Revival of the tower rush (seriously?)

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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I just wanted to state, the sicilian donjon rush is even more broken than tower rushes were before the nerf. And it was nerfed for a reason. Why you bring back a mechanic you tried so hard to remove from the game? It makes no sense.

You don’t need villagers to build the towers. You get a (almost) free production building right next to the enemy base. Which one builds units which can defend the towers from the only things that threatens them: siege and melee units. And lastly: First Crusade gives you up to 50 free of these strong serjeants.

Don’t get me wrong. Serjeants aren’t OP by any means. They are actually the best balanced thing in the Expansion. They can be a really good front line unit in your composition. Unfortunately Sivilians don’t have a good variety of backline units. They get good scorps, but they have no good synergy with the donjons.

Also their bonus of reducing incoming bonus damage is somehow useless because they get neither good cav nor archery. These are the type of units which would benefit from the bonus. The bonus is really nice, but somehow useless because you can’t really play around it.

So, in my eyes: Nerf the donjon rush but make the civ more balanced, give them more options.

My opinion:
Donjons don’t fire arrows on their own, but cost 25 stone less and have +25 % hp.
They fire arrows if villagers or archers are garrisoned inside, but only according to their dps, not more.
This will balance the donjon rush, because you need to bring archers along to make the donjons fire. These archers can also complement the serjeant, which is a great frontline + raiding unit. The donjons can also work as healing platforms for damaged archers and serjeants.
Donjons could still be used very efficient as a defensive structure because of garrisoned villagers can fire arrows + they can produce their own defence against siege.

Then first crusade: Just give 5 Serjeants to each town center, castle and donjon. This would balance it somehow. Still an insane powerspike, but because Sicilians don’t have a strong eco bonus or discount, this is also a much needed powerspike. 10 to each TC is for sure OP, but 5 to each of these Structs is somehow balanced, because it takes some time to build this up, it also supplements the donjon play instead of enforcing it. And because it needs more time to build this up, the opponent can expect and preemptively react to it, going for more military which also helps against the donjon play.

Ultimately i’d like to give sicilians hussars, just to make it more viable to play around their cavalry and their reduced bonus damage. Of course this will make their trash comp very strong, but not stronger than other trash civs like byzantines, magyars, koreans or persians.

To the burgundians I have nothing to say, they are just OP atm.

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I don’t know if First Crusade is so broken… It is almost impossible to do a Donjon rush and build 5 TCS early in the same match. If your plan it is boom and use First Crusade you will can not do a feudal Rush… You will have to put several vils in stone to afford donjons+5 Tcs + Castle.
The thing I don’t like about this UT is that cost the same with one or five TC’s. It should cost proportionally depending on the how many TC’s do you have. Like Spies tech. Same for Flemish revolution.

And Donjon idea, idk, I like it has attack, but if not, I think it would be better that serjeant garrisoned could fire arrows too.

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Based on the title: It would be great if we see the revival of the tower rush.
Based on your post: The current new civs are greatly OP. That is the selling point from the devs. They will probably be nerfed hard in the next patches. Until then we have to deal with the new OP civs.

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Donjon rush sucks quite hard right now just because no one figured yet a build order that includes all 4 ressources.

It is. Just don’t donjon rush at all and spam TCs. Maybe not a go to Arabia strat but defo an Arena one.

So far I didn’t have trouble dealing with them. Especially when ur a scrub like me, your opponents will be scrubs too and be lost figuring out how to use those weird bonuses 11

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Try this: FC, stall the game, build 5 tcs - first crusade - donjon rush OR boom (because the serjeants buy you so much time).

Thats the game atm. Not that it is OP, but it’s the strongest you can pull off with sicilians. Sicilians aren’t an OP civ atm, but a one trick pony.

It all depends on that you are able to defend well until you get that powerspike, so it’s more like a 50/50 strat and sets your opponent on a timer, if he can’t damage you enough till that, he’s done.

And this is for sure not a playstyle you want to have in a game like this, I think. Or does anyone here like this every time he plays or faces sicilans?

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Donjons are easier to take down than Towers, and Feudal Sarjeants are weaker than M@A, while also being more expensive.

As an Inca Tower Rusher, I can tell you that Donjons are much better on the defensive than as a Tower Rush.
200 Stone is too much for a Trush.

