Yeah I aggree with u that cutting three is and should remain an imp strategy only. Because then you know when someone turns to imp that this can be a threat.
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I’m afraid I’m agreeing with Temudschinn here. As far as rush strats go, unique units are pretty slow to make, and then they have to start cutting their sneaky path one tree at a time far enough away from any part you’ve walled in order to surprise you. You in the meantime are not scouting for what the other person is doing, you’re not building outposts just behind your walls for vision and you’re not making army or even some defensive mangonels for a good first punch if someone does get the jump on you. By the sound of it you’re not even going imp, you’re focusing on getting to plenty of TC’s and villagers first. Being imp would still give you a decent advantage to countering a castle age surprise attack. That’s a very passive or as the casters would say it greedy boom. You’re counting on being safe, basically. Or that’s what it looks like when I read what you wrote anyway, I’m trying my best not to read what I want to read too much.
Other civs could take advantage of that as well. They could park trebuchets on the front of your base, or a castle, or since those two are such a good combo both. They could come at you with just enough petards to blow a hole in your wall and a lot of knights. They could go for rams and archers to prevent easy walling behind. There are other unique bonuses, units and technologies that can help too. Obsidian arrows could really hurt you, warwolf trebuchets, any cavalry UU as long as they’re accompanied by anything that can break through the wall quickly.
And you might say “but I always wall six layers deep, nothing breaks through six layers that fast!” And to that I would say okay, maybe Ballista Elephants should receive a change on Black Forrest then. Because that sounds almost like a completely different game then the AoE2 I typically play, where you interact with your opponent and nasty surprises can happen. In any situation I’ve ever been in the Ballista Elephants being able to cut trees is not a problem.
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It’s a very expensive method and it’s never worth it. On closed maps like Black Forest, going for the enemy directly is almost always better than cutting trees with ballista elephants.
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If the strategy is only causing headaches on Hideout, which seems to be the complaint of the OP, that sounds like ample reason to keep it. Strategies being enhanced and meta being diversified by different maps is an inarguable good.
I’d be much more likely to side with the OP if this was a problem on other maps, but if hideout is the issue, make mangonels. This being a potential option on one map is a very, very good thing.
OK the “obvious castle” argument isn’t working for your situation that’s right.
Monks do counter ballista eles just fine tho, they have 4 more range than them. Heck even ele archers, who have more range that ballista eles, still fear monks.
The thing that I 100% can’t understand in your argumentation is that you say they aren’t that expensive. 20 ballista elephants cost double the price of imperial age, that sounds huge. Also imperial age takes 190 seconds to research, 20 ballista elephants take 500 secs of training time. So if your opponent truely masses them up in castle age before attacking then at least someone has to be in imperial age in your team no?
Lately with all the whining about Franks calling someone against a nerf a mono civ picker is trendy but no, it turns out I’m just someone who doesn’t want a niche UU to lose half its niche.
It can be a game winning move on Black Forest or oasis in castle age.
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A lot of things can be game-winning moves. The question more tends to “what are you winning against” and if you’re winning against “boom” it’s irrelevant.
Given how expensive and slow this strategy is, it shouldn’t be hard to provide an answer.
The aim of ballista elephants isn’t to cut trees, it’s a bonus, if you made 20 elite BEs to cut a forest you’d be a retard. So it isn’t 3.6k res to cut trees, it’s just that the little bonus gets moved to the elite unit and it becomes more effective. As you said, “tree by tree” but that wasn’t my suggestion was it? So why argue against something I didn’t say?
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I don’t put six layers of wall. I put one, and it’s annoying to find 20 BEs in my base when I walled because they have a castle age unit that can cut forests.
But it would keep that niche and be more effective, just in imperial age. Is it that bad?
Normally, players don’t get to cut trees unless they make onagers or want to take forever with trebs. This suggestion would lead to it being used a lot more, but just not in castle age.
