How to solve castling effect?
 

The fact is that Norfleet is right about castles.
They're the lone way to defend a province.

If there's no castle many spells can burn your temple.
Armies can do that too, since PD isn't worthing it's cost above 10 or 15 ... and 10 or 15 means a very weak army composed of the worst of your troops.

So on, or PD become more powerful/easier to raise, or Castles become more blitzable (I suggest: if you "ovverrun" the PD/Patrolling Army in at maximum 5 or 8 battle rounds, AND your army can break the gate of the castle in that turn, the storm castle in the same turn.
This should prevent temple burning from ghost riders, call of wild/wind. But allows army to penetrate quicker in enemy territory, preventing the chance to trapeze/teleport some SCs in the besieged castle... now the problems of this sistem are Dead Nations, since they've troops spawning everywhere and it's very difficult to find an ermorian province with so little troops that you can storm castle in the turn you enter the province. I'd solve that raising the cost of Ermor castles, both in gold, turns and design points, since undead rarely rely on castles but instead on massed hordes, and they get a lot of design points from scales ... same to do as a Carrion Wood or other dead nation theme if they'll come in next patches).

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

I thinking: Isn't the problem REALLY that temples are burned down? I suggest that either

1. you win the temple and can use it (just like a lab)
2. Enemy temples remain in effect FOR THE ENEMY until his dominion in that province is eradicated. (my favorite, but require much code chaging)
3. Enemy temples remain in effect FOR THE ENEMY until teared down by a commander.

That would also balance those ghosts to something more reasonable, e.g. point defence.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Bad. Storming a castle often involves an entirely seperate spell preparation, such as rearming the gems of a caster. In no event do you want to arbitrarily attempt to storm a castle, as without proper preparations and arraying your army in a proper storming formation, a large army can lose to relatively small army easily.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is actually an advantage for YOU: Without a castle, an enemy SC teleporting into the target province attacks IMMEDIATELY.

If temples didn't explode the moment an attacker entered the province, I'd be building a lot fewer castles, because it would actually improve the defensive effectiveness of teleporting SCs: Instead of having to either hope the enemy storms instead of doing nothing, and thus tying you down for at least two turns, at high risk of not actually hurting the opposing force, you can teleport onto the province and force a battle instantly. The present situation is actually advantageous towards avoiding a sudden SC drop, as firstly, the defender must pay for the privilege of securing his temples, rather than having the attacker have to manually raze the temple, and the attacker is protected from the sudden arrival of a teleporting SC: As a result, an attacker who has just arrived in front of a castle can *ALWAYS* retreat unscathed, with the exception of Special Monster spells....which are easy to defend against.

If you attack with purely stealthy forces, then those can fail, as an attacking force that goes stealth immediately runs zero risk of being hit by anything.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Well if you can storm the turn you enter, you should know by scouting there's a pretty small patrolling force, and you prepare your army for storming already.

Special Monsters Ghost Riders aren't very good at dealing with.
They can destroy army, and you don't care if they die or less cause they disappear.
You get for 5 gems an amount of troops pair at (40 x Wraith, and how many for longdead riders ... uhmm ... a lot). They are active 1 turn only, yeah. But they come suddenly, where you need them most.
And you can cast them as many time as you can!

The wolves costs 15 nature gems, and are an easy deal for PD.
Hawk 5 air gems, and are an easy deal for PD.
Imps and Devil come from 30 Slaves ... and are medium deal for PD ...

And ... if I shoul asset for storming, I should change asset too for special monster and common battles. Oh how I can do ... I'm horrorified about that ...

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Actually I like the way sieging and storming is handled. Maybe one should simply prolong the time & money needed to built a castle - and possibly offset this by intermediate states of the castle (i.e. some fortress has 3 building stage, where it already offers some minor protection). I think this would also be more realisitic, as castle took years to complete in reality anyway.

Just my thoughts though, since I havent encountered "castling" yet and have a hard time to imagine that this is really a useful tactic. Afterall the attacker benefits from a castle as well, so I imagine that it merely disables raids rather than borderline wars...

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh. Mad castling is EVIL, particularly as Ermor.

