KGB wrote:Negern,
It was *always* worth it to conquer those cities for the reasons I mentioned (good production, high income, hero XP). It was just harder to do so and required actual planning. Now it's obviously very easy to do it so the careful planning part has been lost.
I think you are underestimating the power of the Barb in early expansion. He *speeds* up expansion, not slows it down. For example I'm playing your Sci-Fi map (2nd time actually). It's turn 9 and I've conquered the entire set of 8 middle cities with a Barb (just as I did last game). The outer 4 can be easily handled by a L4 Barb on his own and the inner 4 require L5 (which he gets by taking the outer 4) with the 4th hit, the bless to 70 str and either a Ram / Crusader / Yeti. My opponents are just reaching the middle in force now and the game is over. I've pillaged most of them for gold (using it to buy production in my home cities which are better defended), bought Hv Infantry to defend and will self-raze what I can't keep. Meanwhile my Barb with his Flight skill will now use the mountain ranges to raze enemy cities. He's truly a 1 man wrecking crew.
That's why I liked the Dragon defender because the Barb could not just walk from island to island and capture those cities on his own so this was one of the very few maps I didn't automatically take a Barb as my 1st hero. He requires other units or you need to experiment with Assassin/Wolfrider/Orc/Elf combos to take those cities.
KGB
Yes yes, I agree about the barb, I hate meeting one with no good ambush units around. But what I said is that it is risky to choose him. When I choose him, sometimes he dies early, and when I try to protect him until he reaches lvl 2, overall initial expansion gets slowed down. But it's true, that if he comes to a high level, he's big trouble. But I still think the dragon cities were too strong. If it is like you said, that a lvl3 assa with full stack of ambush units and elves didn't get even 90%, then defenses were too strong. One could storm another players home island with a stack like that. And if that player tried to take over on of the dragon cities, he's likely to have very poor defenses and loose the entire island!