Round table

Cube is an interesting template, but I'm afraid that 4 starting castles will scare players away.

If 4 castles scare someone, then 3 will scare them too. The difference is not that great.

It's just impossible to draw such a beautiful and symmetrical structure as a cube for 3 castles. It can only turn out to be an analogue of a star, as in the second template shown. And it still doesn't reflect the idea of total war as subtly.

The point is that both opponents will not rush towards each other, but will probe the opponent's position with scouts. After all, initially it is unknown who has the advantage at the start.

I'm willing to bet that people will play as usual - they will gather all their troops into one group and go to break through the passages, bringing in troops as they build. And so on until they run into an opponent.

We've already seen this on Spider, where it was also beneficial to lie low if the situation was good, so as not to run into an opponent in a head-on encounter. However, people still broke through the passages with the persistence of people looking for a head-on encounter.