thealien_83 said:
I have to agree with the voices saying "Hardly". The citizens of most medieval'esque kingdoms are probably barely even aware of what's going on "in the grand scale", and as such they are likely to be relatively happy so long as they don't have enemy armies marching around in their homes and battles being fought on their wheatfields and whatnot.
So if you are conducting an aggressive war then they don't have to suffer for it (in fact might indeed be happy you're showing those heathens/heretics/dirty foreigners/pointy eared nonces/greedy stunties/creepy vampires/etc a thing or two, righteous as you are!) and would probably not care too much. Warfare is a fact of life, only need to complain about it when it affects you negatively, right?
Granted, they'd probably be unhappy about levies being raised and such, and we can assume that the longer a war goes on the more manpower is required for reinforcements and such, and thus, war weariness.
I dunno. Rambling randomly. I don't even know exactly what affects war weariness, just that it pops up and bothers me now and then.
Cheers!
Maybe war weariness should be as it is now, plus weariness for cities with units in their radii? Then its specific cities getting upset for very viceral reasons? Length of war means money, this is right, and so excess taxes, etc, make people pissed, i get that.
But war weariness still does not force players to fight battles in the field, not unless the war weariness approched levels that would make the city close to rioting (and switching sides anyway) or in effect functioning equally as a lost city. This is hard becuase a lost city ALSO means another city for the enemy, as well as a fortified position.
Cities need to be LESS defenseable then terrain PERIOD in order to effect this outcome. Now, if you think about it, having cities be ALL AROUND less defenseable would make it equally easy to "retake" if it did get "Taken". So city defense as a whole becomes less important. I also think that city defence should EBB AND FLOW throughout the game. IN RL ancient eras, city defense was paramount. THen other tactics were developed, where armed combat in fields of battle was more important, then it again returned to the city, then fields, then city, ad infanitum. Each technological period saw a switch generally from one to the other. We live now, in a period where battles are not going to be fought in cities (Non-guerilla conflicts here). Battles will be fought with massive armies (when nukes arnt employed) on large battle fields. THe only "street combat" to occur is occupation forces, and insurgencies and the like. Now, 150 years ago, this wasnt true, seiges were common, the civil war is a perfect example. During WWII it depended on the terrain, towns were more of a location for staging areas, and front lines occasionally went THROUGH them, but never wholey were "right on the front steps" of cities. Even Bastgone's line of defence was OUTSIDE of the city, (the radius perhaps, but not the city itself - which still got the crap bombed out of it because of its staging importance and the attempt to subjugate its surrender).
If technology made cities more and less defenseable over time, i think we would see an amalgum of tactics. There would be points where technology and tactics would demand defending at the point of the city, and other times in which it was more important to fight the enemy in the field. I think many buildings should add negative modifiers (penalties) to city defence, as the city gets bloated and less able to defend itself properly. Over time, when things get "too bad" a building will come along to mitigate those modifiers and restore the city to fortification status. Most city's werent forts, remember, but a few had to be both. Throughout history.
-Qes