If you're ermor... your castles provide very minimal protection, zero admin and zero supply, which doesn't help the attacking force very much.

Since you don't care about pop, you can go all out for pillaging to finance the massive castle builds. All the better to deprive living nations of nonrenewable (and useless to you) resources.

The main point of the castling is to protect the temple, (and therefore dominion and/ or immortality) but in hardcore-VQ land it's also intended to tie down the attacker's army for an extra turn so the SC can be flown/teleported in.

While it is true you can choose not to storm... failing to do so wastes the army/turn. If the alpha SC has been brought in to deal with the siege, you break even on tempo... if not... well... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif


Rabe,... who thinks castles ought to cost maintenance, (with admin subtracted?) so that purely positional forts (esp with zero admin) are money losers.

Won't stop castle spamming, but it will annoy those who do it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Well my suggestion does
introduce a temple condition "damaged".

A temple is then automaticly damaged when a provinse is conquered. It takes an comander aktion to destroy a damaged temple.
A new temple can first be build if an enemy damaged temple is destroyed ( to prevent different damaged temples in the same province).

If a province is retaken a damaged temple can be rebuild for halv the cost or what ever cost is appropiate.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Or simply not have temples auto-destroy upon conquering of a province. Require a commander to take out a turn to dismantle it much like someone dismantling thier own buildings in thier own province. Make the timing of the dismantling of said building take place after movement and combat giving time for trying to retake the province and protect the temple. Of course this wouldn't really solve castling but would remove the need to use castles to protect temples somewhat anyways.

Just a thought.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

The problem isn't only to defend your temples:

Castles in every province raise gold by admin.
Doubles production everywhere if you need.
Protects your mages researching inside.
Protects your troops from Ghost Rider spell and similar.
Slow the enemy conquer of your territory, giving them 1 turn more to trapeze/teleport their army sllaughtering SCs there.

Probably I'm forgotting something.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think temple protection is the biggest motivation for castle spamming. Castles do all the things you say, but:
- The typically "spammed" castles is the cheapie low-admin one, so the admin benefits of spamming it are not that great.
- Similarly, for production concerns, you'd probably do far better with single high-admin castles surrounded by uncastled provinces than you would by spamming low-admin castles everywhere.

- You don't need spammed castles to protect your researchers. (Or at least I don't; concentrating researchers in a few castled provinces seems more than sufficient.)

Spammed castles will slow enemy advance, though, as you say. But I'm not sure if that by itself would justify the high cost/effort in doing so for most races.

I like the suggestions to make enemy temples need to be destroyed by a commander, rather than auto-destroyed when the province is taken. At the very least, this prevents Ghost Riders from hitting enemies for a 200 gold temple in addition to the province loss.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

For production it's far better having 1 castle x province, since they double the resources, instead of collecting a % of half of the amount of resources you could have with a castle built in.

You've only to spend more time gathering the troops in one army.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

I don't think it doubles the resources. It only lets you use the full amount of resources available to the provence.

If I provence has 100 resources you would only be able to use 50 without putting a castle there.

However fortreses will draw their admin percentage from the full resource amount. So a fortified city next to the province would draw 50 resources... and another one on the other side would draw the remaining 50.

So if you place your castles correctly you would not be losing that many resources vs building a fortress in each provence.

This also allows you to draw the resources whre you need them (Heavy calvary for example) where if you built a castle in every provence you would not be able to do this.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

I'm not clear what the actual problem(s) are.

Yes temples without castles are vulnerable. I think I mostly like the idea to require them to be torn down, requiring an extra turn by some commander. I'm not sure it's a bad thing the way they fall down now, though. Note too that if this change is made, then skillful raiders will want to bring along "silly" leaders like scouts to knock down the temples while the raiding army moves on at full speed. This will also mean defenders will want to "chase" a raiding army, to reduce those temple-toppling leaders. Also, the AI will need to be programmed to either do the same silly micro-management tactic to raid effectively, or it will be made weaker by either slowing its raiding armies to half-speed so they can take out temples (getting them hit by defending armies), or having them raid without hurting players' temples.

