Fully agree on the stone tower part. There’s a reason why it was banned for N4C. As for getting building rushed with regular towers or landmark buildings I completely disagree. If I was playing Aoe4 for the first time getting harassed by those buildings early on I would be hooked because that would mean there’s more options and depth added to the game. More options means more creativity involved.
Also, I cant remember anyone bar beastyqt having gone for a landmark foward in N4C. And he even lost that game. So I would suggest it really isn’t all that strong, especially when on certain maps you can see it coming.
If you try to get rid of everything that seems to harass new players in a RTS you end up having a 20 minutes no army contact turtle game. This honestly can’t be the goal of a RTS game. We are talking about a RTS with a highly dynamic gameplay, many decisions being made in all stages of the game that can be crucial.
I disagree that “Beeing rushed is far easier than rushing”. The big advantage of the rushing player is to decide when the other player has to pay attention.
Rushing player needs to Macro? Sure, just pull the units back a bit, do the macro, attack once you are ready.
While the rushed player needs to constantly be on guard - if the rushing player decides to attack while you are macroing you are forced to swap asap.
Also the “punishment” of the rushing player is loosing his army, while the punishment of the rushed player can be:
Loosing the game
Loosing eco
Also loosing army if production was done too late
overcomitting on army to destroy the rushers army, leading to an economic advantage for the rusher
and so on.
So as the rushed, or defending player, you have a lot more things to consider and a lot more areas to ■■■■ up at. Sure, you also got advantages, and in my mind rushing is fine atm (at least in 1v1, in teamgames maps are too big for teammates to help in time), but I can see a lot of players struggeling with it / a rush meaning the end for the player. There is a reason why some people report about trying out rushing and jumping 100-200 elo up. Beeing on the attack is far easier than beeing on the defence.
On the point of the landmark - it seems like a worse tower rush, so I wouldn’t consider it a problem, but I’ll try it out to learn about possible counter strategies.
Your arguments are very picky to be honest. The rushing player usually loses the game if his rush fails against a defensive playstyle often playing on 2 tcs. Idk if your just not experienced at this game but that point alone just does not make sense. Your remaining arguments do have a quite similar bias. Also, who are those people that jump up 100-200 elo when switching from a defensive to a rush playstyle? Again you just seem to be jerry picking to substantiate what you think is true.
Some major differences that come into my mind between rushing and defending:
-The rushing player does not have a supportive tc, while the defending player does.
-The rushing player has to take into consideration lots of time the army needs to walk to the opponents base. His units also are not bundled when walking down the map.
-Rushing player has to constantly switch between minimum two spots on the map while the defensive player might be okay with only one spot on the screen.
All other arguments i’d consider very evenly matched. Both players need to be cautious. Defending player primarily on villagers, offensive player primarily on army (it can be wiped out quite easily by the tc or counter units like horsmen vs longbow). Also the rushing player is forced to make something happen. He cant just sit back and wait, as time clearly is against him. So it’s far from being as easy as you make it look.
Maybe one could also say that the defending player needs to put more effort into gaining map control back but im having a hard time taking that as an argument since map control is not that crucial in the early game.
I’m not saying that it is unbalanced, there are pros and cons to both. All I’m saying is that at a lower level defending from rushes is way harder than doing the rushing, as very vividly displayed by the amoun tof threats “help I’m getting rushed” vs the amount “Yeah so I’m rushing and my opponent just has the audacity of defending themselves”.
Also in regards to “Always has a 2nd tc” - what kind of rush are we talking about right now? Because in my experiance building a 2nd tc and all that it involves (setting up a ressource camp at stone, actually mining 300 stone, chopping 400 wood (700 ressources, so 4 Military training buildings, scaling up food production to be able to afford the extra villagers AND military units you want to produce, which, especially if you got low sheeps will force you to either a) build farms (which costs even more wood that you don’t have at this moment) or b) go to berries / deers (which will spread you out thinner and leaves more flanks for the opponent to attack)) often doesn’t seem feasible. Even if it might be at higher elo (I’m just 1250-1300 myself) you can’t balance a game just around what the highest elo / best players can do, since this will kill the lower skill playerbase that a game also needs. Take starcraft 2 as an example, their newest balance patch had a change to a unit (can’t recall which one from the top of my head) that perfermored about average / sub average in high elo play, but was pretty dominant in low elo play, so it was changed.
