Can I get some cheese with that...

[Tuidjy]

Frankly I do not understand what the problem with
castle spamming is. I play Vans. If you go to
war with me, you will lose every single
unfortified temple in, oh, about five turns.

There are some people on this thread who are
familiar with the experience. At least one
of them has taken up castling religiously, so
now instead of burninating his empire, I
am besieging three castles, and gambling on his
Vampire Queen not being called up from the dead
too quickly.

Do you honestly propose that we start using rules
that _enforce_ leaving your provinces
vulnerable? Or do you accuse people building a
castle in each province of playing a cheap game?

Personally I do not build castles extensively.
Not because I am ashamed of it, or because I do
not think it is a good idea. Mostly, it is
because I cannot afford it, or because I am
hoping that I can get away with it unless I am
facing Vanheim, Man, Ulm, Pangea, Caelum, ...
you know, what, nevermind! :-)

Once the game gets going, and supercombatants
raise their ugly heads, having provinces without
a castle is a waste of your 200 gold coins, and
of most of the income you can get from the
province.

So lets see. Why do people whine about castling?
1. Because they do not like micromanaging, and
want to deny others the benefits of doing it?
2. Because they like their administration bonus,
and do not want to give it up?
3. Because they have trouble to keep supply
adequate without a fortified city?
4. Because their strategy is not able to support
the expense of castling?
5. Because they like being able to raid
indiscriminately?
6. Because they need something to whine about?

Guys, castling is not only the one in-game answer
to raiding, it is also perfectly realistic. I am
from Europe. In most places, it is enough to
look at the highest place in sight, and you will
see a castle. This is certainly the case in
France, Germany and Spain. Why? Because building
a castle that allows you to protect your villagers
and lifestock, and strike at the invaders, should
they separate for pillaging, WORKS!

Now, people are proposing solutions to alleviate
the need of castling. I'm all for that! Make
temples take a turn to demolish. Make it
impossible to bump taxes unless you have held the
province for a whole turn. Make it a bit easy to
intercept a moving army. Fine! Thank you very
much! I do not want to pay 500 coins for my
temple. I could use some ressources. But the
problem is not castling. The problem is the
wack-a-mole approach to handling an army moving
in your lands.

My way of handling this? Introduce loyalty in
provinces. Make those who move between loyal
provinces move first, as opposed to those moving
between occupied provinces. This simulates the
army supported by the population having access to
better logistics, better recon, and not being
harrassed by loyalists. Hell, introduce a new
command 'move while intercepting' that will
deflect the path of the army to coincide with the
targeted invader's destination.

Of course this is complex, and will not happen in
a patch. But do NOT cripple castling without
coming up with an answer to raiding first, or the
next whine fest will be:

So his IMPOSSIBLE TO SEE Vans slaughtered my 400
coins strong PD, burned my 200 coins temple,
jacked the taxes to net 200 coins, and then left
me with 50% unrest. Oh, they hid on the next
turn, so there WAS NOTHING I COULD DO!

WHAAAAAAH!'

[HotNifeThruButr]

I think I've just had a revelation.

If labs were more expensive, requiring you to plan out which of your provinces will become magical centers, you can effectively stop Norfleet's mage-dependant strategy, right?

Or, there could be different types of labs. Smaller and cheaper ones reduce your ability to research, or multiplies mage cost, either handicapping your ability to field the best summons before everyone else with your mage army or making it more expensive to pump mages. It does, however, have an advantage of expensive labs which divides mage cost and improves research because in the better labs, you're keeping all of your eggs in a couple baskets and you can't pump mages as well. Cheap labs also allow you to blood hunt in virtually every province but one.

What do you think?

[Cheezeninja]

I personally still believe the problem lies in the supercombatant instead of castling. If your opponent could not teleport in a force capable of defeating your besiegers in 1 turn then castling would no longer work. His castles that he made in all his provinces would subsiquently become YOUR castles because he would not be able to afford a large army since all his money has been going into hi..YOUR castles. I think the ability to intercept raiding armies better would be a definite plus, but if you think about it, if you actually had to move an army around to defend your castles, suddenly castling everywhere is alot less effective. I think commanders should be capable of inflicting massive losses on the enemy, but should not be so good at becoming completely invulnerable to endless hordes of anything that isnt elite.

