Ideas to stop mass castle building for DOM_3

[peasant]

Aren't Ghost Riders and other cheap raiding spells "end of game" spells like Wish?

If they weren't powerful, games would stalemate badly. I guess it is a deliberate design choice - to have v powerful offensive spells at the end, to avoid stalemate/ attrition

[tinkthank]

I dont want to argue for or against madcastling, but would just like to add that a rehaul of the fortress choice system during God Creation would be great -- so that, conceivably, other forttress types become more viable and that their in-game gold cost is not necessarily coupled to their build time.

[Chazar]

Yep, I agree as well. I do not mind castling. In fact, since I was raised in the german country side I am pretty used to see a castle around every other corner. Nevertheless, I think that some castle types need to be made much more attractive than they are right now, especially the 4-5 turners!

BUT:
I'd also say that it is ridiculous that a single limping milita man suffices to defend a castle against immediate storming! I'd say that if the attacking force not only breaks the gates immediately on the first turn, but still has the same amount of siege points additionally leftover, it should be allowed to storm immediately. So those watchtowers will still protect a temple against GhostRiders as it currently does, but it wouldnt be such a hindrance to a proper attacking force as it is now (because of long sieges, ghost riders and fires from afar,...)! And nothing would be different for a moderately manned castle having a sensible amount of defense as well.

I would say that anything that encourages attacking with masses of national troops is a good thing. And if it encourages to choose sturdy castles as well, well...

[Edi]

The best fix for the problem of massive use of raiding spells is using a magic site frequency of 25 or less for MP games, then the players will really have to CAREFULLY consider what they use their hard earned gems for. This way summoning anything powerful is a major decision and the role of national units is greatly increased. If you also put research on very difficult, they become even more prominent and you need to carefully consider what to research to maximize your strengths.

Of course, blood nations are more powerful on magic poor maps, but that is not an insurmountable problem either.

On such maps, madcastling is not such an attractive strategy, and massive raiding spell use is not viable at all.

Edi

[alexti]

Even MSF of 40 greatly reduces number of available gems. I have played once at 40 and everybody has noticed how much fewer sites they could find.

[Edi]

I've always found that games on bi´g maps with MSF 40 end up as huge gem hoardings. Try e.g. Faerun with MSF 25 and it's suddenly a lot more challenging.

Edi

[alexti]

I think that Faerun with any settings will be a micromanagement-fest. Though I'm missing your reasoning about MSF. The less MSF is, the more incentives to hoard and less incentives to conquer... I'd think that with MSF 25 everybody would start hoarding. With MSF 50 it seems that the simple conquest provides pretty decent gem income and gem hoarding is not mandatory and probably is not efficient either (at least in many settings).