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FM_Surrigon said:
Just to weigh in on the madcastling bit.
I am/was the Vanheim player that attemped to raid Cainehills territories and the most frustrating thing about it was...I accomplished absolutely nothing.
To me, there's no strategy in that. He didn't adeptly shepherd my raiders into a corner and kill them by out-guessing where I was going to go, or strategically place his forces so that when I got my intelligence reports he'd have forced me into a certain province, he just stuck some buildings up and never had to worry about it. Madcastling to me is not good gameplay, it is the death of it. It is too easy to get this sort of thing going, especially combined with the fact that hardly anyone spends money on troops, so all that cash is available for building temples and castles.
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Ahem. First - my castles were up before you started raiding. Currently something like 9 castles out of 21 provinces, on turn 41. Not exactly mad castling, but the castles did what they were supposed to - protect labs and temples.
Then - it's difficult to herd raiders on a map with an average of something like 6 neighbors per province, not counting the sailing neighbors which you, as Vanheim, made use of.
I attempted to predict where you would go - frankly, I never expected you to go driving inland away from the sea, as that gave up one of your big advantages.
And several times, I would have balked your progress, except for two things. #1, Caelum's PD is more of a hindrance than a help, since they fly right up and then rout, meaning that I had to get troops with each response force.
#2, on one or two occasions, I did predict your movement, and believe I would have broken your army, except that the fortifications worked against me: My forces moved to where you moved, and sat on their arses inside the walls. If there had not been a fort, or if there was a "Move and Patrol" / "Move and Attack" order, you'd've have been hurting.
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It seemed to me from the feel of the game that buildings like temples, libraries and castles shouldn't be *every province* buildings. There's a reason Pan and Man's temples are half the price, because the developers wanted to encourage mass temples for those two nations. At this point in time, it doesn't look like the money is an issue anymore.
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As stated - 9 out of 21 provinces is hardly an "every province" situation. If raiders didn't have the huge advantages they currently do, I wouldn't _need_ to build a fortification on every temple. As it was, if I had left a couple of temples unguarded, I would have lost them.
If I had built the cheap forts (mausoleum / watch tower) I might have lost a couple of them, as you would have been able to storm the turn after arriving. As it was, the wizard towers were perfect - and frankly, paying 120 design points seems a strategic investment in those forts.
Money not being an issue? Obviously you don't have an inkling of what my upkeep is like. If I build so much as a temple, that's recruiting I can't afford to do, much less a temple and tower.
And finally, you say you accomplished nothing? Wrong. You didn't accomplish as much as you wanted to, obviously, but you cost me a number of mages, and a fair amount of gold spent on PD (which was between 5 and 11 in every province, I believe).
More significantly, you totally disrupted my research and forging, as something like 2/3 or 3/4 of my mages were either patroling, or flying around trying to intercept you for half a dozen or more turns.
It didn't seem like nothing to me. And for this, I will crush Vanheim.
