[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Ironhawk:
3) Castle Spam:
Technically, this solves the problem, BUT at the cost of ruining the fort resource gathering. This is turn (while costing a fortune) would also mean a terrific amount of MicroManagement since all your troop building could no long be focused on key forts due to resource shortages.

This isn't as huge a drawback as you'd think, particularly if you took either the Watchtower, knowing that you WERE going to do this, and as a result, have no resource-gathering to ruin anyway because the watchtower's admin sucks, or your nation's troops are either undesirable and/or have very low resource costs.

It should be noted that heavy, high-resource troops generally lack the strategic mobility to do anything useful anyway, because they move too slowly to actually reach a conflict: This is alleviated if your nation is astrally powerful and can gateway, but otherwise, heavies are simply too slow and useless, and cannot be produced in anything approximating reasonable quantity even if you have a solid admin grid.

4) The Ghost Spell:
I looked thru the spell list and couldnt find this spell. Is it a nickname for something?

Ghost Riders: D4, Conjuration 9. In combination with #3, Castle Spamming, you can easily keep the enemy off your back: When he shows up to bang on the gates, bury him in Ghost Riders. The Ghost Riders will slaughter his forces, but since you hold the fort, and the Ghost Riders evaporate after the battle, the province instantly reverts back to your control without having to send a cleanup crew. Your temples remain intact as well. This strategy is really synergistic with #3.

5) CounterAttack:
A valid strategy. But it sidesteps the fact that there appears to be no good way to defend.

Against an AI, a castle will mire him down until he can take it, making his moves predictable, because an AI never aborts a siege willingly. Against a slash and burn pack run by a human, however, this is totally futile: Enemy armies inside formerly friendly territory always move first, even if they're attacking a new territory. The only way to catch them is to second-guess them, or intercept on the magic phase.

The only thing that I've seen so far that might really address the fact that offense has the advantage are these new maps that people are talking about. But it saddens me that this effectively means that Dominions 2 at the base level favors an all-offense strategy!

You'd think that, but then why does my incredibly defensively-oriented castles+SCs style gather so much flak?