Forts should be effective for defense, not an expensive barracks. If they are “useless” right now, work should be done to make their use for defense more effective.
Forts should be for defense primarily, with some able to train heroes, unique units (champs), and unique, special technologies.
I remember alphas where people would make more than 6 forts just to spam champs, and it became frustrating trying to find space to place them because of the build distance requirement.
also let me stress this really important point: there are no complaints about infantry champions, save for immortals being a bit OP in the ranged form.
all the complaints are about champcav, so how about we calm down a bit and focus of the specific units that are problematic instead of “moving fast and breaking things” so to speak.
why are champcav OP?
- high damage, high hp? Sure, but it is not much more than infantry champions, and they cost a lot more. But really the comparison with champion infantry is flawed, champcav will almost never need to fight champion spearmen.
- mobility? I think this is the underlying cause as much as others want to deny it. We are talking about units that are double the speed of their supposed counter, units that may not be surrounded, trapped, or outplayed except by a larger or faster cav army. Because you can choose your fights endlessly, champcav players can bank up resources while raiding and retrain fast enough to justify taking bad fights. Additionally, since they move faster, they take less damage from buildings.
if you are really adamant to try this, why not set up a PR in the com mod to organize some play testing. I think I’ve seen enough of the current com mod changes to get an idea of what might work in the future regarding capture balance, so we can move forward with a new version if you like.