In another thread, someone said that in DE some mechanichs were made more simple in favor of agression. I’ve noticed that when a unit or building gets surrounded and attacked, it goes down much faster than in HD. Is that the case? This probably has been brought up like 3 years ago when the game was first released, so I’m sorry. Does mobbing have an attack multiplier or something like that?
HD melee units were all sorts of weird. With high pop, melee units became drastically less effective as they’d stutter constantly in battle.
That may cause DE buildings to fall a bit faster against similar units than the same building in HD, but that’s not the result of a new mechanic, it’s the result of melee units being un-nerfed by fixing tragically bad unit stutter.
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Are you sure building HP didn’t go down, or attack strength of units didn’t go up, or hits per minute didn’t increase in DE?
It feels like buildings are built quicker, and go down quicker, in DE. In particular, I think walls, castles, and towers were changed so they don’t help out as much as they did in HD or Conquerors, no?
Very specifically, Towers got a hit, and walls got an armor nerf. AFAIK the rest should be almost totally unchanged.
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HD plays with 1.5 speed as its standard, while DE plays with 1.7 speed multiplier, so everything feels a bit faster comparatively in DE. 
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Combine that with walls and towers getting nerfed… poor turtlers and defensive folks. Defenses crumble at seeming lightning speed now
I miss turtling 
Towers are useless past Feudal Age. We need a civ that has every tech available for towers except BBT, plus 1 or 2 attack per age as a team bonus for towers. I’ve never seen anyone building Keeps. i have a mod reskin for Keeps but had to use the scenario editor to check it out xD
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Yeah, by nature I’m a turtler. But all the AoE changes over the years, from defense nerfs, to offense buffs, to every AI being aggressive, has forced me to play aggressive. It’s too bad to be forced to play a way I don’t want to play.
Someone I team up with on occasion is still a turtler, and I’m constantly having to fast castle and build armies to protect BOTH of us and launch offensives at the same time, so we don’t get wiped out and to eventually gain the upper hand. Every game! We play 2v2 or 2v3 vs. AI. It’s so predictable.
While I’m battling wave after wave of army onslaughts for 10 minutes, he’s building like 20-30 towers surrounding his TC and not sending any armies my way to help. Usually, if it wasn’t for me, he’d get wiped out when they truly focus on him.
I don’t mind that he plays that way. I’m envious that he does that and can. I just wish I could do the same from time to time… but if I did, we’d lose or the game or it would become a 4 hour marathon because of the econ damage I’d take by incessant invasions. His skill level and speed is quite a bit less than me.
Oh, but there is handicap ability now in the lobby. I haven’t tried that much, but that should probably help our turtling plight a bit.
You should try it in Ranked, it’s almost impossible to turtle nowadays xD Sometimes i try it when i play Koreans and it works, turtling and making a ton of war wagons and halbs is a lot of fun for me. However the enemies usually gang up on my ally to counter my turtling lmao! Going 18 or 19 pop to feudal to make army as fast as possible isn’t as much fun for me, but yeah the game is definitely faster and more aggressive than it ever was.
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That’s not turtiing, that’s playing bad.
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No, it’s not. He’s building a turtle shell around his town, so to speak, where he then amasses an army. Even the Wiki says it:
If you’re going to say turtling means walling up or something, then that’s semantics. No need to be pedantic; I’m pretty sure you know what I meant. And to me, it’s turtling.
Also, before you judge too quickly, harshly, or deeply, just remember some people may have conditions where it can mean even if they’ve played 5,000+ hours of AoE over the years, their skills, speed, or abilities may not be as good as yours.
I feel your pain! Yeah, I hear ya… It’s too bad. I should write a book: The Lost Art of Turtling 
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To turtle successfully, you must become like the turtle. Have the enemy break on your walls like the sea on cliffs. Then smash them with an army when they least expect it.
- Darkness01101, The Lost Art of Turtling
What do you think of my Sun Tzu style quote? We could have a new custom campaign series like the Art of War. 
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Bravo! Bravo!