Lots of cheap castles have some advantages, but also disadvantages, such as:

* Costs a lot of gold to put castles everywhere, especially if they don't have administration. What else could be done with that gold?

* Cheap castles tend to have low admin. Empires with fewer castles with high admin, will have more gold income and higher resources to build naional troops.

* Cheap castles tend to have low defense, meaning they can be seiged the next turn. Better castles can often hold out for several turns, allowing a relief army to arrive.

* Cheap castles tend to have few missile weapons. So storming them is about as easy as killing the enemies inside on an open field. Better castles are bristling with missile attacks, which can be expensive and dangerous to storm.

PvK

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Logically speaking, to solve the mad castling issue there are only 2 possible ways - you have to either made building castles in 100% of your provinces impossible due to game mechanic/rules, or/and you have to make it unprofitable. Each of this approaches could be implemented by several different methods.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

But what's the problem?

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Just to repeat myself: A very Illwinter-friendly solution would be to have temples behave like labs: If you conquer a province with a temple, you win a temple. Congrats!

The other proposals are more difficult, including mine.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree, I don't see any problem with this either.

The problem only occur when someone in the game would start putting crappy castles with temples everywhere. Having uber-VQ as pretender doubles its efficiency as well.

Without such player in the game I see no problem with current game mechanics.

[ May 26, 2004, 19:24: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If it were done that way, I'd rapidly abandon mad castling: Castling comes with a hefty drawback: If you trapeze/teleport in reinforcements, they sit uselessly in the castle and drink beer. If the attack turns out to have been a feint, you are now potentially stranded unless you bust out yourself, particularly if the castle did not yet have a lab put up. If I didn't have to then replace the temple when the province started flipping, I'd rather go castle-less to enable instant counterattacks.

With castles, you protect your temples...but at the same time, the attacker is protected from all forms of counterattack except for Ghost Riders or Phantasmal Attack: Teleportation drops you in the castle to drink beer, arriving by normal movement occurs after "friendly" movement, so the attacker can always feint.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Is it a problem without a SC VQ involved? Seems to me adding cheap-o castles everywhere costs about as much gold as it's worth for a one-turn delay in sacking a temple, and little other benefit. Also, by taking a wimpy castle type, your home province isn't particularly well protected, either.

If it's only a real problem with a SC VQ, then I'd say the solution involves doing something about the SC VQ, rather than the castles. Either in-game (go nail their home province, with its wimpy castle, and bring some folks who can kill the VQ, like a few Bane Lords with Flambeaux), or some mild nerfing of the VQ, if necessary (as discussed in other threads).

As for the line of thought "temples get destroyed way too easily by attack spells without castles, so I must build castles everywhere, or else I won't be able to have temples everywhere", I think that argument has a flawed premise, specifically:

* Players who expect to be able to build temples everywhere, and have them be safe.

Consider that building temples everywhere is a huge and boring project. Why should it be expected that everyone will do it everywhere? The existing counter to that practice, is the ease of knocking them out with raiders and magic spells. Seems like a feature to me. Building unprotected temples is a risk, as it should be. No?

PvK

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

The problem is with every SC that can teleport, trapeze, and evry less used moving spell or item.

The problem is with ghost riders too that shot down your army annhilating it while it siege.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can't really comment about how efficient the same "mad castling" strategy would be without VQ. Obviously I never done it myself, since I consider it to be cheap and abusive. The notorious mad castler Norfleet on the other hand, with whom I played multiply times, is always using uber VQ and massive clam hoarding, since it is obviously multiply the effects of his "mad castling" strategy.


I suspect however that while having immortal uber-VQ clearly makes this strategy much more efficient, it could be done without it as well, although less efficiently.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very true PvK. I agree with everything you've said here.

[ May 26, 2004, 19:53: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nope. SC VQs have an entirely seperate issue: It works just as well with SC GKs, SC Allfathers, SC Carrion Dragons, SC Natarajae, or even perfectly mundane SCs like flying Bane Lord squads, Ice Devils, and Elemental Nobility, particularly Air Queens.

