well, you are right. However, as pointed out already, the building time for a castle doesn’t need to change if you are close to your base, so you can still build as many castles as you want. It should change when you drop a castle far away from your base or in enemy territory, it makes no historical sense and the game’s gameplay could become a bit varied. At some pointe AoE2 was called the Age of Buildings for a reason
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Couldn’t unfinished buildings (or at least certain buildings) be made less resistant? That way foundations can’t be thrown at will to control territory. But as quickwalling seems to be a contentious issue, with probably deeper game balance implications, at least something should be done about castle drops. Higher building times for faraway castles would be a gameplay improvement as far as I’m concerned.
I would still personally prefer less resistance for all unfinished buildings, as it would be more coherent and address all disproportionate building efficiency. I guess nerfing quickwalling would affect gameplay balance, but that’s because gameplay balance shouldn’t have been built around quickwalling from the start. The farther we go in that direction, the harder it is to come back. But maybe it’s already too late.
Also, whether a unit or strategy (for example, castle drops) can possibly be countered isn’t all that matters. The 500 food militia that destroys buildings in one hit can be countered but it wouldn’t be a great addition to the game. The question is the relative difficulty of making castle drops compared with other strategies and how it affects its frequency in the game.
I don’t agree with increased build time. IT GOES AGAINST THE NATURE OF THIS GAME. Imagine that I’m tired of archer rushes in feudal and I make a thread asking the devs to do something about that. Like, give archers only 1 range in feudal. IT WOULD BE STUPID and users would point out that it’s me who has to improve.
But you did exactly that in another thread. You wanted a “panic button” to press when you wanted to have fun, and wanted to nerf certain civs.
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I was joking. I mean, I would still like to see some aid to dumb players like me, but everything I proposed is too gimmicky and out of place.
Oh, it was a joke? I literally couldn’t tell. I’m glad you don’t expect the game to change too much to accommodate your skill level.
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I must have some literary talent if I can pass ridiculous things as serious.
Quite the opposite… The nature of this game is the concept of slowly and organic growing up of your civilisation from a couple of vils to an empire.
From this perspective, castle drop is an aberration.
I think building rate decay depending of the distance of an own TC could be a very nice addition.
Nomad civs could have bonuses linked to this mechanic.
You can make defensive castles a little easy build if the decay is wisely balance, making UUs easy to spam.
Of course, I also think some kind of trash siege, or proto-siege could be a good addition, from Feudal onwards, to compensate. I think a push should be finished by siege, not by castle drop.
The Roman Empire didn’t build forts inside of Rome. They placed them in the frontiers to push invaders away. A castle drop is the same concept.
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Yes, but frontiers is not a castle in the oponents face…
Okay, I’ll stop being unreasonable for a while. Increased build time sounds like something I too would profit from, because I don’t like castle drops either. On the other hand, consider the backlash that it would generate from the vast majority of players who, like me, believe that territory or territory-linked mechanics have no place in AOE2. They will start comparing it to AOE3 and it’s 3-Fort limit, and that will be the begginning of the end.
These kind of suggestion nice on paper, but it result in every game goes to 3TC economy boom vs 3TC economy boom because it benefits building castle just in your base and none of castle age unit can take down castle effectively.
Also some game can be unnecessarily prolonged because you have to move your treb/seige all the way across map. Given that slow move speed of seige it will give very unnecessary step to end game. Instead, you can build forward castle and treb down enemy’s building much faster as is.
That could be whole lot of change and I don’t think that can be implemented.
Castle in castle age is already nearly impossible to take down before imperial age. Now castle can be both offensively/defensively use and you propose nerfing offensive use of castle. Then most of the game need to go imperial age.
I think Castle age seige, especially basic ram need to be buffed more to take down castle (or giving capped ram to every civ in castle age). That change itself can nerf castle drop that dropped caslte can be take down before going imperial age.
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I don’t know if this is considered off-topic, but I made a mod where, among other things, I set the castle build time to over triple what it is now and set it up so each player gets 1 castle. I also gave castles less hp. This was my attempt to limit the castle dropping and a reliance on buildings for map control. I find it gives games some interesting flavor because the position of the 1 castle really matters and the long build time usually forces it to be built close to the building player’s base otherwise a lot of eco is lost. Castle dropping can still be done, but it allows plenty of time for detection by the defending player and countering. This makes it critical that the dropping player has map control of the drop area with their units. I’ve played several games and it seems to achieve the desired outcome. Anyways its a least a data point for how this possible solution would play out.
Nice work, however, I wanna remain castle strategies (dropping, forwarding, UU) and be easier to deal with CD that eat TC and farms. It may be good to be a small nerf (a little bit long building time).
Another way, how about cutting castle arrows with stone walls (like hussite wagon).
- “Stone walls can protect buildings and units within 3 tiles from castle arrows (not other attacks)”
They will be broken shortly, but can get some time to hold.
Here is my idea. How about a mechanic whereby the further you build a castle from your TC the slower the build time gets? It could simulate how you have to bring the resources from further away to build it.
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Yes it’s comical. You have to strike a builder several times with a sword to kill him. Not only that but also if you
Fail to kill him he can still go back to work and build just as efficiently as before… with all his wounds he just received from the knights sword. 
Yet the castle goes up immediately and as soon as it’s up the volley of arrows from within kills anything near it instantly.
The way a lot of games address this is by making it so that you can’t build in a place where fighting is taking place. So if units are fighting nearby it should deny the ability to build to villagers.
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I reconsidered the problem, then I found castle drop is too strong when the castle drops near the opponent TC. TC & farms lost is too big to reboom.
CD costs 920 (650 + 270 (with 6 vils forwarding))
5 militaly buildings lost costs 875
1 TC & 8 farms lost costs 855
2 TC lost costs 750
2 TC & 8 farms lost costs 1230
So in this video, he could win this game because first CD did’t eat his economy.
In the T90’s video “The Most Annoying Strategy? The Castle Drop”(can’t post the URL), he couldn’t win because first CD eat his economy directly (and he failed to deal with conqs).
In conclusion, let’s build something within 10 tiles around your TC in order to prevent the opponent from dropping a castle near your eco.
I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think increased building times away from town make sense. In those messy games where opponents kind of exchange places, how would the game treat building times? And maybe more importantly, how would players be able to quickly and intuitively assess it? I think it runs the risk of AoE becoming a territory based game, which I don’t want.
The idea of limiting building where fighting takes place seems interesting, as long as it also prevents building once foundations have been dropped.