I mean, I can give a list of reasons why it is bad, but what are the reasons why it should stay in game? Can somebody explain to me?
The most critical facts about them:
800 stone is cheap for such an attacking force (imagine if 4 knights could take down a castle, since they cost even more)
They are built extremely fast if you pull 10-15 villagers.
They target everything automatically, no management needed (no skill needed), they just destroy you.
Unkillable if you dont have bigger army than enemy.
Production buildings in castle’s radius are better to be deleted so at least they don’t produce units which instantly die which generates net loss.
Everyone surrenders if a castle is successfully dropped into his base. Pros too.
yeah tell me that “If you didn’t prevent enemy dropping that castle in your base, you clearly did something wrong” (yes of course that makes sense, even after what I said above, right?)
and …“Historically accurate”… If this is allowed in the game, then why does rest of the game so badly wanna be historically accurate? why even trying to be historically accurate when this is in the game, well then why not just make more nonsenses.
yes I rant a bit. After all this is a call for help, save the game, don’t let me lose my last will to stay in the game, I hope I speak for other players too
You couldn’t use a worse example, the Feitoria takes more population to limit its resource generation. It isn’t a keep in any way, shape, or form, but a building that generates all resources albeit at a slow rate. And so, it takes a lot of population to prevent players from purely relying on them instead of having an actual economy.
Also, if you get to a point where you get keep dropped, that has always essentially been a type of checkmate move in AOE. If players can do that without being punished, they’re usually far ahead and could’ve likely won in other ways.
Basically, it is somewhat stylish and bad mannered way to finish off your opponent, and I really doubt you could pin it on that alone as the reason that they won.
currently with the bottlenecks between the strong walls of pidera a tower slows down the game more, you must reach imperial for a cannon it is the only strong thing against walls and keeps
…and behind that neck of bottlenecks fenced off with Clocktower Nest of Bees or with mangonels, I compare it to the motionless trench battles of the First World War
The thread isn’t about the game being slow. Orechus is expressing irritation over the aggressive use of Keeps, to for instance, close out a game. If anything, although subpar as a stratregy in of itself, halting or nerfing that aggressive use of Keeps would slow down the game even more. This would go against your endless crusade of trying to trim down gametime, despite it being a hallmark feature of AOE.
Do you mean generous? I’m not sure that condescending is the word you mean there.
I don’t think population space is relevant to Orechus’ problem. His issue is a singular Keep drop, not a million Keeps spread across the map. And if you’re asking about the general nerf of the defensive use of Keeps, I don’t think that is a fun way to limit the gameplay; if a player wants to mine out stone to plop down Keeps, that should come at the cost of having to mine those resources instead of other resources that could help them finish the game.
I’m personally of the opinion that Outposts are weak and pathetic in this game, so I’m not a fan of needlessly nerfing Keeps for the sake of watchability.
But opponent is NOT stronger, I might have much stronger economy and he has a bit bigger army but i would overgrow him. But I will not, because he dropped a castle in my base and everything is lost since that point.
For a funny 800 stone cost, which is the cheapest thing in the game taking into account that it is and absolute tanky structure that has half of a machine gun on it.
Apart from the last point all apply to defensive castles as well. Defensive castles are built super fast when pulling 10-15 villagers, they aren’t even exposed as the castle is being built at home. Defensive castles (and TC’s) target everything automatically as well and you need quite a large army to kill it. Also according to your reasoning defensive castles wouldn’t require any skills and are far too cheap.
I’ve never liked castles in general since they usually just slow down the game but why should a defensive castle be no problem at all and offensive ones in need of nerfs? It atleast gives the games some salt and potential for twists. People should be careful when demanding to erase more and more strategies from the games just because they couldn’t handle them.
You know what would fix it? Double the stone in stone mines and double the prices of castles. (and balance walls cost alongside with it)
That would probably fix the balance, since you would just need 2x more time to mine enough stone. Then the enemy would no be able to drop SO MANY castles in your base, if, then maybe one, and would take longer to drop second. But it would be bearable.
more vulnerable place is near barracks/archery/stables, because as you are making units, one by one, they just die to arrows from castle, one by one, so you are not making anything, just burning resources
and maybe, but nobody would like that, there could be an area, like 30 tiles range from your main TC, in which enemy cannot build a castle, but can build it everywhere around. What’s the logic of that restriction, why would villagers just not be able to build there? I don’t know, but building a castle in a middle of fight also doesn’t make sense so I don’t care about sense anymore in this game
Vision is also important, with scouts and outposts, so it’s easy to see 10 villagers coming from the rival and guess where they’re going to build it.
