May 29th, 2004, 01:29 AM
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Re: Can I get some cheese with that...
Quote:
Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Not sure what exactly do you mean here (time saved on reseach? Time saved on bringing troops to frontlines? And how do you "add" this to gold saved? By inventing some additional arbitrary multyplier between gold/reseach or gold/time? It's the same as adding apples and oranges (unless you intend to keep these in separate colums for the calculating of your "evidence" ).
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Time saved could be ment to equate to the stopping force of any given castle. Meaning that for say, a Watch Tower, you have 1 additional turn at the very least of stopping power for claiming any amount of gold over 1/2 of the province. This is a key factor if you are trying to say Castling is overpowered, because it's primary issue is the time it provides to you respond to any given attack on a province.
Even this simple fact in the middle of your list is absolutely impossible to calculate. How do you calculate how much gold did you really protect with your castle? The province's income? (plus half/admin value). If so, you are making two wrong assumptions here at the same time:
No, a Castle "Protects" Temples, which equate to 200 Gold. It could also concievably protect a Lab from opponent use, though it is not a 'build as many as you can' asset. Also include the Half income of the Province.
Snip
Raiding only lets you lose a province if you choose not to retake it with any sort of force. That means you are choosing not to retake it and the assumption is that the province taker is something you cannot defeat or will move the next turn.
And finally even if you didn't protect the province and it was raided by enemy as the result, how do you propose to calculate how much money will you lose? Do you assume that tghe province in question would be raided once during the game? 2 times? 5 times? 
You can either assume it will always be raided, or raided half the time you play. Halving it's income. You are the one that seems to have an issue with Raiding and it's monumental impact so that you "Must Castle" in order to protect it.
Ha! This is the best part. How do you propose to express in mathematical terms the uber VQ defending "completely castled" dominion, against "the alternative" strategy? You can't even calculate how much money did you realy save with your "madcastling". And even "madcastling" is only a part of your overall strategy, after all you don't have a single VQ with no troops defending your dominion by herself. The issue has nothing to do with "Uber VQ's". It is a seperate issue in and of itself. If you can't seperate it from any of your other issues, you are blinded by the complete issues instead of any single aspect and your logic is flawed, thus being illogical discredited.
And even if me or somebody else did that impossible thing, and even somehow to manage to calculate the "value/benefits" of some totally different alternative strategy, it would still be meaningless to our purpose.  No it would prove that Castling is more economical than buying armies thus it is an overpowered strategy because it protects and holds assets that are more applicable than other things built with gold (Mages and/or Armies).
Why? Because it is logically impossible to prove that one tactic more powerfull than others tactic in this matter. In any scince filed you CAN'T prove ANY theory by examples. You can only REJECT the theory is by using any numbers of examples. Then, you have already lost your argument. You cannot prove that Castling is 'abusive' on any level and so it is not.
Related to our problem, even if me, or Vvyn, or any other people who share our opinion on madcastling would take your advice to heart and try to calculate mathematically that "madcastling" is "better" than some other alternative strategy (which is impossible to do as I have said and explained above), all we would prove is the fact that the "madcastling" strategy is superior to this particular "alternative" strategy. That's all. That's all you need to do in order to have a leg to stand on to prove that the strategy is overpowered at all, let alone with enough consistancy and without enough drawbacks in order to warrant a change.
*YOU* can (theoretically, but not practicaly) prove that madcastling is not the best theory by calculating it's "vlue/bnefits" and comparing it the your own particular strategy, which you claim to be superior than madcastling. Your opponents though can not prove the opposite by using any number of examples. Do you understand what I mean? Then you understand that Castling is not overpowered, only one alternative out of many.
The bottom line is Zen - this game have way too many varibles to calculate in the way that you suggested. Much more that would allow you to build any meaningfull AND accurate mathematical model to generate that kind of evidence that you are looking for as in case with madcastling. It is not nearly as simple as you imply with your "blueprint". You can (and should) apply mathematics and models to certain simple aspects of the game, such as clams, Mirror Image, etc. But "madcastling" strategy is certanly not one of them.
Actually you could, but the simple fact that you want to argue even trying means to me that you have no intention of trying and thus it means so little have no intention of making any valid suggestions based on facts and only opinion. Opinion is not grounds for balance changes. Pure and simple.
[ May 29, 2004, 00:30: Message edited by: Zen ]
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