Is Norfleeting considered an effective strategy?

[ioticus]

ASAIK, Norfleet was the only one to make effective use of Norfleeting, but since he was caught cheating, the validity of his strategy is put into question. I've seen posts that decry Norfleeting as abusive and unbalancing, and I wonder it it's considered a problem by the community in general, or are the posts by a small lunatic fringe element?

[Nerfix]

Eh?

[magnate]

New words are always fun - what is Norfleeting? I never played against him so I don't know.

[sushiboat]

I did a search on "Norfleeting" and was surprised to find hits beyond this thread. Apparently it is more commonly known as "mad castling" (i.e., building a fort in every province you own) and is widely practiced by advanced MP players. Some see no problem with it. Others don't like it. I don't see how it can be abusive or unbalancing since it is available to all. However, it does seem to slow the pace of the late game. People also complain about the cheapness/easiness of the Ghost Riders ritual spell, and mad castling is a logical counter to Ghost Riders.

[Ygorl]

lunatic fringe, definitely. If you want to spend all your money on castles, go for it.
As for effectiveness, it depends. If you don't need the money for other things, it's obviously really nice to have castles everywhere (try playing C'tis miasma with 10 dominion and very favorable scales - and of course a wimpy pretender - and you'll have the money). It's often more useful to spend money on folks who can fight, though (troops early, mages later).

[magnate]

Ah, madcastling I have heard of. Never tried it or come across it, but have no problem with it.

[quantum_mechani]

Madcastleing is pretty much standard practice late game with little else to spend gold on. But as far as building one in each province right after taking it, it slows expanding down to such a degree I would not recommend it.

[PrinzMegaherz]

quantum_mechani said:
Madcastleing is pretty much standard practice late game with little else to spend gold on. But as far as building one in each province right after taking it, it slows expanding down to such a degree I would not recommend it.

Does it really slow expansion?
Mad Castling is very strong for nations that do not use ressource heavy troops like caelum. You can make use of a cheap castle like the watch tower to fortify all provinces while your mages/pretender conquer new ones

[quantum_mechani]

PrinzMegaherz said:

Does it really slow expansion?
Mad Castling is very strong for nations that do not use ressource heavy troops like caelum. You can make use of a cheap castle like the watch tower to fortify all provinces while your mages/pretender conquer new ones

Yes, if you want a fort in each province right after you conquer it, it will slow you down a lot. If you are capturing on average 1 province a turn (I usually expand faster, but as a rough minimum). That means paying 300 gold a turn, even if the only other place you are spending gold is research. That is simply not sustainable the first 10 turns or so, and after that it is still a huge bite for not a lot of return until you actually get attacked.

Now, mid to late game, when your research is going fine and you don't recruit troops anyway, that is when castleing becomes a very good option to spend your gold on.

[shovah]

its pretty effective with soulgate/ashen ermor /miamasa /caelum. infact the ermor one can be pure evil, i played a game vrs ai on urgaia and since there was one chokepoint to reach me i stuck 20 tribunes there and a castle then very late game i had a tartarian commander and some titans for him to comand in each province. then burden of time + well of misery + ( after alot of empowerment ) arcande nexus and wraith of god ) this was against hard abysia and ulm