Seems the map is just a spam fest of Castle drops. So either i find the drop in time and i win. Or i don’t find it in time and due to the spammy cliffs and choke points i lose.
So wondering what would be a go to civ that hard counters these stupid drops, without resorting to the same cheese myself.
Slavs for cheap siege to brute force it? Byz to out boom them instead?
PS isn’t it ironic that it isn’t at all like the open areas you would think mongols would be good at…
Looking for a specific civ to counter the castle drop is not a solution. Best thing is stop him even to go with this strat, and this ofcourse by keeping pressure on him and by attacking his stone mining camp many times, and early rushes like scouts and m@a or even archers are enough. Second solution is to go fast castle before him, then start a siege push on his base. This is on open maps like Mongolia and Arabia, and about Arena there are many solutions and you already will go FC.
Get a scout to patrol so you can see it’s coming
Build a couple of woodwall to hold the critical spots, problem solved
lol thanks guys… i specifically said i want to know how to counter once its dropped, not how to stop them dropping… many times its just impossible or simple blind luck to stop a drop… so what do you do once the castle goes up…
they could have shielded with xbows, stone walled a corridor etc
loool i wouldnt call mongolia an open map… maybe not as easy to wall as BF, but its about 100x easier to wall than arabia or cenotes or 4 lakes or swamp or pit etc etc
My best advise is to reubicate your eco, advance to imp and treb it down.
And regarding the best civ for countering…
I would try castle age cuman capped rams.
You should have a good eco thanks to second TC in feudal, so you can afford some rams with upgrades if the enemy tries to castle drop.
In a similar way, discounted slav rams can be good.
just open with a few archers/xbows into FC, or a few scouts into FC and walk around with ur units. You will have the map control and he wont be able to just walk up to you and make a castle with 0 army to back him.
that’s also how you stop a castle drop on arena.
Castle is a huge investment, so you have some benefits else where. You might have more eco, you might have more military. Also depending on the placement, you might even ignore the castle. Same is true for towers. I have played against some tower rushes, where there towers doesnt make sense. No need to take them down. Just ignore them. They are wasting resources. You can always build some outposts at strategic places, so you have more vision, so you are more likely to spot the castle.
Best civ for taking down castles is probably Cumans, since they can take them down with more easily with capped rams in castle age. Other civs need to wait for imp before the can make some rams, trebs or bombard cannons to take the castle down.
Pick random! make army! Best counter to enemys castle is to prevent it going up.
99% of the time is not worth the invesment to try to take down a castle in castle age. Wait @phoenix1089 what elo are we talking about? Assuming players know what they are doing, a castle age castle is easy to defend.
Once it’s dropped you can’t counter it anymore. Doesn’t mean you’re in a bad position but you can’t prevent damage, at that point, only mitigate it.
Civs aren’t too important, here, imo. More so are the strategic choice after the drop. There are a couple of things you can do (partially combinable, partially mutually exclusive): Wall behind with houses and stones wall (in case of emergency even palisades does kind of the job) in a way that they aren’t in range of the castle. Expand your eco to the sides or anywhere else on the map to keep the vil advantage. Make military and counterattack (on Mongolia more effective than on arena). Take stone, stay on one tc while only defending with minium expenses and rush to imp for trebs. Go all-in castle age and make army to kill the forward (e.g. knights and rams).
In the end scouting how your opponent follows the castle drop is very crucial. Is he getting military to push into your base? Is he gonna drop a second castle even more in your face? Is he going up to imp for trebs? Get answers to these questions and react (I know not always easy but it’s really the best advise because there is no general answer for what to do after being castle dropped).
Id say that the danger usually is not the castle itself, but what the castle means: A near untakeable strongpoint from which to launch attacks.
So the question shouldn’t actually be “how to stop the castle drop” but rather “how to stop whats coming next”.
Often, the castle drop is done by a civ with a mobile UU such as the Arambai or Conq. In that case, you need to think of a defense: Either skirms+walls or monks+TCs.
Once you stemmed the bleeding, try to get to imp as fast as possible (your eco should be ahead; after all, he invested his stone into a castle, not into TCs), drop your own castle and treb down his.
I had a game against Castle Drop in Arena. Problem is second TC makes Castle Age time late. But after advancing to Castle Age, Capped Rams takes castle down easily. I just lost my TC but my enemy could 1-petard(to destroy the feudal stone wall) go inside and I could use scout better.
This is if the castle completes:
If it’s on top of your production, make new production buildings (or carefully move your men away as they spawn).
Determine what it does. Is it a good staging point for attacking you? You can defend.
Is it on your woodline? Find a new one, even if it’s really far away.
Is it on an important Gold or Stone Mine? Make the decision to get to imp faster to treb it down (via market usually), or begin the raids at the enemy eco. The idea here is to pull micro ability away from the front line and towards anywhere else.
Basically minimizing the impact of a resolved castle drop comes down to determining if the damage it’s doing can be ignored. If it can’t be, maneuver the game, and your building placements, as if the castle and it’s area of effect was just cliff you can’t use but your opponent can walk over.
Once you realize that it’s mostly going to impact where the enemy attacks from you can build a defense in that direction.