Question: Defense Dilemma

[Ironhawk]

As I get deeper into the game I often find myself playing "wack-a-mole" when forced to defend my area against incursion. By this I mean that I have a force sufficient to defeat the enemy force but they continually skip to another province. And yes... sometimes I can predict where they will go and ambush them, but this depends to a certain extent on luck which is just terrible.

And its just a fact that there are some geographies that have no bottlenecks and are thus really hard to defend. So its seeming to me that in these cases you would need to keep a defense force that was substantially larger than the attackers. That way you could corral the enemy and attack them in proper fashion.

Am I missing something with regards to area defense? Without an order like "intercept this army" I cannot imagine that I am the only one who is encountering it. Additionally, I can't believe that it is appropriate to say that the *defender* must have numeric superiority. Please let me know your stratgies for dealing this problem.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

You generally have 5 options:

1) Blanket the area with armies, each large enough that local defence+army will be enough to defeat
2) Use traps or guessing methods to predict the next move and squash his army with your biggie.
3) Spam the you provinces with castles
4) Use a magical attack spell to jump the defence (the ghost spell seems effective for this)
5) Counterattack, devasting the oponents provinces just as he devastes yours.

Playing catchup is almost never worthwhile.

Disclaimer: I'm certainly no veteran.

[Gandalf Parker]

Use real world tactics. If he is at the edge of your domain then boost defences in two provinces and build units there (archers are usually helpful to defence militia) while leaving the middle one weak. Attack the middle one and see if he doesnt attack it also in the same round.

[PDF]

There's one simple solution : play the Cradle map, it has lifelike bottlenecks and access routes, it makes the game more enjoyable than the usual "runner wars" where you chase the crappy IA armies invading from everywhere

[Wauthan]

As it sounds like you too favor singleplayer then I can also recommend creatinf a mod were you upgrade the province defence a wee bit. It's an easy and fun mod to make.

Machaka and Pythium, my favorite nations, are a lot more relaxing to play when their frontline defence don't rely on militia.

And I agree with PDF that the map makes a big difference. The Cradle of Dominion rewards a good defence but it can also be very frustrating when it's the AI who's turtling. Kingdom of Karan is a bit more open but still sports various bottlenecks that can fought over. So does the Middle Earth map.

[Ironhawk]

Thanks for all your Posts yall, I appreciate the info. Sadly I still don't feel like there is a good strategy - see below for responses to each point:

1) Blanket an area w/ army+defense:
This tactic basically means I have to deploy far more troops (and spend on defense) a great deal more than the enemy has to spend to build an attacking force. This implies that the game is offense favoring.

2) Traps and Guesswork:
As I said in the original post I already do this - I'm looking for a better way :}

3) Castle Spam:
Technically, this solves the problem, BUT at the cost of ruining the fort resource gathering. This is turn (while costing a fortune) would also mean a terrific amount of MicroManagement since all your troop building could no long be focused on key forts due to resource shortages.

4) The Ghost Spell:
I looked thru the spell list and couldnt find this spell. Is it a nickname for something?

5) CounterAttack:
A valid strategy. But it sidesteps the fact that there appears to be no good way to defend.

6 + 7) AI Strategies:
Those are good strategies for the AI, but I am looking for MP strategies in the long term.


The only thing that I've seen so far that might really address the fact that offense has the advantage are these new maps that people are talking about. But it saddens me that this effectively means that Dominions 2 at the base level favors an all-offense strategy!

Please if anyone can think of a way I have listed, post it! I personally would be very disappointed if this was the way dom2 was built. Hoping I'm missing something somehow...

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Ironhawk:
3) Castle Spam:
Technically, this solves the problem, BUT at the cost of ruining the fort resource gathering. This is turn (while costing a fortune) would also mean a terrific amount of MicroManagement since all your troop building could no long be focused on key forts due to resource shortages.

This isn't as huge a drawback as you'd think, particularly if you took either the Watchtower, knowing that you WERE going to do this, and as a result, have no resource-gathering to ruin anyway because the watchtower's admin sucks, or your nation's troops are either undesirable and/or have very low resource costs.

It should be noted that heavy, high-resource troops generally lack the strategic mobility to do anything useful anyway, because they move too slowly to actually reach a conflict: This is alleviated if your nation is astrally powerful and can gateway, but otherwise, heavies are simply too slow and useless, and cannot be produced in anything approximating reasonable quantity even if you have a solid admin grid.

4) The Ghost Spell:
I looked thru the spell list and couldnt find this spell. Is it a nickname for something?

Ghost Riders: D4, Conjuration 9. In combination with #3, Castle Spamming, you can easily keep the enemy off your back: When he shows up to bang on the gates, bury him in Ghost Riders. The Ghost Riders will slaughter his forces, but since you hold the fort, and the Ghost Riders evaporate after the battle, the province instantly reverts back to your control without having to send a cleanup crew. Your temples remain intact as well. This strategy is really synergistic with #3.

5) CounterAttack:
A valid strategy. But it sidesteps the fact that there appears to be no good way to defend.

