Question: Defense Dilemma

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Ironhawk:
it breaks down the resource/production focus that (I believe) forts are designed for.

If you want to explain to me how there's a resource/production focus in an admin-10 castle, be my guest. The Watchtower is DESIGNED for castle-spamming, as it has basically no admin value of any worth.

The drawbacks are that spammable castles have crappy defense, and are thus only really meaningful as a brief delaying tactic.

Effectively with castle spamming I would be reduced to building like 2-4 units in every province and then running around to collect them all into a central location.

That's because castle spammers don't build troops, they build mages. As you can only recruit one mage per turn, regardless of how much gold you have sitting around, you have to spam castles in order to be able to increase your mage output bandwidth.

A strategy specifically centering around the spamming of castles tends to also involve the production of a buttload of mages.

There's also the minor problem that without castles, building temples is ultimately a futile endeavor as they constantly burn down in raids. Without the temples, you're liable to be dominion-killed very easily. I'm sure some people would argue the situation is not quite as drastic, but in one game, I spam castles everywhere and temple everything....I *STILL* have enemy dominion in my lands. Obviously, I'm not building enough temples.

[PvK]

Follow the raiders, and heavily defend only the valuable provinces.

A large raider army that gets cut off will starve (unless it doesn't need food), and one that is followed will only occupy one of your provinces at a time.

Small raider armies can be worn down efficiently by PD combined with small forces.

PvK

[Firebreath]

Raiders have always (historically) been a problem to those being raided, and they still are (spec. forces). The best way to beat raiders is not (as suggested) to follow them around until they starve and slowly die out (as this will cost you lost income and time) but to trap them. There are many ways of doing it. Uncastled temple provinces make an excellent trap. The enemy will be drawn to your uncastled temples like flies to honey. What the enemy doesn't know is that you're moving lots of flying units, or you're building lots of province defence, or you have lots of hidden units, or your pretender is flying in. Of course, one way to effectively beat raiders is to cripple their leadership. Seeking arrows (air 3) are optimal for this, as you know that the enemy doesn't have any dome of protection in a province without a lab. As mentioned by norfleet, ghost riders also work quite well against weaker armies (armies not heavily protected by priests, wizzards, SC's). Assassins also work well, as they force the enemy to divert some of his forces to 'guard commander' - which means that you will have fewer enemy units to fight on the front line. If you're fighting mages, equip your assassins with elemental protection. Raiding will always be a problem, so make more of a problem for the raiders than it is for you

[HJ]

Originally posted by PDF:
There's one simple solution : play the Cradle map, it has lifelike bottlenecks and access routes, it makes the game more enjoyable than the usual "runner wars" where you chase the crappy IA armies invading from everywhere

I wholeheartedly agree.

[Vynd]

If you really hate raiders, you could try playing one of the death based nations like Ermor, whose dominion kills off all of their population. No population equals no supplies, so its much more difficult to raid these nation's territory. That's not to say it can't be done. Just that it is more difficult and costly, especially if the raiders want to head deep into your territory instead of staying along the fringes where their forts might provide them with some food.

Obviously this doesn't address the problem when it comes to normal nations. But if you find raiding really frustrating then maybe the death nations would make for a more enjoyable experience for you.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Vynd:
If you really hate raiders, you could try playing one of the death based nations like Ermor, whose dominion kills off all of their population. No population equals no supplies, so its much more difficult to raid these nation's territory. That's not to say it can't be done. Just that it is more difficult and costly, especially if the raiders want to head deep into your territory instead of staying along the fringes where their forts might provide them with some food.

This doesn't really address the underlying problem of random parties sacking and burning down unprotected temples, or the fact that provinces now instantly switch to enemy control and you have to send a clean-up crew to deal with this nonsense. Ermor, of course, has fewer problems with this than other nations, having troops everywhere usually sitting around gathering dust, but the loss of the site income and temple is aggravating....and it really IS necessary to build temples everywhere.

I have a game going where I'm a sizeable power on the map, and have temples in every province...yet for some reason, enemy dominion continues to get in. Clearly, this is unacceptable. I must build more temples until this goes away.