[DISCUSSION] Moving most Champions back to the FORTRESS

[LetswaveaBook]

On 10/03/2022 at 7:26 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The Fortress is now pretty boring. The game should not have boring things.

I agree on this. Though maybe it is just because I want to terrorize my opponents base instead of being on the defensive side.

Whenever I have the 600 stone required to build a fortress, I regret having the stone and wish that I had collected metal instead of stone.

 

I like siege workshops. It feels restrictive and counter intuitive to allow siege only to be trained at the fortress

[Gurken Khan]

I think the fortress would be less boring if it could be built in neutral territory and could produce champs.

Weren't a lot of fortresses built in areas not otherwise controlled by the builders?

[thephilosopher]

21 hours ago, Fabius said:

I was strongly oriented toward defense in A23 and have seen the decline in its viability since. you need catapults to properly turtle, which we don't have in a functional form.

My impression has been that the decline of turtling has looked a lot different depending on skill level. Most players under about 1300 rating still can't beat a player who can turtle, even when they can beat players who use other strategies. Most players over 1300 can easily boom and defeat a turtler.

It also depends on pop max. 200 pop max seems to be much, much better for turtling than 250 or 300.

Edited March 11, 2022 by thephilosopher

[Fabius]

12 minutes ago, thephilosopher said:

My impression has been that the decline of turtling has looked a lot different depending on skill level. Most players under about 1300 rating still can't beat a player who can turtle, even when they can beat players who use other strategies. Most players over 1300 can easily boom and defeat a turtler.

Depends on their composition and the competence of the turtler. 

[thephilosopher]

Just now, Fabius said:

Depends on their composition and the competence of the turtler. 

Definitely. I also edited that post and added that bit at the end about pop max. 200 pop seems way better for turtling than anything higher.

[Fabius]

2 hours ago, AIEND said:

There should indeed be a general technology that strengthens the tower while strengthening the fortress in P3.

Some of the tower technologies could be tweaked to overlap

[Fabius]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

A building that is only useful for one tech--that is rarely researched--for most civs isn't a useful building. See also Wonders. 

Agreed, the cost of will to fight is to great to warrant it in most games, I can buy 15 champions with that or get most of the blacksmith upgrades for one type of troop. More often than not I am frustrated at not having a lot of options to defend a fortress or make it impede an enemy advance more than five seconds. I don't mind being forced to adapt, but I also want options to adapt with.

[Fabius]

4 minutes ago, thephilosopher said:

Definitely. I also edited that post and added that bit at the end about pop max. 200 pop seems way better for turtling than anything higher.

Very true. Also something I call building micro, which is were you micro garrisoned troops in and out of buildings to kill strategic objectives like rams.

[faction02]

Champions at the fortress is quite unlikely to make the fortress itself more interesting. If someone make a fortress, he will probably go fortress, (then hero), then will-to-fight, then champions, but usually people die around the time that someone get the will-to-fight tech. So it is likely to remove some champions from the game rather than increase the attractivity of the fortress.

Sieges available at the fortress was important for the timing of the game, it was delaying the final push by some time and potentially giving more time for alternative p3 strategy (like producing champions at the fortress while the enemy is producing sieges at his fortress for example). 

Even if we delay the final push (by making arsenal/elephant stable harder to get for example), having most champions at the fortress seems still too restrictive. It would prevent champions to be massed. This is a problem for at least two reasons:

-       Champions upgrades/heroes (silver shield regiment and nisean warhorse) : if you can’t make many champions, upgrading or getting a hero for them is not attractive. 

-       Melee infantry is not really useful if they are not massed. Getting few infantry swordmen won’t make much of a difference in an army of 100 units. They will die without anyone even remembering seeing them on the battlefield.

I would have less concerns with the production of champions at the fortress if champions were more than just strong units (like the Trumpeter for example). If everything else remain unchanged, few melee infantry champions would feel very useless. For ranged or cavalry champions that would be more nuanced: ranged champions may survive thanks to melee protecting them and cavalry champions could be used for raiding mission and escape before being killed. Both may still be massed and used even if they are slow to produced, but it might end up being frustrating to never be able to really play a champion strategy.

 

I would prefer some other way to make the fortress more useful than sending most champions there. Maybe a fortress could be a place to trained rank2 soldiers on top of its current function ? 

[Fabius]

1 minute ago, faction02 said:

I would prefer some other way to make the fortress more useful than sending most champions there. Maybe a fortress could be a place to trained rank2 soldiers on top of its current function ? 

I agree with your point, chapions simply make a fortress obligatory, and that seems counter productive. I like the idea of second rank troops, but that does potentially remove the uniqueness of other civ bonuses that give that, skiritai and roman castrum infantry to give the two primary examples.

[Fabius]

I am in favour of altering the tower technologies to affect the fortress and increasing the garrison capacity to 40 as suggested elsewhere.

[faction02]

4 minutes ago, Fabius said:

I agree with your point, chapions simply make a fortress obligatory, and that seems counter productive. I like the idea of second rank troops, but that does potentially remove the uniqueness of other civ bonuses that give that, skiritai and roman castrum infantry to give the two primary examples.

Most other civilization would have only 1 fortress, so a very limited production. Roman army camp can still allow for units production anywhere and skiritai, I would prefer to have them as something different than just a rank2 swordman.