Stronghold locations

[egamma]

I feel like strongholds should have held more spots like Balance's retreat. Either really isolated, or, even better, as the shortest path between areas (imagine Balance's Retreat with a back door, and with more mountains around the mountains).

that would be great. Basically have north divide and Fatexna switch positions and remove the bridge, and presto! shortcut from Unterstrom to Poryatown.

[Anaris]

That sounds nice on paper, but falls down very quickly once you put it into the game. Just look at the wars that have happened around the lake on Atamara. Both sides of the bridges have townslands on them and max. level 2 walls. Every single war I have seen fought over there during my 5+ years of playing have devolved into staring matches across the bridge and an occasional assault or two. Add in a stronghold on either side with level 5 walls and it just turns into a war that isn't any fun at all.

Yeah, because that might mean you needed some actual strategy!

And everyone knows the only kind of war that's any fun at all is the kind where you can just gather your whole army into a blob and charge it straight at the enemy without having to think about anything!

[Longmane]

Yeah. Many were placed to force your enemies to take a longer route to their destination.

ha and even better if that route also went via a bottleneck that would likely see their army become spread out   8)

[Bael]

Why don't we collect some data and see if your theory is right or not?

I am the lord of Shrine of Seeklander, probably the biggest fortress on dwilight. Here are the RCs I got after almost spending 3k gold.

40 95/50 inf - 15 recruits per day Size 3
50 95/50 cav - 5 recruits per day Size 2
55 80-5/75 SF - 3 recruits per day Size 2

From observing my region, for both inf and cav centers I got low def while the SF center had more balanced stats with low training.

The regions has 10700 population.

Ok, so that's one thing - it seems like they have better recruitment rates. I had a SF center  size 2 in Ejarr Puutl - http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Ejarr_Puutl (under Eridin) that I battled to get even one recruit out of. They were about 87/75 and training...I forget. I wager it produces more men than other regions.

[Lorgan]

I hear Nuzanki is pretty nice this time of year.

Hehe... Dunbor isn't planning to move... Especially not into the blight! ;)

[LilWolf]

Yeah, because that might mean you needed some actual strategy!

And everyone knows the only kind of war that's any fun at all is the kind where you can just gather your whole army into a blob and charge it straight at the enemy without having to think about anything!

Sorry, but there's no strategy you can employ that would change the situation in my example due to the nature of the map. The terrain and other variables make bypassing the choke points, if not impossible, then highly impractical. Armies have been lost in the mountains that are the only practical way around the choke points. Small raiding parties have been tried and they've been largely ineffectual. Some of the best generals in the game have banged their heads against that wall and come up empty.

BM does not reflect real life in this in any way. There's no way to ambush anyone with a smaller force and win. You can't sneak a small force past an enemy if they have active scouts. There are lots of things you can do in real life that make choke points by-passable. BM has a limited game engine that does not allow for such tactics. No amount of "split your army into smaller groups" is going to change that fact.

So I'll continue to say choke points(and adding strongholds to them) will continue to be less fun in BM than they seem on paper.

[Chenier]

Sorry, but there's no strategy you can employ that would change the situation in my example due to the nature of the map. The terrain and other variables make bypassing the choke points, if not impossible, then highly impractical. Armies have been lost in the mountains that are the only practical way around the choke points. Small raiding parties have been tried and they've been largely ineffectual. Some of the best generals in the game have banged their heads against that wall and come up empty.

BM does not reflect real life in this in any way. There's no way to ambush anyone with a smaller force and win. You can't sneak a small force past an enemy if they have active scouts. There are lots of things you can do in real life that make choke points by-passable. BM has a limited game engine that does not allow for such tactics. No amount of "split your army into smaller groups" is going to change that fact.

So I'll continue to say choke points(and adding strongholds to them) will continue to be less fun in BM than they seem on paper.

Yes and no. It's true that, save for a mix of good and bad settings and army composition, an army can't beat a stronger one due to surprise. As for sneaking a small army past a larger army, I've done that various times. You can only get good odds of success if your army is able to do late-turn moves, though, and your enemy can't/doesn't.

That being said, I think that stronghold on chokepoints aren't a good idea, unless there is a viable (albeit less strategic) alternative available. Mountains, for example. However, if the choke point can't be bypassed by any means, such as because there's water on all sides, then that's not much fun (because we can't build boats in BM).

[Anaris]

So I'll continue to say choke points(and adding strongholds to them) will continue to be less fun in BM than they seem on paper.

To a certain extent, this is true: putting a stronghold at, for instance, Yggdramir on Dwilight would cause some serious problems, because there really is no other way around.

However, first of all, there are very few chokepoints in BattleMaster for which this is actually true. Looking at Atamara, my first impulse was to put one at Mansbridge/Winwich. But it's not very far to go around through the mountains (and those are Atamara mountains; they barely slow you down at all). Then I looked at the Trawiy/Hidale bridge in the west. But there are mountains just a short trip to the east, and another bridge a short trip to the west. 

Yes, it would require going around, and taking a little more time—but that's hardly a complete blockage.

Second of all, maps are much harder to change than code, and changes to code to make less direct forms of warfare more prominent and viable are likely to come well before maps with strongholds at chokepoints.