Worst idea ever. Feudal age becomes nearly irrelevant for 1v1. In team games, it will change army addition to castle age prioritization in mid feudal age. And then it will again be knights+xbows.
Its just going to bring games similar to 2020 Arabia TG. The same knight+xbows but more camping and lesser potential for aggression.
My suggestion would be a change in amount of food from natural resources, size of forests+ wood per tree, distance to forest and gold in each map generation just for team games. That 18 pop archer rush might not be always feasible. Tower, pre-mill drush or maa could become more feasible.
New/lower ELO players don’t even follow the meta at all. I know I’m around 1050 ELO in team games. Been playing odd game here or there to climb. People pick units at random, don’t play into their civs strengths. I played a game where the Ethiopian player decided to go Shotel Warrior…we needed ranged support and they could of destroyed the player they were next to because exposed wood/gold. To add insult to injury. The other team mate and myself were both going cavalry.
I think the general issue for TGs is the “profession” of civs, depending what major line they support the best.
As a flank civ ot’s basically required to play Archers as only ranged units can somehow defend when being doubled. You can try to use towers, but towers are of limited use against scouts and you can’t move them. So even if they can work in defending, you have nothing to get your own damage done on the opponent. But imo the bigger issue is currently their comparably low utility agaonst scouts.
Skirms currently just don’t work in TGs. They are even less effective against scouts. Maybe with some specific civs like Byzantines, but even there they usually don’t work.
For me, I can see some changes to towers like a small bonus damage against cavalry. But I can also see a newly added archer unit like the bowman which has bonus against archers and extra range, which could be used as a defensive skirmish tool. Even if it doesn’t excel against scouts, the extra range can possibly be used to stay out of the range of the opponent archers.
A third option would be feudal Mangonels that have only 3-4 Pierce Armor, 5 Range and also greatly reduced damage. They would be kinda useless agressively cause they would just die from TCs and Towers. But defensively they can possibly be useful against being doubled.
Vice versa archer civs are often hold back by their low mobility as pocket. This could quite easily be solved by making CA available from feudal. But ofc stat adjusted so it doesn#t make much sense to use them in 1v1s. They already have low accuracy, so mainly by jsut reducing the damage (possibly even just 4 damage like archers) they should be chose over archers when the mobility is key like as a TG pocket.
When something like this kind of stuff is implemented, all civs would be able to be played as either pocket or flank - at least in the early game. Ofc the traditional positions would still be benefitial, but it wouldn’t be essential to pick civs for the positions as all should be kinda “playable”.
The devs ruined arabia for team games and that is a fact not an assumption.
They made all arabia maps faster by giving for free 3 deers closer and 100 more food on eles or rhinos which caused much faster feudal age times, for team games that increased the power spike that lots of civs have, then they reduced the thickness of the woodlines and put them far far away with the resources in a + position meaning that you can only defend one spot and sacrifice the rest of your resources, then the devs nerfed walls, all those changes together ruined the tg experience for team games in arabia, which was historically the most played map whether if you like it or not.
The games can end really quick, the devs have also ruined nomad, this FE devs have changed fundamentally a lot of aoe2 reflecting a lot of hate to the old meta, but current meta is way more disgusting, on tg arabia you need to play like a clown as flank, fast age up then no eco full ranges and archers one tc yolo+market abuse, while the pkt spams lots of scouts and then they proceed to abuse the bad map generation of their enemies, if one player makes a tower then they just walk few steps and hurt the pkt, there is no defensive counterplay it is stale as hera said and there is no way to change the meta cause that is the strongest and honestly in a RTS game you can’t deny defensive playstyle, huge mistake from the devs.
And then you have nomad which should be named castles in the face, nomad was never played like it is now and it is disgusting.
Ever since DE came out I thought the watch tower HP nerf was wrong way to do it. I still think watch tower should be -1 range in Feudal Age but +1 attack, emphasizing more on defense than rush. Or maybe simply +1 attack vs cavalry. They do have +1 attack vs camel after all.
Which one is more responsible for current one dimensional TG meta? Archer or scout?
I think the range of towers isn’t what makes them strong offensively. And it’s often even not enough for defense. Like when you tower your lumber camp, you do it usually on the more exposed side. But then Archers can come from the other side and range your lumberjacks whilst your tower can’t range them.
The better way to nerf the offensive applications of defensive buildings would be to just reduce the anti-building bonus damage of the secondary projectiles. That applies to towers, TCs and Castles.
I think a bonus vs cavalry makes a lot of sense. It’s only towers then which would do bonus damage against cavalry, so it’s not that cavalry would immediately die to all kind of defenses. There would be a lot of tools you can then try to use against these towers like rams , but potentially even castle drops.
I like the idea to take away 1 bonus vs buildings but add a bonus vs cavalry for towers instead. Then towers would be an interesting way to defend as a TG flank even when you don’t have an archer civ.
Idk if you can answer this. Imo it’s the development of the super specialised and tight buildorders for the two meta strats. It’s also a log-in effect. Cause it’s so dominant in basically every aspect, there is a huge burden to find good answers. Even when you design good BOs for other strats you still have the executional, strategic and explanational burden. Meaning you need to communicate to the teammates and explain what they would need to do different to make it work. And they will rightfully ask why the heck does this guy try something everybody “knows” doesn’t work?
While the later is true, I disagree with earlier. If a tower deny 2 resources in Feudal Age, it is pretty much gg if you continue the tower to exist for long.
Maybe you’re right. This is the actual reason why Trush must need to be countered by either your own tower or you need to send the villagers to batter it down with weird bonus attack of villagers vs stone defense.
Yeah I guess. Maybe it is just the combination that hard to counter because individually both scout and archer are almost fine.
Is “18-20 pop archer build” worse than “21 pop archer build” on current arabia? Deers are far from tc now so it’s a bit difficult to make steady eco with late mill. It’s no problem for 1 range, but a problem for 2 ranges. I think “21 pop” can do better.
Depends on how far your opponent is. If you do 21 pop build but your opponent does 18, they’d notice you’re late and hit your base with the first 2 or 3 archers and potentially deny 2nd range, blacksmith, force you off gold etc.
But I have eco lead (about 130 resorces) by +3 vils on dark age so 1 vil loss is fine. Enemy 2 archers will come when I’ve just built 2 ranges, and they kill a standing vil in 20 sec while a scout is killing a archer in 12 sec.
Its not just a vill loss, it can snowball quite hard. 3 vills is 1 min 15 seconds, your 2nd range or blacksmith can get denied. Even if you managed to build all the three, you can be forced off gold and eventually you’ll have the military disadvantage, lose fights etc. I’m not saying you can never do this but whether its a risk worth taking would depend on your map, how easy it is to wall, gold and wood positions etc. So 21 pop might not always do better but maybe sometimes.
You are also behind in eco upgrades like double bit axe. So your extra resource is at best 100. After losing 1 villager, you will be on a timer as you’ll lose roughly 23 resource per minute while you also have either less army number or less military techs.
I don’t think you can create perfect eco and military after 18-20 pop archer build. This build brings faster military but is unstable. (There may be my lack of experience)