Anyone use a Fortified City?

[Kristoffer O]

Pocus said:

You know Kristoffer, you should really export this in a text file... I never ever saw somebody playing with a mountain citadel eg. The added defense dont compensate in any way the feeble eco bonus, and the huge cost and build time.

Hmm, yes. We are currently reworking fortresses in dom3. Not sure how dom2 will be affected. Probably not too much, but perhaps some moddability can be incorporated.

[tinkthank]

Kristoffer O said:

Hmm, yes. We are currently reworking fortresses in dom3. Not sure how dom2 will be affected. Probably not too much, but perhaps some moddability can be incorporated.

Hey, neato!

Tuidjy said:
As far as I am concerned there are two castles worth considering on land:

1. The watchtower - cheap in design points, cheap and quick to build, and a
stumbling block to any invader.
2. The castle - slightly inferior to the fortified city, as a castle, but cheaper
and much faster to build.

The wizard tower is a very nice castle, but costs 120 design points. Who can
afford this?! Everything else is crap. It is true that in a game of mine I am
getting frustrated besieging Mountain Citadels with 350 defense, but I cannot
help but think that maybe, if my opponent had taken a better castle, he would not
have had to man his capital's walls three turns after invading my lands. By the
way, Caelum fell, it just took four turns.

It is no wonder that in Multuplayer, you mostly see watchtowers. I would say
that the best players use them exclusively.

This is interesting.
I tend to disagree, but I suppose that depends on what you mean by "best players" and "mostly watchtowers". I suppose those that feel they belong to the "best players" should post here.
Wizard Tower: I have used it with quite palpable success with Pythium, which gets me both decent income and resources for my principes as well as quick forts all over for lots and lots of cheapo communion slaves. As to who can afford it, well, I felt that Pythium could, and certainly even more so could, for example, Caleum, or any nation with high temp settings. Never tried, though, cause I like a castle. I agree with the Mountain Citadel however, I cant imagine the context in which that could be a real boon.

[Endoperez]

Maybe if many "castle plans" could be bought, the Mountain Citadel would be worth buying for those strategically important but economically poor provinces. It might still not be worth buying, but having it in addition to Watchtower/some other cheap castle could provide some interesting possibilities...

[Yvelina]

I am not saying that I am one of the best players, but I will challenge anyone who dares to say that I am not!

I use only watchtowers, but it may be due to the fact that I play only Vanheim. My forces are extremely mobile and mostly undetectable, so I can usually relieve the siege of any castle before it falls... or teleport a welcoming commitee for those who dare storm it.

Why would I even consider another castle? My troops needs little in the way of ressources, I fight mostly with mages, I like to build a castle in every province, and I don't rely on walls, tower archers and PD for defense.

In my present game, there are four races that look like possible winners. One is an underwater nation, the other three use watchtowers.

[PvK]

Hmm. I thought admin drew resources from the _unused_ 50% that a province doesn't use for itself, no?

I use Fortified Cities when I want high admin and don't plan of building lots of forts. I think it's a decent choice for Ulm.

I never use watchtowers. I think they are for weenies. If many winning players use watchtowers it is perhaps more a sign of the kind of mentality of player who chooses watchtowers, and who focuses on trying to win even if it means using weenie tactics.

PvK

[Verjigorm]

I use castles for Ulm. Ulm's primary units can be recruited at any fortress as can their mages. The castle allows for greater overall production than the FC...you can build castles faster and closer together without restricting unit production in provinces with 2 adjacent castles. The only reason I would use an FC for Ulm is in the manner I use them with the other Capitol-only unit nations--to pump out Black Templar in Iron Faith, but I dislike Iron Faith....

As for Watchtowers being a "weenie" tactic, I disagree. I take the watchtower when I want to focus on magic--I can hire more commander units with a watchtower because I can build them right next to each other. Why should a player who has no intention of pumping out huge armies of troops have to take a "non-weenie" castle? If I take Sloth-3 for some reason, a bigger fortress is simply a waste of design points. What about the Mausoleum? Is it for weenies or does the 40 design point cost allow you to play like a weenie. Watchtowers are VERY easy to besiege. Teleporting armies can be a problem, but you shouldn't step unless you can represent

[alexti]

I usually use 3 types of forts:
- Castle - for smaller maps or for nations that don't have too many troops or mages I'd like to buy later. Also for nations that have good resource-intensive troops for early game
- Mausoleum - in other cases when the nation needs walls (lots of casters and few big troops to block the gate)
- Watch Tower - for the nations who will rely on masses of undead (for those, the walls is rather a drawback)

All 3 cases seem to work...

[PvK]

Verjigorm said:
...
Why should a player who has no intention of pumping out huge armies of troops have to take a "non-weenie" castle?
...
What about the Mausoleum? Is it for weenies or does the 40 design point cost allow you to play like a weenie. ...

I was mostly joking about the weenie comment. I might make the same joking remark about players who have "no intention of pumping out huge armies of troops" unless they have some other plan to field suitably butch forces.

Real men use armies and strong forts. Perhaps real wizards don't care about machismo. Perhaps weeniehood is in the eye of the beholder. Really, there are many different playstyles in Dominions, which are more or less good for different purposes. I brought up the weenie comment as an ironic joking contrast to some players who try to minimax and find the most successful techniques, and dismiss other options as "useless".

PvK

[tinkthank]

[b]PvK said:I brought up the weenie comment as an ironic joking contrast to some players who try to minimax and find the most successful techniques, and dismiss other options as "useless".

PvK

Heheh, bravo!

I like the feeling of a castle, and of higher admin too.
Nobody mentioned the admin bonus to gold, by the way, just to resources -- but forts in the right places can give a tasty gold income bonus as well. I rely on it sometimes.

[Boron]

As Ctis the Hill fortress is fun too imo .
If you block the gate a bit with Mech men or similiar your 4 or 5 poison slinger towers do nice damage to almost all troops .
Then only the SCs are left and die maybe to your 2 or 3 skeleton spamming cheapo mages .