Raiding is too strong, please nerf it or give better tools to protect the eco

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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For several months I witnessed a steady decline in direct military standoffs. Instead the game becomes more and more a race for raiding opportunities and often military just passes each other on the way to the opponent base but doesn’t fight at all.
This needs to stop. Raiding is way too powerful and the last really tool against it, walls have been nerfed constantly. So no wonder we see players more and more opting to just directly kill the opponents eco instead of battleing for the military initiative. If any, the initiative comes from timings and tech upgrades like x-bow, but rarely from favourable military engagements anymore.

There are several ways to bring the game back to a decent strategic balance, so that words like “push”, “engagement” and “greed” don’t abandon in oblivion in the near future.

A) Nerf raiding directly. Make some techs like Loom also for feudal, castle and Imperial age. Mostly just increasing the Vills HP a bit, but also maybe their speed by just 10 % (in imp). If a feudal age Vill just has 10-20 HP more archers couldn’t get favorable “trades” by just picking of vills when under skirmfire anymore. Raiding exposed vills would still be a strong move, but at least some kind of stupid game mechanic interaction like this would be stopped.

Especially in imp hussar raids are just too strong atm. you didn’t fought 45 minutes for map control to get raided to death in 3 minutes. That’s bs. Yes hussar raids are one of the ways a game can and should end, but they shouldn’t be as dominating as they are currently. Ofc lategame trash wars can sometimes become a grind, but that’s far better than the alternative of an equal game ending in only a few seconds often just because one of the players was lucky by finding the right raiding spots and the other just was unlucky. That’s not how such a game should end. We didn’t strategically neutralized for 45 + minutes to have the game decided by pure luck who found the better spots to raid.

B) Buff the counter units. If the counters would be more effective in at least fearing away the raiding untis, at least opting for raiding would be a bit less tempting, as it would pose more risk for the valueable gold units to opt for it. Then we hopefully see more reaction to the opponent counters and trying to first get rid of them before just killing vills. My proposal would be to slightly increase the spead of the spear line and either the ROF of skirms or their bonus damage vs archers (maybe in exchange of losing 1 PA). With slightly improved counter units it would be easier to scare away the raiders and force the opponent to care about how to counter the counters instead of just looking for a different angle (or even continue raiding while under skirm fire).

C) Add affordable defensive structures. Towers and TCs are too expensive currently for their protection potential. Towers can only garrison 5 vills which is just not enough to eg protect a mining camp in the midgame. TCs are overall too expensive to be placed for every 15 vills to garrison, So a lot of your eco is naturally exposed. Especially when the woodlines are chopped away. Both towers and TCs also take too long to build to be rushed, they only can be placed preemtively.
One way around this would be some kind of “light” wooden tower with lower range that only fires arrows when vills are garrisoned and is build considerably faster than the current tower line. You would still need to react in time or preemtively build them at your ressources, but they wouldn’t be a waste of the valueable stone anymore and could be up fast enought before the raiding party arrives - if you react fast enough. It would be a quite big investment then but at least you wouldn’t immediately die from a single hussar party hitting the right spots if you manage to react properly. And if you fail to rush these wooden towers, you would still die, so the important basic action => counteraction balancing of strategy would be restored. Cause currently there is basically no counterplay to hussar raids, as the halb switch is way too slow. Either you already have the halbs and where you need them or you die.

It’s a strategy game and currently the strategic balance on open maps isn’t given anymore. Raids have become way too powerful. This makes gameplay repetitive, boring and matches ending way too fast before you have even enjoy the whole strategic depth of the game with many games alreade ending in feudal or castle age because of the dominance of raids in the current gamrplay. Raids are a part and a very important part of the Strategy, but they mustn’t be the all dominating part of the game.

I like to play a military rts game not a kill as many vills that can’t defend themselves game. It’s mentally disturbing to play like this.
I want to fight my opponent eye to eye again. I’m not chicken and I don’t want my opponent to play like chicken either.

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I disagree that raiding is not strategic (blind raiding wont work - see the lyx vs daniel second game), but I guess you find raiding to be not fun, which is whatever.

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I know the feeling, that is why I mostly play Europe Diplomacy or other scenarios. The base game is incredibly boring with meta rushing.

I’ve only played about 100 rank games just so I don’t come across as a total noob when joining a game. When I’m seen in a lobby.

Rushing is already very powerful, yet players want to buff it even more.

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Ofc is raiding part of the strategic variety of the game. But it’s only a part of it, not everything. At least it should be.
But it’s currently way too strong and decides too many games way too fast.

I’m fine that raiding is in the game because it often is also one of the last options for a comeback. I just think that the main focus should be on military engagements instead of raiding parties passing each other in the middle of the map.

And yes I’ve also seen some of the kotd qualifiers and in many situations I saw exactly that. Instead of players fighting each other, they opted to pass and go directly for the eco. That’s not what Age should be about. I want to fight the opponent military and get the advantage by going eye to eye. Not by slashing unprotected and defensless villagers. That’s just too chicken.

Totally agree. It’s a strategy game. Please let it be a strategy game and no “Rush and Raid ftw” game. This game has this great diversity of gameplay to it’s disposal but dwindles down to pure raiding feasts more and more. Raiding is good and it’s important, but it’s not everything. The main focus should be on the military standoffs and strategic decisions during the match.

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You forgot:
D) DE Arabia

You’re very accurate with your analysis, people tend to raid and counterattack rather than invest into a single army to push with an interact with another army. Game has become a booming-fest with mass-TCs and accordingly mass raids.

Playing on a map with tiny woodlines give you an inevitable win-condition to just wood starve your opponent, at the past on AOC Arabia woodlines had 100+ trees, it took one Castle to secure both a Gold mine and a compact dense rich woodline.
These days woodlines have half the amount.

You genuinely try to fix the problem, however you’re ignoring the main issue- the new map we have for 2 years, sadly I dont see it being changed any time soon, developers are too stubborn about their precious baby Arabia.

#Bring back AOC Arabia

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So play Arena or Black Forest

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Honestly… I do see a point. But this kinda is how the game was designed to make mobility in the imperial age worth it.
I don’t think introducing loom^2 and loom^3 in castle/imp will be an issue.
Spanish vils with 110 HP and 10 pierce armor? Sign me up!

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Well I think just like +10-15 HP per age is enough. Don’t think it needs extra armor.
And spanish and incas possibly could lose the last (two) upgrade(s) in exchange for their bonusses.

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Other ways could be to increase the max garrison capacity of TCs by 5 each age, or something like that, and maybe let resource camps garrison up to five villagers. The light tower idea seems like it could create some problems. Even if it is really weak, people will probably still do like a 10 vil rush and build like 20 towers everywhere and other really unintended strats. Buffing stonewalls could be a way to improve hussar raids in the lategame. Either decrease the cost (because I think most people would rather have a castle) and/or let foot units be garrisoned on the walls for better defense. Of course then the game could devolve into a slow grind, so maybe only do one of those, preferably the second. Another pretty radical change could be to have the market slowly recover from price rates over time. This would allow gold units to be more affordable in the lategame, might encourage people to stone wall more, and would also probably toss up the meta on some other maps like islands. It shouldn’t recover all the way, maybe every time it drops 20 resources that sets the new maximum recovery rate. For example, say you could sell 100 food to get 100 gold. You do this once. The rate will slowly go back up to 100/100. If you did it twice however, you would now have less than a 100/80 rate, so it can recovery to 80 max. Maybe have 30 the minimum. I know those aren’t realistic values, but they demonstrate a point. Those are just some other ideas.

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Yeah I agree. The hard cap of available gold on the map is actually something that hurts the lategame a lot.
I think it would indeed be better if there were more “slower” ressources of gold instead so there would be a slow but steady gold value increase rather than a hard switch from lategame to trash war.
Would make lategame way more interesting imo.

It would also be interesting if this was combined with map control. Like every “neutral” gold contains one “inifinite” mine that slowly regenerates it’s gold, like to a amount about 2-3 vills could mine from there. This would be interesting to fight about these golds, it would also make the midgame more interesting, if getting map control would be more revarding also for the long run.

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Walling nerfs come the wrong way in my opinion. The shouldn’t pubish normal walling but instead should punish Quick walling.

Being raided isn’t fun and walls are the tool against it. Making walling harder just makes playing more frustrating.

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Maybe revert the walling nerfs, but give walls something like -10/-5 armor if they are under 33% built.

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Or possibly a way to buff relic generation rates. Like a tech called “Holy Pilgrimage” or something, and it makes relics generate 50% faster. That could of course spiral out of control when one player grabs 80% of the maps relics, but it could be another way of doing it. An infinite gold mine could be interesting, maybe a mountain or something and it generate both stone and gold and lasts forever? Only a few on each map though.

