Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
I've been mulling this over and I'm not sure that there is an overwhelming advantage at all to castling.
[...]
Now without going into minute. The various outcomes would seem to be, wait and knack his temple, remaining defenders, fast response army

Move to avoid his fast reponse army, which regardless of their being a castle there will effectively revert back to defender ownership.

The defender can fast response army directly to seiged prov or second guess your next move as hes obviously prepared to face your invading force otherwise this wouldn't be even in his mind.

So, castle or not, your either cat and mousing or planning to nail his force. All thats saved is the temple and any squishies.

You're going about it the wrong way. You want to squish the attacking army using ritual magic: teleport, gateway, the C9 4Death spell with the riders etc. There is no escape from these spells; the only way to dodge these attacks requires a lab... which you can't have as long as the castle remains in the province. The C9 Death spell is especially cool, since it is cheap&effective, and leaves you without an unwanted magic army and a liberated province. You can even use it to defend an ally, which makes the spell bloody unique

Stack the spells as neccessary.

To defend aginst this you need a large army --- enough to stand against anything the defender will throw against you. And since you will be attacked before you can move, you might as well siege the castle and destroy the temples & mages + gain a free castle.

This is an excellent strategy, which is attributed to Norfleet.

[spirokeat]

Verra late for me and much wine has oiled this evening..

Query. Should you choose to attack a province, then leave the next turn will a summoned spell army such as horde from hell or ghost riders etc attack you prior to your army moving ?

and is there any difference between being able to ghost riders/hordeetc on someone who is castled and someone who is not ? It would seem like that situation might well be a matter of intent, which again leads me to think, make an army big enough to stab up, 25 imps and one devil or 33 undead horse.

But this evenings reply is speculative. Im too wasted to cogitate what I want to say.

Spiro.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by spirokeat:
Query. Should you choose to attack a province, then leave the next turn will a summoned spell army such as horde from hell or ghost riders etc attack you prior to your army moving ?

Yup: A magically created attack will strike before you can leave the province on foot.

and is there any difference between being able to ghost riders/hordeetc on someone who is castled and someone who is not ?

Hordes wouldn't work because they'd sit in the castle and drink beer, but if the enemy army is slaughtered by Ghost Riders and you are castled, you do not need to send anyone to mop-up: Instead of becoming an independent province that you must send a guy to reclaim, who might then get killed, and then rebuild your temple, the enemy army simply dies and the province instantly reverts back to you.

There's also the benefit that you can build a lab in the province, which the enemy cannot make use of immediately upon seizing the province, and thus he cannot gateway large numbers of reinforcing troops in, nor teleport out.

[Blitz]

First, you might want to learn how to spell my name

You learn to spell it... WTF kinda screwed up spelling is that anyway?

[spirokeat]

So in essence, having a castle would mean you sent ghost riders and not having one a horde (meaning the diffrence). Were you to be only sending a summoned army that is.

And the lab, well if there wasn't a lab there anyway he would have to take a turn to build one so thats the same as seiging and taking the castled one. All under the same threat of retributive strike from the original defender.

It would seem to be a tactic of assest protection. If im going to build a lab that usually means I have a reason to, gem focal centre, summoned army producer, bloodhunters....Which if an enemy attacked I would be trying to retake in as hostile a manner as possible.

If its an empty province as it were, low pop, low gold, no sites or low production one etc. I probably wouldnt build a lab.

The reason Im going through these thought lines is because Im trying to understand why people would get 'overly' angry at it as a tactic....You attack an enemy and you know that the enemy is going to come for you with what hes got. Summoned, teleported, flying or on foot.

Its a chance you take to use a castle storming army behind your main strike/wall destruction army as to if you face a summoned force of riders or a main attack response.

Spiro

[Esben Mose Hansen]

There aren't many of us that get angry We just think it is a somewhat tedious strategy. I think it is all about the micromangement level you prefer.

Personally I would like to be able to mod castle income to the negative, so that maintaining a castle will cost you. That would mean fewer castles=>less micromangement=>happier Esben But Norfleet's tactic is fair and square, and I respect him for not only coming up with it but freely sharing it with the rest of us.

