This could be addressed by enforcing a build restriction in treaty mode, where new layers can only be built beyond a certain distance so that wall layers can’t be built too close together. And the fort walls being mentioned above are the big, bulky fort walls in the campaigns, and those can be attacked by any units.
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That Blue one is Treaty Goals 
The main problem is full shooting through walls. I seggest:
- Make a small percentage of misses (or reduced damage) when shooting through to the “wooden” wall.
- Make a impossible shooting through to the “stone” walls for infantry and cavalry. Artillery will shoot with misses (or reduced damage).
- Crossbowmen and other troops with bows and throwing weapons - leave as is.
This would be a massive change that isn’t anywhere else in AOE. Even in AOE4, units merely shoot over walls and do reduced damage, they don’t miss. While it would add to the realism factor, it would degrade the game design, as walls already block movement and melee attacks; requiring siege to attack any units on the other side would make walls substantially stronger and add to the extant problem of turtling being too strong. In AOE3, there is no accuracy; all shots are 100% accurate, with some units having firelock, guaranteeing a hit even if the unit moves out of range, and some not. The only units that can miss are mortars, and even that may have changed with the recent mortar changes (I haven’t tested this yet). Adding accuracy mechanics to AOE3 would change the game massively and would necessitate looking at other areas where that isn’t realistic (historically, muskets were notoriously inaccurate); it wouldn’t be a good change.
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Where did I say this??? It’s just about the walls and some realism! Let there be damage reduction. Pay attention, you missed the fact that dev’s added a accuracy miss mechanic of shooting to ships!
HAHAHAHAHHAA, they don’t build walls… they build the fundation for empire state.
It would be reasonable if walls absorbed ~10% of the damage going through them. Shooting through allied walls could reduce damage by 10% but not actually damage the wall.
1 Like
This is absolutely insane ( I hate this). But the hypothetical rework could avoid a situiation like this (for example with a wall limit).
Honestly, I see a enemy walled like this and I leave the game xd.
C’est comme éplucher un oignon couche après ####### #### le sel des larmes 
maintenant je réalise que je parle encore de bouffe 
Make Imperial Mortar Upgrade that give it a secondary projectile against wall that deal 500 against building but x10 against wall in 20 area of effect range. Additionally for civilization like India they will get Mortar from Consulate.
Something like this is disgusting
Another rework that I can think is make the wall segment free, and the pillar cost resources. Destroying or deleting pillar automatically destroy its connected wall segment. Pillar has build radius limit just like Torp or Tribal Marketplace, so no pillar can be made close to each others
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while interesting from a mod perspective i feel it is too much of a change of gameplay, it will push the balance in ways that can probably only be negative and will increase the complexity for walls a lot.
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Gosh, imagine if gunpowder units couldn’t shoot through walls (like in the old RTS Cossacks!) - that would change a lot!
Archer units could shoot over and Mortars would be the only artillery to be able to lob shells over (would be realistic, though in reality that perk comes with the downside that they were infact the shortest range artillery!)
I’d also take a damage reduction or a miss mechanic though all would take something to implement and would change things massively.
Being able to build both wooden and stone walls would be great still though
6 Likes
I don’t like the idea of reducing the damage dealt when shooting through walls or restricting the ability to do so for some units. I definitely agree that there needs to be some way to prevent people from easily spamming walls like in some of the screenshots posted. I think having wooden and stone walls as separate structures with different costs and HP would certainly be a step in the right direction.
@AnaWinters Good luck sieging this without mortars
I certainly agree with the Wooden/Stone divide.
Stone should take far longer to construct with the obvious benefit that it is way more durable (with a much bigger cost to convey that). It should be a real time investment.
If your enemy is building stone walls quickly, it should mean that they have an awful lot of villagers working on them at once (inefficient) and not spending the resources on their army. Currently they are too cheap and quick to build so constructing line upon line of walls doesn’t dent your economy as much as it really should.
Wooden walls should be the ‘go-to’ defensive wall - cheap enough and quick to put up but no where as resilient.
By allowing the player a choice, you may decide to have your Town Center and close buildings contained in a relatively small, but just about affordable stone wall and then surround your frontiers with the faster-to-contruct wooden pallisades.
3 Likes
I disagree, having two types of walls doesn’t make sense from a historical or gameplay perspective.
