I love turtling. I hate all this rush-rush gameplay. I want to sit back, relax, and don’t worry about being rushed/raided. I often quit the game sometimes the moment I saw 5 scouts raiding my woodline. I like to see cool units, like hundreds of war elephants on the field. Not some lame, boring units like scouts.
Yeah, I know, all the pros love to play on open maps where the game is over in 15 minutes by a single scout rush. I just find it boring. So no epic, massive battles. Just puny raiding parties.
If anything needs to change to walls, then it is nerfing them. Defensive game play is already too strong in my opinoin. We dont play Sim City in which you have to build up your base.
Maybe it’s your opinioin. But lookin at aoestats.io:
4 of the top 5 civs are civs known for their early to mid game rushes and falling off later on. And the other one is burgundians, which have a great midgame.
4 of th worst 5 civs are civs which are known for having almost no bonus in the early game but an excellent lategame. And the other one is cumans which are basically bad at almost all stages of the game.
I stand in the middle, I like castle age fights but I don’t really like long post-imperial games, on the other hand feudal rushes are boring because without castles, siege workshops and monasteries it all boils down to 2-3 units (except for meso civs, which have even less choice).
Also, the anti-wall threads seem to indicate that the love for open maps is merely because you might hit someone who forgot/didn’t finish walling in late dark age/early feudal.
I’d pick arena, hill fort or fortress over arabia any day for that.
And, just to stay on topic, I do think that defensive structures like towers are almost crap nowadays to the point that hardly anyone uses them, let alone upgrades them, unless is for tower rushing.
Most of these games arent decided in the feudal age. Currently the way to go is just ignore the feuda age and go to the castle age asap. Feudal wars are pretty uncommon and extended feudal wars are completely out of the picture in the current meta. Walls might be fine for castle age units, but are too strong for feudal age unit. At least that is my opinion.
So these civs arent really winning the game by their feudal rush, but by rushing for hitting castle age asap and just fully skipping the start of the game. An eco bonus will help with skipping the first ages quickly. So having no early eco bonus, will set you back in your rush to the castle age. Then they take damage and never really hit the late game with an healthy eco.
I recommend you try Death Match (DM), you start in imperial with a lot of resources and in a few minutes after a few battles the game normally becomes a post imperial game but saving you the 40 minutes it takes to get to that point in Random Match (RM). Greetings.
There is a perfect balance currently imo. Stone walls are only countered by siege while palisades can be taken down by units. If you want to turtle, go for stone walls, enemy will have to invest in siege. Make a lot of archers focus fire the siege. Turtling, at least for me…
In this thread I just chose to take the all elo all maps site.
I think as it is a general question if defensive or offensive play is better right now, I can’t really justify any… restriction. I know it’s different as players in high elos are generally much better in defending, but even there I see them preferring civs with high early agression potential over defensive civs. And by a lot.
so, why you don’t wall from minute 3? it’s completely possible and would hold off any scrush. easy …
explain please, why this isn’t meta. If your statement was true, this would be meta. But it isn’t. And this simple fact shows that walls aren’t op.
And what are about civs that have bonusses to walls or defenses? What about cumans? Why are cumans not top tier besides they have the best palisades in the game? They are one of the worst civs in the game. And this with having the best bonus to the “OP” walls…
Because it’s not necessary to start walling this early to be safe.
Because it’s overkill, since normal palissades are enough. There is also the fact that spamming houses foundation behind damaged palissades can stall even castle age armies, so the houses can get even more job done than palissades.
For Cuman specifically, there is the fact that they just aren’t easy to play, and not many people play them often.
Stalling doesn’t help if there isn’t a power spike to use behind it. It comes with a cost to perform that.
And btw, it’s bad gameplay to run into backwalls. Just get another angle and force a new reaction. That’s how you get damage in.
Cumans are easy to play. YOu just need to understand that currently 2nd tc is suicide in open maps.
It’s that easy. The better walls can’t save cumans from either being feudal all-inned or siege dropped in castle age.
Cumans show that palisades actually are in a terrible state, All they do is buying some time, but it isn’t even enough for a second TC in feudal to pay off against an all-in agression play. Even the best defensive players like hera or viper can’t perform it.
And this mentioned that in general a rts always must be set up in a way that eco > agression in the early to mid game (in theory) as defence is always harder to execute than offense, especially in aoe2 where defense actually also needs higher apm besides being constantly “reacting”.
Ok sure walling right from min 3 would be too much on economy. But you know what everyone does against those fast rushes? Small walls. Which means even without full wall I can enjoy the rivetting gameplay of watching my dudes hitting a bunch of wooden sticks for a while.
It’s kind of self evident no? Afaik walls don’t kill stuff. But since they are so good at making you safe for so little res they let you afford the follow up much more easily than if you chose counter units instead. Also when I say “they stall castle age military” it’s to mean that if even knights struggle to break in, then feudal age military sure isn’t going to do it.
Just like it comes with a cost to build military. And walling is cheaper than building counter units.
If it’s boring and grindy to down palissades on the left, it won’t become much more fun doing it on the right. Also don’t know for you, but my opponents have a positive IQ and will simply stop repairing/house spamming as soon as I lower the pressure, and they will watch where my army goes to be ready for the next repairs.
They literally have feudal age gameplay vastly different from every other civ.
If Cuman had an eco bonus other than the second TC they sure would. I mean why do you think the bonus got nerfed? Because in TG you can have up to 3 civs in your team that get a good eco bonus and stronger palissades.
Thank goodness that expensive castle age units that are designed to kill buildings can down a bunch of cheap dark age buildings lol.
Portuguese show that gold units are in a terrible stat, and Saracen that the market is worthless #ohwait
What is the most likely reason:
that a building that every civ gets and everyone uses is too weak
said second TC takes more time to build than a bloody castle, while being the only Cuman eco bonus
Tricky one, I know
Idk everyone knows this is the counter to Cumans and yet at all ELO levels Cumans do win regularly. Yes they are below average, but if we wanna be smartasses about some random stats then to me 45% looks like the civ has the strict minimum efficiency. If Cumans were truely this non-functional then they would have been as bad as unbuffed Khmer, Vietnamese or Burgundian.
Afaik the difficulty between defense/attack depends a lot on the player preferences. Also I don’t see how changing the spot you repair requires any more APM than changing the spot your army attack. However I do totally see how much less APM repairing requires compared to using counter units against your opponent’s army.
You do realize that most players go fc against Cumans, not feudal all in? They are bad becaus they don’t have much going for them besides the 2nd tc.
And your theory about eco and aggression is flawed. Defensive players always have a defenders advantage, they can build units later and react with counterunits and most importantly are protected by defensive buildings like tcs. As compensation, they need to be a bit more careful in their unit-selection as mistakes are punished harder and overextending into military is worse as a defender… Aggressive players need to have the higher apm as they need to switch between their base and their opponents. In a way, reactive play is not much of a gameplay style but no more than anticipating what the opponent is going for and building up the counter for it.