I don’t know man, do you just want to have endless armies mash at each other until someone gets bored and gives up?
Keep dropping shouldn’t be the optimal play, and I don’t think they are. But, I think it should be possible, as it is a very risky strategy, that should pay off if it isn’t punished. That is the fun of a strategy afterall. Pay offs.
Again, the enemy is likely far ahead of you if you are unable to punish someone putting down a Keep in your base. Whether it is because they have bleed you dry through harassment, or set up a strong defense themselves that allows them to safely plop down a Keep. Either case suggests you’ve been done in already. Remember, your base t is where you have the greatest advantages in the form of defenses and production–so if all of that is not enough for you to deal with them trying to put up a Keep, then you were already in big trouble–especially if it was easy for them to pull it off.
Getting out cheeky forward Keeps have always been fun, and has spawned many famous moments in for example AoE2 such as with DauT. It is one of those things that is in fact hard to pull off, and of course spells doom for the opponent if it does go through. If you ask me, that just sounds like exciting gameplay.
There is no way the population thing will prevent that. It’s not like they only drop a keep at 200 pop.
I don’t think it’s a big issue because it’s easy to kill a group of walking villager in your base. But honestly I think the core issue is that keep are built too fast. Probably there should be a limit to 5-10 vill for construction. It make no sense even when built defensively how fast these things are built.
For example if they just start building a keep near your army with 30 vill (don’t need to be in your base). Just the time you take to move your army by the distance their line of sight cover, the keep will already be finished.
I’m not sure if you read what I wrote, because I explained exactly the situation. Had thousands of gold thanks to traders, had my own castle on map with bunch of villagers mining another stone, so had plenty of stone. Had 40 traders in back covered by in-back wall, and farms behind it, so could have made a lot of armies. Just not so much wood to make more military production buildings and siege, both at once, and my military production buildings were suddenly under 800 stone keep which has like disabled 10 of them (yeah next time I will probably make each ome of military production building on a different place so they can’t be shutdown all together with one keep) but one 800stone keep shutdown of all that… you know there is not even a fast way to stop production in those specific military buildings (so that units dont die when freshly created) , the system is that when you auto-select all archery ranges, and start roducing units it evenly spreads units in each building. So if I made another archery ranges, then still, half of made ranged units died instantly under that castle - which brings me back to “it is better to delete those buildings as soon as keep is dropped”, which is to me a nonsense.
I said it is not a regular tactic and your argument is that the game would take like infinite time without it? why? there are proper ways to end the game, swarm the enemy base, flank from sides, kill economy, or just shoot down everything with siege units, why do you think that dropping castle in middle of enemy base is the only thing that ends the game? if someone is ahead of you/generally nust stronger, he will in 95% games just defeat you in like 25 minutes, even without such edge-case things like keep drop. That’s a too long game? even league of legends match takes 35 minutes in average, which is longer than aoe4 match, and there you conteol just one unit. And here in aoe4 you control 200 units and the whole map all at the same time. The game is very fast and in my opinion doesn’t have amy issue with match time. Remove the instant keep drops and since it is an edge-case tactic, then in average, will prolong the average match duration for like 10 seconds. Many games are even ended in 15 minutes and some in less, how is that a long time, for such a comples rts game? These nonsense tactics are just killing the will tonplay this game. To say something positive, this game has A LOT of perfectly made playstyles - for example these are just super-optimized, fun to play, and don’t make you disgusted, these make you really enjoy the game:
losing to:
having your base swarmed with endlessly coming MAA which chase every single one of your villagers so you are just sheltering them and you starve economically
being flanked, smaller unit groups killing your economy in back while you are focusing all your units just in one big fight
having slower economy because you chose to go all in and in that you didn’t success or opposite going all-boom and you didn’t have anything to defend so you were destroyed
not microing enough so enemy killed your army effectively
not managing resources enough so enemy went to next age and you are nowhere near it
you didn’t control objective places on map, like resource places, sites, didn’t grab relics fast enough, didn’t defend them
you had a wrong layout of base, enemy slipped in, not enough places for villagers to hide, unprotected villagers
risky trade route which is killed by few knights
wrong upgrades researched
banked too much of unused resources
not harrasing enemy eco
not making enough sieges and not microing them well
not having balanced economy for nonstop military production
not scouting enough
I could go on and on and on and on…
There are plenty of great mechanics to learn. The nonsense ones are just like maybe 5% of them? remove the 5% nonsense and you still got a great game which still needs a lot of skill, a big learning curve, a lot of special strategies for pros, a lot to look at, and also 50% less frustration from nonsense tactics existing.
