Decorate our castles?

[Carcassone]

Hmm, okay so banners atop a keep influence battles/sieges. Well the obvious answer would be to avoid attacking someone you have an alliance with....but what esle could it mean?

Could the quantity or size of banners atop a keep indicate the number of counties/Lords a king has and this in turn is a reflection of his troops ability to defend? i.e. 120% of normal defensive capabilities.

Or perhaps it's the number of Lords currently residing within the walled town?

C'mon everyone let's speculate!

I guess it could also mean that they just threw a festival and forgot to take down all the fanfare.

[Pioneer]

A flag or banner would be a way of signalling ownership rather than colour coding the building - something I find that breaks the spell that a game is trying to create. There might be a banner to show that a king and court is visiting a particular castle. Taking the speculation a little further this could allow for a dastardly assassination-type raid especially if a player has some sort of claim to another's land (for this to work there would have to be some sort of dynastic marriage feature and I hope that is included too).

[Jerome]

i too suspect that the flags and banners might have something to do with the defence capabilities and/or the amount of knights occupying the castle.

A flag might indicate whether the king is at court...(like in AoK)

Further, i think that the banners on a castle indicate its status. Sort of like it indicates what is your 'main' castle and that city is the capitol of your realm.
The gameplay might be affected in a manner that if your capitol falls; a revolt breaks out (or some other kind of civil uprising), where if other cities fall; they simply would be ruled by another king. (although conquest does tend to have its affects on the mood of the ppl, like in LotR)

anyway; thats my speculations as to the significance of the banners on castles... :D

[Hooba]

Check the screenshots, to my opinion the banners let you know whether the king is an ally or an enemy or neutral. So you look at the flag, check the diplomacy option and then decide whether to attack or not.

[Pikeman]

Maybe they're there for the old "capture the flag" game like in Lords II. (for those who don't know: in Lords II a castle had fallen as soon as you touched the enemy's flag, somewhere in the keep)

[Jerome]

that's true; i forgot all about that....:)

that wasn't very realistic though....

[Pikeman]

And I hope that it's not the case for KoH!:angry: