The reason why people build pillarless in the first place was because paying any wood for a pillar was a scam when you only need to segment.
As of right now, 2 segments and 2 pillars of new walls VS. 2 segments of the old pillarless walls:
240% more expensive → 24 wood vs 10 wood
160% longer to build → 16 seconds vs 10 seconds
Pillarless walls today are also:
33% weaker → 1500 HP vs 1000 HP. An un-upgraded mortar can take out 62.5% of the walls health in a single shot… The damage is spread to 2 or 3 other long wall segments too.
It’s not practical to build walls anymore. The counter is too easy for the amount of micro and resources invested. Pillars could’ve just been removed and the cost could’ve just been adjusted by maybe +50% in order to make them accessible to players who do not have the same level of micro.
I would have no problem with the new pillarless walls except every patch seems to introduce new broken cards, mechanics, units etc.
It seems to be a never ending cycle of over-tuned cards, units, builds…
Here’s a list of all the different meta eras:
Cowboy spam - Nerfed
Italy infinite fort + infinite gatling gun exploit - Nerfed
Giants Gren spam - Nerfed
Harq spam - Nerfed
Huaraca + bola (with not debuff against inf) spam - Nerfed
Huaraca fort rush - Nerfed
Gatling gun spam - Nerfed
Inquisitor rush - Nerfed
Russia Priest rush
Cour de bois rush
Desert archer spam - Nerfed
Eagle runners - Nerfed
Hakkapelit-only spam - Nerfed
Caroleon-only spam - Nerfed
Leather cannon spam - Nerfed
Arrow knight/noble hut camping - ideally with walls even - Nerfed as of last patch
14 min - 5 Great bombard + Nizam rush
British - church fast industrial + Gentlemen of the pike
Chinaco spam - Nerfed
Own hoot spam - Nerfed
Inca - tupac revolt
Peru revolt - Nerfed
South Africa revolt with infinite scaling HP - Nerfed
Jaguar knight spam - Nerfed
Portugese spy spam - Nerfed
Super Chasquis - Nerfed
Chimus - Nerfed
These are just some of the many broken strategies in AOE3DE’s lifetime.
Most of these strategies were overpowered and eventually got nerfed. They were introduced into the game in different patches and dominated for the month that they lasted.
Some of these are still strong and are debatable if they are actually op; they are still in the game.
Mark my words this will be in a Lion Heart or Jaegerchere video soon:
Base defence in this game is no where near as good as Aoe2 or Aoe4 with the exception of walls. The only response for any of these strategies was walled fortifications so you don’t just get overrun inside your own base.
Is it community culture that the competeeeeetive players just do not want to complain about their issues directly, but instead choose some irrelevant minor things to whine about then suddenly reveal their true intention when anyone argues against them?
Like choosing to complain about not being able to identify Dutch villagers anymore if they are renamed to Merchants, asking other people to read historical textbooks or play total war for 1000% historical accuracy, when the real issue is they cannot beat Italians or bersagliere or sth.
Or whining about not being able to comepteeeeeeeeeteeeevely pillarless walling anymore but then suddenly turning fine with it and starting complaining about other stuff.
The point is that accessible walling is a universal counter to overtuned cards and build-orders. There will always be broken strategies in this game. It is difficult, maybe impossible to balance 22 unique civs with over 50 cards each. It is not the devs fault.
By competitive, I mean practical. If it is no longer worth it to build walls, how can you use them to counter any of these overtuned strategies that I mentioned.
Walls are universal to all civs and can be made universal to Lakota. There is only one way that you can absorb overwhelming revolutions, overpops, and doomstacks. That is with walls.
Considering that players built walls without pillars to save wood… Would reducing the cost of walls (and perhaps their construction time) be a good idea to try to keep everyone happy?
My real primary concern is that every patch seems to introduce too many imbalances. Given the fragility of the balance of Aoe3 - that being the weakness of base defenses in general, fragility of the economy, and reliance on cards - cards that allow a player to exponential sky rocket in score and military power are just too much. It is too easy to cause major balancing regressions by changing the bonuses provided by cards.