Moving it to imperial age removes the niche and turns it into a bad version of something that already exists. If you think it should be changed, go climb the ladder with it.
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it’s not very expensive at all. It just takes 1 castle and 1 ballista elephant to execute. They won’t get a notification unlike attacking a wall where they could just wall behind or build a castle. If your side go all in military and the opponent is only booming then this strategy works the vast majority of the time. It might not work at the expert level because they pay attention to the mini map and have good defensive play but they are outliers. I am 100% sure we will see it done in the Black Forest tournament coming up. Also it catches people off guard because these very closed maps don’t get played often so you forget about the fact that ballista elephants can do this.
Seems like a really poor reason to nerf it if everyone forgets it exists, and as such, catches someone off guard. Sounds like we should buff it more instead, so it’s more common.
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Well you talked about how OP it was that Castle Age BE can cut trees and that you surprise your opponents with 20 of those beasts. So i assumed this was the proposed strategy…
Overall, i just dont see any reasoning why one of the weakest castle age UUs should get a nerfed. “Other units can’t do it in Castle Age” is not an argument.
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Indeed, that wasn’t your suggestion, that’s the current situation. Cutting trees with these things is very, very slow. If someone outplayed you with that, I’m sorry, but they probably could have outplayed you with lots of other options.
So you weren’t scouting, you weren’t making outposts, you weren’t making military, you weren’t getting buildings and upgrades to help you quickly make military and you weren’t even trying very hard to keep yourself safe with walls, and yet the opponent had already found the time to build a castle, make 20 ballista elephants and cut a long sneaky path one tree at a time to your base? It sounds like they just won that match fair and square. With such a military lead they could have won the game in many differrent ways.
I don’t think your suggestion to make the elite version better at cutting trees is bad, I think it doesn’t need to be removed from the non-elite version. What happened to you is a meme strat, a flex, something that only works every now and then because nobody expects it. Just building that castle on the front of your base, making all the ballista elephants there and adding two rams would have easily been just as effective and the pressure would have arrived almost 10 minutes earlier to boot.
,
EDIT: Oh, I’m a bad reader. This was on Hideout. That does change things a bit. Because aggression probably started in early castle age so your focus is elsewhere while they make ballista elephants behind. That’s still a very significant investment though, while fighting elsewhere. It’s far from a guaranteed strat to be able to pull off. Honestly I kind of like it better on Hideout than on Black Forest or such. It’s a good way to go straight for your goal, it’s much harder to scout and it can surprise people. It’s almost a good strat. I wish I thought of that. Sorry for misreading/interpreting earlier!
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Petards are lost on use.
Stone wall + house behind it or whatnot?
A bunch of trees vs a ballista ele?
Because a problem lies with the unit balance doesn’t justify an obscure “buff”
(as an extreme example for clarity) Italians are the weakest civ that doesn’t mean they should get free LOS to the enemy base.
Or simply spend 25w 5s and if you want to be super safe 75f for town watch
My man i love this!! 
And like 3 or more people follow up with perfect examples…
Like this…
But its one of the big reasons I’ve become so acidic on this forum. Unless you’re posting something said by someone’s favourite caster, then whatever you say WILL (100%) be exaggerated and torn down. Regardless what you say you are wrong.
I mean people literally contradict themselves to make you look wrong
Just be aware these are the same people that support foundation scouting and other broken mechanics. On top of opposing changes that we supported that devs eventually implemented and turned out fine…
except the op literally said he does this with 20 elephants.
each elephant is 100 food and 80 gold. a castle is 650 stone.
20 elephants is 2,000 food and 1600 food. that right there alone is 3,600 resources. not an exaggeration. and that doesn’t factor in the 25 second build time which means those 20 elephants are gonna take 500 seconds to mass up or around 8 to 8 and a half minutes.
so where is the exaggeration?
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i stick by my words… you pick one aspect of what he said, exaggerate it to apply in every circumstance and then point out how bad it is…