Because it reduces the area your counter units need to cover. And its cheaper then an army.
Yeah, wall up and boom… Then the opponent breaks in and idles your whole eco, because surprise: Vills with some more HP still get wrecked by raiding units… You have the choice of letting them get wrecked or be idled by the opponent as he then completely free through your eco… Just doesn’t work.
The area your counter units need to cover is the area of your eco, not the area of your walls…
Note that my proposal doesn’t changes anything about how good any units work against other units, so the only difference is IF opponent units get into your eco (then your walls don’t help) THEN the counters work better as they have more time, as it takes longer to kill villagers.
And you try to make an argument out of it that this would lead to even more walls… It’s getting absurd here.
Its like if you produce ladders that aren’t long enough to get on the roofs of the most commonly built buildings you say: “It makes no sense to make the ladders longer, then people will start building higher roofs!”
Besides that you actually contradict yourself:
You try to make an argument by implying you won’t need to make army but then you just assume you would still have the same amount of counter units when you boom more… You can’t have both.
But you actually only know this if you play the game…
It’s easy to wall and boom. Because vils are harder to kill, they can easily rewall behind against most early pressure. The harder to kill factor also means they will likely be covered by defensive buildings by the time they are likely to be raided.
It’s true that this makes containment play easier. But also forwarding.
Both are plays that actually play for like 95 % of people on the ladder only a minor role currently.
They are highly technical and need a lot of experience to be pulled of reliantly.
The thing is IF you want to make an arena like boom game out of it, why would you get an additional loom-like tech that costs you ressources and TC idle time? I mean in arena you often don’t even get loom because of that. The opponent could just make only a few archers that cost less than your investment in defensive techs and walls, idle some of your vills in the process and safely boom without getting these techs or walls.
So it actually only opens your opponent the opportunity to beat you in booming while even have the scouting information and initative… Looks like a pretty poor play under these circumstances to me.
But it actually could lead to more forward plays, as the forwarder would like to get this tech and actually forces you to get it aswell and he would have an initial timing advantage with it.
By lowering the amount of space you can get in you dont need as much army to cover your base.
If you have 10 units but an open base youre much more suspectible to raiding then if you have 10 units and walled off.
And by giving your villagers more health, you give yourseld more time to respond, which means more villagers are going to survive and a greater eco overall. You will literally never get rid of wallling or make it not meta.
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If every post on this thread was as well put together as this one, there would not be those needless discussions.
Just one minor thing to point out:
Depending on the opening, this isn’t true. Nearly every game i see starts with maa/archers, so there is your second building already. Yeah, you could argue that the player going 2 stable kts will open scouts, but even then, he will need to add some skirms in later feudal play or die to archer+few spears. I hardly ever see games without ranges.
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Walls actually increase the space of the base. Directly and indirectly, without walls you can set up your base way more efficient.
That’s absolute nonsense. You can’t change the countering mechanics with your base setup, you can only make it easier for your slower counters to get in position (or opposite restrict the movement of your opponent. As I explained above the margin between “not enough” counters and “too much” is actually quite slim. If you don’t hit it right any layout of your “base” doesn’t helps anyways in regard how much counters you need to make.
So you just assume walls are “for free” and come with no tradeoff? What about expansion - as we are talking about
I mean you literally switch forth and back here endlessly. Besides none of your arguments makes really sense individually, they explicitely contradict themselves as they are describing totally different games.
I don’t even know how to respond to this anymore, cause it actually makes zero sense regarding real game situations. You can’t try put these things together like frankensteins monster but neglecting all the different timings and preconditions when they actually realistically occur.
When they are engaged… yes… like 2-3 more hits from castle age units… That isn’t enough to miraculously make the amount of counter units needed. And that’s your argument that you then would need less counter units… Time isn’t equal to time if it is 4-10 seconds vs 1 minute to make the military you need.
Currently with the bad counters that often aren’t capable of doing their “job” under realistic circumstances as raiding is so insanely strong i agree.
And I exactly try to tackle the problem by the roots, Make raiding less strong and / or counters more effective in their job and you are less encouraged to defend with walls as the intended counters work as intended again.
Most defensively minded players actually don’t like walling themselves. It just currently is a necessity as the counter play just doesn’t works the way it needs to be reliable on.
