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Message: <blockquote data-quote="darious777" data-source="post: 3102589" data-attributes="member: 34926">This I am in agreement.  Fast and cheap fortifications that don't pin the defending army in place I can see.  I guess my problem with static defenses is that, in my opinion, they leave the initiative to the attacker.  Here are my assumptions:1) Defender has a strong defensive position, but the attacker has a stronger army (attacker had better have a stronger army, otherwise why is he attacking?)2) Attacker can only take that position with great cost, or with magic.3) Defender can only hold out against the attacker's magic with magic of it's own.4) Both sides have equal magic power.  Everything that one side has, the other side has available to it.  How do you, the defender, prep your spells to stop me the attacker?  Do you take move earth to rebuild the walls that I brought down with my move earth? Do you take summon elemental to counter my earth elemental?  What if you have an elemental memorized the day I decide to drop a cloudkill instead?  What if you took 1 wind wall, 1 move earth, and 1 earth elemental and I decide to come in with 3 elementals?I'll probably try a few change self or invisibility infiltrations, but I won't have high hopes - a proper defensive structure had better be protected against that sort of nonsense, but, still, you never know until you try.  I'm going to assume that you have dispel magics but those are unreliable and time sensitive.   You can't dispel something once the magic is finished being cast.  So one day I'll lob my spell offensive at 4am.  The next I'll do it at 1am.  And then I'll hit at noon.  I can dictate the times that my offenses go off - your dispel magics and counterspells have to be available 24/7.  Even if we change the assumptions and you now have such a powerful defensive position that I can never take it.  It becomes essentially a perfect platform from which to launch protected attacks on my units.  Why should I stay there?  I'll wander around your countryside pulling a Hannibal and wait for you to leave your defenses to put a stop to me.That does give you the option to take the initiative back, but remember, I wouldn't have invaded in the first place unless I had a larger army (and therefore the advantage) already.In this, I feel that magic is similar to modern combat.  Putting signifigant resources into a defense that the enemy can knock down at their leisure is not effective.</blockquote>

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