War of attrition - my 2 cents about siege

[pppp]

siege - noun
1.
a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling those inside to surrender.
"Verdun had withstood a siege of ten weeks"

It is somewhat weird to me that most talks about siege focus on assault rather than on cutting off supplies. Perhaps it is so because mechanics does not allow to really cut off supplies.
Looking for IRL examples it was always so attackers destroyed and occupied suburbs where most of agricultural and industrial production was located while defenders hid inside walls.
The idea is to enforce difference between keep and suburb area by making keep area costly and not suitable for production while very easy to defend and by making suburb area way easier to raid. That will also let the defenders keep most of valuables and reduce losses while allowing attackers to hinder progress, making outcome less binary. A determined attacker still can block any development for extended period of time causing economic collapse of attacked village.

Implementation:
Create new kind of claim - "Keep claim"/"Castle claim". The claim will emanate from village idol so no new structure is needed. Managing size of keep claim will be dane trough the same interface as personal claim except expanding it comes at no cost. Alternatively it can be managed via field cairns. Keep claim cannot extend outside village claim or it will not affect unclaimed tiles (cough, in terms of defense, while still having bad effects) There should be only one keep claim per village (disputable). Keep area will have significantly increased authority drain compared to regular village claim. It will be not possible to grow any crops, trees and keep animals on keep claim, except for short periods (for example implemented as not eating or troughs not being functional). Placing certain structures should be restricted, the list including kilns, tarkilns, ovens, smelters, crucibles, windmills (questionable), mineholes (that will suck, up to discussion) and porticos and charterstones too. Extending a keep claim over a forbidden structure will make the structure not functional.

Pclaim siege difficulty should be the same as suburb area (generic village area) to prevent abuse. Keep claim takes priority over pclaim (or can not overlap with pclaims at all).
Changing size of keep claim should come with cooldown timer, 24 hours at least, maybe more.

It's quite obvious that defenders will try to have multiple production villages to keep making progress during siege. It is up to the attacker to find and destroy them all. It's not a hearthvault anymore. Restricting fast travel structures to suburb area will help to prevent smuggling. Both portico and charterstone might need a drying period of 24 hours to prevent ninja porticos.

It's up to discussion how much underground industrial villages are hated and how much should they be screwed in the process. It will be always possible to have another, underground idol to cover mine with keep claim. Keep claim should prevent building a minehole from above.

Disclaimer: please fix combat first before attempting any meaningful changes to siege.

[Archiplex]

I might be a little confused after reading, so let me summarize what I THINK it suggested, so you can confirm:


1. A "keep" claim is introduced. Keep claims are the 'hard to raid' aspect of villages, benefitting from all the best parts of siege defenses currently, but any industry or production in the keep is halted (farms, machines, etc). In essence, the keep claim is the 'treasury' of a village.

2. Due to this, village claims and personal claims are weakened in power (read: able to be sieged easily)

The idea being that an enemy can 'siege' a village by taking control of the means of production (Or more realistically, destroy it all), but not the 'treasures' of a village without significantly increasing the effort needed, as keep claims are hard to raid.

Here's some of my takes on the idea:

1. It will not introducing 'siege over several days'. Realistically what this means is that enemies will roll into a town, destroy walls until they reach the "production" threshold, and then destroy all the kilns, smelteries, etc. they can- killing anyone who couldn't retreat into the keep, and running off with a few scraps. This'll definitely set villages back, and might even significantly cripple some.
2. As personal claims can exist outside of villages, this means hermits are shafted greatly until they can build a village claim. Either this is acceptable, or simply put, a personal claim that does not belong to a village is automatically a 'keep' claim, and a village cannot expand over another keep claim if one already exists (But a character would be able to toggle off whether theirs is a keep or not to allow other villages to expand over them, for the situation of large communal plots.


There's some upsides to this; It's rather larpy in the concept that peasants will flock to a keep when they can in order to protect themselves from raiders- something somewhat realistic to irl sieges, and it also completely bombs "communal style" villages, as communal plots are no longer a better defense mechanism than a centralized village (which is nice, IMO;).

