Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Sure you have to pay for the gems, but that also gives you a thousand hitpoint piece of stone with a protection of 30 that virtually no early game army can defeat before they are forced to autorout.

I see the entire "autorout" problem as the fundamental issue at hand: Battles should be fought to the death! Or at least until nobody is actually fighting anymore, for, say, 3 rounds.

Originally posted by Boron:
i just thought that teleporting at least costs gems and you have to build a lab in the province to which you teleported in order to teleport again right ?
so i perhaps noobishly thought at least you have to pay for your movement and can only move every 2 turns with a sphinx + have to research 3 levels in traumaturgy for teleport .

Just imagine, for example. Someone on turn 7 being able to drop their 500hp (usually down to 300 or so in enemy dominion) Sphinx on your capital. With 30 Prot, and a good amount of Astral (needed to even protect from Magic Duel) casting Mind Burn then Soul Slay.

Now while it was possible to defeat, and had it's weaknesses (not many) it was a huge limitation to the choices of pretender designs that could deal with the Telesphinx. Thus, it was changed to being very hard to play. Though not permanantly, remember paitence is a Virtue.

[ June 30, 2004, 22:19: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Zen:
Now while it was possible to defeat, and had it's weaknesses (not many) it was a huge limitation to the choices of pretender designs that could deal with the Telesphinx. Thus, it was changed to being very hard to play.

I recall that you yourself admitted that the Sphinx is now useless, as he is completely immobile by any means, even the higher-level teleportations like Astral Travel, which wouldn't be quite the same threat for a turn-7 teledrop. As he still remains a hefty 60 points, while offering nothing that an Oracle or Sacred Statue cannot, magically or dominionly, and being unable to actually GO anywhere, rendering bringing his physical power to bear impossible, he is useless at 60 points. If he were zero points, he'd be a viable alternative to an Oracle: While totally immobile, he'd be tough and cost no more than the oracle does.

Though not permanantly, remember paitence is a Virtue.

Patience is a VQ. Virtues aren't immune to BoT so can't afford to wait forever.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Zen:

quote:

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Originally posted by Boron:
i just thought that teleporting at least costs gems and you have to build a lab in the province to which you teleported in order to teleport again right ?
so i perhaps noobishly thought at least you have to pay for your movement and can only move every 2 turns with a sphinx + have to research 3 levels in traumaturgy for teleport .

Just imagine, for example. Someone on turn 7 being able to drop their 500hp (usually down to 300 or so in enemy dominion) Sphinx on your capital. With 30 Prot, and a good amount of Astral (needed to even protect from Magic Duel) casting Mind Burn then Soul Slay.

Now while it was possible to defeat, and had it's weaknesses (not many) it was a huge limitation to the choices of pretender designs that could deal with the Telesphinx. Thus, it was changed to being very hard to play. Though not permanantly, remember paitence is a Virtue.

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ok this is really brutal i agree
almost no nation has a chance to defeat a telesphinx at turn 7 .
but on the other hand now it is completely useless because it can use no other travel spell too as norfleet said . so less variety in pretender selection .
would it perhaps have been possible to either :
-increase the teleportation gem costs ONLY for the sphinx casting it ?
-forbid teleportation in the enemy capital with the sphinx ?

Originally posted by Boron:
ok this is really brutal i agree
almost no nation has a chance to defeat a telesphinx at turn 7 .
but on the other hand now it is completely useless because it can use no other travel spell too as norfleet said . so less variety in pretender selection .
would it perhaps have been possible to either :
-increase the teleportation gem costs ONLY for the sphinx casting it ?
-forbid teleportation in the enemy capital with the sphinx ?

There are some ideas around. And yes, I will admit the Sphinx as it is right now, is probably my Last choice of pretenders. However, as I said paitence is a virtue. I would rather have it in it's current state than where it was in the interim where something is done to it to be 'fixed'.

[Norfleet]

Meh. The simple solution would have been to disallow the Sphinx to teleport, but let it retain the ability to Gateway or Astral Travel, which are much higher level spells. Thus, a Sphinx could still be utilized in battle, but not merely dropped on people on turn 7.

[Wendigo]

Going back to the OP topic, my take:

The benefits/pros from castling:
-Protection of magic sites, temples, labs & recruitment of indep exhotic mages/troops.
-Increased income (depending on the fort's admin).
-Allows recruitment of national troops & commanders.
-Increased supply & resources (depending on admin).
-Protects troops & commanders from surprise attacks.
-The province cannot be lost in one turn to raiders.

The cons:
-Cost in gold!! while castling your valuable provinces can be beneficial, these benefits are less & less clear the less valuable the province is, as the opportunity costs of investing that gold elsewhere are higher.

-Extreme castling requires a low cost fort to be viable (300 gold ones), and these either have low admin ( Mausoleum & Watch tower, which have the drawback of a serious penalty in early income & resources) or high selection costs (Wizard tower at 120 design points).

-A castled province prevents the owner from immediate retaliation vs raiders via movement/distant summon spells: the defender teleporting mages & armies will show up inside the walls, leaving the raiders a full turn to do whatever they wish. This makes the fully fortified empire very vulnerable to burnt land tactics & multiple strikes:

Strike at 5 or so forts at the same time, does your enemy have powerful enough armies/fliers in range to retaliate (or inside the sieged fort)? if yes tax to 200% & consider moving on, if not consider storming in or pillaging. Do not forget that if you storm the fort you might run into the relief force that just teleported in, so be ready to take some losses.

Only distant attack spells with no allegiance can hit the invaders doing this before they act, but these spells are pretty weak in the early & mid game.

-The defender must be ready to fight & retaliate on multiple fronts, otherwise every single fort lost to a multiple strike will become a stronghold for the enemy in the middle of his lands. The defender must also be able to handle the attacker's main force with his own, otherwise he will lose a fort every 2 turns.

-Domes are counter-productive with this strategy as they prevent the defender from reinforcing magically, so research those army bLasting & province bLasting spells & cast away.


Chew on the above & make your turtling opponent suffer.