[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
See, Norfleet is already backing down from "mad castling.

If that's what you got out of Norfleet's statement... hmm. Yes, he wouldn't build castles. OTOH, it makes attacking him even harder. Meanwhile, the game devolves from 'endless castle sieges' to 'endless cat-and-mouse antics'.

To do what you have said norf you need to have significant force not only to overwhelm the entire invading army with your teleporters,

Unless your opponent is invading with SCs, this is not really an issue. If you're invading with SCs/mage assault squads... why aren't you doing this against the castles?

but you also need to overrun all friendly neigborhing provinces at the same turn, to block the invider's route to escape if the choose to, or you would just end up wasting your time and gems AND would pose yourself wide open for retaliation.

You might want to explain this some more. Spell movement happens before 'normal' movement. I don't see how they can 'escape'. It's not like squads made to destroy entire armies are made to let anyone escape. You _could_ place your army on 'retreat' orders, making it a true raid, but then your army gets dispersed, requiring time to reassemble it.

Keep in mind that once your drop you "cloudtrapezing/teleporting squad" you are open to the same present plus some extra from your enemy, since now *you* are the one siting in the open and the enemy knows your numbers and knows what to expect from you.

And the 'sitting duck' goes first. In a fight between squads of the same quality, advantage goes to the defender.

Also by having line of naked countryside near your neigbors you are risking of losing it all to one coordinated attack.

That all depends on the border involved. If that border is small, then the attacks of both attacker and defender are concentrated. If large, both have to devote larger resources for a smaller gain. This is a wash, IMO.

But anyway, it is certanly an improvement compared to "mad caslers" warfare, in terms of fun if nothing else.

This is nothing more or less than an opinion of yours, and hence not really useful for supporting an argument.

Stormbinder, you seem to be operating under 2 rather common logical fallacies, and it's really hurting any chance you have to get what you want changed.

The first logical fallacy you're using is that of the 'bandwagon philosophy', or 'if it's popular, it's good'. Popularity is not without merit, but it cannot be the basis for a discussion on whether something is quality, not quality, etc. etc. One of the arguments used for VQs (especially) and castling and clams (to a lesser extent) is 'everyone uses them, so it has to be broken'. It is a fact that people tend towards the most powerful/abusive parts of a game, because the object of the game is to win. However, that by itself is not enough to prove that a strategy is broken. In fact, actual anecdotal evidence shows clearly that it's not a strategy easy to use, and that few can implement it properly.

The second logical fallacy you're falling under is that of the self-evident statement. You are _assuming_ that castling is a problem, and using that as the starting point to suggest solutions to it. You quite nicely are sidestepping a crucial point in the problem analysis procedure, namely determining whether the point under consideration truly is a problem.

This is where your argument is falling down, and Zen is quite right in showing this over and over again. You haven't given us any real information showing how castling everywhere is a problem. Zen has even suggested ways for you to do this. Since you seem unwilling to do so, I'll do it for you.

Let's say you have a 300g Fortification (which is at the heart of this strategy... it's also the 'best' situation for the defender, so we're talking a 'best case' scenario in favor of the defender). Let's say you've built X of them in your kingdom. The amount of gold you've spent on them would then be 300x. That's all the analysis we'll do for now. We won't go into temples/labs involved, or anything else that might be harder to quantify.

Now, the question is, can the attacker build an army with 300x gold (where x is the number of defending castles) that can take out the defender's castles? Now, a specific answer would require assigning a number to x, which as you point out varies on a case-by-case basis. However, something that you CAN see, just by the numbers, is that as the number of castles the defender has increases, the relative size of the attacker's army increases. This leads to easier and easier capture of castles. Therefore, putting a castle in every province is not a very good strategy, per se, as it is something that gives more and more advantage to the attacker.

"But wait!" you say. "That isn't the castling strategy! It requires rapid-response units to prevent the castles from ever falling!" And that is correct. But before you can propose a solution to a problem, you have to know where the problem lies. By the above _simple_ analysis, simply building castles everywhere is a losing proposition, all else being equal. Therefore, if there is a problem, it doesn't exist with the way castles are built.

You must then analyze if the fault lies in 'raiding', or in the ease of moving SCs around (to prevent breaches in lines), or something else entirely. But the thing here is, you're not defining your problem clearly enough.

Would your suggestion of requiring an action to burn down temples solve the castling question? Perhaps. It removes what some claim is the incentive for castling. But is that fixing the problem, or only the symptoms of the problem?

Personally, I feel the issue stems down to SCs being too easy to build and too mobile by far. But I can't prove that either. This also isn't much of an issue for me as a player since I can't play MP very much.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Scott