The downsides of course is that it makes raiding and destroying things easier, but perhaps that is both a goal and welcome to the game- as long as people have a stockpile of things they can rely on for backup and rebuilding, losing your outer resources wouldn't be so crushing.

My only suggestion to add to this is that Archery Towers could only be constructed inside Keep claims. Otherwise, I like it, but my opinion is meaningless as I have never raided anyone, and would probably prize the opinion of someone more experienced with siege mechanics over my own.
Also, perhaps it should just have it's own idol to make something a keep claim, and that keep claim overrides personal claim keeps.

[pppp]

Some clarifications:
- personal claims were always considered lesser to village claims, it's ok if they offer less protection, IMHO.
- outer area being "easier to raid" was not intended to mean "free for a fresh naked alt", there still should be a place for archery towers and other siege-related structures, it should more or less satisfy "siege is too hard" party demands, if they can ever stop making demands, but there was no intention to make it effortless.
- what structure defines keep claim is a technicality, but IMHO the village idol should always be inside and it is already there, so putting that additional function on it may just save development effort (unless it does not).

[Archiplex]

Some clarifications:
- outer area being "easier to raid" was not intended to mean "free for a fresh naked alt", there still should be a place for archery towers and other siege-related structures, it should more or less satisfy "siege is too hard" party demand.

I think the best way to make this work is to change the 'charging' times of various siege weaponry to be able to deal with claim levels. Pclaims without a keep would only take an hour or so, Vclaims should take an odd 8hrs, and Kclaims 16, with keeps taking 24 hours.

An additional amount of time should be added based off the wall:

Stone fences should add +1 hour, Palisades 4, Brick walls 8.

[MrPunchers]

Yes lemme waste 2 weeks of my life in a game.

[jorb]

Claim magic that shuts down production, intended need for multiple villages.

Miss me with that shit, fam. Sorry.

[shubla]

Claim magic that shuts down production, intended need for multiple villages.

Miss me with that shit, fam. Sorry.

Yeah, because it can probably be logically proven that good siege system is impossible!

[pppp]

Claim magic that shuts down production, intended need for multiple villages.

Miss me with that shit, fam. Sorry.

You are reading it wrong. Even going this style, it's claim magic that allows defenders to choose between gain and safety, more precisely to define zones of gain and zones of safety.
You are not going to see people taking risks if you do not lure them into that with solid rewards.

[SaltyCrate]

I see no concrete explanation of how the "easier to raid" siege of pclaims and suburbs would work and that is like 95% of the problem there, not the particular keep mechanics. Depending on how you envision it to work it most probably would either make keep claims pointless (if the siege of pclaims is hard) or obnoxious (if the siege of pclaims is easy). Either way I am almost 100% sure that siege scenarios and base planning would not work the way you think they should.

[pppp]

There is little room for base planning going unexpected way. With keep claim disabling most of activities except holding valuables to rebuild, most activity will stay as it is, outside of the keep area. Maybe some siege engines or siege materials will be kept inside. Maybe it can be abused for defending icicles, if keep claim is allowed to cover natural wonders. (better not) Maybe it can be used to protect mineholes or become vulnerable by covering a minehole.
Certainly it will change psychology of defence though, so people would try to pack as much valuable things inside as they can. The real change will be spreading industry between alliance bases, or keeping redundant high q structures in different places. There might be a problem with mine level 9 industry vaults.

It should change siege scenarios to repeatedly wiping industrial parts of opponent villages in expectation they will fall behind and give up. It is about war of attrition after all. It can be expected factions will place a lot of redundant low q structures in random places as decoys, hoping the attacker will give up chasing that one true kiln. Attrition works both ways.

It does not matter what exactly means "easier to raid". Practically every system, including ones to be invented in the future can be tweaked to be either easier or harder. As a basic example consider varied drying time, soak value, damage per tile moved (ram), material costs. Manipulating any these parameters can make siege easier or harder.