Fortress Invincible

[Pillager]

When it comes to city defense...the current system is totally unbalanced in favor of the defender. Players can chose to take advantage of this by filling a city to the brim with troops..every unit gaining the city bonus and every command/stacking bonus of every other unit in the city. the worst is a hero sitting in a city with a horde of units...if you attack with your own horde you will likely boost this hero to an unmanageable level.

Usually, when I see an opponent do this, I chuckle and just march my troops around to attack a softer target....but I have faced some situations where this was not a very attractive option. A heavily defended city within striking range of several of my cities is a nightmare situation. It slows the game down by forcing me to focus on defense (unless I am willing to give up the cities).

Being able to self raze would be helpful in this situation..but, still seems to be rewarding this turtle strategy.

It would be nice if there was some reason for players to moderate the number of units in a city. I recently proposed a 'plague scroll' for just this purpose. Or maybe just a chance of plague when unit numbers get too high?

KGB and I discussed a siege mechanic a while ago...but now with more games under my belt, I think that a siege mechanic should starve units..or start a countdown to automatic city conquest.

The basic idea is to discourage turtling and static play, thereby encouraging active, enjoyable games.

[KGB]

Pillager,

I'm completely against the siege mechanic starving units or having an automatic city conquest mode. It should work as our final discussion ended up on that topic. That you prevent units from entering/exiting, stop vectoring and add 1 to the number of turns required to produce a unit in the city. That alone prevents the defender from replenishing lost armies. With the new XP system in Beta4 attacking cities with enemy heroes won't be near as big an issue.

Also, I proposed a poison power for the Scorpion unit. Not sure if that's in the works or not as Piranha never said either way. But if poison and disease were added that would be another good way to weaken defenders in preparation for an assault.

Personally, I still have yet to run into this problem in any game. I've found plenty of strong cities like you describe but as you mentioned, I just go around and attack something else. I have yet to see any kind of turtle strategy be of any use other than as a minor delaying tactic.

KGB

[Moonknight]

I agree there should be self-raze, but seriously, building a stronghold city is a valid strategy and one I implore often once I get to the edge of my city advancement running into my opponent's city advancement. Is it my fault some of my opponents are idiots and slowly try to attack the city only making my hero invincible? No...I mean, why have vectoring if this is not allowed?

[Pillager]

Moonknight,

I'm not saying that this isn't a valid strategy, if it works for you then fine. But it would be nice to have some tools to use against massively fortified cities.

KGB,

Poisoning and diseasing troops would be a nice addition. Though it strikes me as odd that you are OK with elementals/archons/ghosts being diseased and poisoned...but had a thematic complaint about these same units dying from starvation/disease while in a city under siege.

I have been running into the 'super fortress' issue with a few of my recent games. It hadn't been much of an issue until now.... I think this is because some of the new maps have concentrated clusters of cities. Controlling one city in a cluster poses an immediate threat to all the other cities withing the same cluster... so, this 'strategy' can be pretty effective on those maps...effective at bogging down the game, that is.

[KGB]

Pillager,

Two things different about the poison/disease concept on units vs starvation from siege

1) You have to build units to obtain poison/disease. Those units have to enter combat and likely die in order to deliver their effects on the enemy directly. From a thematic point that works because the weakening of hits/strength is combat related (Scorpion poison for example). Plus there is no 'you get something for nothing' aspect which I am firmly against.

2) Unlike DLR where the poison/disease lasts forever (or until blessed), I proposed it only lasts a limited amount of time. 2 turns for poison (with the unit regaining 1 strength per turn so that in 2 turns it's healed) and 1 for disease (with the unit regaining 1 life per turn so that in 1 turn it's healed). This means you have limited time to take advantage of the effects and I think works better balance wise.


I don't think I've played any of the cluster maps yet. But maybe when I do I'll notice this issue more. But you can blame the map maker for this problem, not the super fortress concept.

Out of curiosity, have you tried to just do the same as your enemy? That is assuming you own the rest of the cluster, put all your men into 1 city and leave only a token man or 2 in the rest. Then if the enemy decides to take those cities he'll spread out his own armies and you turn the tables and pick them off one at a time. Ideally you'll pillage out all the production in those cities other than the one you plan to fortify yourself so they don't get anything useful at all minus a small gold income.

KGB