Good one, Conqueror753! 
I’ll have to get you to write the Forward for my book 
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You mean he’s mentally handicapped? No, I don’t want to insult people with actual disabilities. But I have to press my point: why did I say that building 30 towers is playing bad? because if you wait to have that amount of towers before you create an army, you’re going to lose. Of course, if the other player is really really bad, then your strategy will work.
I also didn’t mean that turtling is only walling up - I consider 30-tiles long walls to be a dreadful strategy.
Your comment/observation, essentially, plays into what we were saying. There was a time where it was a pretty viable strategy, I’m pretty sure, but the game now has nerfed defenses (or at least less robust, and increased offense) so it’s not as viable anymore. At least vs. AI. (Versus humans, maybe it was never a good thing; no idea.)
I know there are multiple AIs to choose from, including Classic … and Handicap modes are available… so the issue isn’t insurmountable. But as a defensive- or turtle-minded player, I wish defenses were more viable in thr base, vanilla game
how was 30 towers in your own base ever a viable strategy?
you are out 3000+ stone at this point. which your opponent can use to build 5 castles and take complete map control
I said ‘a viable strategy’ vs. ‘AI’. I never said it’s a strategy that you have or would employ.
A viable strategy is any strategy you can win with. And I’ve won plenty of games starting defensively – building towers, walls, castles (i.e., gauntlets) for AI to try and stream through where they’d get nailed most every time. And, yes, without walls or castles, too – but lots of towers. Personally, I enjoyed doing this. A nice turtle shell to let me do my thing for a while; sometimes a long while.
Enemy castles are pretty much meaningless once you have trebs and bombard cannons, and a ton of other supporting units you’ve amassed. Playing on Giant map helps get you some periodic peace and quiet, too.
You play AoE how you want to play, and I’ll play how I want to play. Everyone should feel free to do the same, as that’s the beauty of AoE with its veritable RTS sandbox. There are more strategies that exist than just your favorite meta or what you see in tournaments.
The recent convo has been been about turtling. And one of the drawbacks of turtling is, yeah, you don’t get map control for a while. Doesn’t mean it’s not a perfectly viable strategy for many people in years past, or even at times today. I just contend it’s harder nowadays with vanilla AoE2:DE. Evidently, you clearly feel the same
And believe it or not, there was a time when players just played the game to have fun, using whatever skills, ideas, or strategies they had and wanted to try. They didn’t visit forums to hear everyone’s ‘meta’, didn’t watch gameplay vids of masters, didn’t play ranked, and didn’t play with a stressful mad attack, attack, attack fest to finish the match in 20 minutes flat. Personally, even though I’m pretty much forced to go into attack mode early nowadays, my more natural playstyle is to chill out a while building my econ (sans treaty). Gets harder to do, bit by bit, as time goes on and the game gets updates, though, since the predominant belief (and possible reality) is the vast majority wants to just do offense.
ah i missed the ‘vs AI’ bit, sorry.
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I feel you. I too usually dwelve into these thoughts about a golden age of humanity. In the year 2000, there were some things that didn’t exist yet: Youtube, and the ELO score. So maybe we remember those times as of innocence. However, humans were already humans - you get what I’m saying? There were, without doubt, player who felt the need to win at all costs.
I have the most fun when I do what you described at the end of the paragraph:" a stressful mad attack, attack, attack fest to finish the match in 20 minutes flat". Hey, maybe I’m dumb and can’t manage large numbers, and that’s why I want the match to not have more than 50 units in total.
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That’s fair, and yeah, it was probably a golden age in some respects Even if just from a nostalgic sense.
You’re not dumb. Today, we also maybe have a shortage of time. More things vying for our time, and traffic much worse so making trips to work or stores longer. So, there are benefits to quick games, in addition to it just funner or easier to manage for some.
I like to speed up my games sometimes with the 4x, 8x, 16x cheat (or whatever it is). That’s what I do for quicker games. I’m just not a fan of skewing the game to favor offense more and more and diminish defense. That’s not how I, personally, want faster games