How to solve castling effect?

[Cohen]

For production it's far better having 1 castle x province, since they double the resources, instead of collecting a % of half of the amount of resources you could have with a castle built in.

You've only to spend more time gathering the troops in one army.

[Maltrease]

I don't think it doubles the resources. It only lets you use the full amount of resources available to the provence.

If I provence has 100 resources you would only be able to use 50 without putting a castle there.

However fortreses will draw their admin percentage from the full resource amount. So a fortified city next to the province would draw 50 resources... and another one on the other side would draw the remaining 50.

So if you place your castles correctly you would not be losing that many resources vs building a fortress in each provence.

This also allows you to draw the resources whre you need them (Heavy calvary for example) where if you built a castle in every provence you would not be able to do this.

[PvK]

I'm not clear what the actual problem(s) are.

Yes temples without castles are vulnerable. I think I mostly like the idea to require them to be torn down, requiring an extra turn by some commander. I'm not sure it's a bad thing the way they fall down now, though. Note too that if this change is made, then skillful raiders will want to bring along "silly" leaders like scouts to knock down the temples while the raiding army moves on at full speed. This will also mean defenders will want to "chase" a raiding army, to reduce those temple-toppling leaders. Also, the AI will need to be programmed to either do the same silly micro-management tactic to raid effectively, or it will be made weaker by either slowing its raiding armies to half-speed so they can take out temples (getting them hit by defending armies), or having them raid without hurting players' temples.

Lots of cheap castles have some advantages, but also disadvantages, such as:

* Costs a lot of gold to put castles everywhere, especially if they don't have administration. What else could be done with that gold?

* Cheap castles tend to have low admin. Empires with fewer castles with high admin, will have more gold income and higher resources to build naional troops.

* Cheap castles tend to have low defense, meaning they can be seiged the next turn. Better castles can often hold out for several turns, allowing a relief army to arrive.

* Cheap castles tend to have few missile weapons. So storming them is about as easy as killing the enemies inside on an open field. Better castles are bristling with missile attacks, which can be expensive and dangerous to storm.

PvK

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Cohen:
The problem isn't only to defend your temples:

Castles in every province raise gold by admin.
Doubles production everywhere if you need.
Protects your mages researching inside.
Protects your troops from Ghost Rider spell and similar.
Slow the enemy conquer of your territory, giving them 1 turn more to trapeze/teleport their army sllaughtering SCs there.

Probably I'm forgotting something.

Logically speaking, to solve the mad castling issue there are only 2 possible ways - you have to either made building castles in 100% of your provinces impossible due to game mechanic/rules, or/and you have to make it unprofitable. Each of this approaches could be implemented by several different methods.

[PvK]

But what's the problem?

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Just to repeat myself: A very Illwinter-friendly solution would be to have temples behave like labs: If you conquer a province with a temple, you win a temple. Congrats!

The other proposals are more difficult, including mine.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by PvK:
But what's the problem?

I agree, I don't see any problem with this either.

The problem only occur when someone in the game would start putting crappy castles with temples everywhere. Having uber-VQ as pretender doubles its efficiency as well.

Without such player in the game I see no problem with current game mechanics.

[ May 26, 2004, 19:24: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
Just to repeat myself: A very Illwinter-friendly solution would be to have temples behave like labs: If you conquer a province with a temple, you win a temple. Congrats!

If it were done that way, I'd rapidly abandon mad castling: Castling comes with a hefty drawback: If you trapeze/teleport in reinforcements, they sit uselessly in the castle and drink beer. If the attack turns out to have been a feint, you are now potentially stranded unless you bust out yourself, particularly if the castle did not yet have a lab put up. If I didn't have to then replace the temple when the province started flipping, I'd rather go castle-less to enable instant counterattacks.

With castles, you protect your temples...but at the same time, the attacker is protected from all forms of counterattack except for Ghost Riders or Phantasmal Attack: Teleportation drops you in the castle to drink beer, arriving by normal movement occurs after "friendly" movement, so the attacker can always feint.

[PvK]

Is it a problem without a SC VQ involved? Seems to me adding cheap-o castles everywhere costs about as much gold as it's worth for a one-turn delay in sacking a temple, and little other benefit. Also, by taking a wimpy castle type, your home province isn't particularly well protected, either.

If it's only a real problem with a SC VQ, then I'd say the solution involves doing something about the SC VQ, rather than the castles. Either in-game (go nail their home province, with its wimpy castle, and bring some folks who can kill the VQ, like a few Bane Lords with Flambeaux), or some mild nerfing of the VQ, if necessary (as discussed in other threads).

As for the line of thought "temples get destroyed way too easily by attack spells without castles, so I must build castles everywhere, or else I won't be able to have temples everywhere", I think that argument has a flawed premise, specifically:

* Players who expect to be able to build temples everywhere, and have them be safe.

Consider that building temples everywhere is a huge and boring project. Why should it be expected that everyone will do it everywhere? The existing counter to that practice, is the ease of knocking them out with raiders and magic spells. Seems like a feature to me. Building unprotected temples is a risk, as it should be. No?

PvK

[Cohen]

The problem is with every SC that can teleport, trapeze, and evry less used moving spell or item.

The problem is with ghost riders too that shot down your army annhilating it while it siege.