How to deal with fort/tower spam?

I have noticed a very unfortunate trend of people (usually norse) building forts and towers offensively lately. I hate playing vs defensive buildings used offensively which I why I quit AOE2. I hope this trend stops before I stop playing the game.

What they do is they build forts and towers and box me in so I cannot get any gold and sometime the map is filled with towers all around my base. Then, they attack
me from both sides, under cover of the buildings. I dont have the apm to deal with this kind of constant dual front attacks under buildings. What am I supposed to do to counter this? Maybe they could add a villager bonus vs forts as well as just towers.

Towers in this game are not very strong. The counter to it is to spend resources on your own military or walls to prevent them getting close enough to build their towers. If they’re able to get their towers up, it’s probably because they had a much better eco than you anyway.

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Age up with a beefy MU.

That doesnt work against norse, who are the ones who do this ‘strat’, inevibaly they use hesirs to build the towers and forts. The answer ‘build military units’ isnt helpful at all

You have no choice. Norse have been cheesing this since forever. Use a beefy MU to help take down buildings, and ofc you will need something to counter the hersirs.

I like this idea.

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Wich civilization do you play?

Why is it not helpful? This is a part of the fundamental RTS macro triangle. Economic focus (boom) beats defensive focus (turtle). Turtle beats military focus (rush). Rush beats boom. You’re describing a situation in which your enemy is rushing. So you need to turtle. That could mean building your own towers. It could be walling out your opponent.

Or it could be your own military. If you know that they’re using hersirs, go counter-infantry. Build axemen, throwing axemen, toxotes, or cheiroballistae & murmillos. If they’re not Norse, this is even better for you: they’re spending villager work time walking all the way across the map and building these towers; that’s time they could have been spending gathering resources to gain an eco advantage, in addition to the resources spent directly on the towers themselves. Plus, then you should be killing their villagers, which puts them even further behind economically.

Another option would be to counter their rush with your own rush. A rush that goes straight for their (probably undefended) eco should do more damage to them than a static tower would to you. Just pull your eco away from where they built the tower and go to a different gold mine/food patch/wood line.

If he’s got the resources to make a tower at your base and then upgrade it, he’s sacrificing army production, at least in the beginning of the game. You need to be faster and get more army to counter his. If it’s late game then siege of course. And towers do not build quickly.

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Yup, exactly. That’s 450 resources minimum to build a single tower and get Watch Tower. If you’re playing Greeks, that’s enough for a Military Academy and 3 Hoplites, or an Archery Range and 3 Toxotes, with 80 resources left over. Or Stable & 2 Hippeus with 110 res left over. And that’s assuming they didn’t also invest into military production buildings, which adds more to their cost.

Improve your game, build fortress too lol :upside_down_face:

I play whatever god no one else is playing, which is usually Kronos/Oranos or Egyptian at my level.

Which btw was and is perfectly fine as it also happened in history. Offensively used castles were commonly known as “siege castles”.
Even in your main game, AoE 3, using Outposts and Forts as an offensive tool is common despite the game invoking a protection zone against the first TC. :slight_smile:

As for your question: Buildings in AoM are in general fragile which includes Forts ofc.
As you mentioned Kronos, you could maybe go with Rheia as your Classic Age God and bring that Fort down with Behemoths. :slight_smile:

Leave an advanced unit on the map to know when your enemy starts building towers or forts. Act by preventing them. If they have advanced bases, it might be a good idea to surround it with some troops to disrupt their main base, killing some villagers and interrupting their direct attack on you.