Any plans on nerfing dropping castles in enemy base?

Lots of strawmanning happening here. You suggest I didn’t read your post then misrepresent my comments.

I never suggested that Keep dropping was the only way to close games. Only that it is a possible one and that it doesn’t detract from the game due to how risky of a maneuver it is. I noted that it had been present in past AOE games and has always made for exciting moments, and that it brings great pay off when successful but is also easy to shut down and punish. I stated that in my opinion, that makes for good gameplay.

None of the things I said above suggests what you claim to be my “argument”. I didn’t say it would take infinite time to play out without, I didn’t say it was the only way to end a game, I didn’t say 25 minutes was too long, I can continue refuting the things you claim, but that’d be your whole comment, because I said none of those things.

You’re saying it is instant, but clearly it isn’t. There are diminishing returns when building in AOE4, sure, you can put down a Keep relatively quick with say 32 villagers, or even 16. But, this of course ignores the fact that you’re for one able to waltz into your enemy’s base without resistance or that you’ve already laid siege and dismantled their defenses. Either way, you’d probably win without the Keep, and if not, it acts as a great foothold to end the match. The point is, you should never allow it to happen to begin with. That is part of strategy.

The irony here is that you’re bringing up how the game has diverse playstyles and how that is something you seemingly enjoy, yet you are advocating for the removal of strategies that make up that diversity, a strategy so old it has been around for literal decades and is part of the game that AOE4 has taken heavy inspiration from.

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You are right, in everything. I accept it, and with it also give up. With the game. All my friends stopped playing it because of stuff I was mentioning and similar, I don’t have anyone to play with, am alone in the game, and you proved that the things in the game are desired to be as they are, so I just realized, that I’m just in a wrong game.

im against your proposal for the reason you already said. ive dropped forward keeps and lost. its a big investment in both time and building time.

historically it doesn’t make sense indeed but i still think its part of strategy. its somewhat an attempt to put a nail in the coffin move.

people who forward keep me happens when im just so far behind due to poor early game play, to which i blame myself for than game mechanics.

and keeps are already nerfed. they did already significantly reduce production speed, to the point it makes french quite garbage to play as defensive keeps take too long to build ( offtopic suggestion, in the presence of other buildings, allow keep building to be faster). and being able to produce rams from siege workshop, thats also an indirect nerf.

so no im against this proposal

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lol a very popular game, a pro can’t go over 68%, imagine the winrate of a casual player, at least this rts rewards your game skill with almost 99% win rate.

I suspect that one of your weaknesses is the vision of the game, you should practice that with scouts and palisades, I also notice that only “keeps” you dislike from the game and it is not an extensive list. I suggest you train your weaknesses, but in the end it’s your choice what to play, good luck

imagen

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In my opinion, dropping keeps is just unfun and feels very cheesy.

Especially when they start dropping landmark keeps with insane range that covers your entire base and is a extra pain to bring down.

I don’t think the foreward building is the main problem, its the speed which they build and the great difficulty in taking down the villagers building it.

If there were only a button to allow your units to prioritise which units to attack first.

I.e Target Range units within range first, target melee units first, target economy units first.

They have this in Company heroes with anti tank units, (Enable/Disable target armor only).

a small archer blob with target economy units priority would take down the villagers much quicker and efficient than manually targetting each and every one of them.

So if you want to castle-drop inside enemie base, you will need a sizable army to protect your villagers in order to do so.

Right now, its so easy to just run in half-naked with a large enough crowd of villagers to drop keeps, ignoring any form of protection unless the opponent has mangonels.

i find dropping keeps fun, especially when used strategically. different opinions

Tbh, I think one thing that could perhaps work with a lot work done to it to make it work and balance.

Is capturing keeps.
We can technically “capture walls”.

One should be able to capture keeps. (be it a special unit, i.e man-at-arms specifically).

That way dropping keeps is still viable, dosn’t take the fun out of it, but does make it more strategic and tactically important to actually protect the keep that you drop or else you risk it being used against you! (Like breached walls), But it also comes with its own set of risk. Landmark castles will only be “disabled” untill recaptured or something else that will balance them out without completely gimping the civ that has landmark castles.

To prevent getting your keep captured, You gotta garrison your own keep with man at arms of your own.

the Breach-mechanic in COH3 is pretty neat and been playing a lot with it.

