by Händler » Sun Dec 21, 2025 7:36 pm It could be a fun addition to have someone well-versed in the arts of strategy able to utilize their surroundings to lay large traps or - on the bigger scale - create hazards at keypoints stemming from the natural environment that any potential battlefield be affected by - be it a base or some free field.
Examples:
- - Dams and the breaking thereof be used for Floodings, further enabled whenever there is rain. Such that an area can be flooded, potentially flooding open areas, and alternatively an entire area enclosed by walls.
- Fire and Scorched Earth, such that proper arson can be committed where it is due as long as the weather is sunny and dry, mainly to create walls of fire that cannot be passed unscathed, allowing for the entrapment of groups or the temporary blocking of pathways and if the fire be allowed to spread far enough, to burn alive anything that's not fast enough on its feet to evacuate an area. Be it either with a volley of fire arrows or any transporation device on water, land or otherwise with an incinerable payload to detonate at the target destination.
- Infestations and Plagues, where swarms of nasty critters can be released upon an area to spread disease, wither and steal crops. Rats, crows, locusts, just pack a load of decay on a catapult and fire away at the sinners.
- Rocks, Boulders and Avalanches. When someone chooses to do battle in or dwell in rocky mountainous land, the land should be prone to attacks from boulders pushed from hills or in the worse case a whole rock avalanche be released upon them. Furthermore, any rock that is too large to be lifted, be able to be pushed with a little helping hand, and in the scenario that the rock is moving into a slope, the rock shall roll down the slope, striking anything it makes contact with while moving.
- Toxic smoke, fumes and Gases to subject enemies in an area to painful coughing and cause blindness to drive out enemies, such as incorporating the usage of sulfur or quicklime.
As far as "factions" and PvP are concerned in the game, in particular in regards to siege and warfare, I find a few things highly lacking in HnH:
There is no meaningful way to utilize bows in strategic combat. This is alarming, considering that melee combat in large scale combat is only a fallback solution for when ranged units run out of ammo or are otherwise force to engage.
Ranged weapons should, as long as units of people organize properly, be of some relevance.
For example: Allow hearthlings with ranged weapons to organize in formations. As long as within a formation, the 1 hearthling that leads the formation will direct where the squad fires at. This should then, in turn, allow the ranged unit to fire in ways that otherwise are not possible by each of them individually, such as focused shooting of multiple hearthlings at the same target or shooting volleys at specified areas, where usually each bow would simply shoot in the line before them.
This would make archery not 1v1 PvP viable, but it would make it relevant for siege warefare.
Similarly, more defensive structures would be not just fun but I think important to have if kingdoms are to proliferate and compete over land and resources. The attacking side obviously is more motivated and typically advantaged with the victim they chose to prey on. It only seems appropriate that defenders be given tools to harm attackers in mean ways.
Examples:
- - Forts that can be built to be mounted by hearthlings and from where hearthlings enjoy a certain protection from attacks such as from catapults and can shoot with equipped ranged weaponry or alternatively if built beforehand with a pre-attached ballista at hearthlings.
- Firearms, such as flintlocks with 1 ammo capacity and some heavy reloading time in which you have to stand still, to destroy the naivety of anyone who becomes too comfortable in the homes of their armor. An advanced, much more powerful MM*PER variant of what is currently ceiled in power by the Ranger bow, but much more focused not on simply penetrating armor but proactively damaging and destroying armor of the one being shot at.
- Towers full of heated defensive substances and other heated projectiles to be shot. Boiling water, heated sand, fat and even tar to harm not the siege weaponry but those manning them.
They built copper and iron shields, put sand into them, and heated them over hot fire so the sand became red-hot. By means of some mechanism they threw this sand at those who had fought bravest and subjected their victims to most severe suffering. The sand penetrated through the armour into the shirts, burned the body, and it could not be helped [...] they died, going mad with horrible pain, in sufferings piteous and unquenchable.
— Diodorus Siculus, on the 4th century BC Siege of Tyre
