Literally 90% of my games right now are people doing an FC cheese strat and quite honestly after 8 years of playing this game almost every day, I’ve had enough.
I’m about 1500 so I know the usual ways to counter, but some civs you simply cannot do enough damage before being steamrolled by their unique unit, whether or not it’s from a castle. The res collected allows for a tower, and by minutes 12-14 you just can’t do enough to slow them down.
Pros lose to other Pros doing it. The FC player always has the immediate advantage unfairly.
I also don’t know what the answer is either. It would have to be a broad enough nerf to affect everyone, but equally it means all civs suffer.
The only way I can think of, is if Castle age costs slightly more before 16-18 mins, like 300 gold.
But at the moment, the game is no longer enjoyable.
The best counter to it is to make a “real” FC against it, you can even prefer a civ that excels in countering phosphorus, like tupi.
The thing is that a lot of the phos adaptors are currently undervalued for various reasons. So the counters that are available ofc can’t work if the opponent is in reality like 300 elo stronger or so with the phos strat. That’s really unfortunate.
90 % seems an exaggeration to me, though ofc it might vary on different elo and locations how often you have to face an phosphoru.
Edit: The thing with the undervalued people, independent of the playstyle is ofc something that us generally a concern. I would like to make this unfeasible, harder to grief.
I could respond in kind and decry all these feudal aggression players; stating how unfair it as that they are cheesing the game and getting an unfair advantage; or how if combat before Imperial Age was prevented, the game would be a lot more fun; but that’s just not really the point. If you’re playing to win, you will be disappointed half the time: but if you’re playing to have fun, only you can decide whether you succeeded or not. If you elect to play-to-win, then accept your 50% winrate; but if you elect to have fun, then do what is fun.
I don’t like the feudal fighting because it always seems so one sided. Did I complain? Yes, and that’s on me. But I didn’t stay there, I got good enough that I could get past that and on to the parts that I actually like: the massive armies clashing against each other, the constant strategy recalculation, the sheer strength of macro, the constant stream of fresh soldiers into the meat grinder, the surprise raid on the woodline, the proving that deep knowledge triumphs over rote memorization and execution.
If your fun or happiness depends on the behavior of strangers you will be disappointed. All you can do make the best of the time that is given you.
I can’t speak to 1500’s but. Walls market, blacksmith, and 1 tower, tend to lose at the pro level. before phosphoru and after the wall nerfs, naked FC strats were not common it was only Spanish and Koreans and Portuguese, These civs were worse back then and their FC castle strat was their main strength which made the strat easier to predict and counter. It is only after Bengalis, Shu where added , and Searjeant buffs that these cheese strategy became more of a problem. From a generic perspective FC has never been worse thanks to the wall nerfs, food being more expensive, and the Crossbow upgrade nerf. FC into knights might be a bit too strong because knight require no upgrades to beat a feudal army.
Strongly disagree with your solution, time-variable upgrade cost are weird and confusing band-aid solution. The way i would do it be 600f 600g with a -5% discount to each based on total resources you spent on non-age-up upgrades. But I’m not sure that would be a good idea. I would prefer a series of civ or UU targeted nerfs rather than nerfing the concept of reaching castle age faster than your opponent to gain an advantage.