Single-Castle Game: Which Nations Would Win?

Belac · #1 December 24th, 2009, 12:42 PM

I am curious which nations would do best in a game where no additional castles could be built. Obviously those with the best cap-only units would have edges--would nations with spies also have advantages, as they could cheaply totally destroy their enemies' productivity?

Gandalf Parker · #2 December 24th, 2009, 12:55 PM

Interesting concept.
But there are also castles from magic sites. And spells. And an event?

thejeff · #3 December 24th, 2009, 01:06 PM

The castle building magic sites could be removed, as could the spells.
Events are rare enough that you couldn't count on them.
You could also just make a rule that any castles gained, even through conquest would be destroyed.

Spies wouldn't be used much, I suspect. It's easy enough to patrol one province and you'd have to waste turns at your only castle to build them.

I suspect it would just come to favor mobile recruitable SCs even more than the game does now. Research would be slow, since you've only got 1 reliable source of mages. National troops would only be recruitable far from the front lines. Nations that rely on lots of cheap mages would be handicapped, those focusing on powerful cap-only ones would be okay.

BesucherXia · #4 December 24th, 2009, 01:41 PM

Actually I am even looking forward to such a game.

My current bet is LA Ermor. They can field free units everywhere. Although those are not good enough, they are effective in overrunning units recruited from independent provinces and since the opponent now has no more castles to set up a defense line, there will be a true nightmare of raiding.

Gandalf Parker · #5 December 24th, 2009, 02:15 PM

As always, the size of the map would go a long way to deciding some things. Many predictions and "absolutely true" items are affected by number of players and map size.
How many provinces per player? 5, 10, 20, 50?

And what era? Era 1 would boost nations with weak capital mages while era 3 would boost nations with weak armored troops.

Fantomen · #6 December 25th, 2009, 01:38 PM

I think the winner would be a nation with low recource/high gold non sacred elites Like skinshifters, hydras, salamanders, spider riders or the like.

LumenPlacidum · #7 December 25th, 2009, 01:58 PM

Would put more emphasis on the ability to summon mages and troops. You'd see way more clashes involving odd summons that people don't use because they've got troops that are just as good.

Gandalf Parker · #8 December 25th, 2009, 02:43 PM

All of the predictions sound interesting. It would certainly throw a wrench into standard strategies and create a new game. It would force people to give up their tried and true ways to rethink the good/bad things they were taught about the game. Evolve to the new standard, or die!
Im all for it.

Maybe Belac should add a post to the "game variants" thread
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=35083

Baalz · #9 December 25th, 2009, 04:46 PM

Nah, the nations that would dominate would be those that have N/B mages (like Mictlan and Lanka), rain of toads is low enough to be fairly easy research, and blood slaves are the only resource you could really spam early. Wouldn't be terribly hard to lock down 3 or more people's caps pretty early - earlier than most nations could really put a domes up (with a little planning you can ignore water/fire domes, and spam through most of the others). You'd probably have to ban it and maybe a couple other spells as well.