VQs are fairly easily swatted if you expect them to show up, and even if they're immortal, every beating dished out yields you a castle that an SC alone is hard-pressed to take back. The strategy is, in essence, brittle: It's hard to break, but when it does, it shatters.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Bull****. You can kill VQ again and again and again, but it will be back immideatly just as strong (or stronger) as before, as long it is her dominion. (and with temples in every province it is always her dominion).

Even if you win an offensive battle against her, you are risking of losing large part of your army in each successeful battle against her, or being totally annihilated. The max benefits that you can get from wining against her - is one crappy castle. Losing one castle is nothing when you have castles in every province.

To compare VQ to SC banelord is just plain stupid.


I agree with Norfleet in one thing though - as I said in my Last post this strategy can probably be pulled off with some other pretenders. But having immortal uber-VQ pretender clearly makes "mad castling" much more effective.


AllFather, Natataraje, etc are strong SCs (and btw unlike VQ they are unique). But they are not immortal, so once they die even once they are crippled due to losing magic pathes that made them efficient. They also risk taking battle injuries in each and every battle while they would be trying to defend "castled" dominion. VQ risk nothing.


Norfleet is just trying to turn facts upside down in his usual manner. Playing "mad castling" with Natataraje for example is brittle , since once your pretender dead or crippled your resistanse is significantly weakened. Playing it with VQ is an opposite of that.

[ May 26, 2004, 20:36: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And every time this happens, she loses another castle and temple.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Look. I've taken on an SG Ermor with a fair level of castle spam and a VQ that was being regularly lobbed at me, inside its own dominion. Hey, thanks for the castles, buddy!

And "losing a large part of your army"? You're joking, right? I don't call 5 Seraphs, a pair of Bane Lords, and an Air Queen a "large part of my army". I don't call 0 losses "losing".

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">SC Banelords can take down a VQ, particularly a poorly equipped one, if they attack quickly and aggressively. Even if you don't care to pit one head-to-head against the enemy's fully-equipped VQ, the fact of the matter is that you can cover more ground with SC Banelords than you can with a VQ. Think battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So don't die. Ain't rocket science.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Arco Nataraja is as proof against afflictions as any VQ, due to the healing priestesses. Anyone can get GoH, Chalice, Fairy Queens.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Got a mad castling game going with a Nataraja just fine. Got a mad castling game going with a freaking W9 Blue Dragon that I don't even use as an SC and has never left the freaking capitol. You don't need to use your pretender as an SC to play castles + Point defense SCs. Had a mad castling game going with a rainbow Archmage. Had another mad castling game going with an immobile Monolith.

Face it: The mad castling has little or nothing to do with a VQ pretender: Hell, I don't even always have to use SCs at all to defend my castling: Seraph Wrathing teams work just as well. Different strokes, different folks.

In fact, as my strategy and grasp has improved, I've been using the VQ less and less lately, rarely pitting it in combat against actual human players, instead spending most of my time summoning Air Queens, Ice Devils, and soforth. Gives you more mobility and better point-defense. Nonetheless, the burnination continues. Now I just keep her around because VQs are such great distractions: People like you will get so utterly fixated on her that you miss the bigger picture. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ May 26, 2004, 20:53: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

I think Norfleet means that since you have a force capable of defeating the vampire queen you are conquering territory and assimilating the fortress. The vampire queen by itself will not be able to retake the castles. So even though the VQ is coming back every turn they are still losing ground against you.

I can see this applying if your invading army was created in a way where you are not taking any (or only a few) losses against the VQ.

The vampire queen would need to be naked or they would be losing a lot of equipment every time they are defeated. I imagine it wouldn't be that difficult to defeat a naked vampire queen with the right force without taking many losses.

10 lighting bolts on the first round ought to take it out since the defender gets to go first?
Of course if the vampire queen was accompied by 20 vampires the story might change a bit...

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are correct about VQ not being able to take castles. But we are talking about VQ defending casltes, not attacking them.

