Okay, I tend to be a very defensive player, but even by my standards, I may have gone a bit overboard with the defenses of my main base in this match! Some of it is at least partially aesthetic, mostly to cover up where the diagonal walls look a bit wonky (i.e. where the horizontal ones join up with the turrets that serve as pivots; there’s a gap there), but this is also an experiment with alternating between keeps and bombard towers. Keeps for firing speed, bombard towers for extra damage.
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A tower rush is an offensive strategy. So you had to do this by your enemy. Then yes, it is a tower rush. Now? No, it isnt.
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I suspected as much but wasn’t sure. Thanks for the clarification!
Is there a special term yet for this kind of hyper-defensive style?
I would dub this Roleplay Turtling where the emphasis (as you say) focuses on being aesthetically pleasing rather than being an effective use of resources.
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Yeah, this is just a form of turtling. If this is your final base and that is all, then it is just to be annoying. This doesnt seems like a good strategy for multiplayer games. So building this kind of bases is pretty much roleplaying or for aesthetics. So Roleplay Turtling seems fitting for this way to play the game.
Note: My post might sound negative, but if you enjoy to play the game this way, than that is totally fine! This game is pretty versatile in how you can play it. There is no wrong way to play the game. There is nothing wrong with just wanna to roleplay turtling. If you enjoy being focused on aesthetics, then that is great! Many scenario creators are also focused on aesthetics and they also do a great job!
Well, I at least try to strike a good balance between aesthetics and “effective use of resources,” my ultimate goal being a strategy that maximizes both, if such a thing even exists, which I hope to find out through the kind of experimentation I’ve been doing lately.
It’s not the entirety of my base, just the “hub” or “lifeline,” as I like to call it. It’s what I would fall back on if everything else was destroyed and I found myself in survival mode, which is why I tried to equip it with everything I would need to at least forestall destruction and eventually regenerate. I have another town center surrounded by farms and a couple of civilian buildings as well as about a dozen castles, two of which are completely surrounded by military buildings, so I can churn out units quickly.
I’m not sure where the “Roleplay” comes in, at least not uniquely, since the whole game is just generally a role-playing exercise (you’re either the king, local lord, or “guiding spirit” of a medieval civilization), but I definitely think “Turtling” is apt!
At least for now, I have no aspirations of playing online against human players. As it stands, I’m pretty sure I rely on the game-pausing function of the F3 button far too much to be viable in that regard. It was a real watershed when I realized I could still issue orders while the game was paused. I quickly came to depend on it for issuing multiple orders all at once as far as the in-game timer is concerned, thus giving me a fighting chance to overcome my below-average dexterity and reflexes.
Turtling, but you’d never see it in ladder since it’s highly uneffective
I’m assuming “ladder” refers to some sort of multiplayer ranking or tournament (the L in this ELO I keep hearing about, perhaps?).
Turtling may be really ineffective against human players, but it seems to work reasonably well against the moderate AI, since I’ve gotten to the point where I’m starting to consistently beat it, though my habit of setting up a generous 90-minute initial peace treaty and building an army that’s about twice as large as either of my opponents’ likely has more to do with that than my intense fortifications.
Still, I won’t deny that it’s particularly fun watching enemy trash units, or even fairly tank-y ones like paladins, get easily slaughtered by the towers that line my walls, at least until the AI figures out that it needs some serious siege equipment if it hopes to make a dent.
In my head, I sometimes refer to my style as a “slow burn.” My tendency is to have an extended period of pure economic build-up, followed by a binge on walls and towers, immediately followed by if not partially overlapping with an equally rapid binge on military units. Then, I ward off whatever attacks may come and, during a sufficient lull in enemy offensives, I take my turn on offense, almost always with at least 10 siege units and one squad of 30 paladins and 30 HCAs (or conquistadors in the latter’s stead, if I’m Spanish). If the enemy is being particularly stubborn, I might double up on that troop contingent.
Once I get sufficiently confident with current settings, my attention will soon turn to gradually reducing the length of the initial peace treaty and/or trying a game against the “hard” AI. Maybe either of those challenges will finally force me to break my turtling habit, or maybe I’ll find a way to adapt it somehow. Who knows?
The best way to abandon a defensive style is trying to be ultraoffensive. I learned this way by doing my first drush (attacking with militia in dark age).
To help with the terminology: an X rush is typically any strategy where you attack using X as fast as possible. So a knight rush means doing a fast castle (which means going up to castle age as quickly as possible, it confusingly enough does not mean getting a castle up as soon as possible) and then immediately producing knights out of usually two stables to start with, sending them forward as soon as you make them. If you stayed in feudal age for a minute or two to make scouts for early pressure it’s no longer a real knight rush. Then you would just call it a scouts into knights build or something like that. So to execute a “proper” tower rush you basically need to time your feudal age research, your stone mining and your villagers going forward in such a way that you can drop a tower on the other guy’s berries, gold or woodline as soon as you get to the feudal age, and that you can preferably make a second tower immediately afterwards so they can cover each other.
