Talk:Neutral Forts/@comment-141.105.164.165-20150810182121

Stuff about neutral forts:

1.  They don't behave like normal fiefs.

-  If you're a vassal and you capture a neutral fort you get to keep it without the faction leader deciding to give it to you.

-  If you leave a faction you get to keep the neutral forts without any trouble.

-  If you're a mercenary and you take a neutral fort its yours instead of automatically going to whatever faction you're fighting for. So gather a few men, sign up as a merc and then go and take some forts!

2.  No one else ever attacks neutral forts.

-  I've done everything I can but it just doesn't happen. Not before you yourself have taken the neutral fort. Not after you've taken it. Not if you kite hostile lord's armies or bandits to your completely undefended neutral fort. Not if you're a vassal or an independant king or just a guy who took a fort. Not if you declare war on every single faction and infinite camp for a while.

-  This is great because it means you don't have to waste men and money garrisoning neutral forts once you've taken them.

3.  Some of them are much easier to capture than others.

-  The two fortress temples (Mii-Dera and Kokawa-Dera) are tough to take both because they're basically small castles and because of the troops there. The number of monk gunners at Kokawa-Dera is particularly tough but their armour is poor so both temples will fall with lots of decent archers.

-  The other 4 neutral forts are just little walled compounds (like the kidnappers mansion in the starting quest) or villages and the troops stationed there are pretty poor. The troops in Tsuchima and Otasut have lots of bows and guns which make things a little more difficult but the Sado and Niputay garrisons are pretty much all poorly armoured swordsmen. They'll swarm you at the beginng but you should be able to take them easily with a few decent swordsmen backed up with some archers, say 20 men total. It helps if your character is either a decent archer with a decent bow so you can do some sniping or a melee tank.

4.  Neutral forts are a cool novelty (like the semi-permanent fort you can establish in Brytenwalda) but sadly they aren't really that useful.

-  Although you can recruit troops for free at neutral forts all the troops are fairly poor. The only ones worth having are the gunners and maybe the naganita monks but their armour is rubbish so they're only really usefull to bulk up your army or maybe for garrison duty.

-  You don't get any rent and you won't get rich on the goods that are produced there although they're worth picking up as you can make a few thousand from them. If you're a bandit hunter type character it can be useful to travel round them in a circit collecting the goods and hunting bandits along the way.

-  The best use I've found for neutral forts is storing shiny equipment and any good units from prisoner stacks. This means you don't have to cart it all round with you if you don't want to.