Anyone use a Fortified City?

[Kristoffer O]

Pocus said:

You know Kristoffer, you should really export this in a text file... I never ever saw somebody playing with a mountain citadel eg. The added defense dont compensate in any way the feeble eco bonus, and the huge cost and build time.

Hmm, yes. We are currently reworking fortresses in dom3. Not sure how dom2 will be affected. Probably not too much, but perhaps some moddability can be incorporated.

[PvK]

Hmm. I thought admin drew resources from the _unused_ 50% that a province doesn't use for itself, no?

I use Fortified Cities when I want high admin and don't plan of building lots of forts. I think it's a decent choice for Ulm.

I never use watchtowers. I think they are for weenies. If many winning players use watchtowers it is perhaps more a sign of the kind of mentality of player who chooses watchtowers, and who focuses on trying to win even if it means using weenie tactics.

PvK

[Verjigorm]

I use castles for Ulm. Ulm's primary units can be recruited at any fortress as can their mages. The castle allows for greater overall production than the FC...you can build castles faster and closer together without restricting unit production in provinces with 2 adjacent castles. The only reason I would use an FC for Ulm is in the manner I use them with the other Capitol-only unit nations--to pump out Black Templar in Iron Faith, but I dislike Iron Faith....

As for Watchtowers being a "weenie" tactic, I disagree. I take the watchtower when I want to focus on magic--I can hire more commander units with a watchtower because I can build them right next to each other. Why should a player who has no intention of pumping out huge armies of troops have to take a "non-weenie" castle? If I take Sloth-3 for some reason, a bigger fortress is simply a waste of design points. What about the Mausoleum? Is it for weenies or does the 40 design point cost allow you to play like a weenie. Watchtowers are VERY easy to besiege. Teleporting armies can be a problem, but you shouldn't step unless you can represent

[alexti]

I usually use 3 types of forts:
- Castle - for smaller maps or for nations that don't have too many troops or mages I'd like to buy later. Also for nations that have good resource-intensive troops for early game
- Mausoleum - in other cases when the nation needs walls (lots of casters and few big troops to block the gate)
- Watch Tower - for the nations who will rely on masses of undead (for those, the walls is rather a drawback)

All 3 cases seem to work...

[PvK]

Verjigorm said:
...
Why should a player who has no intention of pumping out huge armies of troops have to take a "non-weenie" castle?
...
What about the Mausoleum? Is it for weenies or does the 40 design point cost allow you to play like a weenie. ...

I was mostly joking about the weenie comment. I might make the same joking remark about players who have "no intention of pumping out huge armies of troops" unless they have some other plan to field suitably butch forces.

Real men use armies and strong forts. Perhaps real wizards don't care about machismo. Perhaps weeniehood is in the eye of the beholder. Really, there are many different playstyles in Dominions, which are more or less good for different purposes. I brought up the weenie comment as an ironic joking contrast to some players who try to minimax and find the most successful techniques, and dismiss other options as "useless".

PvK

[tinkthank]

[b]PvK said:I brought up the weenie comment as an ironic joking contrast to some players who try to minimax and find the most successful techniques, and dismiss other options as "useless".

PvK

Heheh, bravo!

I like the feeling of a castle, and of higher admin too.
Nobody mentioned the admin bonus to gold, by the way, just to resources -- but forts in the right places can give a tasty gold income bonus as well. I rely on it sometimes.

[Boron]

As Ctis the Hill fortress is fun too imo .
If you block the gate a bit with Mech men or similiar your 4 or 5 poison slinger towers do nice damage to almost all troops .
Then only the SCs are left and die maybe to your 2 or 3 skeleton spamming cheapo mages .

[quantum_mechani]

I think there are really two issues here:

1. People building cheap castles in every province.

I don't think this is a big issue, it is only a real option in long games, and it is only powerfull if the player can back it up with strong armies/SCs.

2. Only a few of the forts are worth the design points.

This is the real problem in my opinion. The watch tower costs no points, while remaining cheap in game (and quick to build), and providing most of the defensive power of other forts. If each of the citadels cost zero points, they would have still in most cases be inferior to the watch tower. The rest of the forts fall somewhere between, but I don't think anyone belives citadels are a good choice as they exist now.

[Jack Simth]

Perhaps one way to make other forms of forts more useful in the end game would be to make them moddable into constructable magic sites - e.g., make it so a Wizard's Tower produces 1 Astral Pearl per turn (or perhaps 1 Air Gem), a Mountain Fortress produces 1 Earth Gem per turn, a Dark Citadel produces 1 Blood Slave per turn, a Mausoleum produces 1 Death Gem per turn, et cetera, and then leave the watch tower doing nothing useful other than it's no-point spammability.

[alexti]

quantum_mechani said:
I think there are really two issues here:

1. People building cheap castles in every province.
2. Only a few of the forts are worth the design points.

This is the real problem in my opinion. The watch tower costs no points, while remaining cheap in game (and quick to build), and providing most of the defensive power of other forts. If each of the citadels cost zero points, they would have still in most cases be inferior to the watch tower. The rest of the forts fall somewhere between, but I don't think anyone belives citadels are a good choice as they exist now.

I agree that #2 is the real issue. I only find watch tower, mausoleum and castle to be useful. In some very rare cases, fortified city may be practical. But I can't see why I'd want one of the other forts. The main reason is that the defensive bonus doesn't worth much. In the early game you don't have neither gold nor time to build those expensive forts and in the later game, their defenses don't make much difference. If the fortification would be able to increase their might as the game advances, that would be interesting, but it's already hard to storm castles in the late game as it is. So I see the only way to make them more attractive - let them cost design points, but reduce their construction costs to be on par with watch tower.