How to solve castling effect?

[Cohen]

The fact is that Norfleet is right about castles.
They're the lone way to defend a province.

If there's no castle many spells can burn your temple.
Armies can do that too, since PD isn't worthing it's cost above 10 or 15 ... and 10 or 15 means a very weak army composed of the worst of your troops.

So on, or PD become more powerful/easier to raise, or Castles become more blitzable (I suggest: if you "ovverrun" the PD/Patrolling Army in at maximum 5 or 8 battle rounds, AND your army can break the gate of the castle in that turn, the storm castle in the same turn.
This should prevent temple burning from ghost riders, call of wild/wind. But allows army to penetrate quicker in enemy territory, preventing the chance to trapeze/teleport some SCs in the besieged castle... now the problems of this sistem are Dead Nations, since they've troops spawning everywhere and it's very difficult to find an ermorian province with so little troops that you can storm castle in the turn you enter the province. I'd solve that raising the cost of Ermor castles, both in gold, turns and design points, since undead rarely rely on castles but instead on massed hordes, and they get a lot of design points from scales ... same to do as a Carrion Wood or other dead nation theme if they'll come in next patches).

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I thinking: Isn't the problem REALLY that temples are burned down? I suggest that either

1. you win the temple and can use it (just like a lab)
2. Enemy temples remain in effect FOR THE ENEMY until his dominion in that province is eradicated. (my favorite, but require much code chaging)
3. Enemy temples remain in effect FOR THE ENEMY until teared down by a commander.

That would also balance those ghosts to something more reasonable, e.g. point defence.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cohen:
(I suggest: if you "ovverrun" the PD/Patrolling Army in at maximum 5 or 8 battle rounds, AND your army can break the gate of the castle in that turn, the storm castle in the same turn.

Bad. Storming a castle often involves an entirely seperate spell preparation, such as rearming the gems of a caster. In no event do you want to arbitrarily attempt to storm a castle, as without proper preparations and arraying your army in a proper storming formation, a large army can lose to relatively small army easily.

But allows army to penetrate quicker in enemy territory, preventing the chance to trapeze/teleport some SCs in the besieged castle...

This is actually an advantage for YOU: Without a castle, an enemy SC teleporting into the target province attacks IMMEDIATELY.

If temples didn't explode the moment an attacker entered the province, I'd be building a lot fewer castles, because it would actually improve the defensive effectiveness of teleporting SCs: Instead of having to either hope the enemy storms instead of doing nothing, and thus tying you down for at least two turns, at high risk of not actually hurting the opposing force, you can teleport onto the province and force a battle instantly. The present situation is actually advantageous towards avoiding a sudden SC drop, as firstly, the defender must pay for the privilege of securing his temples, rather than having the attacker have to manually raze the temple, and the attacker is protected from the sudden arrival of a teleporting SC: As a result, an attacker who has just arrived in front of a castle can *ALWAYS* retreat unscathed, with the exception of Special Monster spells....which are easy to defend against.

If you attack with purely stealthy forces, then those can fail, as an attacking force that goes stealth immediately runs zero risk of being hit by anything.

[Cohen]

Well if you can storm the turn you enter, you should know by scouting there's a pretty small patrolling force, and you prepare your army for storming already.

Special Monsters Ghost Riders aren't very good at dealing with.
They can destroy army, and you don't care if they die or less cause they disappear.
You get for 5 gems an amount of troops pair at (40 x Wraith, and how many for longdead riders ... uhmm ... a lot). They are active 1 turn only, yeah. But they come suddenly, where you need them most.
And you can cast them as many time as you can!

The wolves costs 15 nature gems, and are an easy deal for PD.
Hawk 5 air gems, and are an easy deal for PD.
Imps and Devil come from 30 Slaves ... and are medium deal for PD ...

And ... if I shoul asset for storming, I should change asset too for special monster and common battles. Oh how I can do ... I'm horrorified about that ...

[Chazar]

Actually I like the way sieging and storming is handled. Maybe one should simply prolong the time & money needed to built a castle - and possibly offset this by intermediate states of the castle (i.e. some fortress has 3 building stage, where it already offers some minor protection). I think this would also be more realisitic, as castle took years to complete in reality anyway.

Just my thoughts though, since I havent encountered "castling" yet and have a hard time to imagine that this is really a useful tactic. Afterall the attacker benefits from a castle as well, so I imagine that it merely disables raids rather than borderline wars...

[rabelais]

Originally posted by Chazar:
Just my thoughts though, since I havent encountered "castling" yet and have a hard time to imagine that this is really a useful tactic. Afterall the attacker benefits from a castle as well, so I imagine that it merely disables raids rather than borderline wars...

Heh. Mad castling is EVIL, particularly as Ermor.

If you're ermor... your castles provide very minimal protection, zero admin and zero supply, which doesn't help the attacking force very much.

Since you don't care about pop, you can go all out for pillaging to finance the massive castle builds. All the better to deprive living nations of nonrenewable (and useless to you) resources.

The main point of the castling is to protect the temple, (and therefore dominion and/ or immortality) but in hardcore-VQ land it's also intended to tie down the attacker's army for an extra turn so the SC can be flown/teleported in.

While it is true you can choose not to storm... failing to do so wastes the army/turn. If the alpha SC has been brought in to deal with the siege, you break even on tempo... if not... well...


Rabe,... who thinks castles ought to cost maintenance, (with admin subtracted?) so that purely positional forts (esp with zero admin) are money losers.

Won't stop castle spamming, but it will annoy those who do it.

[Jondifool]

Well my suggestion does
introduce a temple condition "damaged".

A temple is then automaticly damaged when a provinse is conquered. It takes an comander aktion to destroy a damaged temple.
A new temple can first be build if an enemy damaged temple is destroyed ( to prevent different damaged temples in the same province).

If a province is retaken a damaged temple can be rebuild for halv the cost or what ever cost is appropiate.

[Anglachel]

Or simply not have temples auto-destroy upon conquering of a province. Require a commander to take out a turn to dismantle it much like someone dismantling thier own buildings in thier own province. Make the timing of the dismantling of said building take place after movement and combat giving time for trying to retake the province and protect the temple. Of course this wouldn't really solve castling but would remove the need to use castles to protect temples somewhat anyways.

Just a thought.

[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.

[LintMan]

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.

I think temple protection is the biggest motivation for castle spamming. Castles do all the things you say, but:
- The typically "spammed" castles is the cheapie low-admin one, so the admin benefits of spamming it are not that great.
- Similarly, for production concerns, you'd probably do far better with single high-admin castles surrounded by uncastled provinces than you would by spamming low-admin castles everywhere.

- You don't need spammed castles to protect your researchers. (Or at least I don't; concentrating researchers in a few castled provinces seems more than sufficient.)

Spammed castles will slow enemy advance, though, as you say. But I'm not sure if that by itself would justify the high cost/effort in doing so for most races.

I like the suggestions to make enemy temples need to be destroyed by a commander, rather than auto-destroyed when the province is taken. At the very least, this prevents Ghost Riders from hitting enemies for a 200 gold temple in addition to the province loss.