How would you feel for this to be a civilization bonus. You can upgrade your Lumber Camp (costs 50 wood) into a weak version of a town centre, but has more HP than a standard Lumber Camp. You need to do it with each Individual lumber camp.
Basically it allows you to garrison up the five villagers inside. And the Lumber Camp fires arrows. Purpose to deny scout rushes, and nullify them completely. Fortified Lumber Camp does huge bonus damage to scout units. It would make a player who wants to do the old classic scout rush think twice.
The concept of fortifying individual buildings isn’t unheard of in the franchise, and while I would normally approve of this as it sounds unique, there’re a couple things concerning me:
50 wood does not sound like a lot for a complete anti-Feudal raid, when Watch Towers practically serve that purpose, and additionally cost 125 stone.
Attack boni versus Scouts is too much. It’s already enough that you’d get to garrison your Villagers to protect them a la Khmer houses - they don’t need to annihilate the enemy at the same time.
Why lumber camps in particular? Why not extend this to mining camps and mills?
I actually like the idea if it is modified a lot. Make it castle age UT that applies to all lumber camps just as malay harbors. No atk bonuses or stuff like that. In feudal that thing wouldn’t make any sense as that stuff can easily break game balance. But for a civ that struggles on their transition to imp or generally with mobility like celts (strongholds is useless anyways) that could be cool. Or burmese as this defends from xbows so you could try to force fights with melee and siege through the center. Both of these civs have wood bonuses already so it could fit the civs concept.
But I have one reservation which is in late game this basically is trash towers so that might be op here.
You really don’t like scout rushes, do you? You realize that with the more open and aggressive KotD4 Arabia kind of set up we have right now, scout rushes really aren’t that common, and archer play is just better. Also, just small wall all your resources, you don’t need to fortify lumbercamps.
I would like to see some unique lumbercamp for any new civ, much like Folwark.
Perhaps when you build it next to a determinated number of trees it instantly collects 10% of tree’s wood.
Really? with a building that has lower damage, lower range and no bonus damage vs buildings?
I generally like the idea of adding some tools against raiding for some civs. Raiding is in general too strong currently. If this kind of upgarde for lumber camps (and I think an individual upgrade is ideed the right approach, as it makes it more tactical) is the right one, idk. Imo defensive structs should always cost some stone - as a method against griefing. And I also don’t think that protection should be reduced to wood only. Imo a “light tower” would be a good idea. A tower with reduced range, no normal damage output (only when garrisoned with vills), reduced damage per shot and no bonus damage vs buildings.
Raiding is part of the game, you just need to learn how to defend against it. Just wall and make counter units. Tower your resources or play as Khmer if you must have the option to garrison. Being raided doesn’t necessarily lose you the game, especially if the enemy can’t multi task. e.g. If the enemy is focused on his scouts raid and kills 2 villagers, he might not even be ahead if his own TC is idle during the raid.
So I don’t like this suggestion at all. Just another gimmick to add to a game which already has too many gimmicks.
I know and I love it. That’s why I basically never play Arena or BF etc.
It’s just
in the strategic balance of the game.
That you deliberately ignore what I already wrote and try to defame me with stuff like
Only shows that you are aware of this and try to deflect it, cause it seems you like that strategic disbalance.
We need to bring the game back to a stage where there is no single simple strat dominates the gameplay. It’s a strategy game, that means that there shouldn’t be one all-dominating strat.
And I am speaking in the interest of the whole community actually. You will figure out with raiding being a less dominant strat we will have way more interesting games.
Still the vast majority of games is decided by raids despite people try to make everything to counter raids.
The tools against raids are just not as good, that is the reason why raids are OP.
It’s like you try fighting poles reduced knights with pikes. Yes it’s a tool against knights, but they only give about an even trade and die to a few obuchs like flies.
Raiding is just 1 of 4 different ways to attack your opponent, the others being assault, skirmish and siege. Sorry if you took the criticism personally, but players only complain about things being OP when they keep losing to it, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume that you struggle to defend against raids. If you look at pro games, they are not solely won by raids. Yes, sometimes raids can be the deciding factor in games, but often just surviving the raids and getting imp techs with trebs faster wins.
There are lots of different ways to win. Controlling key hills with castles, controlling the extra resources + relics, superior micro, better economy management, countering raids with your own raids while his army is in your base etc. Yes it’s important to be able to defend raids, but you can’t win games by just being defensive. If raiding was OP the pro player meta would just be scouts every game. And more importantly, if raiding is so OP, why don’t you prove it and raid your opponents every game? Climb the ladder with this so-called “all-dominating” strat.
Well that’s the advise I currently give new players to focus on raiding first. Learn the buildorders, add your production buildings to hotkeys, fokus on your unit control.
I don’t need to learn to defend, I consider myself of being quite good in defending. I prefer trying to “outsmart” my opponents. And yes I still win a lot of my games by just “counterraiding”.
Because pros are actually the best in defending. Defending is the highest art of aoe2. If you look at game times you will see that they continuely decrease unitl like 1600-1800 elo. Then they start increasing again. That’s why pro games aren’t a good measure for this. Pros are the Pros because they are the best in defending against raids. Cause if they can’t they don’t even have a chance in surviving the early game.
That is why pro games don’t help any here, they don’t show the reality on the ladder.
Yet if you watched kotd4 you saw that these small changes that beneffitted raiding lead to a lot of games decided extremely early just because of that. It was the straw that broke the camels back and showcased how disbalanced the current game is towards raiding already.
I agree with a lot of what you said, I just don’t think raiding is OP or broken. If the opponent is able to raid you to death and you have no answer for it, then they are a better player. Doesn’t mean they are better at every aspect of the game though. Just like wrestlers and jiu jitsu fighters can beat boxers and kickboxers in UFC fights if they can take the opponent down to the ground where they have the advantage. If the boxer is unable to stand up and get off their back then it doesn’t mean they are bad at boxing. Of course in a pure boxing match the boxer would win. Sometimes players with faster APM beat players with better game knowledge and strategy. Being really good at raiding and nothing else will only get you so far, so it’s not OP. And also, raiding is not a low skill strategy. You still need to micro.
Yet if you watched kotd4 you saw that these small changes that beneffitted raiding lead to a lot of games decided extremely early
You kinda need to define “raiding”. It seems you include feudal pressure, which is just not something that is usually meant by the term “raiding”. So yeah, if you include every strat that possible includes killing enemy vills under “raiding”, then it is dominant. But if you use a narrower - and more meaningful - definition, that is, streaming in units without really microing them, then it is a lot less dominant.