spamming castle all over feasible?
 

Hi there,

Just bought and play this awesome game for a few times.... i was initially stumbled by the unfamiliar interface and gameplay but manage to adapt to it through a few games (which i lost all to easy AIs) and the walkthrough and helpful links and docs on Dom2.

I would like to point out on the "castle" aspect of the game...i am quite confuse with the admin value of the castle. Having read the walkthrough, they said that having a castle in your province:

a) increase your province gold income by admin/2 %

b) receive admin% of resources from all neighbouring province (those that shares border)

c) decreasing neighbouring resources by same admin % as in (b)

My question is whether having one castle/fortress is better or having castle/fortress in EVERY province better (if you can afford it)?????

Let me illustrate an example, to make math easier, lets assume that your capital (castle admin = 40) has 3 surronding province. Pls correct me if i am wrong.

All of the 4 province produces 100 gold and 50 or 100 resources (50 is based on the fact that there is no castle on it, if there is castle on it, it would be 100)

CASE A - One castle in capital only
a)3 neighbour province produces 300 gold altogether (no change)

b) capital produces 120 gold (+20%)

c) 3 neighbouring produces 90 altogether (100 - 40 divided by 2. Divided by 2 is because of no castle)

d) capital produces 220 (received 40 from each neighbour and receive full resources from castle)

e)total gold = 420, total resource = 310


CASE B - All 4 province gets castle

a)3 neighbour produces 360 gold(all get +20%)

b)capital produces 120 gold (+20%)

c) 3 neighbour produces 300 (each gets full resources and does not give any to capital because neighbouring castles don't give or receive from another castle)

d) capital produces 100 (full resource due to castle)

e) total gold = 480, total resources = 400

VERDICT

CASE B gives you more total gold & res. Therefore it is better to build castle in every province if you can afford it?

[ August 04, 2004, 11:10: Message edited by: pohtato ]

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

Howdy, and welcome to the dom2 Boards!

First of all, you may want to use the "search" button in the top right corner to search for "castle" or castling or similar terms, there were many threads on this topic which may be of more help to you than my humble words.

Now on to your questions, I hope I understood correctly:

Point a. Rarely will you find many (especially: many neighboring) provinces producing 100 gold AND 50 resources. This is a Rare Thing under normal richness settings.
Point b. You need also to calculate the 450 gold you are spending for your castle.
Point c. There are times when you really need a lot of resources, e.g. if you want to recruit, say, Ulmish or Abysian infantry, or especially in your capital if you want Marignon Knights of the Chalice. Units with 30 to 61 resources a piece will NEED neighboring resources or they will only be able to get 1-2 units a turn.

Otherwise, you are right -- if you do find a lot of provinces with really high gold production AND resources, you may want to build castles in them. However, it will be rare for a province to produce 100 gold without a mine, and it will usually nót have high resources too.

Don't forget, however, that you will need 450 gold per castle and someone to build it for 3 turns.

Did I understand your question correctly?

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

I believe you are right that having forts of some sort in every province will maximize your output of gold and resources. As tinkthank says, though, the added resources and gold won't always be worth the cost of building the fort. It is also worth keeping in mind that you only need so much resources. Increasing the resources in some out of the way province where you won't build anything anyway does nothing for you.

So in practice, when you do see someone building forts everywhere, it usually has more to do with making their territory easier to defend than it does boosting output. Although the extra gold is certainly nice. Also, this strategy usually involves one of the cheaper-to-build forts like a Mausoleum or Watch Tower, not a Castle or something like it. The time and gold you have to invest in a Castle means it just isn't cost-effective to build them all over.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

yeah if you have a 30+ admin castle :
only castle important provinces , either chokepoints or special provinces with e.g. good indies you want to build

if you have mausoleum or watchtower just build them everywhere http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

i get all your point there... Boron said that if you are having masolleum and watch tower (those cheap and fast) build them all over but for expensive and time consuming castle type built only on important places.

i plan to focus on marignon default mass Knight of the chalice and xbow man.....so i think spamming castle isn't a good tatic.

but what if i intend to go mass on cheap units...with every province having a castle, i can mass produce in every province...the extra income can also help me to maintain the upkeep.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">i think if we go into long term planning, the cost used to build those castles would be offset by the income per turn eventually

[ August 05, 2004, 01:24: Message edited by: pohtato ]

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My advice is to never think in terms of "eventually". A lot can happen between now and eventually, most notably that your opponents might notice the vulnerability caused by ploughing most of your funds into expensive castles, and hardly any into a standing army.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You will pay the price for your lack of vision!

