Anyone use a Fortified City?

[Tuidjy]

Ha! Only weenies hide behind walls. Real men use watchtowers, and even that
is only because they want to make sure that everyone can make it to the battle
in time. Can you imagine how Vanjarls would feel if they miss out on the
bloodletting, or how legionaries would feel about barbarians being slaughtered
without a Theurg's blessing?

The day I let walls do my fighting for me is the day I make a brick my prophet.

[PrinzMegaherz]

I wonder why every nation only gets one castle it is allowed to build. Imho it would be nice of you could choose as many of the given castles as you like, as long as you have the points to spend.

Fortified City for capitol, watch towers for border provinces. Sounds like real world, eh?

[The Panther]

Yvelina said:
I am not saying that I am one of the best players, but I will challenge anyone who dares to say that I am not!

I use only watchtowers, but it may be due to the fact that I play only Vanheim.

You might be one of the best players, and you might not. But how can you even remotely claim to be one of the best players and yet play only a single race? What happened to BF Ulm, which you used to play occasionally?

As for the castle selection, only the watchtower is a good selection for ANY race. Perhaps the others can be a good choice in selected situations, like the Hill Fort for Miasmi C'tis or the Fortified City for Tuatha Man or the castle for certain other playing styles, but no other choice can be used in any pretender design for any race.

If national troops were viable in the late game, then perhaps higher admin choices would be more useful. Or if MP games had victory conditions which prevented them from going on and on for so long, then other type castles would DEFINITELY be useful.

Perhaps the reason Petar says that the best players only use the watch tower is because it is difficult to win a long game unless you have a castle in every province. This means a cheap one that can be built quickly, like the watch tower. I have definitely noticed that the watch tower matches the playing style of most of the top players, which I am not among.

In fact, I am trying to recall if I have ever played a long MP game (>80 turns) where the winning player selected something besides the watch tower. And I cannot think of any such game right now...

[Zooko]

I'm beginning to think that many of the so-called "balance" issues in dom2 multiplayer are because of the prevalence of "all against all" games. In those games, it is in each player's best interest to avoid war with the other players while working on his overwhelming tech.

Naturally, this leads to that overwhelming tech being "over-balanced" when the end game comes.

One approach is to change the stats in order to make alternative strategies remain competitive even at the end of very long games. Another approach is to play games such as "one team vs. one other team" or "pentagram style", where prosecuting a war earlier in the game is a worthwhile strategy.

[alexti]

The Panther said:
If national troops were viable in the late game, then perhaps higher admin choices would be more useful.

High admin isn't giving much advantage in the late game, but if you used high admin's advantage in the early game and squashed couple of opponents, you'd already realized the advantage of your castle and had more provinces, gem income, summoned troops etc for the late game

The Panther said:
Perhaps the reason Petar says that the best players only use the watch tower is because it is difficult to win a long game unless you have a castle in every province.

I'm not sure how true this statement is, but there's no rule forcing you to get into the long game. Those with watch towers may have advantage in the long game, but they need to survive to reach it. Many times I've attacked mad-castling watch tower player around turn 20-40 only to discover that he has nothing to defend them with. In aggressive games mad-castling is like baiting an opponents to attack you - everybody wants some infrastructure for free. Before somebody else has grabbed it

The Panther said:In fact, I am trying to recall if I have ever played a long MP game (>80 turns) where the winning player selected something besides the watch tower. And I cannot think of any such game right now...

I can only remember one game that has not been decided before turn 80, and in that game all watch-tower players were dead by that time Here I must mention that I'm staying away from the games on maps large than Craddle. That's just too much micromanagement for my taste.

[quantum_mechani]

I think there are really two issues here:

1. People building cheap castles in every province.

I don't think this is a big issue, it is only a real option in long games, and it is only powerfull if the player can back it up with strong armies/SCs.

2. Only a few of the forts are worth the design points.

This is the real problem in my opinion. The watch tower costs no points, while remaining cheap in game (and quick to build), and providing most of the defensive power of other forts. If each of the citadels cost zero points, they would have still in most cases be inferior to the watch tower. The rest of the forts fall somewhere between, but I don't think anyone belives citadels are a good choice as they exist now.

[Jack Simth]

Perhaps one way to make other forms of forts more useful in the end game would be to make them moddable into constructable magic sites - e.g., make it so a Wizard's Tower produces 1 Astral Pearl per turn (or perhaps 1 Air Gem), a Mountain Fortress produces 1 Earth Gem per turn, a Dark Citadel produces 1 Blood Slave per turn, a Mausoleum produces 1 Death Gem per turn, et cetera, and then leave the watch tower doing nothing useful other than it's no-point spammability.

[alexti]

quantum_mechani said:
I think there are really two issues here:

1. People building cheap castles in every province.
2. Only a few of the forts are worth the design points.

This is the real problem in my opinion. The watch tower costs no points, while remaining cheap in game (and quick to build), and providing most of the defensive power of other forts. If each of the citadels cost zero points, they would have still in most cases be inferior to the watch tower. The rest of the forts fall somewhere between, but I don't think anyone belives citadels are a good choice as they exist now.

I agree that #2 is the real issue. I only find watch tower, mausoleum and castle to be useful. In some very rare cases, fortified city may be practical. But I can't see why I'd want one of the other forts. The main reason is that the defensive bonus doesn't worth much. In the early game you don't have neither gold nor time to build those expensive forts and in the later game, their defenses don't make much difference. If the fortification would be able to increase their might as the game advances, that would be interesting, but it's already hard to storm castles in the late game as it is. So I see the only way to make them more attractive - let them cost design points, but reduce their construction costs to be on par with watch tower.

[Turin]

I would add the fortress to the usable castles. It´s almost as good as the castle, but costs 20 design points less.

I agree that the others are pretty useless. So how much should they cost, so that you would choose them?

I would see every castle as viable, if these changes to design point costs were made:
watchtower,mausoleum,fortress,castle,wizardtower unchanged.
hillfortress: -20 points
fortified city: 40 points
citadel: 40 points
dark citadel: -40 points
mountain citadel: -60 points

I´d probably still go with watchtowers in most games, but I might choose the negative point castles if you just need those few extra design points.
The citadel or fortified city would be a real alternative to the castle/fortress, if you want to have an high admin castles.

[Yvelina]

> But how can you even remotely claim to be one of the best players and yet play only a single race?

The same way that the best shot I know uses only Cheh-Zeh pistols. I did not say that I was unfamiliar with the other races, or that I could not play them. Some people, *cough* *cough* feel they need to prove something, so right now they are playing Abysia despite loving air nations. Me, I play for fun, and for me, fun in Dominions II is winning with Vanheim.

On the other hand, I am about to start a team game with randomized races, so I guess I will have to play something else. It will still be an air nation, even if I have to play the Marignon theme on a map that has no seas whatsoever.

> What happened to BF Ulm, which you used to play occasionally?

I realized how limited it was. I used to play Man too... and I dropped it for a completely different reason. I'm studying to be a Powergamer *cue pompous music*