Also, what exactly is keeping the attacker from building the 2nd tc?
So just to be clear: I’m talking about tight build orders where someone ages to age 2 and instantly starts harrassing
Rushing well in a game with such a garbage Dark Age and super distance in team games makes rushing more difficult than defending. If you watch the top 100 players in any game mode, they are always taking a more defensive strategy in this game, that leads me to believe that rushing definitely isn’t the preferable way to play.
If I rush every game, as I tried to do when I first bought the game, I’ll tank my ELO by 100-200 points. My ELO went from 1000 to 1292 when I switched to playing only Turtle-Wonder-Cancer with ten layers of stone walls, 45 castles and no offense in 35-45 minute games. (Teamgames, in 1v1 it’s mildly different)
But I eventually felt ill from long games without action and have returned to the other extreme and my ELO has suffered for it. I want 10 minutes games.
If BBQ rush works so well, maybe I should try that instead of Delhi rush.
I might go into detail with that post later. Just one thing: What I said was “Often has a 2nd tc”. What you make of it is “Always has a 2nd tc”. It was just the same with your previous quote. Stop altering what I have said please, it is bad manner.
Oh yeah I’m talking about 1v1. In teamgames, maybe 2v2, everything else I agree turteling is the way. in 3v3 / 4v4 it is a little bit dependant on the map, as some maps place you as far away from your allies as your opponents, so unless you scout really well and your allies react one player might be rushed and killed by 3 opponents (Happened especially on the map that is seperated into 4 square, in 3v3 the spawn is
1 | 11
22 | 2
So usually the player who is allone will get rushed hard. (Again, not saying that there are no counterplays, but scouting and coordinating with teammates to send military basically the same distance the enemy sends it is nothing you can expect from lower elo players). But on anything where you spawn close to each other / have something to defend defensive is surely the way to go in multiplayer games, I was more talking about 1v1, and limited 2v2’s.
I’m not saying that it is unbalanced, there are pros and cons to both. All I’m saying is that at a lower level defending from rushes is way harder than doing the rushing, as very vividly displayed by the amoun tof threats “help I’m getting rushed” vs the amount “Yeah so I’m rushing and my opponent just has the audacity of defending themselves”.
The amount of threads posted might be one of the poorest metric serving as basis for a strategic discussion. What else makes you think that rushing favours low elo players? I think it is the other way around but im curious about your reasoning.
Also in regards to “Always has a 2nd tc” - what kind of rush are we talking about right now? Because in my experiance building a 2nd tc and all that it involves (setting up a ressource camp at stone, actually mining 300 stone, chopping 400 wood (700 ressources, so 4 Military training buildings, scaling up food production to be able to afford the extra villagers AND military units you want to produce, which, especially if you got low sheeps will force you to either a) build farms (which costs even more wood that you don’t have at this moment) or b) go to berries / deers (which will spread you out thinner and leaves more flanks for the opponent to attack)) often doesn’t seem feasible. Even if it might be at higher elo (I’m just 1250-1300 myself) you can’t balance a game just around what the highest elo / best players can do, since this will kill the lower skill playerbase that a game also needs. Take starcraft 2 as an example, their newest balance patch had a change to a unit (can’t recall which one from the top of my head) that perfermored about average / sub average in high elo play, but was pretty dominant in low elo play, so it was changed.
When mentioning two tcs (keep in mind i said often, not always) im referring to the defending player. With abbasid and china it is/was quite usual to go for a 2 tc start, also map dependant though (idk if that has changed with recent patches). If you play french knights and are not successfully raiding villagers of the defensive player on 2 tcs within the first 10 minutes it is most likely game over. You can still build a second tc or age up but there’s a certain time window where you have to do the damge and if you did miss it your in a big disadvantage. So my point is that when the rush fails the game often enough is over.
I don’t think the rushing player automatically loses if their initial push fails unless they are inflexible and commit to a Feudal all-in. The reason is that the rushing player can dictate the tempo of the game.
I switched from pre-patch defensive Abbasid play to aggressive French play, and the results were knight and day. I’m not sure what my Elo jump was, but aggressive play is far more rewarding than defensive play. This may be civ-specific and skill range-specific, but I’m sure other people have experienced something similar.
