I've read a lot of the Posts on castling and felt compelled to chime in. No doubt I'm not saying anything new, but neither were the Last 100+ Posts I read...
I waffled a bit on the 'cheese' factor for castles, but finally concluded it's not cheesy. To the points made by many, stopping enemy raiders, fliers, summons, and everything else makes castling a smart strategy. It seems you could do without trying to castle every province (not sure if that is what anyone does) just to avoid the appearance of being cheesy, but if you bought the cheapest structure, it seems ridiculous not to play to your strengths.
Does this mean it's boring or lacks creativity? This is probably true for any strategy someone uses endlessly, but I think 'endlessly' should at least be given a couple of months. If someone is clever enough to come up with a good strategy, let them enjoy the returns for awhile.
While no expert, it seems there would be some good counters. First, castle yourself. I know some people hate playing their games this way, so no more on this. Second, use stealth troops to attack the 'deployment' province(s). What if - at the same time your forces show up at said castle, stealth troops or a single leader tie down the reinforcements (assuming they're not summons). Sure, this does not stop cloud trapeze so perhaps that is in vain, but it might stop anything else ala flying troops, etc. You can also use the multiple stealth troop Groups attacking several sites at once. How many indy woodsmen would this take? How well defended can every province be? Beats me (but I'd like feedback if anyone tried this and what the counter-counter was). Third, come with a force to beat the reinforcements - seems obvious, but for whatever reason people seem to be under the belief they cannot beat whatever Norfleet will send. Maybe that is the problem and not castling... Fourth, and Gandalf said it best, gang up on him. If you know he's a good player, seems like an easy pitch to get the other players to take him out early. Just email them with some of these castling threads and watch the fireworks begin. Funny thing about MP is you don't want to be too good - no one is above being drawn back to their humble beginnings if the other players band against them early enough.
My general 2 cents seems to be that there is far too much effort spent criticizing the castle strategy than coming up with counter-strategies. If nothing else, think of the glory when someone brings him down in a 1-1 game. Their would be endless Posts about the SC crone pretender with 1 magic in each school that dismantled castling and a VC SC in a legendary arm wrestling match to decide the fate of both kingdoms. The benefit, of course, if this does happen, is that no one is likely to complain about THAT strategy being unbalanced.
Re: Can I get some cheese with that...
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