[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Reverend Zombie:
Well, the current whine du jour seems to have moved off somewhat from VQs and clam hoarding to "castle spamming."

I thought the whine du jour was whining, and the fact that the forums don't support killfiles?

Whether or not any of these activities may be broken, why does it seem that the first reaction of people unhappy with these is to propose nerfs, rather than strategies to deal with the tactics in question?

Norfleeting, er, mad castling, has always struck me as a beatable strategy. As someone (NTJedi?) also posted here, Machaka could have a -bunch- of its best troops for the cost of 10 cheap castles.

From what Norfleet in particular has said, mad castling relies on not building troops. (In order to afford the castles.)

So, my theory is that if you haven't been castling, you should be able to build, say, three armies each capable of taking a castle. (Or at least a watchtower ) Striking multiple provinces, preferably each too far apart for a VQ or other flyer to get from one to another inside of a single turn means that a lone SC can only respond to a single attack; in the meantime, you've acquired two provinces and two castles without having to build the castles yourself.

And the troops aren't there to respond to the other two attacks, in theory.

Where I think this breaks down is with summoned troops and commanders, which the mad castler can often manage if sie's concentrating on mages, research, and finding magic sites.

The other thing is that the castles typically used are pretty worthless for the other player - watchtowers, or worse, Ermor's 0 admin keeps.

So, my theoretical counterstrategy requires work. Probably it'd be best to attempt to strike the Mad Castler early in the game, before a preponderance of summonings are brought to bear. Obviously, this can be unfeasible with huge maps.

The other tweak would be to rely heavily on flying troops yourself, for mobility and the ability to quickly reduce enemy forts. Again - difficult to do save for a very few nations / themes.