I got asked an interesting question by one of my players today. He asked if there was any way to fortify himself against contest actions. As far as I can figure, this question is not addressed in the BRCS (at least the version that I have): It was not endorsed or forbidden.

Here is what I came up with.

First, the new contest action has fundamentally changed from the 2nd edition action. The old action reflected a struggle for control of the entire holding (hence contested), while the new action reflects a reduction that seems to be best paralleled in military occupations. The new language also states that "[c]ontesting another holding is like declaring war."

It seems to me then, that given the similar principles and effects, fortified holdings should also e protected against contest actions. What I ruled was that each individual level of damage from a successful contest action should be examined individually. If there is an unprotected holding level, that will be reduced, otherwise a level of the holding's fortification will be reduced. So a Guild 3 with a level two fortification will lose its unprotected level first, then will have its fortification reduced one level, then will lose another guild level that has become unprotected.

I think there is a good policy implication for this, first of all it will make holding fortifications more desireable by making them more useful to domains that generally do not participate actual warfare. However, it will not make the fortifications all powerful such as, say, requiring that an actual military siege be used to reduce the fortifications before the holdings protected by them can be contested.

The only question then would be how holdings protected by province fortifications should behave. I tend to think that such holdings should be protected until siege is used to reduce the level of protection. However, that would make it almost impossible for domains without state support to compete with those that have state support. It just seems wrong to me that a province fortification could be weakened by contest actions though.