Now, in practice the terminology is not always that precise. When you build towers offensively later in feudal or castle age you could still call it a tower rush, even though it technically would be more accurate to call that towering or tower dropping without the rush aspect. In general the “as fast as possible” aspect of a rush is also a bit of a conversation starter. A drush/dark age rush/militia rush is still called a drush if you build two lumber camps and a mill before you make a barracks and produce militia, even though people have come up with workable builds to delay the mill and one of the lumber camps and get the militia out even faster without too much damage to their own economy. But you usually should at least be trying to be fast, if getting X out fast is not some sort of a high priority it’s not really an X rush.
The ladder just refers to the multiplayer ranking.
Elo is your rating. You write it is Elo. It is not abbreviation. It is called after creator of this rating system. Mr. Elo.
If you like playing the game that way, then that is totally fine. Just keep playing this awesome game 
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This would probably be the layout I use for my farms, if food price was 50x more expensive than stone on the market. But in regular circumstances, I fear this defense is a bit overkill…
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Seems great for a roleplay game.
Seems trash for a competitive game.
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I’m not sure who you were asking, but if you were asking me, there are several reasons why I would never build anything like that.
First, two many buildings are directly adjacent to each other. My rule is that buildings can touch diagonally (i.e. share a corner), but there must otherwise be at least one grid square’s width between them. This is to ensure that my villagers and troops can move about freely. The only exceptions are farms, which can be immediately adjacent to anything, and towers, which can be immediately adjacent to walls but nothing else.
Second, that farm layout seems really inefficient. Another rule I use is that every farm should be at least diagonally if not immediately adjacent to either a TC or a mill.
Third, I would never put three towers right next to each other. That would be pointless even by my standards.
Fourth, the inner walls and towers seem completely pointless. The only thing they seem to be defending is the castle and the monastery, one of which is quite good at defending itself and the other of which is among the least vital buildings, relatively speaking. I’m not saying I never put tower-lined walls around a castle or monastery, but when I do, they’re just two among many other, often more crucial buildings contained within the fortifications.
Fifth, while I get the efficiency argument in its favor, I could never bring myself to use other buildings as part of a wall, like you seem to do here with the inner towers It’s just too aesthetically jarring and, I think, unrealistic.
Finally, I’m quickly becoming less of a fan of perfect squares. They just look too artificial. My goal in town design is to achieve at least some semblance of historical realism. I don’t meticulously look for a recorded precedent for everything I do, but I aim for something that looks plausible at least at first glance. Granted, the regular hexagons and octagons I’ve been using lately are likely too perfect as well, but it’s less obvious, especially with protruding gatehouses adding a bit more of a meander to the town outline, even if they are symmetrically placed.
That was probably much more than you were asking for, and alot of the strategic stuff was likely already obvious, but for whatever it’s worth, there it is.
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I think this is the Roleplay Turtle Deluxe Edition with a free plush Teutonic Knight toy.
No offense intended to anyone or how you decide to play if it works for you.
The point is that you will not see (and you do not see) this kind of building placement at high competitive levels, which is totally fine. However walling and castle placement is of course very important.
For example, whilst taking the time to place these buildings and mining a lot of stone, a skilled opponent will take map control, boom to imperial and be trebbing it down with an accompanying force of units before you finish the design. That is if you haven’t already lost to the drush, archer, scout, tower rush etc.
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This is the most important part of your post and i totally agree. Dont get fooled and get pushed in a certain play style that you dont like.
- If you like to role play, then that is totally fine.
- If you like to build town for aesthetics, then that is totally fine.
- If you like to play competitive online games, then that is totally fine.
- If you like another play style, then that is totally fine.
The only worse way to play the game is to play the game in a way you dont like.
HealFortress seems to me a player that like to build bases for role playing purposes. If that is the way he likes to play this game, then he really needs to continu playing that way. If this was meant as example for a base in competitive games, then i have my doubts about the usefullness of this build. I dont think it will be a strong base. All you gold, stones and wood are unprotected. It is much better to build your TCs so they protect these resources. That is why you will never see this kind of bases in competitive play.
The farms when fully upgraded are at maximum efficiency(they hit the farm gather capacity limit easily) - the towers are bombard towers - the outer walls beyond the farms and the bombard towers beyond the farms are not usual and are part of my map Fortified Regicide Diplomacy.(can be found by searching Xanthene Regicide Diplomacy since they’re in the same pack) The farms, inner walls and inner bbt’s+monestaries are the usual part - houses are 1 tile away from the farms to reduce bumping and to a degree are part of the wall, as are the bbt’s by denying siege towers.
(Tho I do sometimes add the walls normally, not usually - it might become practice in the much later game)
I do build my bases for roleplaying purposes - but I also build them for functionality that works in ranked play.
As for tcs’s to protect other resources in regular ranked - I do build them - the first 4 tcs are defensive farm tcs that add further functionality to the castle while further tcs would be added nearby alongside any further if needed castles to keep needed resources - as for forward camps, those do exist from time to time.
I was asking you - thanks for responding, I enjoyed reading
Depends - the initial stone is enough for the initial castle, surrounding tcs+additional tc camps and then the build switches to gold/farm focus as soon as the wood is around 1k stable - the castle is important for numerous reasons defensively - can also build a few pre-emptive petards -x2 dmg on foundations(so I’m told) - to deny castle drops (1 petard per 25% of build on a non-byzantine castle, so 2-4 would be good to keep handy)