Hopefully, with ranked seasons, players will be able to find opponents in their skill range.
Again I did not say automatically but usually. That’s a significant difference. Please don’t change what I have said.
Yes the rushing player can dictate the game. But I have listed many disadvantages for the offensive player. What’s with those? If anything, we have to make a list with all pros and cons for offensive and defensive playstyle and weight them up against eachother. Mentioning the same advantange for the rushing player over and over again is will not lead to anything.
So you switched from abbasid to french and claim to have won some matches. I remember match ups in my quick match history that were heavily one sided due to the elo difference. The maximum possible elo difference has even increased with recent patches. So if you didn’t play more than 10 games against opponents on max ±20 your elo what you say can’t really be evaluated.
Apart from that i fully agree with this post from the Aoe2 board:
Defense, done properly, is far easier than offense. One of the hardest things to do in the game is apply lethal pressure to a competent enemy. What the game actually rewards is activity, not aggression. If your idea of defense is to sit at home with your scout and prepare nothing, you will die.
That’s why all the counter units cost no gold, and are extremely efficient against their generalist counterparts, with the downside of lacking real offensive capability. As long as you keep your scout active and you keep an eye open for what your opponent is preparing, defense shouldn’t be hard. Seeing the number of villagers on gold and/or a Stable/Range is information enough in most cases.
Once you count quickwalling and rewalling behind, getting really effective damage that compensates for the initial investment in military (plus the potential idle you cause yourself with the micromanagement of military) is not a simple task unless your opponent has simply failed to take the proper steps to defend it.
That’s another good point that can be added to the list of advantages for the defending player. He does not need gold for building counter units as spearmen, bows and horsemen all do not require gold. He is fine with gathering food and wood only. The offensive player more likely is in need of gold e.g. french knights rush. Also on most (if not all) maps the woodline has a shorter distance to the tc than the nearest goldmine. So the offensive player again more likely has to take a higher risk.
As mentioned, mostly it is dictating WHEN someone has to take an action. If you watch the replays of low elo games you’ll realize they don’t have a set builder and they will struggle to even follow that little they have.
Let me make an example:
Offensive player: Ok I’ll queue my units near their base. Done Macro? Enough stuff queued? TIME TO MICRO! (Attacks) Oh I need to Macro? => Retreats => Macros
=> Aggressive players can dictate their own pace of the game
Defensive player: Hey cool I’m minding my day and Macro’ing I should queue a villager next BLABLARGH Oh fuck red circle where (first villager lost) ah fuck there ok garrison all (villagers idle) Did I scout this / knew how to react to it? (Keep in mind scouting is not something all players manage to do, some even struggle to bring home sheeps).now… where was I [towncenter still idle], what did I need to do? Mhh I’m not getting any gold that I need, but I also can’t get to the gold mine, how do I adapt to this? Oh he relented with his attack? Oh time to Macro again, get my villagers un-idle and so on.
=> This disrupts players hards, especially those of a lower level. They will fuck up more and more.
In addition to this you need to age up to 2 to be able to form a descent counter in most times (Can’t beat horsemen archer with just spearmen… or worse if you are english just MAA, since no age1 spearmen). So since those games do not have their age up times set in stone it is way possible that the def player is collecting stone, aging up with 1 vil and therefore not be able to field a suitable counter.
As mentioned, mostly it is dictating WHEN someone has to take an action. If you watch the replays of low elo games you’ll realize they don’t have a set builder and they will struggle to even follow that little they have.
Dictating the game comes with higher risks. I have mentioned those risks. So here we go again: Apart from not dictacting the game, what disadvantage does the defensive aoe4 player face lets say until the first 10 minutes have passed?
Let me make an example:
Offensive player: Ok I’ll queue my units near their base. Done Macro? Enough stuff queued? TIME TO MICRO! (Attacks) Oh I need to Macro? => Retreats => Macros
=> Aggressive players can dictate their own pace of the game
Defensive player: Hey cool I’m minding my day and Macro’ing I should queue a villager next BLABLARGH Oh ■■■■ red circle where (first villager lost) ah ■■■■ there ok garrison all (villagers idle) Did I scout this / knew how to react to it? (Keep in mind scouting is not something all players manage to do, some even struggle to bring home sheeps).now… where was I [towncenter still idle], what did I need to do? Mhh I’m not getting any gold that I need, but I also can’t get to the gold mine, how do I adapt to this? Oh he relented with his attack? Oh time to Macro again, get my villagers un-idle and so on.
