is it me , or is there 2 house side by side on this picture?
Does it mean that we could, once more in aoe, wall whit house, in aoe4?
You were beta participant, shouldnt you know your answer? 
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Like you said yourself, we are all not allowed to talk about it
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I hope thereâs no house walling.
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If you gonna say beta is beta, then I shall reply player discuss is player discuss. Obviously we will never know what in devâs mind if they think house wall is eligible nor shall we to alter their mind( at least not for now, and not for these small number of players)
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For some reason totally lost on me, thereâs no way to use adjacent buildings to block units in AoE4. This is a significant departure from every other Age game ever and make irrelevant 21 years of player habit and strategy. Buildings no longer have this fundamental function. Itâs a very strange risk for them to take.
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Do you remember the time when architects had the power to block units by thinking where they wanted to put the next fundations?
Those vils was Jedi !!! 
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Yeah it would make no sense if we were literally building a village.
I think a lot of it has to do with the devs not being competitive players. Watching the esports interview with some of them they discussed how they just like to make an army then attack and donât like playing competitively. They donât understand all the successful RTS games have had this feature of buildings being able to block. Itâs basically a core RTS feature. SC2 BW AoE all have this feature.
Theyâre designing a game for everyone. Hope it works out (I enjoyed beta) but when designing for everyone you end up pleasing no one.
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It feels very very much a decision that would only ever be made by a franchise outsider. In all my years I cannot recall anyone ever on this forum complaining about the ability to wall with buildings. Itâs something that just feels right.
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I donât know. Iâm actually happy itâs gone. Yes, it was a very fun aspect of the game but at the same time itâs good itâs gone with how strong it was.
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It is quite possible they worked on the building grid after feedback.
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@EgoTonic
Why do you think so? In real life in every city are âwalledâ buildings at the streets. To use buildings as walls is very realistic in my opinion. They just shouldnât be too strong.
Iâm very happy they got rid of that, walling in aoe2 is so annoying, I want to play strategy game fighting units vs units, not some tetris
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Interesting topic. Never thought about it, nor expecting any change in these mechanics compared to previous titles, but Iâm honestly not convinced the current formula shouldnât be changed or altered, a bit, to make things more interesting.
First of all to state the obvious - buildings should be well-designed, appropriately scaled, and with a footprint that is balanced and matches the rest of the game. Placing them and planning expansion should be intuitive, fast, clear and logical without pixel counting or use of grid mods (in builders like ANNO there is a mechanics that is showing grid when in placement mode, it should be enabled here by default maybe, at least for shapely buildings like barracks or houses, maybe not for non-diagonal and free placement ones like walls).
To make things more clear:
- walling should be present, but only for certain buildings (houses, churches, military buildings. Not mill, lumber camp etc).
- all non-defensive buildings should be extra vulnerable to siege units, to incentive use of defensive structures, on top of that they would be a bit more vulnerable to siege damage in general (that can be dealt with even basic soldiers) since they are not designed to withstand that damage and are made from mostly wood, not stone so even torching them can inflict serious damage.
- few special, player units (vills, priests) MAYBE should be able to âsqueeze byâ and pass walling. Only through player structures with player units. Friendly, team units should not (since they are strangers that donât live in that settlements and do not occupy these buildings, thus do not know shortcuts etc.). I like the idea but it might be hard to balance and be confusing for some newcomers.
- mentioned AoE2 walling, building dropping to block raiding parties, trap scouts etc. are interesting mechanics and give depth, but are also quite old, sometimes annoying and hardly realistic. Construction sites should be passable up to like 25% completion, by any units except for some XL ones (siege engines, bombards, trade carts etc.)
In general, buildings shouldnât completely replace wooden-tier of defensive structures (or even stone, up to some point) and relying on them instead of proper fortifications should be punished more and more with every age.
I hope there will be enough depth to planning city layout. I already love ability to man the walls.
Walls themselves should recieve improved textures, and maybe be scaled down a bit, but the idea is great. Age of Kings walls always felt more like low walls in fields or property walls, than serious fortifications.
Personally- Iâd love 3 tiers of walls (not counting special ones for super weird civs like Mongols):
- T1 wooden
- T2 stone (roughly AoE2-3 stone type)
- T3 defensive, more expensive/with longer build time, heavy walls that can be manned (what we have now)
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Yeah I get that, but gameplaywise itâs just stupid. I like it way more that you now have to actively make the decision to play defensive or aggressive as you canât just save all your eco by using all your buildings as walls. Itâs now a real investment to play defensive and not have your eco vulnerable. To me it feels like a great change and a lot more interesting and fun to play that way.
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Walling is present but not super strong in AoM, AoE3, and AoEO. Iâve only seen AoE2 players say they thought it was too strong. I wish the other games were consulted before sweeping changes like this get made.
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I think itâs fine to cater as much as possible to a casual audience, but if micro is lackluster then competitive players will lose interest. Micro and ways to optimize your play are vital long-term, otherwise people will only be interested in playing a few months after each DLC, and then return to AoE2 or more fun games.
I donât see why we canât have both. AoE2 is so successful precisely because newbies can always play the economic management game, while pros can play the micro game. Newbies arenât affected by the micro requirement, so itâs fine. They wonât be playing at the top level any time soon.
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I need to start a list of the reasons people claim aoe2 is so successful.
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I donât prefer AoE3âs style either, with having enemy army next to your TC at 6 minutes, and no way to avoid it. I would enjoy a more moderate approach, with breakable walls, that give you a minimal sense of security, but can also be breached with a bit of effort. AoE2 doesnât have a problem with walls being too strong, it has a problem with building houses behind the walls.
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