Combat on Ports Bug

[KGB]

Tim,

The defender has the option to upgrade his boats. The defender has the option NOT to sit on the port. The attacker gets NO options at all. That's the unfair part. I'm perfectly fine if the attacker instead has to upgrade boats before the battle takes place instead of automatically attacking at land strength.

To me ports are simply a place to enter/exit the water. Not a place for defenders to get overwhelming strategic advantages that the attacker has no counter for.

KGB

P.S. Are you interested in starting another 8 player FFA game on Midguard since this one is ending? I'm tired of playing the Orange (I seem to always end up there even in a 2v2 team game I'm playing I got assigned Orange meaning I've played Orange in 8 of 10 games on that map) start spot.

[Chazar]

I still don't see the problem: the attacker has the option of employing air and sea units to free up the port.

I think the current way is a good compromise, since I would say that ports ought to be razeable in the first place. So you cannot raze them, but at least you can park a moderate army (i.e. strenght > 20) there to shut down the port temporarily.

So one guy looses access to one port and the other guy has a moderate army impaired, stil requiring upkeep. Fine.

[KGB]

Chazar,

I still don't see the problem: the attacker has the option of employing air and sea units to free up the port.

Many maps have restricted army use especially with regards to fliers. It's also possible you have no sea units because you have no water access from any of your cities. Far more often you simply don't have money / time to buy sea units/fliers and amass a bunch of them to clear the port.

I think the current way is a good compromise, since I would say that ports ought to be razeable in the first place.

That's something for a wish list item and would be an interesting idea depending on how it works.

So you cannot raze them, but at least you can park a moderate army (i.e. strenght > 20) there to shut down the port temporarily.

Then I would make the suggestion that the Towers we build get changed so that all armies attacking a tower fight at 15 strength max other than fliers who can reach the armies sitting in the top of the tower. This change is OK because you can bring siege against the tower if needed to help with the wall bonus and the opponent can only park 1 stack there (unlike in a city) to guard an area temporarily. Are you OK with my change? That's essentially what is happening here.



Also the way things are leads to cheesy tactics like the following:

I send a stack into your lands consisting of a stack of 8 Elves. Your strong hero stack full of good units spots me and moves to intercept knowing you will crush mine with maybe 1 unit lost. I hop on to a port and stay there. Now your hero stack must fight as Djonks (15 str) losing all their bonus's causing you to lose many more units than would otherwise occur and maybe even lose the fight if things go really badly. Do you really want to just sit there for several turns with your hero stack hoping I'll go away while you try to amass some sea units or other stacks to suicide on mine?

To me that's not what ports were meant to do. But it's definitely now how I will be using them as I move around enemy lands.

KGB

[Zaque]

The problem with doing that KGB is that you loose so much movement going from sea to land, and back again. I would gladly just leave you stack alone and park a decent stack of terrain suitable mobs 3 squares away from the port so you couldn't attack me on land and I would see if you left by sea. The only thing your tactic gets is to tie up a few of my units, which at times can be very useful.

Now having said that, I completely agree with you that this whole thing doesn't make sense and should be changed (generally speaking those who where on land had the advantage in war when it comes to ports not the other way around), or at least give the player a warning that this is going to happen.