spamming castle all over feasible?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
My advice is to never think in terms of "eventually".

You will pay the price for your lack of vision!

If you never bother to think beyond the here and now, you will die horribly anyway as you stumble around aimlessly with no sense of purpose. Plan for the future, and when it comes, the here and now takes care of itself.

[Zapmeister]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Zapmeister:
My advice is to never think in terms of "eventually".

You will pay the price for your lack of vision!

If you never bother to think beyond the here and now, you will die horribly anyway as you stumble around aimlessly with no sense of purpose. Plan for the future, and when it comes, the here and now takes care of itself.

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That's not what I meant. Plan for the future by all means, but take account of the fact that paybacks that are a long time coming may not come at all.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:

quote:

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Originally posted by pohtato:
i think if we go into long term planning, the cost used to build those castles would be offset by the income per turn eventually

My advice is to never think in terms of "eventually". A lot can happen between now and eventually, most notably that your opponents might notice the vulnerability caused by ploughing most of your funds into expensive castles, and hardly any into a standing army.

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Not to mention that if your neighbor notices you building a lot of forts, better ones than he can build, and more of them than he can afford - he's likely to think that _you_ building _his_ castles is a wonderful idea. In more than one game, I've gained most of my forts by massacring those who built them or owned them before me.

This tends to cut down the ... return on investment, for the nation that built the forts.

[Master Shake]

You just have to balance things.

In a recent MP game, Ctis was mad castling Hill Forts (!), and put just too much cash into Forts, and had no units to actually defend them. I assume he was planning on stocking them with lots of units when he was done with the building phase, but thanks to the units I had built, he never got to that point

Of course, I've seen the opposite and watched people have a single fort for a 21-province empire. I prefer to pick high income provinces to progessively castle as the game progresses. It booosts income significantly from those provinces (using standard castle), and protects the province from raiders.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Master Shake:
You just have to balance things.
.... Of course, I've seen the opposite and watched people have a single fort for a 21-province empire. I prefer to pick high income provinces to progessively castle as the game progresses. It booosts income significantly from those provinces (using standard castle), and protects the province from raiders.

Yep. High income provinces, choke point provinces, high resource provinces with high resource neighbors, provinces with especially valuable magic sites. Best of all is when you can combine 2 or 3 of those attributes in one - a rich plain with a great magic site and 3 high resource neighbors, say.

[pohtato]

does the type of terrain affect your defense rating or something???

if that is not the case, then it would be wise to build castles on most plains to get higher gold income if possible

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by pohtato:
does the type of terrain affect your defense rating or something???

if that is not the case, then it would be wise to build castles on most plains to get higher gold income if possible

Terrain mostly affects gold income, and resources. While it's almost always nice to castle on a high gold plain (if you have a decent admin castle), it's also good to get castles in mountains where you get enough resources to build those monster units - knights, things that take 40-70 resources.