If you never bother to think beyond the here and now, you will die horribly anyway as you stumble around aimlessly with no sense of purpose. Plan for the future, and when it comes, the here and now takes care of itself.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You will pay the price for your lack of vision!

If you never bother to think beyond the here and now, you will die horribly anyway as you stumble around aimlessly with no sense of purpose. Plan for the future, and when it comes, the here and now takes care of itself. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's not what I meant. Plan for the future by all means, but take account of the fact that paybacks that are a long time coming may not come at all.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">My advice is to never think in terms of "eventually". A lot can happen between now and eventually, most notably that your opponents might notice the vulnerability caused by ploughing most of your funds into expensive castles, and hardly any into a standing army. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not to mention that if your neighbor notices you building a lot of forts, better ones than he can build, and more of them than he can afford - he's likely to think that _you_ building _his_ castles is a wonderful idea. In more than one game, I've gained most of my forts by massacring those who built them or owned them before me.

This tends to cut down the ... return on investment, for the nation that built the forts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

You just have to balance things.

In a recent MP game, Ctis was mad castling Hill Forts (!), and put just too much cash into Forts, and had no units to actually defend them. I assume he was planning on stocking them with lots of units when he was done with the building phase, but thanks to the units I had built, he never got to that point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Of course, I've seen the opposite and watched people have a single fort for a 21-province empire. I prefer to pick high income provinces to progessively castle as the game progresses. It booosts income significantly from those provinces (using standard castle), and protects the province from raiders.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep. High income provinces, choke point provinces, high resource provinces with high resource neighbors, provinces with especially valuable magic sites. Best of all is when you can combine 2 or 3 of those attributes in one - a rich plain with a great magic site and 3 high resource neighbors, say.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

does the type of terrain affect your defense rating or something???

if that is not the case, then it would be wise to build castles on most plains to get higher gold income if possible

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Terrain mostly affects gold income, and resources. While it's almost always nice to castle on a high gold plain (if you have a decent admin castle), it's also good to get castles in mountains where you get enough resources to build those monster units - knights, things that take 40-70 resources.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just wanted to explain exactly what Cainehill meant:
Different terrain types affect the province's "stats", a farmlands province is high on gold income, but low on resources and magic sites, a swamp is low on gold and resources but high on magic sites, a mountain province is high on resources and therefor building a castle in it (and doubling its resource value) will net you more resources to use for your high resource units.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But would having a castle on mountain means the place is more "defensible" like in many other games?

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But would having a castle on mountain means the place is more "defensible" like in many other games? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">no . but heavy terrain (nonfarmlands/plains) reduce strategic movement when the armies don't have the special movement ability like forest / mountain survival.
doesn't protect you though from flying . so with caelum / abysia / mictlan expect always fliers attacking your hinterlands .

for all races which don't need stuff early-midgame that needs more than 15 resources to produce watchtower/mausoleum is good ( ryleh , mictlan etc. ) . just spam them in every province as i said .

with races who need high resource stuff earlygame you should take the 80 points 40 admin castle and build it only in strategic important locations . or you can consider taking a lower admin but high protection castle with these ( main focus on defense value , nbr of archertowers ) .

in lategame when you don't need your national troops anymore you can build everywhere a castle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">no . but heavy terrain (nonfarmlands/plains) reduce strategic movement when the armies don't have the special movement ability like forest / mountain survival.
doesn't protect you though from flying . so with caelum / abysia / mictlan expect always fliers attacking your hinterlands .

for all races which don't need stuff early-midgame that needs more than 15 resources to produce watchtower/mausoleum is good ( ryleh , mictlan etc. ) . just spam them in every province as i said .

with races who need high resource stuff earlygame you should take the 80 points 40 admin castle and build it only in strategic important locations . or you can consider taking a lower admin but high protection castle with these ( main focus on defense value , nbr of archertowers ) .

in lategame when you don't need your national troops anymore you can build everywhere a castle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif [/quote]

OIC...thanks for the explaination...was just wondering if you intend to go on spamming watchtower/masolluem, hence mass producing low resource units in every province is it a powerful tatic in SP? It seems that that was the tactic employed by AIs in my SP games.

Can you hope to win using only huge amount of low level units?

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Against the AI? Yeah. Against multiple human players? I wouldn't bet on it, because the first flaming atomic death squad or SC you run into eats you for lunch.

Re: spamming castle all over feasible?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well - with some nations, you build lots of the low cost castles, ignore the low resource troops, but recruit lots of mages - one in each castle, after building a lab there also. Then you use mages and summonings and hefty research to crush everyone.