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Trading raiding parties happens for one simple reason: you don’t always meet the enemy army when on your way to their base so you end up being too far away to bring your troops back to defend. So it’s better to try and damage them so that they don’t get ahead of you, and the reverse is true for them. As long as raiding is worth anything this will happen.

Of course you’re saying that the walling nerf is going to kill defensive play, but really switching to KotD arabia will do more to nerf it than the recent nerfs. I made some testing, and houses are still quite surdy, but it will make it so that one house can’t keep SIX scouts out forever as long as one villager repairs it, and that you will need to use two vills to repair against m@a rather than just one.

Onto the rest:
A) Let’s put aside the fact wheelbarrow and handcart already increase villager speed, in feudal villagers can already help fighting against scouts and weakened m@a, +idk in what world wasting archers for some villager picks is worth it, since, you know, archer play is all about keeping as many of them alive.
Then in castle and imp you unlock more way to counter the opponent anyway.

B) Spears are already strong enough that one is enough to scare away a group of 3 scouts and skirms beat archers both cost and pop efficiently

C) Okay defensive towers are kinda bad. But TCs are often plenty to block enemy agression, and thx goodness you can’t just pop defensive buildings instantly, last seconds buildings that can block whole armies even in castle age or sometimes imp (quick gates in front of trebs can be game winning) is already too much. Also castles in your base and stone walls are a good counter to hussar raids. Hussars also cost more tha villagers so 10 hussars killing 10 vills isn’t even a good trade. Heck if there was no counterplay to hussar spam then hussar/light cav quality would almost not matter since light cav have the same attack as hussar.

You also argue with the assumption that agression makes up for lack of defenses completely, but actually defenses also benefit agressive players a ton. Your army is out of position? No big deal, just plop down a bunch of houses or markets when they try to counter attack you. More expensive palissades will also make it harder to sustain agression and wall behind.

Time to add a trigger warning for most campaigns in the game ig then.

I would be satisfied too if they made it so that 4 sticks on the ground couldn’t block a whole fleeing army, force to funnel feudal agression into the TC or block an archer army forever, but I have the feeling that the OP wouldn’t like it either.

Uh that would buff map control tremendously, and map control is easier to achieve through having an army that can go out of your base than through turtling. So you would end up being disappointed by the result.

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Maybe that’s actually what we want?
Make it more revarding to fight for map control?
(But at the same time raiding needs to be nerfed caus it’s just too strong currently)

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I mean the general tone of this thread is that raiding beats anything else, so who cares about having a castle or a siege workshop in their face. Also wait you want to buff gold income after writing all these posts about how trash is bad?

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I never said that it’s the only viable strat. But in the current balance of the general strategic choices you have in the game it is just too strong.
That’s what the thread is about, and a concern since this is a general development in the last few years that raiding has become stronger and stronger, that in the near future it will be the all dominating strategy.

Imo it is already way too strong. I want to fight army, not vills.

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I agree. Walls are close to being too weak to use Full Walling on open maps with the new nerf, if they’re not too weak already. The upcoming House armor nerf and recent M@A buffs are much, much better directions to keeping the strength of walling, while still giving the aggressive player opportunities to fight back against greedy walling. For it may be that weaker Houses become a viable target for melee rushes in a Pop Blocking tactic. Or maybe the M@A/Tower rush, which is the natural counter to Full Wall FC since before DE, comes back into the meta by compensating lower tower HP with better M@A.

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I cant think of a single rts where raiding an enemy eco isn’t a supremely effective tactic

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That’s positivism. And actually not true.
I always liked the game because it was generally balanced so nicely, a lot of different strats which all were viable (at least if you chose to go for them in the right situations).

That’s what made Age2 such a great game imo.

Are you really trying to argue that raiding has to be the all dominating strat in this game? Isn’t that boring to just pass enemy army and go directly for eco, try to kill as much defenseless vills as possible?
It’s ok that it’s a part of the game, at least to have a comeback chance.

But a lot of games just being basically “raid trades” is just weird. That’s not what I expect from a medieval military rts. For me it’s about fighting opponent strategy and army for the most part. And adapt my own comp and strategic choices. Not just rush-raid ftw.
That’s not strategy, that’s repetitive automatism. And disturbing. It’s questioning my mental health.

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