Anyone use a Fortified City?

[Yvelina]

I am not saying that I am one of the best players, but I will challenge anyone who dares to say that I am not!

I use only watchtowers, but it may be due to the fact that I play only Vanheim. My forces are extremely mobile and mostly undetectable, so I can usually relieve the siege of any castle before it falls... or teleport a welcoming commitee for those who dare storm it.

Why would I even consider another castle? My troops needs little in the way of ressources, I fight mostly with mages, I like to build a castle in every province, and I don't rely on walls, tower archers and PD for defense.

In my present game, there are four races that look like possible winners. One is an underwater nation, the other three use watchtowers.

[The Panther]

Yvelina said:
I am not saying that I am one of the best players, but I will challenge anyone who dares to say that I am not!

I use only watchtowers, but it may be due to the fact that I play only Vanheim.

You might be one of the best players, and you might not. But how can you even remotely claim to be one of the best players and yet play only a single race? What happened to BF Ulm, which you used to play occasionally?

As for the castle selection, only the watchtower is a good selection for ANY race. Perhaps the others can be a good choice in selected situations, like the Hill Fort for Miasmi C'tis or the Fortified City for Tuatha Man or the castle for certain other playing styles, but no other choice can be used in any pretender design for any race.

If national troops were viable in the late game, then perhaps higher admin choices would be more useful. Or if MP games had victory conditions which prevented them from going on and on for so long, then other type castles would DEFINITELY be useful.

Perhaps the reason Petar says that the best players only use the watch tower is because it is difficult to win a long game unless you have a castle in every province. This means a cheap one that can be built quickly, like the watch tower. I have definitely noticed that the watch tower matches the playing style of most of the top players, which I am not among.

In fact, I am trying to recall if I have ever played a long MP game (>80 turns) where the winning player selected something besides the watch tower. And I cannot think of any such game right now...

[Zooko]

I'm beginning to think that many of the so-called "balance" issues in dom2 multiplayer are because of the prevalence of "all against all" games. In those games, it is in each player's best interest to avoid war with the other players while working on his overwhelming tech.

Naturally, this leads to that overwhelming tech being "over-balanced" when the end game comes.

One approach is to change the stats in order to make alternative strategies remain competitive even at the end of very long games. Another approach is to play games such as "one team vs. one other team" or "pentagram style", where prosecuting a war earlier in the game is a worthwhile strategy.

[alexti]

The Panther said:
If national troops were viable in the late game, then perhaps higher admin choices would be more useful.

High admin isn't giving much advantage in the late game, but if you used high admin's advantage in the early game and squashed couple of opponents, you'd already realized the advantage of your castle and had more provinces, gem income, summoned troops etc for the late game

The Panther said:
Perhaps the reason Petar says that the best players only use the watch tower is because it is difficult to win a long game unless you have a castle in every province.

I'm not sure how true this statement is, but there's no rule forcing you to get into the long game. Those with watch towers may have advantage in the long game, but they need to survive to reach it. Many times I've attacked mad-castling watch tower player around turn 20-40 only to discover that he has nothing to defend them with. In aggressive games mad-castling is like baiting an opponents to attack you - everybody wants some infrastructure for free. Before somebody else has grabbed it

The Panther said:In fact, I am trying to recall if I have ever played a long MP game (>80 turns) where the winning player selected something besides the watch tower. And I cannot think of any such game right now...

I can only remember one game that has not been decided before turn 80, and in that game all watch-tower players were dead by that time Here I must mention that I'm staying away from the games on maps large than Craddle. That's just too much micromanagement for my taste.