Outposts and palisades

I don’t see outposts used alot. By alot I mean more like… at all. People build walls, they build towers, and they never build outposts. Why is that? On top of that, palisades get weaker as the game goes on, and by the time castle (or even feudal age) rolls around, they have been completely subverted by stone walls.

I would like if outposts and palisades were built more often even into imperial age, and I would really like it if they actually had a reason to be built into imperial age. So, lets get into historical uses for wood.

  1. Battle palisade walls. This actually happened irl. The English and Welsh archers on the flanks drove pointed wooden stakes, or palings, into the ground at an angle to force cavalry to veer off. Check wikipedia. Battle of Agincourt.

So, with this, I am thinking this could be a castle age or even imperial age tech that allows your own units to pass over your palisade walls without colliding, but prevents enemy units from moving over the wall. Units already inside the wall during an alliance change can move outside of the wall. Researched at the university ofc.

  1. Palisade wall upgrades. They upgrade from 150 health to 250 health when you go from dark age to feudal. Why not give palisades another 100 health when you go to castle, and a final 150 health in imperial? That would give them a chunky 500 hp.

  2. Cheaper outposts… sort of. Outposts cost 5 stone, and that might be what is off putting for people. There would have to be a ton of matchups to see, but if outposts cost extra wood instead of 5 stone, people might build them more often. Perhaps 5 gold instead of 5 stone? Idk.

  3. Explosive outposts. We have the petard. We have the demo ship. Why can’t outposts have an explosive death? Right now, if you invest in outposts, the enemy has no disincentive to simply walk his troops up to your outpost and melee them to death. They are out alone, in the open, and will get repeatedly killed. Why can’t they have extra pierce armor and a gunpowder barrel sitting with a fuse that goes off when the structure is destroyed? It would at least force the enemy to bring proper seige equipment or archers to destroy the outpost from a safe distance instead of just wiping it out.

Outpost is used a lot in mid-high elo games. One of the things you do midgame is spamming outposts.

4 Likes

i see pros build outposts quite a bit.

because they aren’t meant to be a huge stop gap. they cost 2 wood each. they are meant to be replaced by stone walls later on.

3 Likes

I build outposts later on in the game. They’re pretty useful to check where your opponent is trying to expand their eco to.

Oh god i saw something horrible.
There is actually an unused tech in the games code that doubles the HP of palisades (gates) called “Revetments”. Lets pray to god it stay unused (also changes the graphics of palisades to those of the fortified ones)

That would be a pretty cool feudal age tech (at some reasonable cost) if maybe given to only a specific civ

Castle age rather, or Imp - Feudal is too early - except if it has more than 300 total cost - but if it would be available then in university - which is Castle - also it has no Icon, no Research Location, no real cost nothing.

Currently you can research it at the moveable map revealer, in 10 seconds for 10 wood

Maybe it could be just researched at the wall itself, like in AoM :slight_smile: then it can be a feudal tech that way

Do I see techs for training livestock?
These could be future civi ideas?

The true cost of outpost in the early game is not the stone or wood but the brave villager that goes out in the open to build it somewhere in the map. This often means a lot of idle time and risk for that villager.

If thats the case, why not remove the stone cost and call it good?

Because outposts still see plenty of use.

Outposts are already one of the best buildings in the game (if you don’t use them, you really should, they are great!). If they had no stone cost you could spam the whole map and essentially play with marco polo active. The small stone cost is there for balance but you don’t need to be stingy about that stone :slight_smile: