Can I get some cheese with that...

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:

quote:

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Well if player A, player B or player C were all the same size... and myself was twice the size of any of them .. There will be the one player(player_C) who says hey I will utilize my gold for other

Yes if player "C" was retarded. All 3 of them should attack you immediatly if they know what is good for them. You are twice their size. If they don't gang up now then all is lost. Comming in 2nd is still losing.

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I completely agree... but the strongest player should still use his strength to try and intimidate the others. The biggest rebel should be the first one to go down.
Another method the strongest player can use is providing a good trading market for one or more players thus helping convince them to follow his demands.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I am sorry I misinterpreted you sentiment(?) I am only human.

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:
You don't want ME to "castle spam" because YOU hate micromanagement.

Without more, this appears to be a non sequitur. [/QB]

Let me bend that in neon, then

I really do not like games where "caring to do lots of micromangement"="winning". I hope you can understand this sentiment. I also thought that dom2 was one of the games where this was not the case. Alas, I was wrong.

I should have left it at that, yes. But then I thought that we could mod us out of this. I have realized an hour ago that the server implementation does not allow that in several ways.

And now I'll leave these forums to cool off. Send me a private email if you need me for anything.

[Reverend Zombie]

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
Unless, of course, that the gems you have on your commanders are there for a reason. In which case you have to reassign gems to every commander who happened by a laboratory each turn. Result: Extensive, pointless micromangement.

Quit lab-spamming, then.

[Tuidjy]

Frankly I do not understand what the problem with
castle spamming is. I play Vans. If you go to
war with me, you will lose every single
unfortified temple in, oh, about five turns.

There are some people on this thread who are
familiar with the experience. At least one
of them has taken up castling religiously, so
now instead of burninating his empire, I
am besieging three castles, and gambling on his
Vampire Queen not being called up from the dead
too quickly.

Do you honestly propose that we start using rules
that _enforce_ leaving your provinces
vulnerable? Or do you accuse people building a
castle in each province of playing a cheap game?

Personally I do not build castles extensively.
Not because I am ashamed of it, or because I do
not think it is a good idea. Mostly, it is
because I cannot afford it, or because I am
hoping that I can get away with it unless I am
facing Vanheim, Man, Ulm, Pangea, Caelum, ...
you know, what, nevermind! :-)

Once the game gets going, and supercombatants
raise their ugly heads, having provinces without
a castle is a waste of your 200 gold coins, and
of most of the income you can get from the
province.

So lets see. Why do people whine about castling?
1. Because they do not like micromanaging, and
want to deny others the benefits of doing it?
2. Because they like their administration bonus,
and do not want to give it up?
3. Because they have trouble to keep supply
adequate without a fortified city?
4. Because their strategy is not able to support
the expense of castling?
5. Because they like being able to raid
indiscriminately?
6. Because they need something to whine about?

Guys, castling is not only the one in-game answer
to raiding, it is also perfectly realistic. I am
from Europe. In most places, it is enough to
look at the highest place in sight, and you will
see a castle. This is certainly the case in
France, Germany and Spain. Why? Because building
a castle that allows you to protect your villagers
and lifestock, and strike at the invaders, should
they separate for pillaging, WORKS!

Now, people are proposing solutions to alleviate
the need of castling. I'm all for that! Make
temples take a turn to demolish. Make it
impossible to bump taxes unless you have held the
province for a whole turn. Make it a bit easy to
intercept a moving army. Fine! Thank you very
much! I do not want to pay 500 coins for my
temple. I could use some ressources. But the
problem is not castling. The problem is the
wack-a-mole approach to handling an army moving
in your lands.

My way of handling this? Introduce loyalty in
provinces. Make those who move between loyal
provinces move first, as opposed to those moving
between occupied provinces. This simulates the
army supported by the population having access to
better logistics, better recon, and not being
harrassed by loyalists. Hell, introduce a new
command 'move while intercepting' that will
deflect the path of the army to coincide with the
targeted invader's destination.

Of course this is complex, and will not happen in
a patch. But do NOT cripple castling without
coming up with an answer to raiding first, or the
next whine fest will be:

So his IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE Vans slaughtered my 400
coins strong PD, burned my 200 coins temple,
jacked the taxes to net 200 coins, and then left
me with 50% unrest. Oh, they hid on the next
turn, so there WAS NOTHING I COULD DO!

WHAAAAAAH!'

[HotNifeThruButr]

I think I've just had a revelation.

If labs were more expensive, requiring you to plan out which of your provinces will become magical centers, you can effectively stop Norfleet's mage-dependant strategy, right?

Or, there could be different types of labs. Smaller and cheaper ones reduce your ability to research, or multiplies mage cost, either handicapping your ability to field the best summons before everyone else with your mage army or making it more expensive to pump mages. It does, however, have an advantage of expensive labs which divides mage cost and improves research because in the better labs, you're keeping all of your eggs in a couple baskets and you can't pump mages as well. Cheap labs also allow you to blood hunt in virtually every province but one.

What do you think?

[Cheezeninja]

I personally still believe the problem lies in the supercombatant instead of castling. If your opponent could not teleport in a force capable of defeating your besiegers in 1 turn then castling would no longer work. His castles that he made in all his provinces would subsiquently become YOUR castles because he would not be able to afford a large army since all his money has been going into hi..YOUR castles. I think the ability to intercept raiding armies better would be a definite plus, but if you think about it, if you actually had to move an army around to defend your castles, suddenly castling everywhere is alot less effective. I think commanders should be capable of inflicting massive losses on the enemy, but should not be so good at becoming completely invulnerable to endless hordes of anything that isnt elite.

Yes, castling is a problem, but its only made possible because of Supercombatants that can defeat your besieging army by their lonesome.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:
Well, the current whine du jour seems to have moved off somewhat from VQs and clam hoarding to "castle spamming."

I thought the whine du jour was whining, and the fact that the forums don't support killfiles?

Whether or not any of these activities may be broken, why does it seem that the first reaction of people unhappy with these is to propose nerfs, rather than strategies to deal with the tactics in question?

Norfleeting, er, mad castling, has always struck me as a beatable strategy. As someone (NTJedi?) also posted here, Machaka could have a -bunch- of its best troops for the cost of 10 cheap castles.

From what Norfleet in particular has said, mad castling relies on not building troops. (In order to afford the castles.)

So, my theory is that if you haven't been castling, you should be able to build, say, three armies each capable of taking a castle. (Or at least a watchtower ) Striking multiple provinces, preferably each too far apart for a VQ or other flyer to get from one to another inside of a single turn means that a lone SC can only respond to a single attack; in the meantime, you've acquired two provinces and two castles without having to build the castles yourself.

And the troops aren't there to respond to the other two attacks, in theory.

Where I think this breaks down is with summoned troops and commanders, which the mad castler can often manage if sie's concentrating on mages, research, and finding magic sites.

The other thing is that the castles typically used are pretty worthless for the other player - watchtowers, or worse, Ermor's 0 admin keeps.

So, my theoretical counterstrategy requires work. Probably it'd be best to attempt to strike the Mad Castler early in the game, before a preponderance of summonings are brought to bear. Obviously, this can be unfeasible with huge maps.

The other tweak would be to rely heavily on flying troops yourself, for mobility and the ability to quickly reduce enemy forts. Again - difficult to do save for a very few nations / themes.