How to solve castling effect?

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I thinking: Isn't the problem REALLY that temples are burned down? I suggest that either

1. you win the temple and can use it (just like a lab)
2. Enemy temples remain in effect FOR THE ENEMY until his dominion in that province is eradicated. (my favorite, but require much code chaging)
3. Enemy temples remain in effect FOR THE ENEMY until teared down by a commander.

That would also balance those ghosts to something more reasonable, e.g. point defence.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cohen:
(I suggest: if you "ovverrun" the PD/Patrolling Army in at maximum 5 or 8 battle rounds, AND your army can break the gate of the castle in that turn, the storm castle in the same turn.

Bad. Storming a castle often involves an entirely seperate spell preparation, such as rearming the gems of a caster. In no event do you want to arbitrarily attempt to storm a castle, as without proper preparations and arraying your army in a proper storming formation, a large army can lose to relatively small army easily.

But allows army to penetrate quicker in enemy territory, preventing the chance to trapeze/teleport some SCs in the besieged castle...

This is actually an advantage for YOU: Without a castle, an enemy SC teleporting into the target province attacks IMMEDIATELY.

If temples didn't explode the moment an attacker entered the province, I'd be building a lot fewer castles, because it would actually improve the defensive effectiveness of teleporting SCs: Instead of having to either hope the enemy storms instead of doing nothing, and thus tying you down for at least two turns, at high risk of not actually hurting the opposing force, you can teleport onto the province and force a battle instantly. The present situation is actually advantageous towards avoiding a sudden SC drop, as firstly, the defender must pay for the privilege of securing his temples, rather than having the attacker have to manually raze the temple, and the attacker is protected from the sudden arrival of a teleporting SC: As a result, an attacker who has just arrived in front of a castle can *ALWAYS* retreat unscathed, with the exception of Special Monster spells....which are easy to defend against.

If you attack with purely stealthy forces, then those can fail, as an attacking force that goes stealth immediately runs zero risk of being hit by anything.

[Cohen]

Well if you can storm the turn you enter, you should know by scouting there's a pretty small patrolling force, and you prepare your army for storming already.

Special Monsters Ghost Riders aren't very good at dealing with.
They can destroy army, and you don't care if they die or less cause they disappear.
You get for 5 gems an amount of troops pair at (40 x Wraith, and how many for longdead riders ... uhmm ... a lot). They are active 1 turn only, yeah. But they come suddenly, where you need them most.
And you can cast them as many time as you can!

The wolves costs 15 nature gems, and are an easy deal for PD.
Hawk 5 air gems, and are an easy deal for PD.
Imps and Devil come from 30 Slaves ... and are medium deal for PD ...

And ... if I shoul asset for storming, I should change asset too for special monster and common battles. Oh how I can do ... I'm horrorified about that ...

[Chazar]

Actually I like the way sieging and storming is handled. Maybe one should simply prolong the time & money needed to built a castle - and possibly offset this by intermediate states of the castle (i.e. some fortress has 3 building stage, where it already offers some minor protection). I think this would also be more realisitic, as castle took years to complete in reality anyway.

Just my thoughts though, since I havent encountered "castling" yet and have a hard time to imagine that this is really a useful tactic. Afterall the attacker benefits from a castle as well, so I imagine that it merely disables raids rather than borderline wars...

[rabelais]

Originally posted by Chazar:
Just my thoughts though, since I havent encountered "castling" yet and have a hard time to imagine that this is really a useful tactic. Afterall the attacker benefits from a castle as well, so I imagine that it merely disables raids rather than borderline wars...

Heh. Mad castling is EVIL, particularly as Ermor.

If you're ermor... your castles provide very minimal protection, zero admin and zero supply, which doesn't help the attacking force very much.

Since you don't care about pop, you can go all out for pillaging to finance the massive castle builds. All the better to deprive living nations of nonrenewable (and useless to you) resources.

The main point of the castling is to protect the temple, (and therefore dominion and/ or immortality) but in hardcore-VQ land it's also intended to tie down the attacker's army for an extra turn so the SC can be flown/teleported in.

While it is true you can choose not to storm... failing to do so wastes the army/turn. If the alpha SC has been brought in to deal with the siege, you break even on tempo... if not... well...


Rabe,... who thinks castles ought to cost maintenance, (with admin subtracted?) so that purely positional forts (esp with zero admin) are money losers.

Won't stop castle spamming, but it will annoy those who do it.

[Maltrease]

The easiest way to solve the castlting problem (if it is indeed a problem) would be to charge a maintence fee for the castle.

One of the main reasons I build a castle now is in the increased income. You plop a wizards tower down on a province generating 100 coins and it has paid for itself in 20 turns. Plus you get a recruiting center and protection from raids.

If I had to pay 15 gold a turn instead of receiving it, I would build far fewer fortresses.

I don't actually support this change but it would solve the problem. I like investing in infrastrucute that pays dividends down the road.

[Cohen]

I believe raising the gem cost and path level required of all SCs summoning spell, and nerfing some pretenders should be nice too ...

Added to the issue about the Ghost Rider.

I'd improve the effect of scales too ...
Rabe idea is good too.

[ May 26, 2004, 12:20: Message edited by: Cohen ]