Stone walls are hard to remove so you'd limit Arenfield to these premises...
Well, yes, but that's would be the price for the advantage over the palisade, which can be rather easily burn down and, as I also wrote, a show of power to those around, to think twice before they try something. After all, not anyone can have a stone fortress. And there is still quite a lot of space inside Arenfield as buldings were build where people wanted. If you start squeezing buildings one to another, you can fit a lot of new ones.
Also, if needed, Arenfield could be expanded either east into fields or north into Darkwood, by cutting down trees and building outer bailey with palisade.
fortifying and building several outposts that later can either be torn down or integrrated into the village seems a better Option in the long run...
I'm going to agree and disagree with you on this at the same time.
Agree on having serveral outposts. Having multiple in the area would greatly improve control and security and surely would improve respond to any potential threat if needed.
Yet I have to disagree at the same time, because having multiple outposts scattered around the area without strong center from which those outposts can be supplied and to which troops can retreat if needed to is rather pointless.
Also I have to say Arenfield is in great strategic position of both, economic and military. Too good to not use it. Fotifying it with stone should be priority, as to having strong center in the area will allow to have multiple cards.
After all you can't travel from Varron to Kirlic, Parakis or Monastery without crossing through Arenfield unless you use a ship. Eventually you can try to create a new route south of Arenfield by traveling by coast line.
Also, it is impossible to encircle Arenfield fully without either ally or dividing your troops. Someone has to block the moutain path from the south in order to cut off any reinforcements, supplies or counter-attacking units. And someone has to the same from the north to east through Darkwood.
also walls alone offer no real protection... you'd need some siege weapons like the Balistas we had seen before... people capeable to use them and soldiers patrolling the walls.
the defence of a place grows with it's overall sice, villages tend to have guards and fences, bigger ones palisades.
Stone work fortifications come with cities.
Well yes, wall alone is just a... wall. But it offers security to those inside. Even without people defending it someone trying to get inside still have to do something, like at least building a latter.
But I disagree on the siege engines. You don't need them in order to defend Arenfield. As you said yourself, and I'll allow myself to quote:
Arenfields strongest defence are the natural blockades as it's positioned at the border to the mountains.
Road to Arenfield through the southern slopes is not only twisted but also narrow. Same at the entrace to it. You don't need huge force to defend that part of Arenfield. Unless, somehow, enemy forces can deploy there siege equipment and climb 20 or mroe meter high slopes and walls while under arrow and bolt fire.
As for north, good luck with moving with siege engines and army through dense forest of Darkwood. But let's just say someone managed to cut thier way from one clearing to another and from one forest path to another, there's still huge advantage for the defenders to launch an ambush from basically any direction.
The only problem would be defending east, because those fields are pretty nice spot for siege equipmet and army to build thier camp. I would rather launch harassing parties from the forest up north to destroy those siege engines or kill personel qualifed enough to use them. If they won't manage to achive it then... well, I guess walls and towers must be thick enough and moat deep and wide enough to withstand siege from there.
Still If we could manage to "borrow" those oversized crossbows from orcs I would surely put them on the east side of the castle.
Pallisades however offer little danger to the Kingdom and with the current threats to Arenfield even known to the King a Pallisade would still stand to reason.
What danger to the kingdom? Current danger to Eric's kingdom is Van, his allies and orcs. Not a village of which Baron would like to raise some fortifications, becasue of threat of outlaws and orcs.
Eric should issue an order to Giron to start fortifying road to Arenfield ASAP in case if Van manage to force him somehow to reateat. This way he would gain not only a place of which he could retreat, but also option to lick his wounds while also defending the only known road to his kingdom aside from sea.
But if he's paranoid about Giron joining Van's side, he could issue an order to fortify only road to Arenfield.
Arenfields strongest defence are the natural blockades as it's positioned at the border to the mountains.
The south entrances holds the higher ground the Bandit outpost is right next to the only southern road leading to the frontlines apparently.
The entire western side is framed by the same mountains travelling those is hard and the only known path leads into the deeper woods/hunting grounds.
So it looks like there is futher no reason to fortify moutain pass from Arenfield to hunting grounds. But it would be nice to convince Kath and Tia to move to Arenfield for safety reasons.
With everything said it seems to be a better idea to build some fortification at the ruined house in the eastern parts (Fort) and use the Mercanery basecamp to reinforce that location.
Use the bandit hideout after repairing and reinforceing the defence as another Mercanery Camp and in the north use Rumah+Orc Outpost to counter the Orcs... with time take over both the main Orc settlement while giving up that outpost and from there take posession of Callan's Rest again moveing the Orcs into their main settlement.
Than we can use both Rumah and Madra Ghaz to support and reinforce Callan's rest to secure the entire deep forest area from sentinent beings (Swamp fiends don't seem sentinent)...sure we'd likely still have to deal with some stragglers and Brigands but those can be used to increase our numbers or atleast help to maintain them as there will certainly be losses.
Stone fortifications are likely something in the far future when Arenfield has more than 100 citizens/families living in it's premises
Historically stone fortifications, larger than stone fences, have happened only on cities with population in over thousands. Building stone fortifications is expensive and time consuming work. Also i think Arenfield is actually bigger/more populated than we see, it's most likely the case as is often with games, that you can't really give accurate representation of the size of settlement due to limitations of engine etc... If anything i'd guess Arenfield's population would be well over 100, since outer farms like what Coldstone family runs would be counted into it.
It all comes to money. Transporting resources over medieval roads cost more money than resources themself, so building anything out of stone in plain areas of countries was expensive and only the most rich people like Lords and Kings or the most rich cities could allow themself to build out of stone. Yet some of castles and knight's towers in Poland, Italy, France and in England were build out of the bat using stone. Why? Because there was no need to transport it if stone was already at the bulding site, because of moutain, rocky terrain.
The thing is... Arenfield has almost all in arms length. River provides water, clay and fish, moutains provide iron and stone, and darkwood forest provide wood, fur and meat. You don't really need to transport those resource anywhere. So anyone trying to build something in Arenfield can save huge amout of money. Money which can be used to pay for labor, because that's the only thing Arenfield lacks.
Indicate to me which ones.
To not make two posts: