drush FC isn’t a “defensive” play. it just showcases that the castle age powerspike is too big atm.
And I am totally for a solution for that, cause this strat actually restricted the strategic diversity too much. But please chose the right approaches to tackle that.
We shouldn’t take degenerative meta strats that restrict the diversity as an excuse to restrict gameplay even more. That’s a terrible Idea.
The fact that a drush with walls behind it can buy you enough time to get enough resources to safely tech to castle age and pump out military units just shows how good defensive walling is.
No, the castle age powerspike is just way too big + fast to achieve. So even only a little bit of distraction could help achieving it.
That doesn’t makes walls too strong, they are only there to buy the last few seconds needed, they are just expandable so you aren’t raided to death before getting that insane powerspike.
And that’s why I proposed to make castle age just 20 secs longer to research, that would delay the powerspike just enough so that drush FC wouldn’t be such a thing anymore. Without destroying the whole strategic balance of the game.
it literally takes several minutes to get the food needed to go castle age. you want to talk about how good defenses are?
viper is literally going castle age with 2 archers and 3 spears against kasva and making it work because thats how strong it is to sit back and defend because walls and feudal buildings are so durable that you can’t kill them.
game 2 - viper sits at home, with archers, plays defense. keep telling me that defense has been nerfed into oblivion.
Viper is the by far best defense player ever.
And in his first set he was almost taken out of the tournament because he was too greedy.
So don’t tell me something about the horse please. Kasva is able going up faster to castle than viper with less military cause he was agressive and viper only used his military in defence until kasva decided to go up.
Maybe Kasva was also too greedy with his fast uptime, but it showcases how weakend defensive play is currently if even the best defensive player of all time gets punished for even trying it.
uh games 1 and 2 viper was up to castle age first. so maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.
the only reason kasva was up in game 3 faster was because he lamed the crap out of viper food wise.
fact is, sitting at home and playing defense is far superior to going aggressive, and we see it all the time. not just in this series.
also notice what your argument was for him “almost” losing th4e last series. because he was too greedy.
defense doesn’t mean greedy. you can be DEFENSIVE without being GREEDY.
if viper had played a little more defensive and denied those tower rushes, guess what? GG. no offense needed.
That’s total bs. In the last game viper won with being agressive after kasva was too greedy. The others I couldn’t watch yet.
Kasva had a real chance if he wouldn’t have been that greedy with his castle age. He invited viper to punsh on him and viper did exactly that.
Sorry but this kind of game is totally boring, whoever is greedy gets punished heavily? Thats absurd.
Nope, you can’t win with that unless your opponent makes a big mistake. That’s just how this game works. If you aren’t greedy with being defensive you lose cause you will always have more vill idle time and slowly grinded to death cause you can’t compete with the numbers.
I think you haven’t understood the basics of the game. Defence and Greed always go hand in hand.
And again notice what your argument is.
Greed.
Not defensive. Greed. Kasva didn’t full wall.
Kasva didn’t invest much into defense. And viper had to create an insane amount of army in feudal to do any damage DESPITE the lack of walls and units.
Full wall. Create counter units and defend = easy mode. And it costs a heck of a lot less then playing offensive.
Greed does not mean DEFENSIVE.
If I go up to feudal and keep making villagers with no protection and I try naked fast castle is thst defensive or greedy?
Stop using greed to say defense is bad when the truth is greed is greed.
arabia is only considered aggressive because the rest of the map pool includes garbage like arena and black forest. compared to that, sure, it’s aggressive. but that’s not the scale anyone uses except arena people who hate RM
the whole concept of a blank map without any resources to fight over will always be economy-oriented (i.e. defense-oriented). it doesn’t matter how many times you nerf walls or how many times you tune the map script. that stuff only changes what civs are good or bad and how many resources you have to waste on some boring militia trades, but not what the map is actually about (farming, extra town centers, economy upgrades, getting to castle/imperial faster than your opponent)
trying to change fundamental game pieces (like how long it takes to advance) in an attempt to fix an unfixable map is a fool’s errand. they have already destroyed the game balance enough in service of the shallow 1v1 arabia games. it doesn’t need to be ruined further.
if you want to play different amounts of offense/defense, just play different maps. arabia will never be more than an economy contest. you can’t punish people for getting a town center. a town center is a fortress. you can’t punish people for getting economy upgrades. those things pay for themselves.
fortunately, the game has more maps than arabia. find a way to actually play those instead of trying to do the impossible by hoping that a map which is just empty space is somehow going to fix anything you feel is lacking in the game
Sorry but playing defensive just doesn’t makes sense if you don’t want to be greedy. At least at a level where players know how to macro and read the game.
Man, it makes no sense to “defend” when your eco is worse than the opponent one, he will just outboom you behind his agression and kill you with a big push you can’t defend against.
Nothing more boring than that kind of “dying slowly” against moderate controlled pressure. For all players, including the agressor, it’s just an unnecessary grind then.
Playing defensive means playing greedy, it’s precondition to have success with that approach.
you can be defensive without being greedy. want to win the game by building up an army instead of rushing your opponent? sit back, let him come to you, and take very favorable trades. this is literally what viper did in game 2.
or it makes more sense. take favorable trades, keep producing your villagers to maintain your vill numbers roughly equal to your opponent and watch as he’s just throwing resources away.
no. it doesn’t. they are two seperate playstyles.
greed is cutting corners and trying to do stuff that you hope you can get away with. defensive means sitting at home and taking care of the home fires first.
just because you view defensive as greed does not make it true.
A greedy style is going fast castle with no or minimal defense and defensive units, and hoping your opponent doesn’t scout it or you can hold with a few units and get away with it.
a defensive style is walling up, using units to defend and safely going up to castle age.
Greed can also include something like pushing all your deer without scouting, and then often having to practice your quickwalling against an enemy drush, which tends to turn greed into forced defense, for at least a while.
But defence makes no sense without greed, If you try to play defence but not greedy you lose against any opponent who can read the game.
It’s that easy.
Youre focused on winning by out trading your opponent and getting advantages that way. It’s exactly what viper did in game 2. Defend defend defend. He took better engagements then his opponent did, Then pushed out when he knew he had the advantage.
I understand that hills are annoying but it’s the only way to guarantee the chance of breaking the old meta (sub 20 min castle into 3TC with minimal military investment), which is not what an open map meta should be in my opinion since open maps should promote fighting since early stages of the game.
No matter how much a map is open, if it’s flat once it’s sealed by walls with TCs on crucial locations the only way of breaking the defence before imp is going complete yolo in early stages or if opponent makes mistakes.
XD why the opponent pressuring should take the disadvantageous fights? ^^
I mean ok if he overextends it’s probably possible if you can pull of the crazy traps like viper does, but otherwise… Really that’s absurd. It just doesn’t work that way. If the opponent doesn’t misplays, you can’t get an advantage by making “good trades”…
I haven’t seen that yet, but in that matchup it’s common to see the britons player staying behind his walls for some time as franks have such an insane scout rush. It’s not “defensive”, it’s just waiting for the numbers. And as the franks player doesn’t wants to overextend it becomes a race for castle age.
It’s a classic skirmish where the franks player tries to get the map control and the britons player a very tight base with various powerspikes for both civs to play with.
And if someone gets a way better timing with one of these powerspikes it can very fast snowball out of control. As you are explaining it to me it looks like viper just got a way better timing with his xbow upgrade and the franks player couldn’t stop him from getting the map control, maybe even expanding and squeeze him into his base. It’s a classical motive with britons. But that also isn’t “defensive”, it’s actually quite agressive for that civ, that traditionally plays way more greedy.
Here’s what the original Arabia looked like (minus oasis in woodlines):
Arabia was never some super open map where only aggression should work. “Feudal Forever Arabia” (or whatever) is an exclusive thing for Hun Wars because Huns can’t Housewall, and their bonuses are for early/mid-game aggression, rather than camping and booming.
As for KotD Arabia, defensive players are adapting already to the new aggression meta with small-walling berries and woodlines. And the guaranteed rhinos have enough extra food to give Archer and Scout openings a competitive uptime to M@A. Even KotD IV is seeing plenty of games that turn into mini-Arena with minimal military engagements until players finish their boom. And on Ranked, Survivalistaoe2de is sometimes experimenting with a Fast Castle build on the new Arabia that uses small walls + 1 tower each on wood/gold/stone. Just yesterday, on his stream, he won while using this non-standard Fast Castle opener as Ethiopians vs. Mayans, despite losing a rhino in the Dark Age, forgetting to click up to Castle, then researching Fletching, then forgetting to click up to Castle again.
3 TC boom with minimal military engagements on Arabia are here to stay. The only thing walling changes accomplish is the exact build order for playing into a boom. Perhaps instead of wanting more ineffective walling nerfs, try M@A/Tower Rushing a player opening with walling and booming? And if you shall say Feudal Towers are too weak for that, then maybe you should ask for Feudal Tower buffs?
That picture is quite nice, is it possible to get some for the other versions of Arabia? Then people can easily compare stuff by looking at the whole map.
A well-designed Arabia map requires a solid mix of instinct, intellection, and quick wits, in contradistinction to an Atacama type, where instinct oft prevails over the other two. A mix of those three factors is unequally involved in any map, but some are especially skewed.
Wait have I really been quoted on a post about hills with a picture of aoc arabia which was even more brutal than current arabia about hills?