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If you know that, then you have to push it hard in castle age, like play against Goths, Cumans, Franks or Britons in Arena…

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Tower rushes were never broken just annoying lol

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Tbh once first crusade will be nerfed (or reworked but I feel like it’s asking too much 11) if they don’t nerf the anti bonus damage people will defo try mangos that don’t get one shot by other mangos, or cavaliers that are as halb resistants as catas 11. This civ can’t be a one trick bonus with such an immense bonus affecting all its military units.

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I use “broken” for “not op, but reduces the game to one simle task: beat this and win, or don’t and lose”.
What stands it for in your opinion?

They have no strong options to make any good use of this, because their power units will still be worse than any other civs best featured power units. It doesn’t matter if your cavaliers don’t take that much bonus damage if they die to goth champs, almost all cav civs cav and almost all inf civs inf and almost all archer civs archers.
This would be ok, if they had hussar, but they don’t. And on their less than average archers the bonus also doesn’t matter atm.
That’s the point. Try to play around this, I don’t think this is a good strat atm. They need at least hussar to make it viable.

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That is every game in the history of games.
Games really are a “beat this or lose” type of scenarios.

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In my eyes aoe2 is so famous because of the many skirmishes you fight, trying to predict what your opponent is going for and try to trick him in bad decisions.
It is also a nice balance between micro and macro. Tower rush just breaks all of this.
Not because there is only one engangement or mechanic which decides the whole game, this is broken. Why even playing a whole 30 minute game, if all what matters is decided in 1 minute of gameplay? And that’s what happens if there is a tower or donjon rush like it is atm.

That’s why I propose to take away the arrow firing from the donjon if there are no ranged units (vils) garrisoned. This would take away the immediate game decider property of the donjon rush and bring it to more skirmish play, also allowing to make more counter attack, because you don’t have to react immediately with all your ressources and attention.
The donjon is still a very usefull production + garrisoning building, even if there are no units garrisoned to fire arrows and you don’t have to bring vills forward to build it right in front the opponent base. Of course they should be a bit cheaper then, but it would actually fit the donjon rush into the great skirmish + mental game that is aoe2.

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But Donjons are just an Unique Tower, that is actually easier to take down than normal, because of the bigger base.

Donjons are not problematic at all, and if they have no auto-attack, then Sicilians have no Towers.

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Donjon is just trash in early game, it’s good in the lategame only. It is only good holding vs a single tower

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Of course it could work defencively just as a bigger tower, just offensive donjon rush would be completely different.

I don’t say they are too strong, but the donjon rush is just a step back, after they nerfed the tower rush for good reason formerly. And I don’t understand why the devs did that.

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Well to me it feels like every strategy can be described as such in some way, even the non game ending ones.

Unless this civ is say, Magyars, you probs either have better cav or better archers. So if you’re against Franks make arbs to abuse the fact their skirms are bad, if you are against Ethiopian make cavalier and laugh at their halbs.

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There is no such thing, it is too expensive, and the Serjeants will die to M@A in Feudal, and Knights or Crossbows in Castle.

Donjon is just too expensive to properly Trush with it.

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Try the strat I announced earlier in this thread. It is definetely an insane Trush with the first crusade. I’ve already played this, if you pull this off, it’s unstoppable. Of course you need to survive till that, but the 5 tcs + castle help a lot to survive ;).

Maybe if they nerf first crusade it won’t be that broken anymore, but the donjon rush if played properly, is very potent.

I haven’t played it from feudal, because I also think it’s not the best strat in feudal - the feudal serjeant is so bad. But the later the game goes, the more potent it becomes actually, because of the good scaling of both serjeant and donjon.

Also, if you take away the arrows from donjons, the feudal serjeant can be a bit stronger than it is atm, so it actually can beat maa 1v1. Maybe I should have added this in my first post.

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the main advantage of the donjon is actually that it produces arrow resistant m@a. so it is actually vastly cheaper than a m@a + trush(-75w, -100f-50g along with the saved vil time)… so yes it might lose eventually to enough towers, but at the same time you’re producing huskarls that can either kill the opposing twrs or their vils… and because the donjon is bigger than a tower, your vils can repair it from safety unless the opponent builds their tower closer, but if they build their tower closer you can shoot the builders…

its really really not bad, just different

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2 archers and serjeants are useless

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