spamming castle all over feasible?

[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.

[Agrajag]

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

Just wanted to explain exactly what Cainehill meant:
Different terrain types affect the province's "stats", a farmlands province is high on gold income, but low on resources and magic sites, a swamp is low on gold and resources but high on magic sites, a mountain province is high on resources and therefor building a castle in it (and doubling its resource value) will net you more resources to use for your high resource units.

[pohtato]

Originally posted by Agrajag:
Just wanted to explain exactly what Cainehill meant:
Different terrain types affect the province's "stats", a farmlands province is high on gold income, but low on resources and magic sites, a swamp is low on gold and resources but high on magic sites, a mountain province is high on resources and therefor building a castle in it (and doubling its resource value) will net you more resources to use for your high resource units.

But would having a castle on mountain means the place is more "defensible" like in many other games?

[Boron]

Originally posted by pohtato:

quote:

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Originally posted by Agrajag:
Just wanted to explain exactly what Cainehill meant:
Different terrain types affect the province's "stats", a farmlands province is high on gold income, but low on resources and magic sites, a swamp is low on gold and resources but high on magic sites, a mountain province is high on resources and therefor building a castle in it (and doubling its resource value) will net you more resources to use for your high resource units.

But would having a castle on mountain means the place is more "defensible" like in many other games?

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no . but heavy terrain (nonfarmlands/plains) reduce strategic movement when the armies don't have the special movement ability like forest / mountain survival.
doesn't protect you though from flying . so with caelum / abysia / mictlan expect always fliers attacking your hinterlands .

for all races which don't need stuff early-midgame that needs more than 15 resources to produce watchtower/mausoleum is good ( ryleh , mictlan etc. ) . just spam them in every province as i said .

with races who need high resource stuff earlygame you should take the 80 points 40 admin castle and build it only in strategic important locations . or you can consider taking a lower admin but high protection castle with these ( main focus on defense value , nbr of archertowers ) .

in lategame when you don't need your national troops anymore you can build everywhere a castle