=> This disrupts players hards, especially those of a lower level. They will ■■■■ up more and more.
So let’s say both players are on average or below average but equal skill level (we need to do so if we want to have a fair comparison). What makes you think that the rushing player does not run straight into the tc because he was not able to cope with the APM it takes to control two or even more parts of the map at the same time? His knights could have run into spears too? This also disrupts offensive players and easily can decide games especially when we are talking about average or below average players who usually simply do not have the APM to have control over multiple spots on the map. Again you seem heavily biased. You seem to assume that the player executing the rush does not make a mistake and switching between micro and macro is something trivial while the defending player that mainly needs to gather within the radius of its tc and can easily build counter units in feudal age has a tremendious amount of decision making to do and is prone to making mistakes.
I think we’re running in circles here arguing about hypothetical defensive vs. offensive play. The OP @herrickrcw is just frustrated with cheesy strats being used at their Elo and probably looking for help.
The first thing I would advise is understand that your opponent is making a big risk by dropping forward buildings near your base: their resources will be lower, their walk distance will be longer and unable to reinforce.
scout around and around your base for forward villagers (especially when playing against Mongols, Chinese, Rus)
use your vills to attack their villagers (especially when playing as English)
build towers yourself. You can build 2 towers and secure most of your starting resources.
Also always try to not run into fights with the landmark. If possible even ignore it completely and remove your wood line or source for gold/food income. Also scout the base of your opponent and try to spot unprotected villagers. Then just curve around the landmark and attack those unprotected villagers. The worst thing for the forward rusher to happen is not making any progress with his forward and being attacked in his usually very vulnerable home base. This is a very good example of how to play against a forward landmark rush. Just scroll to the 4th game (china vs abbasid).
I totally underrstand the frustration.
I am not saying its unbalanced, but its a very annoying playstyle to go up against, and forward barbican along with forward towers and stone wall towers are getting more and more common.
The main issue of that strat is that the opponent can follow it up with stone wall towers all around the opponent’s base, stone wall towers are going to take longer to build next patch though so hopefully it wont be that much of an issue.
As for towers, they need to be more expensive than what they are right now.
That being said, when playing against chinese make sure to use your scout from the very start of the game, if you spot a bunch of vills going forward you can use your own vills to kill your opponents vills and deny the landmark. If the opponent already started building it and its at around 30% complete or so then its too late.
Hey its XARDAS here (DIA III on 2 accounts) who did this strat like 100x times and had to face it multiple times.
How to deffend?
Scout
Are u ENG? = problem solved
Are u Chinese? = problem solved since its mirror
Are u Delhi or HRE? = make ± 10 horseman/maa (which is possible between 8-9 min mark) + 3 or 4 prelates/scholars and just rush all the outposts or BBQ itself. You are gonna kill it without a single loss since all the dmg is going to be insta healed.
Are u Mongol? If u let opponent to do this against you when u play Mongol you should be angry JUST and ONLY to yourself
Are u Abbasid? - Well its worst scenario for you + specially on map like Altai where its strong strategy - few archers into fast ram might be viable - just take care about it and if it takes dmg repair it ASAP
Oh yes u are welcome I just gave you a better advice than any streamer ever did since I am probably most experienced player from entire server with this strat.
Have a nice day cya
additional tip (spending like 15 wood on MOST CRUCIAL place when u 100% dont want BBQ to be build - between 2 close woodlines or between gold+wood for example) slightly before enemy vills come - and u know they are about to come cause u are smart and when u see that enemy is Chinese u might expect this strat to come is REALLY 5HEAD move) + u see enemy vills incoming cause u are scouting properly right?
counter towers dont work
pulling villagers if there is more than 7 vills doesnt work (+ smarter players are gonna make supportive 90% completed outpost slightly behind if u would like to pull / in case you wont u can cancel it ehm ehm - sorry for pro tip for BBQ rushers themself)
I want 10 minutes games.