Defender should have advantage during Raids. Make Defenses actually do something

Age of Mythology: Retold Discussion
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I’ve observed a trend in games - which is that aggression is UNFAIRLY rewarded in this game. Defences ARE STATIC.

UNITS ARE MOBILE.

One Tower should have the dps of 4-5 units.

You shouldn’t win the game just because you went hyper aggro and the games towers are too weak .

Defender is forced to idle his villagers or garrison them. He should have the ability to have the high ground with Town Center dps and tower dps.

Towers are static. You could make the argument that they don’t cost food, but since they have their own hard cap and cost way too much, and are unmovable , they should deal a disproportionate amount of damage. Long story short - forcing villagers to go idle while towers pelt enemies with tickling arrows is unacceptable.

Raiding and defending need to be properly balanced.

I’ve observed the following trend - 9/10 times the player that is the raiding aggressor wins the game. That’s ridiculous. Defenses need to actually do something. A tower should be fully capable of 3 shotting units and they should also scale up with age.

The skill needed to pull a raid and the skill needed to exexcute a raid are disproprtianate.

Please fix your game. Defenses aren’t balanced at all. It’s ridiculous. 1 Tower should absolutely be worth 5 units.

"There are alot of nice changes in retold, but currently the macro level strategy is 1 dimensional.

Static defense isn’t effective and aggressive strategies have all the resources they need to do nothing but build units all game. Every game is mirror 1tc fighting, and if no one gets and advantage for 15 minutes maybe you expand into a macro focused game. Economic plays don’t even get an eco lead, as an aggressive player can raid and harass and add a 2nd tc behind for much less investment than the eco player.

Like in EE, minor gods are not particularly balanced, and we are already seeing strong favoritism for certain gods. As the meta develops this will only become more homogenous. But with support this issue can be solved with balanced patches." -

HowDoIEvenEnglish OP • 2y ago

-2024

There are alot of nice changes i

Wow, 2 years and nothings changed! Static defenses are still useless and the game rewards raiding and punishes defender with weak towers that pelt enemies with ticklish toy prop arrows! Amazing game design! Definitely no personal bias leading to bad balance here!

Further more, each villager adding 3 dps is unacceptable. Each villager should AT LEAST 10%-15DPS. Give demeter doubel whatever that bonus is.

But right now the game is unfairly tilted towards aggression - why shouldf my opponent have the advantage assuming equal numbers with towers and tc fire?

-Answer - TC and Tower fire is TOO WEAK for being static.

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You don’t seem to understand how RTS game work, static defense are there to buy time or attack from behind a wall and hide your villagers, while you bring your own units to defend. And buildings can be repaired for every civ in every age, unlike most units and civs.

4 Likes
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I understand perfectly buddy. Go boot up Command and Conquer and see how much damage a Prism Tower in Red Alert 2 or Obelisk of Light in Kanes Wrath does. Or Play Warcraft 3 and try facing a human early game - towers that mana burn on hit or late game (Cannon Towers that deal great AOE damage.) Undead towers that slow movement and attack speeed - countering early game eco harassment.

Or boot up Generals Zero Hour. EMP Patriot Missles that instantly shoot down aircraft and disable enemy vehicles.

Actually, in the original game towers were twice as strong as they were in this one.

20 Seconds to kill a hoplite? Versus 10 in the original game? That’s completely unacceptable.

Tower values need to be reverted to base values. Get greedy and tower dive at 5 minutes into the game? You should be punished if opponent has invested 200+ resources into towers.

If you’re going to gut defenses DPS in half, gut the price in half as well. Being arrogant enough to assume you are better at balance then original developers of a game is how treasured masterpieces get milked for cash while the quality of the game and balance goes downhill.

I understand they may be slightly faster now then in this video, but I doubt they are as fast as killing as the original game.

Warcraft 3 has a great anti-worker harassment system.

Every race has “something” they can do against worker harass.

Undead has Towers and a “Town Center” that has a ranged attack that slows on hit as well as lumber gathererers that are fighters, orcs can run into burrows that gain an attack, humans can turn into militia and night elfs can detonate to burn enemies mana.

