Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion

[Norfleet]

You can't pillage a fortified province unless the castle is taken. This is certainly another reason to castle: It contains the level of damage marauders can inflict.

[spirokeat]

I've been mulling this over and I'm not sure that there is an overwhelming advantage at all to castling.

I would build a castle for a number of reasons usually.

I need more forts to purchase larger numbers of national non capitol troops, not relevant to all nations.

I want to protect an important province for bloodhunting (the hunters etc), magic site or special recruitable.

Its in strategically good place to start producing new armies from or block the entry of another nation (peninsula provs etc)

So, on one level depending on how costly your castles etc are, you are going to build a number of them anyway.

A castle gives you essentially one turn (generally) of grace on the 'total' loss of a province. This has the effect of protecting a temple or unprotected magetype for one turn also.

Now without going into minute. The various outcomes would seem to be, wait and knack his temple, remaining defenders, fast response army

Move to avoid his fast reponse army, which regardless of their being a castle there will effectively revert back to defender ownership.

The defender can fast response army directly to seiged prov or second guess your next move as hes obviously prepared to face your invading force otherwise this wouldn't be even in his mind.

So, castle or not, your either cat and mousing or planning to nail his force. All thats saved is the temple and any squishies.

Even if you bring in the idea of relief forces or multiple strikes, you will still be facing an army thats built to defend a nation and your either ready for it, or not.

There is of course the immortal defender problem, but even if you take a uncastled province with a temple in it, you still dont reverse the dominion in it instantly so you would have to prepare in advance to cope with immortals regardless of castle or not.

And of course everytime you let a province slip, your opponent is then 'castled' against you. So it would seem that the main advantage is to protect non focal mage types like bloodhunters or site activators.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Norfleet:
I place the blame firmly on the fact that they were not beaten frequently enough as small children and did not suffer sufficient hardship and deprivation while growing up.

It's nice to know that you approve of child abuse along with all your other psychological problems.

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[littlemute]

I think there's a right way to beat kids (the way I was beaten) and many wrong ways.

When we would beg for candy at the store we were told to stop, then told to stop with a warning that we would be spanked right there in the store (add the pain to the shame), then, of course, it would actually happen if we continued.

The second way was the worst. I'd do something wrong, like steal or lie or start a forest fire or shoot at people with a bb gun, something fairly bad. Then I was scolded and told to go to my room and come down for 'punishment.' The nature of which was never revealed until the moment of impact. What this does is takes the anger out of it and gives the parent a chance to cool down before laying on hands or the switch.

The whole "go out to the woodshed and find a switch to be beaten with and if it's too small, I'll pick it" gives the parent time to relax and strike the kid without any rage or feelings, simply execution of the logical conclusion to the child's poor actions.

As the kid gets older, you will really have to do damage to have them do anything but laugh at your spankings, so I'd say past 11 or so, no beatings. So what you do is 1) take **** away from them such as telling them when their 13 that when they get their driver's license you will take it away from them for 4 months...the span of time they'll never remember, but you will! ha ha! 2)Make them stand in front of a clock for hours 3)Wake them up VERY early to spread gravel on the driveway or dig a ditch on a saturday morning and keep them working the whole day, not even mentioning that it's punishment, but they'll know.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
I've been mulling this over and I'm not sure that there is an overwhelming advantage at all to castling.
[...]
Now without going into minute. The various outcomes would seem to be, wait and knack his temple, remaining defenders, fast response army

Move to avoid his fast reponse army, which regardless of their being a castle there will effectively revert back to defender ownership.

The defender can fast response army directly to seiged prov or second guess your next move as hes obviously prepared to face your invading force otherwise this wouldn't be even in his mind.

So, castle or not, your either cat and mousing or planning to nail his force. All thats saved is the temple and any squishies.

You're going about it the wrong way. You want to squish the attacking army using ritual magic: teleport, gateway, the C9 4Death spell with the riders etc. There is no escape from these spells; the only way to dodge these attacks requires a lab... which you can't have as long as the castle remains in the province. The C9 Death spell is especially cool, since it is cheap&effective, and leaves you without an unwanted magic army and a liberated province. You can even use it to defend an ally, which makes the spell bloody unique

Stack the spells as neccessary.

To defend aginst this you need a large army --- enough to stand against anything the defender will throw against you. And since you will be attacked before you can move, you might as well siege the castle and destroy the temples & mages + gain a free castle.

This is an excellent strategy, which is attributed to Norfleet.

[spirokeat]

Verra late for me and much wine has oiled this evening..

Query. Should you choose to attack a province, then leave the next turn will a summoned spell army such as horde from hell or ghost riders etc attack you prior to your army moving ?

and is there any difference between being able to ghost riders/hordeetc on someone who is castled and someone who is not ? It would seem like that situation might well be a matter of intent, which again leads me to think, make an army big enough to stab up, 25 imps and one devil or 33 undead horse.

But this evenings reply is speculative. Im too wasted to cogitate what I want to say.

Spiro.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
Query. Should you choose to attack a province, then leave the next turn will a summoned spell army such as horde from hell or ghost riders etc attack you prior to your army moving ?

Yup: A magically created attack will strike before you can leave the province on foot.

and is there any difference between being able to ghost riders/hordeetc on someone who is castled and someone who is not ?

Hordes wouldn't work because they'd sit in the castle and drink beer, but if the enemy army is slaughtered by Ghost Riders and you are castled, you do not need to send anyone to mop-up: Instead of becoming an independent province that you must send a guy to reclaim, who might then get killed, and then rebuild your temple, the enemy army simply dies and the province instantly reverts back to you.

There's also the benefit that you can build a lab in the province, which the enemy cannot make use of immediately upon seizing the province, and thus he cannot gateway large numbers of reinforcing troops in, nor teleport out.