Buff Dungeons, the afterthought building.

We all know dungeons don't get the respect they deserve.

Dungeons are cool things. They're dank and creepy. We love them. Make dungeons great! (I'd say make dungeons great again, but from what I can recall they've never been great)


My proposed changes to strengthen value of dungeons:

- Double dungeon capacity
- Dungeons provide no jobs (prisoners still fill jobs as before)
- When sent on attacks, prisoners suffer regular casualty %'s rather than current setup which is that half return nomatter what
- Allow for prisoners to be gained on defense (this is huge and maybe too much, but think about it)

- New mechanic: Enslavement. Essentially allow a province to switch between the normal small amount of peasants gained on a trad-march, to instead gaining that amount in prisoners. This would allow for the acquiring of prisoners to not be solely tied to casualties inflicted. I see it as a simple toggle button to switch from one to the other, but a more elegant solution could certainly be devised.

- New op / change to kidnap?: Maybe allow the enslavement toggle to effect the results of kidnap? Or introduce a new op to just nab a portion of population for slaves.

Something would also need to be done to adjust the current 'cap' of 1 per 5 regular units. That's obviously a big reason why prisoners aren't sought after is that you usually max out on *usable* prisoners if you are 4x'ing around 3-4% dungeons in all but extreme cases. I dunno...



Dungeons. Give em some love.

Something I came up with in the past...

The Warden

- Every Building houses 2 Prisoners
- Can lead more Mercenaries/Prisoners into combat (Limit of 1 for every 3 regular units, instead of 5)
- Starts with +400 soldiers and +400 specialist credits
- Starts with +400 Prisoners (200 starting acres would each house 2, make em full!)
- -25% Prisoners lost in combat
- Immune to Free Prisoners Operation

As for the personality 'tag' I think something like
___ the Cruel
The Severe ___
The Draconian ___

Especially now with Dryad this could be wild

Statwise, (full) dungeons are already the most efficient building in the game...They immediately refill after an attack (magical teleporting prisoners) so basically get utilized x4.

If you're an attacker and not running 2-3% dungeons you're doing it wrong.

They do not need buffing.

Swag, I think my gripe is that what you just described is the *only* way to use dungeons, and since as you said they are the most efficient building in the game it becomes a no-brainer to do so.

Ie, the afterthought building. We take them for granted. It's boring.

I agree with everything you said.

They do not need 'buffing' but they could certainly use a retooling.

I agree with Wolzly re how to use dungeons. A few niche ideas aside, there is basically a "correct" way to use dungeons which doesn't involve having very many of them.

I think the general aim is to require people to make choices. So dungeons should be changed in such a way to make it viable to run, say 10% or even 20% dungeons. It shouldn't be clearly better than TGs to do so, there should be some kind of trade off one way or the other so that there is a tactical choice to make in what to build (and ofc you could have TG and dungeons and less of some other building).

I haven't gone through the detail of all the ideas on how to do it, but my view is the basic starting point would need to be that you capture more prisoners per attacker or that more of them return after using them - that is the reason why there is a limit on dungeons % currently.

Kinda.

As swagger was saying, the real reason you hit a cap very quickly on dungeon usefulness is actually the limit of 5 prisoners per unit sent, as soon as you start doing double-taps instead of singles you cut the amount of dungeons you can use in half - doing quads? yup, quarter it. The amount you capture is okay in my books, and due to that limit on how many you can use, it's probably more common that you can't 'catch' all the prisoners (but you can't use em anyway so who cares). if you want to go the 'dungeon strat' just do things that increase casualties. The amount that returns should be something (anything) other than 1/2 though. That's the laziest bit of game mechanic coding I've ever seen. That's some anime-themed cell-phone game stuff there.

Hmm. Has anyone got some rough figures to hand for what % of dungeons one would need to capture all available prisoners? (Ie if there was no cap at all on how many prisoners you could use per attack, what % dungeons would you need to ensure you are capturing all the prisoners that you could, assuming obviously you use the prisoners on each attack rather than attempting to store them up).

Obviously it depends on enemy kills, but we could look at the range (min and max) or take some reasonable assumptions on common hosp % etc.

Prisoners can't leave or desert during overpop, so their value in providing even a small econ boost instead of attacking shouldn't be completely disregarded - If you can keep your enough dungeons to house them of course.


I like the warden idea, but instead of Homes just each acre. Like Dryad with food, the Warden allows 2 Prisoners per acre. Some buffs:

Gladiators - double strength prisoners on attacks.
Mercantile backbone - double gold gain per prisoner.
(Action) Merciful - free prisoners via the military page to soldiers (or straight to peasantry).

A debuff: -50% honor gains, -50% honor effects.

"If you can keep your enough dungeons to house them of course." ya there's the rub on that one, aint gonna happen, 3% dungs on 200 acres has a lot less capacity than 3% dungs on 2k acres.

Chris121, as you said it all depends on the scenario. I have had 10% dungs and hit a T/M (no hosps) with pitfalls, bribe gens, and emerald dragon (no ritual, this was before rituals) and still didn't have enough dungs to 'catch em all'. For best results target T/Ms that rely on troop numbers rather than troop strength.

I have a crazy suggestion, allow a % of caught thieves from failed thief ops on your province to be added to dungeons, after all you caught them didn't you?

and/or allow the use of prisoners on thief intel/ops at the same rate as on attacks, 1 prisoner for every 5 thieves?!

Just throwing around some thoughts to make prisoners more resourceful and maybe as a result run more than 1-3%!

I like the thieves add to dungeons idea (although i'm not sure if it is enough to make dungeons popular as it is reliant on being opped sufficiently)