The way Breach machanic work is that a Unit can garrison a building, when another unit uses the “breach” ability, they will garrison themselves inside the same building, killing the units garrisoned.

A way to prevent loosing your garrisoned units is by un-garrisoning them and if the unit has that ability, return the favor. (But the ability is limited to only certain units and requires certain tech upgrades)

I like the breach and flippable castle ideas. TBH I wish walls would work the same way. People offensively wall more often than they offensively castle, and it’s annoying to punch a hole in a wall, effectively take control of it, yet still have this giant, unusable line through my territory that can just be repaired at any future moment. I should be able to claim it after 1 minute like a sacred site, repair, walk on it, build my own gates…

But I doubt they even know how to code that even if everyone wanted it. My best advice is to just prepare for the obvious possibility of keeps dropping in castle age. The first things I focus on when hitting castle age is immediately building springalds and trebuchets to handle the impending siege war. If they try to destroy my wall/keep/production, springalds at the ready. If they try to drop a keep, trebs at the ready. I love when the enemy starts a keep and I get to smash it from 10% hp with a volley from 3 trebs and they lose 100% of the resources on it.

It is not mandatory that you play competitively, you can play with mods that have that nerfed.

If you consider AoE4 not your game, there are more AoE series as well.

That was one of the reasons I uninstalled this game, making castles as a offensive strat, when they are supposed to be defensive structures.

Everyone surrenders if a castle is successfully dropped into his base. Pros too.

A keep in the opponent’s base is a “get out of the game, you lost 5+ minutes ago” kind of a move. It might be the last thing you see before you get kicked out of the game, but that doesn’t mean it was the scenario branch that made the game unwinnable. Jumping to this conclusionis anti-improvement and blocks you from getting better.

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?)

Yes, it still makes sense, the illusion is that you see what happened, but not what could’ve happened had you made better decisions earlier. You’re jumping to the simpler but incorrect conclusion, and freeing yourself from all responsibility of losing while at it.

Castles were actually used for siege pushes in medieval warfare:

And while it’s not AoE 4, Sandy Petersen commented on the same issue all the way back in 1999 when AoE 2 was brand new and players were concerned about forward castles in that game:

Q) how about castle rushes and dark-age TC rebuilding?

A) We don’t mind castle rushes because that is exactly what
people did in the middle ages. Also, you can’t build nearly as
many castles as you can town centers. Dark Age TC rebuilding is
not a screw because no one has a particular advantage in doing
it, as far as I’m concerned. If you don’t like it, go rebuild
YOUR TC somewhere else.

Q) We don’t mind castle rushes because that is exactly what
people did in the middle ages.” I’m serious Sandyman. Obviously
you’re not.

A) I am absolutely serious. Castles were OFTEN built as an
aggressive act, a jumping-off point for attacks, to control enemy
land (not just your own), and to suppress potential expansion.
Look at the history of Wales. The English border barons built
castles right inside Welsh lands in order to annex it onto their
own. This was also done by the Teutonic Knights in the Baltic
region.

Source:
https://aok.heavengames.com/university/game-info/general-info/ask-sandyman/ask-sandy-viii/

I’m not sure if you’re new to the Age Franchise and played any other Age apart from AoE 4, but in AoE 3, Castles (or Forts as they’re called there) are limited and can’t be build right into the starting base. Maybe you want to check that game out! :slight_smile:

If you provide a link, ill happily provide feedback on how you could’ve won your game, and what to improve upon. I was top500 1v1, top 100 2v2 last time i tryharded somewhat so i believe i should fill. I’d also be much less harsh compared to what im about to write.

I will be harsh further below because this is a pivotal lession for all new competitive RTS players, and you’re at risk of stagnation.

What you describes sounds like the definition of being overly greedy and allowing the opponent to gain too much momentum before the investment payed off. Its a base concept of the game.

It also sounds like the average case of balance complaints: Someone making a mistake costing the game, not realising it cost the game, then believing that the last thing they saw before going down was the thing that changed the tides, when the game was unwinnable before that point. The killing blow could’ve been a dozen things, just because it happened to be a keep doesnt mean that was the problem.

Jumping to balance whine instead of replay analysis the the #1 sign someone is stagnating. Send a replay link and ill spend 30m-1h to write a custom plan for how you can grow the fastest.