Is network of castles too op?

As many people may not know, it literarlly adds the attack speed for any units, including seige for 50%.
So basically English’s army is unbeatable under the aura in the late game.
I do see viper’s English lost to China, but I believe the basic strategy for Viper is not correct.
In the late game, it is not ideal to use horseman to counter ranged units and seige. Instead, building handcannoners and springalds seems to be a solution.

If dev still wants to keep this OP aura, please at least make the area smaller

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Ah yes, of course you know more about basic strategy than the greatest Age of Empires player ever. English springalds get destroyed by Chinese clocktower bombards so that just doesn’t work. Viper did make a bunch of handcannoners but they got owned by grenadiers/nest of bees.

Network of castles is very strong, but it is only 25% attack speed. You have to upgrade it to Network of Citadels at a keep or one of the keep landmarks in order to get the 50% attack speed buff.

It can be argued that the 50% increase may be a bit too much or that maybe it should cost more to upgrade but frankly every civ has something pretty broken going for them so I’m not sure this is too unbalanced.

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I disagree with this. Springalds under aura may occupy more pop but at least its cost efficient for clocktower bombard. Bombard can’t one shot springald after siege work upgrade. From cost point of view, 1 bombard = 2 springalds, where springalds will win if both are the same resource.

And I think viper main mistake is to build too many longbows, which cost most valuable resources – wood, and build too many horsemen which are useless.

But also, we are talking about if network of castles is too op. This is just a special case for English vs Chinese. In general, I felt this is too op and I saw few people ever mentioned that, and many people even dont know how english siege is broken

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Not saying he played a perfect game, but longbows are the only thing that does well vs grenadiers and the horsemen were an attempt to get rid of the clocktower bombards since nest of bees were slaughtering the men at arms. ML had 14k gold so cost isn’t especially relevant. I’m pretty sure clocktower bombards beat springalds head to head and if you make too many springalds then grenadiers stomp your army. A bit of a catch 22.

Overall, yes, network of citadels is crazy strong. Maybe if it becomes too much of a problem they could change it so that siege is no longer affected by the bonus

I miss mongol Yam speed buff. Maybe that should get a castle/imperial upgrade so return its lingering effect.

English Networks makes Mongol Network look bad in comparison. xD

Are you aware that English has bombard that is also buffed by Network of castles?

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100 units under Castle Network after Age III => Attack like 150 units…

Nothing else to say, it’s way too strong. +25% is already strong enough.

Network of Citadell needs to be change into something else (like increased radius of the aura, more HP for keep, + armor for units under keep, or something like that), it’s crazy strong right now.

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I think network of castles is fine.

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It’s broken as hell, no one without siege can cost and pop effectively beat an English army under network of castle. With sieges, as English sieges are also buffed by network of castle, it’s broken even further

They certainly can nerf Yam Network. I don’t see why they can’t nerf Network of Castles.

Well at least when it comes to effecting siege.

Yam dosnt work on mongol siege.

NoC shouldnt work on english siege.

Ever tried going against a 2v2 combo of mongol+english? Kurultai+NoC on english Trebs turn them into meatgrinding machines on chokepoints. (thats 25% more damage and 25% faster fire rate)

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I do think it’s a bit too powerful - 50% attack speed is not a thing that should be universal. One could argue that the English army is basic without it, but then you remember that outposts can provide it and thus its always active. Its meant to be a defensive tool, why does the aura radius cover two times the screen?!

If the devs restrict it to TC’s and castles, and also exclude siege, I’ll find a way to deal that 50% attack speed. As is, its just another thing to abuse in the future.

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