castle placement

[vivifan]

So, when you are in game, is it better to build a castle at home in your base, or try to build it forward near the enemy base to pressure them?

 

[IYIyTh]

It depends.

Are you ahead? Behind? What is your map like? Are you Daut?

 

[Paint]

It depends.

 

[enmipho]

The absolute best situation to build one is when you're Mayans on a landmass with 4 enemies and 0 allies. I would recommend placing it next to your TC at the bottom of a hill while being pushed by scouts, knights, monks, and mangonels.

For best results, commit most of your vills to build it right away. Garrison and ungarrison vills to dodge mangonel shots. When you inevitably lose a few to mangonels anyway, use every single vill you have to finish the castle, no matter the cost. Hopefully you can bait a monk and mangonel or two into TC fire range.

Ignore any rams your opponent uses to start killing your castle foundation as you build it -- they are immaterial to your goal. Just force the castle up. You should have at least 3-4 vills left by the time the castle goes up, and the castle should likely hold your position for several seconds before being going down to rams.

 

[Rayne]

Well like others said, depends.

Generally, it is obviously easier to make castles in your own base than it is your opponent’s since they probably have army at home or can use their vills to make a counter castle/towers. So, you’d have to evaluate their ability to defend and the own potential of your army if you decide to make an offensive one (that’s for highest success rate tbh, there can be few other cases).


Then there’s of course, map. Not just speaking of hills, but the placement of res. Usually gold and stone, but wood can sometimes matter. And if there’s both like say a hill and 1 pile of gold below it, that suddenly becomes a prime target for a castle placement. And if say there’s 2 piles of gold by a hill, or 1 gold and 1 stone (even a forest to add), you get the idea. That’s more bang for your buck if you place castles in these areas. You should always keep an eye on the whole map for areas like this (opponent’s side as well), not just your own map. But as I mentioned before, it is generally easier to place them on your part of the map and actually in any event, you’d want to cover your own sensitive spots on the map. Otherwise, it is a cloud that hangs over your head until you castle the area. Protecting your own map relieves a huge headache tbh.

You can go for some serious offensive push on the opponent if you see areas like this in Dark Age (helps to plan ahead). The player who did this kind of stuff like no other imo is Yo (assuming he’s still has this style, prob does). He would sometimes forward or trush in feudal, get some grip on the game, come Castle Age he’s siege pushing with army, then he’d place disastrous castles in just the perfect spots (hills, res, combination of both).


And then of course there’s civs. Dunno what civs there are these days since I don’t play anymore (only really replying here since a friend asked me to look at his DE game some days ago and I remembered things 11), but this matters too. If your civ relies on UU since it’s the best unit, maybe you don’t want to do offensive castles and would prefer your own base? Personally, I think this can be a matter of style.

Like with Yo as I mentioned, he’d still do this with civs like that. There’s also old Liereyy from I think KOTD2 who I think had Mongols in one game and placed 4 forward castles vs Villese and it controlled his whole base perfectly. The game literally ended once he hit Imperial. So... depends really I guess, matter of style somewhere too. But you have to know how to make that aggression work too. Viper also had some civ like Spanish or Mongols when I think about it and actually did both forward and castles at home (2 forward castles, rest home) in some old HC tournament! Won the game in style too. And if you have a civ like Franks on the talk of civs, you probably could do both. Or if your civ/plan doesn’t require UU, it’s something to consider perhaps.


Sorry if this is a longer answer than you expected, but about everything that comes to my mind on castle optimization. And actually on a final note, there’s one more thing I’d like to say.

Personally, I always saw castle placements as a ‘permanent’ strength or a ‘permanent’ weakness. That’s to say as close to the definition of permanent as it will get. That’s because you can never really take your castle back once it goes up (towers are cheaper, little less to care about but still matter too). So if you place castles in the right area that does something (protects res, controls hill), it can be considered a permanent strength. If you place them in poor areas (below a hill, not protecting res basically), those could be considered a permanent weakness. And especially if below hills, because then become a serious target with trebs and the like, and will almost always go down at some point. So... evaluate carefully.

 

[AttilaTheHun]

There is an instant win condition which is pretty much unknown: build a castle in all four corners of the map. It isn't possible on any map (like there is water in the way on islands or trees on black forest), but on most open maps it should be possible.

Going for this strat is even stronger in team games, since it ruines enemy trade as well.