And yes with villagers with more HP you can actually (and maybe will even prefer cause of various soft factors) not walling but rely on your counter units instead. And it’s still not that easy as then you would need to be way more precise with the amount of positioning of your counters (that is where your walls come into play - they allow you to get in position to defend by buying you a few crucial seconds. The same could also be achieved by your vills just taking a bit longer to be taken down - you still need to react before the raid comes in btw).
Which is too late already actually. If you only react when you are already raided it is too late to respond. You need to respond before that. Extra HP on Vills won’t really change that. Maybe some more vills would survive, but the damage is heavy nevertheless. The extra HP would help if you are capable in responding and dragging the vills away before the raid comes in, so you either can already be close enough with your counters or pull the Vills away towards your TCs and lose less vills in that process (still the same idle time btw).
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to get this tech if you play wall-heavy (except forwards ofc). Cause if you have the walls you already have enough time to respond. That extra tech wouldn’t add much time to react in comparison to the walls, and if you are too slow to react if your walls are hit… You have way bigger problems actually and I doubt that a bit more HP on your Vills can solve these…
While i kinda like the idea, there is a huge caveat: It will make vills even more resistant to counter units in particular. So overmaking them would be even more of a problem than now, as its wasted res.
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That’s absolutely true. That’s one of the reasons i only wanted to add more hp, not make them faster or give extra armor or even attack…
But I also think this plays only a very minor role here, overmade counters are bad for various other reasons mostly just because of the economy aspect. Counters are just not designed to be good raiding units and they are already terrible in it. From terrible to ultra terrible is not that much of a step down here.
Edit: An example for the tech:
Tanning
Villagers have +20 HP
Feudal age tech in the Town center, 60-75 secs, 50 Gold (+50 Food).
Adding and producing on the said tc is not the same thing at all.
they are one of the strongest but also one of the most expensive, it’s quite hard to get. halb however is very easy to get.
Yeah, you really need to explain what kind of stat buffs you are thinking about and what the techs are like, or people will assume it’s like a supremacy grade hp buff, which isn’t remotely balanced.
I don’t quite understand why some people here say that Pikmen vs Knight doesn’t work. One on one, the Knight wins. But it ends up badly hurt, so it’s not cost-efective for the Knight. It costs many more resources, in Food and Gold, for Christ sake.
If you pitch 2 Pikes vs. 1 Knight, guess what: the Knight dies, and the two Pikes survive. A point has been made about movility. Well, there is a unit that counters Knights and is as fast as them: the Camel. But it costs Gold. Are you going to take the lead of the original poster and start complaining about the Gold cost of Camels and keep saying that the big bad Knights are hurting you?
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Unless i missed things, this thread has nothing to do with camels or gold. I think OP assumes he is in castle age with a non-turc non-camel civ against a good knight civ.
He assumes that is castle age gold is not limiting and feels that pikes are not cost effective enough against knights, unless his civ has a great eco bonus or great pikes bonus.
He feels that against a 1 TC full knights push he needs a 1 TC full pikes defense, so he is not getting any eco advantage while using the soft-counter unit.
I think pikes are fine and 2 pikes (50w, 70f) are cheaper and stronger than a knight (60f, 75g), but he thinks otherwise, at least when playing against a knight civ.
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Why would anyone do that? That doesn’t make any sense unless you fell behind a lot in feudal age.
Why would anyone do what ??
- Go 1 TC knights ? Because as a knight civ, you may want to utilize your earlier age up or better eco to finish of opponent. Or you may be behind and feel that you cannot afford a 2nd TC. And maybe you were full scouts in age 2 and feel it is too costly to add skirm. I am pretty sure this is a valid strategy in many situations. If you don’t think so, please explain why.
- Go 1 TC full pikes ? Because you and behind in eco and need to defend against 1 TC knights. Maybe you dont think monks can help you out due to lacking gold. And maybe your opponent prevent you from walling. And most importantly: that is the whole point of this thread ! The OP feels he has no other choice against 1 TC knights ! Because he thinks pikes are not cost effective enough… Maybe it sounds weird to you because you think that you can go 2 TCs pikes against 1 TC knights, but if you think so you have to convice the OP that it works…
you don’t add right away, early Castle age it’s hard to add, sure. After 5-8 min, you likely have 15-20 Knights, 15 or so on Gold and maybe 20 ish on wood. You have more than enough to keep 2 Stable production, and a bunch of extra food from the extra vills u made that are likely making extra farms. Unless you are LITERALLY spamming Siege, you will be able to squeeze the 275w needed for the TC. The stone cost is irrelevant as u start with 200.
yep, thanks for explaining more clearly, perhaps we should add also that MOST Knight civs have some form of eco bonus to support the all-in Knight flood (Magyars: extra attack - saved resources, Berbers, cheap Knights, saved resources, Franks, faster Castle age - earlier coming flood, Lithuanians, 150 extra food and relics = more attack for free etc.)