And of course you don't send your naked VQ into the battle. Cheap and easely replacable gear on VQ can go a long way toward improving both her survivability and power.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hrmmmmm, I think I just just saw the problem with the above "fix" thanks to Lintman mentioning the ghost rider spell. If casting the spell on a castle-less province with a temple in it that has to be dismantled by a commander then what would happen to the province when the temple doesn't go away and the province goes to independant status? Oh well, was a nice thought while it Lasted. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh. Sounds like you are giving away secrets. Loose lips! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And every time this happens, she loses another castle and temple.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wrong. You can attack with VQ every turn if you want to. You can't take more than 1 castled province per two turns with your army.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have no way of knowing what happened in these games that you are refering to, no do I know the level of your oppoennts that you are talking about. Given your history of lies and distortions you surely don't expect me to take your word on it.


The only possible and logical way for you to prove your point is to stop using the only tactic that you are constantly using to win your games, which is VQ + mad castling + clam hoarding. Up until now you have been always madcastling, you have been always clamhoarding, and you almost always use uberVQ pretenders. I observed it in each of my games where you was present, and I've seen it in several dozens of your other games that I've read about on this Boards, as well as from numerious other players who have played with you in the past, and who are sick of it just like I am. You can't deny it.


If you will win such games against experienced opponents than it'll be clear proof for everybody that you are indeed winning because of your skills and not because of the fact that you are using cheesy and exploitive strategy, that requres little skills to impliment. Since you never done that, prefering to use the same lame strategy in all your games, the rest of your "personal" examples is meaningless for the purpose of this discussion.


Personally I've been in 4 games with you so far, and it was always the same - mad castling, massive clamhoarding(unless prohibited), and uber-VQs. Must be purely coincidence of course... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you would know marine military history you would know, that you can't win major sea battle with cruisers and destroyers alone, against enemy float that includes battleships.

(we are not talking about modern ships of course, with nuclear anti-ship missiles)


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death can happen. To VQ as well to any other pretender. Nobody is invincible. But some are immortal.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Arco Nataraja is as proof against afflictions as any VQ, due to the healing priestesses.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Arco is the only nation that have healing ability, as you should be aware of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif And even Arco priestess can not cure death.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which are not avaliable until the end game. And none of them make your pretender immortal.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Again you are trying to dodge the question. I've said three times already that I am not disputing that mad castling can be done with none-VQ pretenders. But it is clear that VQ pretender multiplies effect of mad castling, that's why you are using VQ in a majority of your games.


And I've said that what you have said is not true, and mad castling with AllFather or BlueDragon is much more "brittle", as you put it, than with VQ. Are you disputing it?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ May 26, 2004, 22:12: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I do not know about Norfleet, but I am disputing
it. I will take Odin against a VQ anyday. VQ is
better against masses of crap, but against SC and
thugs, including a VQ, Odin is significantly
better.

And both ARE brittle against a squad designed and
scripted to take them out.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I do not know about Norfleet, but I am disputing
it. I will take Odin against a VQ anyday. VQ is
better against masses of crap, but against SC and
thugs, including a VQ, Odin is significantly
better.

And both ARE brittle against a squad designed and
scripted to take them out. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think you are missing the point Tuidjy. We are not talking about single battles. We are talking about the war. The war in which the player is defending completely castled dominion. Sure, you are correct, the Odin maybe as strong or even stronger than VQ in single battle against certain opponents. But the thing is every time you are using him you are risking to lose him, or even if you win you are risking to get nasty battle afflictions. Few affliction can easely cripple AllFather. A single death will hurt him a lot, since to be a strong SC he have to rely on several magaic pathes, which he will lose with death.


None of this matter at all to VQ. So she can just keep attacking armies who are trying to storm her fully castled dominion indeffiently, wearing them down or just wiping them out straight away, without any risk to herself.

When/if AllFather dies, his castled dominion defense is shattered. When VQ dies it doesn't mean anything to her. That's why the first case is "brittle", unlike the second case. Do you see what I mean?

[ May 27, 2004, 00:31: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

So if I'm hearing things correctly, and I might not be, the problem comes in immortal Supercombatants and/or Ermor, where castles that you take over have no use.

Does any problem NOT spawn from SCs and Ermor?

