I discovered a mechanic that prevented quickwalling - should we bring it back?

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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A few years ago, somewhen in around 2021/22 I was a casual aoe2 player, somewhat decent (for that time) and I played only Teamgames mostly in the Lobbybrowser.

My favorite map was nomad where often than not one player stays in feudal and goes full water, while the rest goes castle drop or knights or whatever, fast castle. Back then despite playing NoMad, I still got mad when I couldn’t punish the enemy feudal player going water with my early knights because of quickwalling.

This is where I had that idea.

As you all know, building foundations are first come first serve. Meaning if two enemies want to build a building and their foundations intersect, whoever comes first and hits it with a villager gets the property rights and the other villagers are obstructed, unable to build. This was different 3 years ago, back then your building foundation wouldnt be obstructed but rather the unbuild foundation would be deleted by the building that was already built and you would get your resources back.

So… what did I do? Well, there is one building that exists immediatly when placed and you all have seen it with at 0% atleast once: Farms. Your farms are visible for enemies immediately as an untouched foundation, allowing them to be destroyed with a single hit from anything.

This means back then in the few games I played, I used this farm trick to jump into the enemy lumbercamp with scouts or knights or whatever, and when they started to quickwall I would use my Group 3 hotkey (any villager) hotkeyed a farm next to his lumbercamp and deleted the enemies’ quick wall foundation because a 3x3 area was now unable to be build on because the farm was there.

Here is how it looked (remade in scenario editor today):

And it worked, it was so satisfiying watching my enemies’ villagers being completely dumbfounded to what just happened, being idle with their hammer in their hand in front of my farm, and my cavalry charging in which then immediatly forced my enemy to delete his started quick wall and run all vills.

Today, this actually feels like a meta changing mechanic but I didn’t realize back then, still if you would go back through all my reddit comments or when I was in an aoe2 twitch chat I remember making remarks occasionally when the topic was quick walling, and how to prevent them.

It wasn’t long until they completely changed the way building foundations worked (not because of my method - As far as I could tell it wasn’t well established and I probably was the only one doing it).
I think there was a bug with this where you could place farm foundations and delete them and they would then explore the 3x3 they were placed on or the typical scouting trick where farm foundations turned red when an enemy building or unit was in that explored area (farm scouting).
I think because of that they changed it and this video no longer works (trying to do this will automatically delete the farm when he starts building the wall).

Anyway, I would vouch for this mechanic to come back for a few reasons:

  • It would buff aggressive playstyles which are always require higher APM and are thrilling compared to fully walled games.

  • It would add a new skill ceiling and depth to quick walling, even if, I must admit, placing random farms might be weird.

  • Quickwalling is so overused nowadays, an ability to counter it would make it fairer

  • It is actually risky, and its a game of APM. if you are even able to do it and you do it too early, the quickwaller can rightclick spam on the most crucial quickwall to build the quickwall which would turn into an attack command that destroys the one HP farm causing -60 wood loss while still possibly being able to quick wall. Additionally, any stray arrows from archers or TC would instantly destroy the farm as well.

  • Placing a 3x3 is not easy and not always duable, quick wallers could wall the middle parts first and leave only 2 tile wide gaps to prevent farms being placed.

  • If the deathfarm (which is what I call this mechanic) is too strong, they could make it that farm foundations are immediately automatically targeted by military units within sight, currently you have to manually attack them.

I would propose it would be brought back temporarily and then based on community feedback this odd feature could stay or be reverted.

Why this comes to my mind now? Idk recently picked aoe2 up again and I remembered yesterday.

2 Likes
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You are a genius. But, farm foundations being an exception is nonsense. They should completely remove this mechanism, along with farm sniping.

In the situation you use this trick, you usually already have the upper hand. The defender needs a tool to counter, not getting stomped.

And you can counter spam click to reseed it. There is no chance he can build walls because he needs 2 key presses and a mouse click.

If you over emphasize this it’s turning into a tedious game.

3 Likes
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Well there is a difference, pros quickwall all the time and just because you have to do it, you don’t necessarily lose the game.

No no, the farm wouldnt exist anymore, there is nothing to reseed, like it gets destroyed when an archer shoots your 1 HP farm foundation at home

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It’s a bug, clearly.

I wouldn’t be against a mechanism to make quickwalling harder, but this is way TOO easy.

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True, I had wrong memories. Still I don’t think such gimmick needs to exist.

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I think quickwalling should not exist in the game. I don’t like it but it is very effective, so i use it almost every game.
my solution to this is:
All foundations should be walkable till 50% is built. Then villagers would stop building if sth would stand on the foundation. (like how they do now when they start).
Now it seems like villagers make a post “construction of that size” and enemy knights go, “we should respect that.” just stupid.

5 Likes
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Is it too easy too? As I said, the quickwaller could just quickwall early enough instead of playing it greedy. Besides he can quickwall so that the first walls only leave a 2 tile wide gap where the 3x3 farm wouldn’t fit.

It just punishes those that quickwall just in time because they didnt pay attenion earlier

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Well u seem not to get the point of quickwalling. Quicwalling is done couse you save resources not walling. and wall in time just when you need if you need and what you need. Well its strange to me that you can errect walls as you see enemy approach…

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In AoE3 buildings that are being constructed take more damage. Pretty simple solution and it makes sense.

This helps against quick walling, tower rushing and castle dropping.

3 Likes
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No i don’t agree it doesn’t solve the problem as villagers build buildings faster than units can damage them. Harassing units still cant fight vills this way, just mybe the player will need to put 2 vills to build a house instead of 1. Unless you mean an extreme bonus that units destroy buildings by *10 margin, but that is not a good solution i think as will affect to many other situations we don’t want to address.

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If the damage is 2x then you need 2x as many villagers making it 2x as hard, or requiring half as many units to destroy the building while under construction.

I forgot how big the bonus was in AoE3.

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But point is to prevent quickwalling as a source of instant protection for vills even if it will be a bit less efficient in your case.

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an alternative solution would be if buildings don’t block movement until their are a certain percentage build.

So you can walk over a 10% build house or palisade wall.

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I can see you didnt read my post, i can quote it for you:

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Oh I forgot about that one.

But yes I agree. But I think taking more damage is also a good idea.

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I am not 100% sure but i think it is done already to some extent by reduced armor on foundations. somebody correct me if i am wrong.