I feel 1 TC, say 2 Barracks play should defeat 1 TC Knights + 1-2 Scorpions. I’m willing to extend the argument to 3 Barracks to account for mistakes the same way how in theory 1 Archery Range Skirms counters 2 Ranges Crossbows in theory IF you waste 0 Skirms. But the problem is that Knights build mass faster and I don’t think mixing 2 Scorpions for 200w of Workshop + 300 resources of 2 Scorpions should create such an overwhelming advantage where you can’t defend anymore with full Pike (mixing units IF you plan to boom/already added TCs is not an option, you are doing 3 Barracks Pikes + boom so you can’t tech transition into anything to counter the Scorpions).
Normally if you plan to boom, you do 1 range Crossbow (I’m assuming Archer civ here) and do like 8-10 Crossbows. Making more IF you plan to boom just doesn’t make sense. Booming generally involves making counter units
I admit if you boom, at some point you add 1-2 TCs. The defender looks like: 3 Barracks early, 1 TC relatively early, additional production buildings (Siege, Monks) and TCs potentially later. The attacker looks like: 2 Stable Knights, relatively early Siege Workshop with 2-3 Scorpions as soon as he sees Pikes play. It just so happens that early raiding and Knights inevitably sneaking by + the potential that 15 Knights + 3 Scorpions have in mid-Castle age of beating… basically any army is hard to counter even if you make the COUNTER UNITS.
A non-exhaustive list of problems in this defensive style is:
- Pike transition is hard
- Pike is a unit that lives and dies by their mass vs Knights play, you need to reach a critical mass to threaten Knights
- mobility aspect of Knights always being able to do damage/idle eco even against the counter units
- Scorpion transition is easy but anti-scorpion transition is hard/impossible (only reasonable counter to Scorpions is Knights and Mangonels and Mangonels will get sniped most likely by the Knights just running in.
In calling Pikeman bad, I mostly compare to how a similar transition into Skirms looks vs Crossbows. It FULLY shuts Crossbow play down.
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So, you add economy quite late, your opponent which is doing pikemen and instant 3tc will have already taking like 15 vills advantage.
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See this kind of stuff is why its so hard to take you seriously. No kts player would send 20 on wood intentionaly. For you, the kts player can always afford everything and has an enormous amount of vills, while a pike/siege push doesn’t work because there isnt enough wood…
Its also funny how you count pretty much any bonus as an eco bonus, which somehow ONLY the kts civ have…oh no, in fact, EVERY civ has bonuses and if you count Magyars free upgrades you have to count britons faster shepherds and cheaper TCs as well…its almost as if this game is about making the best with the bonuses a civ has…
As i said before: You are actually not that far off the reality. There is a problem with pikes, mostly that tons of stuff counters them incredibly hard, and that they cant catch the only unit they are good against. But making completly ridicolous, exagerated claims (combined with the fact you are a smurf…) just means people do not take you serious.
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but 15 vills doesn’t matter that much, they need to be working for 5-10 min unharassed for you to translate that into actual army advantage.
Knights civs time ago got a lot of love cuz “in crossbow meta Knights NEEDED love”. Also because Knights delays your Imp timing and you can’t compete as a KTs civ vs Arbalest powerspike, for that reason you can’t compete with Castle Age Knights.
I like Franks as much as the next guy and do NOT think they are OP cuz of TGs (who cares about those when the game is 1v1), but you can’t deny that Franks until minute 18, between berry bonus, farm tech upgrade, free bloodlines maybe save like 600-800 resources, now compare that to your average Archer civ, Britons, from faster Sheep gathering they get an extra like maybe 70f until min 18.
This again cuz “Knights are so weak and Crossbow OP” (a statement which I don’t disagree with, but Crossbow is OP cuz of timings, as a unit stand alone it atually has a lot of drawbacks).
This thread has to do with Gold since people started complaining about losing 35 Food when a Pikeman dies. That’s why I wanted to prove that the Knight wastes the Gold invested in it.
Moderators, please lock this loony-house of a thread. It spawned because the original poster was hurt about losing, is obsessed with opponents who use a certain type of unit, and is attracting similar people who just won’t listen.
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