How to solve castling effect?

Cohen · #1 May 26th, 2004, 12:25 PM

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 · #2 May 26th, 2004, 12:29 PM

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 · #3 May 26th, 2004, 12:59 PM

Quote:

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 · #4 May 27th, 2004, 01:15 AM

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 · #5 May 27th, 2004, 01:17 AM

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 ]

Jondifool · #6 May 26th, 2004, 02:31 PM

Well my suggestion does
introduce a temple condition "damaged".

A temple is then automaticly damaged when a provinse is conquered. It takes an comander aktion to destroy a damaged temple.
A new temple can first be build if an enemy damaged temple is destroyed ( to prevent different damaged temples in the same province).

If a province is retaken a damaged temple can be rebuild for halv the cost or what ever cost is appropiate.

Anglachel · #7 May 26th, 2004, 02:41 PM

Or simply not have temples auto-destroy upon conquering of a province. Require a commander to take out a turn to dismantle it much like someone dismantling thier own buildings in thier own province. Make the timing of the dismantling of said building take place after movement and combat giving time for trying to retake the province and protect the temple. Of course this wouldn't really solve castling but would remove the need to use castles to protect temples somewhat anyways.

Just a thought.