Yes, castling is a problem, but its only made possible because of Supercombatants that can defeat your besieging army by their lonesome.

[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.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Tuidjy:

Now, people are proposing solutions to alleviate
the need of castling. I'm all for that! Make
temples take a turn to demolish. Make it
impossible to bump taxes unless you have held the
province for a whole turn.

In addition to a good description of Europe, where castles, forts, and towers large and small can be found almost every square mile in some parts, for good reason, Tuidjy has a really good point about the temples.

Why does it take a nation a full month of a commander's time to destroy their _OWN_ temple, but an invader, even an attack and immediately go poof spell invader, destroy it immediately?

Really seems to make more sense that it would require one month of a commander's time to destroy it. Otherwise - the original temple is still there.

Maybe it still benefits the original deity. Maybe it doesn't, since the priests and temple-tenders are presumably at least in hiding. But having to devote a commander to destroying the temple only makes sense. And it means that a commander is there, visible, for that turn, and thus vulnerable to Magic Arrows, Ghost Riders, Call of the Wild, teleporting / air trapezing mages, etc.

Destroying the temple would thus be risky, but important - you can't build your own temple while that temple is there, and you also don't want to leave the enemy's temple there for them to recover by retaking the province.

[Kel]

I think the initial post is a bit inflammatory and unneccessarily one sided. Normally, I wouldn't post in response to one person's point of view but your post was a good example of one extreme 'side' of every balance argument that goes on so I wanted to post my thoughts. This isn't aimed at you so much as the statements that are represented here (which you happened to make in this case).

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."

People said what they had to say. Is it a whine du jour because they didn't keep beating it into the ground for a month ? Those people still feel that way so calling it a whine du jour lacks foundation and is inflammatory (as opposed to if it was inflammatory but had a valid point behind it). Would it be better if they said something about it EVERY day of every week of every month so it would no longer be a whine of the day ?

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?

Why does it seem that the first reaction of people that use the strategies is to call everyone else a whiner or a newbie rather than make a point about the actual subject ?

Or has everyone proposing nerfs done extensive testing of the various strategies and proven that they can't be beaten?

Representing extremes is fine lawyering and good drama but it isn't really fair. Don't you think it is likely that the truth is in the middle ? That *most* people probably have tried several different things but it was neither their 'first reaction' nor have they done 'extensive testing and proven they can't be beaten' ? Honestly, don't you think the truth is in the middle here ? Do you really think that every complaint comes from a single game experience ?

And if it can be beaten, why would people equate that with it being balanced, other than that they have run out of logic ? I mean, if you want to use that argument, every single unit in the game is exactly as good as every other unit because there are open ended dice rolls and anyone could win any combat at any specific time.

Or are some players just wishing that the game was designed differently--to suit the fact that they don't like playing against a given strategy?

I think it is inappropriately disrespectful to assume that everyone who brings up a balance discussion is wrong, not because of specific points but rather to dismiss them and assume negative character traits about their personalities. Why do they all have to have ulterior motives, based on being weak willed, rash and whiny ? I mean, that is basically the answer that some people use for every balance discussion.

Tthis is probably true in some cases, don't get me wrong, just as there are people on the OTHER side who don't want changes in their game for the *exact* same reasons. For either side to dismiss arguments based on anything other than actual, valid points, on the subject itself, demonstrates both a lack of respect and a losing argument, imo.

- Kel

Thank you for enduring my brief rant.

[JJ_Colorado]

Kel - nice post.

I agree. The constant superior attitude, arrogance, and cynicism of some posters gets old. Sure there is some whining but I think some of the points raised about DOM2 play balance are valid and they get grouped immediately into the "whining" Category. Whatever.

--John


P.S. What is this "we don't suffer fools" cr*p? Get off your high horses. Sheesh.


[ May 27, 2004, 06:00: Message edited by: JJ_Colorado ]