[Esben Mose Hansen]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
I've been mulling this over and I'm not sure that there is an overwhelming advantage at all to castling.
[...]
Now without going into minute. The various outcomes would seem to be, wait and knack his temple, remaining defenders, fast response army

Move to avoid his fast reponse army, which regardless of their being a castle there will effectively revert back to defender ownership.

The defender can fast response army directly to seiged prov or second guess your next move as hes obviously prepared to face your invading force otherwise this wouldn't be even in his mind.

So, castle or not, your either cat and mousing or planning to nail his force. All thats saved is the temple and any squishies.

You're going about it the wrong way. You want to squish the attacking army using ritual magic: teleport, gateway, the C9 4Death spell with the riders etc. There is no escape from these spells; the only way to dodge these attacks requires a lab... which you can't have as long as the castle remains in the province. The C9 Death spell is especially cool, since it is cheap&effective, and leaves you without an unwanted magic army and a liberated province. You can even use it to defend an ally, which makes the spell bloody unique

Stack the spells as neccessary.

To defend aginst this you need a large army --- enough to stand against anything the defender will throw against you. And since you will be attacked before you can move, you might as well siege the castle and destroy the temples & mages + gain a free castle.

This is an excellent strategy, which is attributed to Norfleet.