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

The easiest way to solve the castlting problem (if it is indeed a problem) would be to charge a maintence fee for the castle.

One of the main reasons I build a castle now is in the increased income. You plop a wizards tower down on a province generating 100 coins and it has paid for itself in 20 turns. Plus you get a recruiting center and protection from raids.

If I had to pay 15 gold a turn instead of receiving it, I would build far fewer fortresses.

I don't actually support this change but it would solve the problem. I like investing in infrastrucute that pays dividends down the road.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

I believe raising the gem cost and path level required of all SCs summoning spell, and nerfing some pretenders should be nice too ...

Added to the issue about the Ghost Rider.

I'd improve the effect of scales too ...
Rabe idea is good too.

[ May 26, 2004, 12:20: Message edited by: Cohen ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Whining? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

This is someone who builds a castle in every province AND boosts the defence over 20 AND builds units in that province? If not then I would think that Pangaea, and maybe Man, would be the response.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hrmmmmm, I think I just just saw the problem with the above "fix" thanks to Lintman mentioning the ghost rider spell. If casting the spell on a castle-less province with a temple in it that has to be dismantled by a commander then what would happen to the province when the temple doesn't go away and the province goes to independant status? Oh well, was a nice thought while it Lasted. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think that's a big problem... Two reasonable ways to deal with this situation are:
1) A temple in an independent province (or an enemy-held province) is marked as "abandoned" (or as someone else suggested: "damaged", and does not generate dominion checks until the temple owner restores control, or it is destroyed by the new province owner.
2) The temple works as normal in an independent province (and maybe even in an enemy-held one).

I don't think either of these options is unreasonable (though I prefer #1). Of course, either of these would require a bit of coding on Illwinter's part (with #2 likely a bit easier), but nothing that seems to me (as a programmer myself) that it would be particularly hard/complex to do.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every time you crash a VQ, you lose a rather expensive suit of equipment. If you're just kamikazing a naked VQ into your opponent over and over, you're going to get smacked down over and over: A naked VQ is not really that tough, and can be easily killed: I've done it.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not protecting a cover identity here, so I have no reason to lie. Besides, reliable sources can corroborate the results.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I return in victory from a reported ladder match with a W9 Blue Dragon. The mad castling stays, however.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">See above. Currently involved in another ongoing match with stock Pan and a Carrion Dragon instead.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Given that you admittedly avoid games with me, this is hardly surprising. I have non-VQ pretenders when more applicable.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death is the bride of the warrior, Stormbind. Your mother was a trout.

[ May 27, 2004, 04:32: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's impossible to have logical discussion with you Norfleet. You are clearly sick and need a professional help.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Don't be silly. I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it. Why would I want help?

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Back to the original topic.

Personally I like a lot the suggestion about commanders having to manually destroy enemy temples next turn after they conquered province with temple.


That would go a very long way toward making mad castling less attractive, since the main point of mad castling is to protect temples against sudden raids. It should also be relatively easy to implement I think. And it feels better in general than some artificial limitations on the total number of castles.

[ May 27, 2004, 13:04: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

Feh. Building lots of castles is rather expensive in gold, gems or blood slaves depending on how you do it -- unless you're astoundingly lucky with fortress sites and fortress events. If somebody's building castles everywhere, that's a lot of gold expended plus time consumed with commander-turns. Then garrisoning all those bloody castles is expensive unless they're undead, most of which defend the gates rather poorly.
You might as well argue that the game encourages having decent armies backed by mages.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The castles AREN'T garrisoned: Usually, they're instead defended by mobile forces that teleport, gateway, or fly between the threatened castles. The drawback is that in order to make this in any way affordable, the castles tend to be constructed of paper and breach quickly, necessitating a rapid response: Attacking more castles than your opponent can respond to at once will pose major problems for him.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

There should be some territories which prevents castles from being built. A territory with lots of rivers and sand for example.

Re: How to solve castling effect?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very true... that's where diplomacy takes a big part. Hopefully a gamer has been trading/communicating with at least one other player where a plan can be arranged to attack the greatest threat... effectively altering the outcome of the game.