Against an AI, a castle will mire him down until he can take it, making his moves predictable, because an AI never aborts a siege willingly. Against a slash and burn pack run by a human, however, this is totally futile: Enemy armies inside formerly friendly territory always move first, even if they're attacking a new territory. The only way to catch them is to second-guess them, or intercept on the magic phase.

The only thing that I've seen so far that might really address the fact that offense has the advantage are these new maps that people are talking about. But it saddens me that this effectively means that Dominions 2 at the base level favors an all-offense strategy!

You'd think that, but then why does my incredibly defensively-oriented castles+SCs style gather so much flak?

[Ironhawk]

Don't get me wrong - I didn't try to argue against the usefulness of castle spamming. I agree that it solves the strategic problem perfectly BUT...

it breaks down the resource/production focus that (I believe) forts are designed for. Effectively with castle spamming I would be reduced to building like 2-4 units in every province and then running around to collect them all into a central location. I simply *will not* spend the majority of my turn time micromanaging my troops like that.

As the game stands now it is fun (wack-a-mole syndrome aside), but if I have to MM my troops every turn I know that my desire to play will evaporate quickly.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Originally posted by Ironhawk:
1) Blanket an area w/ army+defense:
This tactic basically means I have to deploy far more troops (and spend on defense) a great deal more than the enemy has to spend to build an attacking force. This implies that the game is offense favoring.

More or less. If games are to end, ever, the game must be slightly favored toward offense. Otherwise, everybody would just hole up. A few points, though;

a. Firstly, you don't have to pay upkeep for you PD. He does. PD combined with a real army is more powerful than it seems, though not against huge armies.
b. If you can enclose his army and break it, even partially, he will lose those troops. Breaking (parts) of an army is usually not that hard. Enclosing big armies corks well. Also, see 2.
3. He will (probably) be fighting in your dominion. This is a huge handicap, especially since breaking quickly becomes a real troop killer. Cavary and/or flying units set to e.g. hold+attack rear do a terrific job in capitalizing on breaking.

2) Traps and Guesswork:
As I said in the original post I already do this - I'm looking for a better way :}

The key here is TRAPS. Humans can also be tricked. Use baits (you pretender works well), partially concealed armies, hide your armies just beyond sight and so on. This is how dom was meant to be played, I think.

3) Castle Spam:
Technically, this solves the problem, BUT at the cost of ruining the fort resource gathering. This is turn (while costing a fortune) would also mean a terrific amount of MicroManagement since all your troop building could no long be focused on key forts due to resource shortages.

Yeah, it works, and it sucks. I fervently wish that castle spamming is killed by a balance adjustment of some sort. I suggest an global earthquake like spell, that destroys 10% of all castles in the world. Mhu-hahahahahaha. I'll put castlespamming on my deathlist together with wish and the clam

5) CounterAttack:
A valid strategy. But it sidesteps the fact that there appears to be no good way to defend.

As I said, it is important that offense is slightly favorable to defense. Also, it is easy to forget how expensive that pillaging-army-until-it-dies strategy is for the offensive player. Try doing it to the AI once, and see how well it works for you

6 + 7) AI Strategies:
Those are good strategies for the AI, but I am looking for MP strategies in the long term.

That was just examples of 2 and 5

The only thing that I've seen so far that might really address the fact that offense has the advantage are these new maps that people are talking about. But it saddens me that this effectively means that Dominions 2 at the base level favors an all-offense strategy!

All-offense is a catostrophy. Try it againt the AI if you please. No amount of offense is going to give you dominion, and dominion is a key to victory.

BTW, all of this advise is useless against the Vampire Queen-wielding camp. Against those, only a high dominion and extensive alliances help And you will still get beaten.

To quote an english author that rose to some esteem. "I'd rather be a canker in the hedge than a rose in his grace.": I'd rather lose every single game than stoop to micromangement. Too bad the best magic school (blood) cannot be used without mucho micromangement

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Ironhawk:
it breaks down the resource/production focus that (I believe) forts are designed for.

If you want to explain to me how there's a resource/production focus in an admin-10 castle, be my guest. The Watchtower is DESIGNED for castle-spamming, as it has basically no admin value of any worth.

The drawbacks are that spammable castles have crappy defense, and are thus only really meaningful as a brief delaying tactic.

Effectively with castle spamming I would be reduced to building like 2-4 units in every province and then running around to collect them all into a central location.

That's because castle spammers don't build troops, they build mages. As you can only recruit one mage per turn, regardless of how much gold you have sitting around, you have to spam castles in order to be able to increase your mage output bandwidth.

A strategy specifically centering around the spamming of castles tends to also involve the production of a buttload of mages.

There's also the minor problem that without castles, building temples is ultimately a futile endeavor as they constantly burn down in raids. Without the temples, you're liable to be dominion-killed very easily. I'm sure some people would argue the situation is not quite as drastic, but in one game, I spam castles everywhere and temple everything....I *STILL* have enemy dominion in my lands. Obviously, I'm not building enough temples.