[spirokeat]

Yes, to be honest, Im not sure how vitriolic the debates have been about it only that it always seems to spawn large threads.

I'm not so sure a charge of micro management can be laid against it either to be honest, there is no adjustment or constant retweaking each turn for each castle, other than sending any commander at all there and selecting construct, thats about it.

Now a charge of overt micromanagement in my mind is seperating units on the tactical screen to try script mages casting single target buffs on Groups of normal foot troops. I just cant seem to force myself into that one yet.

The upkeep cost of a castle might work I suppose or allowing fliers to storm castle without breaking walls. I've not really thought about ways of restricting or overcoming it as I see it as a viable use of the cruddy castles and I dont see a massive advantage to it.

Now clam hoarding, thats a different one, I aint got my head round that yet either.

Spiro

[Boron]

Originally posted by spirokeat:

Now clam hoarding, thats a different one, I aint got my head round that yet either.

Spiro

the best clam horder is atlantis i would say .
but since atlantis has very few pretenders and the only mage with other skills than water magic is the king of deep with 2 completely random other magic skills i think the idea behind the clams was to enable especially the 2 underwaterraces and especially atlantis in the long run to get other magic pathes too .
this general idea is good and works well .

the only problem is ihmo if a game Lasts too long . it depends on the settings and so on .

but i think only if the orania map is played and Lasts long enough it is really a problem or in general when the gem income through clam hording
exceeds the income through all other gemsources greatly.
there are some nations who are potentially great clam horders too like caelum / pyhtium .
but the 2 most dangerous are ryhleh + atlantis i think because the water provides quite good protection in the beginning and still some in midgame .

so at some time if excessevely done it comes to a point where it skyrockets :
to keep it simple i assume there is no water/astralgemincome :
if you have reached e.g. 100 astral gem income through clams and convert all to water gems you get +5 clams ( more with forge items but again simplicity )

then you get :
turn :
(0)100 gems = 50 water gems -> forged to 5 clams
(1) 105 gems , again 5 clams , 5 pearls saved
(2) 110 gems , again 5 clams , 15 pearls saved
(3) 115 gems , 6 clams , 10 pearls saved
(4) 121 gems , 6 clams , 11 pearls saved
..........

normally you have items with forge boni by then and the costs even drop so the increase goes even faster

really dangerous it becomes once the clam horder gets e.g. 2/3/4 times more astral pearl income through clam hording than gem income in total .
and then sometime it comes to a point where you either cast one / two wishes per turn or something similiar .

but i think this can only happen seldom on an orania map where there is the following :
1. only 1 underwater nation ( ryhleh or atlantis ) or if there are 2 one of them is an early quitter
2. if ermor is included it can't pay attention because it has to deal with short term more important "above-the-sea" problems
3. no other player with either a good aquatic pretender or easy access to water breathing items or something similiar realises the danger that is coming from the underwater nation and / or has more important problems with the "above-the-sea" enemies

hmmm that is much longer than what i intended to write

Last question : can you cast flames from afar on underseaprovinces ?

[Kel]

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
Personally I would like to be able to mod castle income to the negative, so that maintaining a castle will cost you.

I kind of like that, although I might make the 4 turn castles have a decent, positive income. Might make them a bit more useful.

- Kel

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
There aren't many of us that get angry We just think it is a somewhat tedious strategy. I think it is all about the micromangement level you prefer.

Personally I would like to be able to mod castle income to the negative, so that maintaining a castle will cost you. That would mean fewer castles=>less micromangement=>happier Esben But Norfleet's tactic is fair and square, and I respect him for not only coming up with it but freely sharing it with the rest of us.

He didn't 'come up with it', he only uses it in every single game even if it would not be to his benefit. It has always been there and there have always been ways around it that anyone can use and don't use more resources than the castling to do. While tedious and annoying, boring and effictive against those who have a hard time mustering a defense against it, there is no reason that a defensive stance shouldn't be able to be taken in Dominions. Turtlers are a part of every game Dominions 2 just happens to have a very loud one that plays games consistantly against a caliber of player he can beat easily regardless of tactics.

I'm sure if there is room for improvement, but not because you can castle spam, but because some Castles are just 'bleh'.

[ July 02, 2004, 16:43: Message edited by: Zen ]