Mountain Citadel vs. Dark Citadel

[Cohen]

Perhaps he was referring to the Mountain Citadel ...

However it's too poor in Admin, so you cannot gather properly resources from neighbouring provinces, in a 5 player Urgaia map ... and I suppose in the beginning you're in dire need ot troops.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
In the sort of game you play, mebe. Try Urgaia with 5+ land nations for a change, or avoid generalizations.

I think that still would be an awful idea: The ROI on a Fortified City, considering that its admin is a mere 10 points better than the Castle, and thus yields only an additional 5% income, is awful.

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I don't know any castle type that comes with a decent ROI, even the Wiz Tower - but of course this is completely irrelevant since in that case you aren't going to build any - at least, a priori. The sole point of the Fortified City on small crowded maps is to make your extra income and resources to pay asap and snowball, to get an early edge over the other nations - everyone starts with only one castle, remember? And if someone is willing to build a second castle too early, that will put him even more behind the curve.

This means you'll be effectively limited to one fort for most of the game, leaving the rest of your provinces completely undefendable and leaving your probably one-and-only army,

You should try at least once before making assumptions like these. Whoever picked the Fortified City in such a game is likely to be the one with the most troops, thus the most armies, thus the one who can defend and invade at the same time, and who can crack your own fortresses open the easier. It is an effective strategy, provided you're offensive-minded. I've seen it used and used it myself many times.

[Maltrease]

The wizard tower and castle do not have bad ROI's, particularly if playing on a Rich map setting.

If you built a wizard tower in a provence generating 100 income it will increase your income by 15 gold a turn, and pay for itself in 20 turns.

Finding provences with higher base income produces even quicker returns. Obviously if you plop a fortress down on a provence generating 20 income it will never pay for itself.

If you playing with high income scales (3 order, 3 production, 3 growth), rich maps, or big long games this can a significant motivation in your plans.

It also combines nicely with the lvl9 nature enchantment spells that doubles your income.

And of course having lots of fortresses has many other benefits besides simply enhancing your economy.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Maltrease:
If you built a wizard tower in a provence generating 100 income it will increase your income by 15 gold a turn, and pay for itself in 20 turns.

Exactly. Anything that takes more than 10 turns to pay for itself in Dominions has a poor ROI in my book. OFC your mileage may vary.

[Scott Hebert]

Well, if you don't think that fortifications have a decent ROI (which IMO they shouldn't; that's not their point), you would still choose a fortification that has the best ROI, if nothing else to minimize your problems.

From an economical standpoint, the two best Fortifications for ROI are the Castle and the Wizard's Tower.

I think it would be interesting if, as an exercise, IW made all Fortifications equal in price (the most logical price would be 0) and made them quantitatively different in other ways (Admin Ratings, defense Ratings, Supply Ratings, etc.). Then you could have the 'defense fort', the 'money fort', the 'cheap fort', etc.