You can’t really strike a balance between expensive walls and cheap walls because you can always just spam 2 or 3 cheap walls in place of an expensive one. People will just make whatever option is most viable or looks coolest.
Early cheap walls is also never going to have a good balance. Either they will be too weak to protect the spread out resources in the game (all it takes is one breakthrough to render an entire wall useless) or it will be too strong and favour toxic FF and FI strategies.
The grid of buildings is also full for most Europeans so I’m not sure where to fit a second wall type anyways.
From a historical perspective, stone walls were rapidly becoming obsolete in this era. They were replaced by advanced earthworks, angled bastions, and trenches which could actually hold up to cannons.
There is a place for some big stone walls for some select civs, but overall one wall type is fine for everyone else. Malta (half the country is a fortress) and China (Chinese walls were extremely thick and made of rammed earth so they held up well against artillery) would have a strong case for getting a 3rd tier upgrade to their walls, maybe even giving them functionality like AoE4 walls.
Absolutely - I am aware of this though I’m just using stone walls as a catch-all term for strong walls in general. Most ‘permanent walls’, i.e fortress walls were fairly squat and brickwork (which covers the various European fortresses right up to the Victorian age). Unfortunately what ever happens, the Stone walls we have already are unlikely to change graphically (I’ve personally always hated their look as they are 100% medieval!)
Speaking from a Supremacy perspective, even in a 4v4 setup, there is a cost to taking the time and focus to lay down multiple layers of walls efficiently. It becomes much worse when you have multiple layers with damage in different places that you have to keep on top of repairing to keep the opponents from seeping through. I consider this enough of a burden to balance the lower cost of our hypothetical weak walls. Space is also an issue with the stupid onion strategy showcased earlier in this thread. Treaty might be a different story, especially 40 min, ### I’ve never played treaty, so I can’t really offer any suggestions there.
I’m more than willing to sacrifice some historical accuracy for the sake of what I consider an definite improvement in gameplay. We might as well keep the two wall types as they’ve been since 2007 and just separate them into two different buildable structures. I’m sure resizing the individual icons on the building grid a bit would easily solve the problem.
I’m not understanding what you think would be improved here. It sounds like you only want the stronger version and would be annoyed by a weak version of walls. What would be the benefit of splitting it into 2 types if you say one is too tedious to use?
Some ideas.
Make them similar to AoE2’s walls, except that the size of each wall’s parts becomes circular.
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Makes each part of wall similar to a pillar and cost 1 wood.
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Click on a place and drag the cursor to build a wall. The longer the drag, the longer the wall and use more parts.
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When these parts are connected in a straight line, their looks become a wall instead of several pillars.
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If you like, you can choose a part in the wall and click a button on its UI to switch its look back to pillar.
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When the part of a wall is attacked and the HP drops to 0, the part will collapse, and will cause some additional damage to nearby parts when it collapses. If those nearby parts also lose HP due to the AOE of the artillery attack, the additional damages may have a chain reaction. In this way, the wall will appear to have been bombarded with a breach, instead of disappearing altogether.
About the gate.
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Still possible to have a button on the UI of parts which in a long enough wall.
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After clicking the button, a gate image will appear on the place in the wall closest to the cursor, and adjust its position on the wall as the cursor moves.
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Choose a favorite place in the wall, click and turn there into a gate.
About the different types.
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Palisades for all civs by default. They are made of wood or bamboo, short and fragile, but quickly buildable.
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Each row of palisade can be upgraded individually into a row of wall by spending a short time and some resouces (depending on how many parts in it). Walls may be made of hard logs, or may be brick.
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Each row of wall can be upgraded individually into a row of fortified wall by spending a longer time and some resouces (depending on how many parts in it). Fortified walls are stone or rammed earth.
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The Bastion technology makes the upgrade from existing palisades to walls instant and free (but not upgrade them), and makes the default changed to walls instead of starting from palisades.
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Introduced Fortified Bastion tech after Bastion. It makes the upgrade from existing walls to fortified walls instant and free (but not upgrade them), and makes the default changed to fortified walls instead of starting from walls.
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Walls take longer to build than palisades, and fortified walls take even longer.
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Some civs may not have fortified walls and Fortified Bastion, and the Lakota can not have even walls and Bastion.