This game doesn’t have that same balance between aggressor and defender esp. early game.

Imagine if you spent the funds on a unit that couldn’t MOVE.

That’s a HUGE limitation. It should be balanced out by being pretty frigging strong.

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You are the the one with and “arrogant attitude” saying things like “unaceptable” because other wildly different RTS do it other way, who do you think you are to speak like that?. Each of these games have a different philosophy, this game has a different one (which is the one I told you) and that’s probably why the towers were nerfed.

2 Likes
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The game should stay true to the spirit of the original game. Defenses should be reverted to the original level. If the original devs intended for towers to tickle they would have been that way in 2002.

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Despite the ranting tone I do generally agree with the premise. Raiding is significantly easier in this game than most RTS and whenever something effective against it exists like master of weaponry or crenelations the community cries for nerfs. I really do wish they took a bit more middle ground stance so the game wasn’t such a game of whack a mole.

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Tbh there was this thing called the “fort patch” that took the building power higher (iirc it was still less than the og game) and it didnt have a possitive feedback overall, at least from what is seen on most forums. Devs can always try again if they wanted to, but dunno if the player perspective would change.

I always find this argument kinda meaningless since its taking for granted one was the best option just because “it was like this in X game it has to be the same here” sort of vibe. In the end its a preference and its hard to balance it perfectly to cater for all, specially with the things they have to deal with:

AoM has the issue many other RTS dont in that you start with free towers and can upgrade them all in a single button. This means that when the individual power of one is high your base is simply safe and good luck trying to break in. However when they account for that dynamic and make the towers weaker now the base isnt as indestructable and actually has some play, but the individual tower is weak and not worth investing into until you are basically full pop and are looking for extra sources of dps.

Personally, if aom didnt have the 4 starting towers you could much easily tune it out so that 1 would hold off a position on its own while not making your base untouchable without much investment.

Retold also made different changes, theres way more food, theres no “low hunt” maps like you had in the old game where you needed to get out of your base even in archaic to age up and food starve were a very common thing. It was nerfed a bit but theres still enough food around to get most things you need and you dont need to get out of your base unless gold basically, and even then for some gods that gets delayed like hades or amaterasu.

Retold also has other changes like theres more population to play with, so army limit doesnt hit a celling that fast and they are worth much more than buildings while you can make them since they move.

The video has quite the short comings, as many other top players pointed out, besides the simulation having more units that accounted for, there was also no garrison micro or any of the other advantages a player of that level would use.

Warcraft 3 has a whole different dynamic. You are not running out of gold anytime soon in that game, period you can close the corner of your base off and call it a day and never have to venture out for resources for quite some time, which AoM doesnt have.

Theres also the whole Hero dynamic and creeping, items, etc that is much more micro intensive that benefits from being able to put your base on hold and not worry much about it.

And even in warcraft 3, 2/4 factions dont do towers in the meta gameplay. Human does it because its cheap for them, they can power build and one of the towers burns mana, undead does it because its their houses that transform and one of them slows units down significantly.

Neither orcs nor night elfs usually build towers in their bases like you would think of doing in AoM or AoE for most 1 vs 1 meta gameplay.

Asymmetry wise warcraft 3 has much more going on that AoM that shares a more common ground between civs.

4 Likes
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The fort patch was something literally nobody asked for. Defenses were perfectly fine as they were on release day.

And instead of reverting the fort patch, they decided to gutt towers and TCs instead.

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Towers currently serve two functions. They prevent archer spam from winning at age 2, and after an upgrade, they hit cavalry hard, making raids less effective. Towers should be used when you’re playing two TCs and booming. In all other cases, units should be preferred.
If this bothers you, try AoE 3 and see what useless fortifications are.

I like the current damage output of defensive buildings, but I don’t like the TC’s range. This has significantly weakened the 2 TC strategy because the TC is no longer the area control keeper.
Since that patch came out, I’ve been playing raids 100% of the time. I think that was a mistake.

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There was a thing about TCs being stronger than fortresses. After all you can only build so many TCs. But i guess someone really wanted the aoe2 experience

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What’s in AoE 2? I haven’t played it in 15 years.

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Castles are cool. So they made fortresses cool too.