Who walks SO in and under castle fire? Do even noobs do this? Besides the BBC start shooting the defenders castle from out of range. Defender runs in Paladins, attacker attacks ground against them with their SO and then runs in his Paladins which tank castle fire. Again this is all semantics: all things equal the non trader has 22% more military on the field. How you use it is up to you.I think you misread my points. In my situation I tried to explain the defenders advantage by him not having to cut and beeing able to fight with his army behind his castles.
Therefore the defender does not have any onagers or SO at all, but has put all his res into pala. The attacks SO have to fight the castle (tell me again how good they are in one shotting castles), while the pala fight takes place behind the castle (for the SO to get there they would have to pass the castle which they do not survive). According to your math with the 3000 resource advantage for the attacker subrtacted by the cost for SO, the defender will have about equal pala numbers, while the SO can not join the fight due to the castle. All. Things. Eqal. Just the defender uses his castle actually for defense, which I guess should be possible even for low rated players (pull back pala behind castle and target SO with castle does not require high level micro).