after playing a game recently (admittedly, only my second game) our group was confused by the strategic point of ports. they are confusing and i don't know what the real value of them is.

does anyone have a good description of what they are good for in the game?

First of all, ports are good for marching to conquer seas.

Furthermore, they are very useful to backup controlled seas, too.

To expand on this, while there are other subtle advantages to ports, the MAIN reason use use them is when you own a land area with a port, but another player owns the sea area outside.

If you wanted to build some ships of your own to re-take the land, and there were no ports, you wouldn't be able to do this. You would be completely unable to build ships until the other player vacated the sea region. Ports stop you from being able to completely block another player in by simply puting 1 ship on each sea area.

Also, while you only have one or two ships, and are waiting for the opertunity to march out and re-take the sea, you can keep raiding the ship/fleet that the other player has left in the sea. This stops them from supporting any attacks on your land areas. Alternatively, you could put on a support order and assist another ship in attacking that sea area against your opponent.

Using ports is, of course, also pretty risky as you could loose a few ships if you loose the land area, so I only use if necessary. My personal beleif is that a ship in port should be able to support it's own land area to help reduce this problem, but they do need a weakness to balance out the benefit.

First of all, ports are good for marching to conquer seas.

Furthermore, they are very useful to backup controlled seas, too.

that makes a bit more sense, i will have to put in a few more games to fully understand them. those are probably the only thing i could wrap my head around.

Don't forget about the benefits of power tokens.

really? does it say that on the card?

if it does, then i'm sure i knew that (since i can read).

It's actually hidden away in the rules for ports.

You can also consolodate power on a port, as long as there are no enemy ships in the connected sea area.

While this can be quite useful I don't personally like the idea of leaving a ship in the port just for the occasion where the GoT card is drawn. If you're miltary power is pretty good and you think you can spare a unit or two to babysit ports, then it's fine, but I often find myself needing every unit I can muster to be pulling its weight in the field.

This stops them from supporting any attacks on your land areas.

Sea units cannot support land battles and vice versa. But they have value to help hold adjacent sea areas or if you've lost it, to take it back.

And as far as not wanting to use ports, sometimes you have to muster ships there when you're out of available places or units to muster on the land adjacent to it (as long as it still fits your army limits). You don't want to throw away those points.

Sea units cannot support land battles and vice versa.

Actually, Ships CAN support battles in land territories, although land units cannot support combat at sea.

Rulebook, Page 18:

"Ship units may support adjacent combat in a sea area or a

land area. Footmen, Knights, or Siege Engine units, however,

may never provide support to combat in a sea area."