In AoE2:DE, it feels like towers, castles, and walls are weaker than they were in AoE2 before. Either that, or units were made stronger which makes them seem weaker. Is it just my imagination?
Regardless, defenses get destroyed too easily, imo. Any chance the game could be tweaked to show some love to those who invest a good amount of time and money mining/buying stone and building defenses rather than going for an aggressive style? Doesn’t feel like we’re getting our stone money’s worth with how quickly they fall
Only nerfs were the Tower HP before castle age and Korean defenses no longer being built faster. That’s all.
Look at the changelog. No siege weapon was buffed, only dedicated anti-building unit changed were supplies for champ and the battle ele nerf. And I’m pretty much sure you don’t complain against mass swords.
Welp, Castles can last super long with villager repairing.
Guard towers are perfectly viable for booming people who want to defend against mangonels.
Or you can go kill their siege units. Then it’s their gold that will “fall quickly”
Seriously, all defenses have their role, only keeps being rarer since in Imperial castles/BBT are so much better (and for some reason tons of civ who get them also don’t get arrowslits), but if you’re really that defensive minded you might eventually have enough towers to make the keep upgrade worth it, and it’s not hard to get.
I would even go further and argue that the game is not oriented in that way. Just looking at how stone is distributed among maps and the respective stone cost of defense buildings, you can have a better idea about this. I see these structures more as pontual things, rather than something that’s worth big investments.
Play as Teutons, Inca, Byzantine, French, Bulgarian, or Koreans to improve your stone building’s performance. I think the game has a good balance of defensive civilizations. The cool thing about the game is that you can play however you like. I sometimes build quite defensively… it depends on the situation. Towers are still quite effective at cutting off enemy resources. If you want to make your towers stronger you have the option to wall them or place buildings around them. Towers in Nomad can be quite effective since opponents are often closed off behind trees. And Korean towers and Teutonic castles are awesome in Gold Rush.
Before the game got to this point I used to see a lot more tower rushes and Mayans/Towers dominated 1vs1 RM which was kinda boring because the game has a lot more to offer.
I think the only way they could keep the balance and increase tower HP is to allow a defensive tower bonus if it’s closer to your TC but that’s unlikely
Japanese are a good choice as well (+their trebs), and have likely the best keeps in the game. Chinese have also good defenses, and while the Celt’s upsides are niche you also get top-tier trebs to defend them.
Thanks for the info! I usually play as Spanish, as I enjoy their fast cannon ships, and that they nice advancements for walls and towers, even getting cannon towers. I didn’t know stone structure strength could vary so much between civs. I figured a stone wall with Spanish is pretty much the same as a stone wall with Koreans regarding HP. (Granted, I may have known at one point, but I got used to just playing the game for fun and with Spanish civ so long that I may have lost sight of that aspect.)
For single-player games and ones with friends vs. AI, I’m more than okay with the game being slow and a more defensive battle. We can save the game and come back later if it’s taking too long. I would dislike nerfing defenses for all players (SP and MP) just so online matches go faster for online people; or to make the game strive to be a Call of Duty-esque constant action, action, action offensive fragfest with weak defenses. (Really hope AoE4 isn’t designed to be that way ) I’m not saying that’s happening, but I think any unit/structure balance tweaks should be careful not to do that.
Too bad there’s no easy way to simply click a checkbox at the start of a match to make defensive stuff a little stronger (+10%, +20%, +50%, etc.) for SP or vs. AI matches on a match-by-match basis.
I don’t get why palisade walls (2) don’t cost the same as stone walls (5) but palisade gates (30) cost the same amount as stone gates (30). Palisade walls are so much cheaper that many people don’t use stone walls. I know stone walls prevents making quick TCs but if it was cheaper then maybe you justify a villager on stone to make up for it. Instead, players will just double palisade wall or house wall to buy time to get to castle age. Stone walls seem too expensive for most people to justify making them which makes for less defensive play.
) I’m not saying that’s happening, but I think any unit/structure balance tweaks should be careful not to do that.