Fast industrial and revolt favor specific nations overwhelmingly. Another balancing change for walls could have been improved mortars, petards, or cannons bonus to walls.
Like I said, I would have no issues with weakened walls but the problem is the inconsistency in the balancing philosophy. All of those aforementioned metas existed at different version of Aoe3 with the introduction of new features.
This revolt turned 1 pop of value into 2 and added all upgrades up to guard. The score jumped from 33000 to 47000 with a single card, effectively causing the inca player to gain more than a double score lead over his opponent. A single card essentially ended this game.
Yes, exactly. We do not know yet how this is going to affect the balance of the game but it is an overall sweeping nerf to all seige infantry including grenadiers, petards, huaraca, arrow knights. This will most likely cause some minor unintended side effect. Perhaps culverin spam + walls might make european nations untouchable to natives simply because they far outrange the arrow knight.
this was among my concerns. It also includes things like oprichniks, shinobi, mantlets. it makes culverins behind walls a complete composition against civs without mortars.
I am not a ranked player but my play style is defensive. I rely on fortifications to setup up fighting positions similar to how an AOE4 player would play. Walling off key resources and defending it with long range units is how I handle expansion. Walls are useful to keep skirmishers and cannons safe from cavalry which might sacrificially dive into my base to kill them. I solve strategic problems with base building design.
I am biased, otherwise I wouldn’t be concerned about this change. Similar to how some players who never use walls might be biased when they rely on offensive play.
I think the change should’ve been to remove pillars and make the cost 50% more. I think the overall difference in the wall effectiveness is a little bit too much:
240% more expensive → 24 wood vs 10 wood
160% longer to build → 16 seconds vs 10 seconds
33% weaker → 1500 HP vs 1000 HP. An un-upgraded mortar can take out 62.5% of the walls health in a single shot… The damage is spread to 2 or 3 other long wall segments too.
Interesting why the point on competitve aoe3 if not playing, but fwiw, calling walls unusable is a pretty major exaggeration. No other aoe series has as easy, apm less, and cheap walling system. every tile is paid for in limited res there. You cant say honestly aoe4 palisides are cheaper or eaiser when they cost for every tile. Even now in aoe3 you got 3 options:
0 pillar- 20% more expensive, 1k hp for 6wood and 6s
1 pillar and knowing how to daisychain 12w, 7s per a 6 long segment. lots of apm fwiw and unlikely to be worth it
2 pillar ie full walling -18w, 8 seconds to make
Its like nerfing abus 5 coin, it sounds expensive but in reality it really only punishes spam. the vill seconds on say a 4 segment base is roughly double it was before, from mighty 72w 36s to make to basically cordon off all melee troops. thats less cost than a single xbow. How is that “untenable?”
Since DE the most single consistent complaint from most competitve community is how easy it is to sit in base and wait for pops. players have gone from the uber rush of RE to “sim city” probably the most typed comment in streams. It boring, many civs were never designed to face it, and moreso because so many civs can base sit on these higher res maps and civs, for many civs almost impossible to win while the defender needs far less risk or actual strategy to close the game. there is a reason civs like otto, ports, italy have all been popular as you can just wall all day and delay till some very strong pops or eco kicks in.
This simply means you cant deny half the map with a pittance of resources. You may have to actually adapt to opponents pressure and make the hard choice of balancing greed/aging vs massing. 72 wood and 8xbow plus MM and a batch or 2 will kill almost every single rush dead. you just have to micro. I think this change will not lead to any sort of “competitve decline” even though the other changes I think like dutch akan have people worried as well as the blind seige tag for culvs. But walls costing what the devs actually intended (RE pillarless was an exploit) is hardly the end of defensive civs.
P.S.- aoe4 civs vary too, and walls have been culled there a few times for the same reasons here. no one wants 0 walls (well maybe some) and ofc we cant let lakota get free reign. but the nr10 meta is i think comming to a close