts can be made on occupying commanders.  And regardless of any manual intervention, regular automatic revolts make holding a city prohibitively expensive on anything but the very short term.  As an added kindness, disallow the occupying force access to as many resources as fit in the vault. Occupation then becomes a favorable way to commandeer economic output, especially lucrative when large undefended stockpiles are found.  But defenses include a healthy military that enjoys full benefit of the walls and ability to limit and/or delay the benefit of an occupation. With a mechanism this simple, think of all the means left to the vassal's disposal (depending on varying amounts of foreknowledge, quick reaction, or preparation):  ship away all the horses then disband all the caravans before the occupying force arrives (occupation will spend a long time/sustain high losses while facilitating all that transportation);  while caravan count is limited, tie them all up in long-distance drops of 1 stone; ship all high-value resources to another location before occupation; keep resource stockpiles at a single city constantly defended by multiple others; intercept (or have allies intercept) caravans sending goods back to the occupying force's home; blockade your own city for the same purpose; tie up all the resources in construction and production queues (which can still be controlled even after the occupying force arrives); ship away all gold then mess with taxation to ensure no monetary profit; attack or have other allies attack the occupation from other cities; and I'm sure there are others... And yet it's still worthwhile a stratagem, because if the target is sloppy and/or loaded, you can get a quick payoff by holding a short term occupation just to clean out the resources.  Unprotected gold is an especially lucrative hit-and-run since it only requires a very short occupation and one caravan available.  But what you won't do is hold the city over a long-term basis or repeatedly (at least very frequently).  Those revolts will trash your troops and give you no experience, and there's nothing to gain by sticking around...especially if the taxation is low.

He's with H?.