Im not against having a variety of strat at all. But the problem comes when it’s the main and predictable strat. In an Arena game, at the elo of 1k-1.5k, I can almost guarantee you that someone will be building a forward castle on someone. I ALMOST always happen in every game. Soooo rare to not see a castle go down.
Yes I can defend against a castle drop. Have been doing so. But my point is that it sort of takes away the standard play of the game a bit.
The forward TC does not happen in castle age. It sounds like you have never played vs people in rank, especially in a nomad map. This is where it’s prevalent. What happens is they delete their TC in dark age, and rebuild it right at your TC. With the extra HP, they will win that little TC war. And you are forced to play some wacky game or run. It’s just dumb. Why encourage this type of game play?
And lastly, even with this new tech tree, I still see the TC ###### from Persian players. So yea. I don’t think you play rank, do you?
This thread feels like someone didn’t play AoE2 but claims they did.
Wall has been nerfed, Tower has been nerfed, Koreans’ extra range bonus becomes a castle age tech, Sicilians’ fast castle building bonus has been nerfed, and many other civs bonus are also nerfed, as other already mentioned.
Even if you didn’t play it, watch video/streaming/tournament, and everyone would tell you that those cheesing/forward strategies all come with a big risk as they all sacrifice eco.
Seriously if the topic is like “Persian TC need a nerf” or “Castle drop need to be nerfed”, maybe more people agree with you.
This reminds me of the discussion about Skirmisher:
Skirmishers don’t throw infinite Javelins and somehow hit harder to archers, but they represent the concept in history: lightly armed and mobile troopers who harass enemy formations, including archers.
In real life, they used bows, crossbows, javelins, etc. But the bows & xbows have been given to the archer-line, so they have javelins, a one-handed weapon that also allows them to hold a light shield - just like they did in history, and also represents the concept of pole weapons being cheap and common.
It’s all about concept.
You also can’t light a house with a sword but the tech Arson suggests they’re actually setting fires (AoE3&4 did a better job by giving units an alternative attack method of throwing touches). Sappers suggests the villagers digging under the building to cause it to collapse, The Murder hole icon shows the defenders of castle/tower dropping rocks, and go on.
The two solid example was Persian tc drop and castle drop. I guess you didn’t read much of what I wrote and jumped to conclusion there. To say “This thread feels like someone didn’t play AoE2 but claims they did.” is nothing but an insult. Try adding something meaningful, useful to the conversation.
Palisade wall is made with 3 logs, 1 tree can provide 100 such logs to build 33 walls. It can stop around 100 normal arrows which is good enough.
British elite longbowmen were trained for many years and they were using one of the most powerful bows. The castle arrows are much more stronger than longbow arrows so they can’t be fired by normal bows. There must be some kind of heavy shooting equipment that can destroy dry wall.
Honestly tho, how do you define what is “standard” and what is “non-standard”?
Castle drop is pretty standard to me tbh
Douching is pretty valid in Nomad as well.
I am assuming the OP wants armies to fight armies, or raid villagers/buildings with units. Not using buildings as aggressive weapons instead.
Exactly. I thought the word “standard” is pretty standard for rts players. Cheesing is a non standard way of winning.
Nah every rts is different 
(I still remember the days when human tower rush was the norm in war3)
I agree about the Castle dropping, it’s an extremely degenerate strat, at least tower rushing requires a fair amount of micro skill to pull off well.
Especially at under 1200 ELO that sort of rehearsed cheese is rife… recent monk nerf against villagers only made things worse.
Arena in general is a battle of wits and nerves.
More like a battle of castle dropping in front of the closest gate from my experience.
It is actually a matter of reading your opponent’s game. Even if you know that that is their plan, there are more specifics to it, and viable counter moves. Many a Castle drop has been allowed, contained and eventually pushed back. It is not only monk civilizations that do this well. Others have been countered. The hardest issue with arena is that some civilizations hard counter others harder than on other maps.
If you agree castle drop is a poor way to play the game, what do you think of the Persian TC drop? I mean I can teach a noob who has never played AOE 2 before in a few hours or day to pull it off and has the potential to beat someone who has been playing playing for years.
The only logic I can think of why they made the game this way is to make it more “fun” and accessible to newbies. Players just coming in with no skills and experience of the game but can rely on these tactics to win.
Again, I don’t mind games having cheesy tactics. All RTS games have it, but it should scale accordingly. some of these tactics is just too strong, too predominant in certain maps.
4v4 Arena team random = castle drop, I almost want to say I guarantee it.
Every RTS is different for sure. But in WC3, human tower rush was a lot more appropriate for the skill level required and more easier to defend against.
DE did no changes to support or improve any of these. If anything towering has been nerfed to the ground in DE.
Either you didn’t play multiplayer Aoe 2 before DE or forgot how crazy strong the tower rushes in voobly were. Old school Tower rushes in legacy Arabia were a nightmare, DE balanced it out very well by decreasing tower hp and increasing villager bonus against towers.
This has been around from AOK times. You can’t compare irl things with a game. Irl you also dont see a guy hammering a foundation and building rising up suddenly after a few seconds. Damage done by castles to walls is kept this way to have strategic variety in closed maps. Otherwise any closed map game turns into a boom fest.
Castle drop isn’t a low level tactic. If you watch Warlords 2 or some other S-tier event, the best players in the world do these strategies. Collecting stone for a castle delays up time for castle age and you have the ability to stop it with light cav. So many games where people even as high as Daut fail to finish their forward castle and lose the game. So its neither broken nor a low elo mechanic.
It is skill based. When to drop the castle, where to drop, how to follow up after the castle drop - whether do uu and break in, make a mangonel behind and go imp, gather stone for a follow up castle. These are all non-trivial decisions.
Dropping a castle atleast needs a build adaptation. Doing the stone walls and just doing a plain boom is very low skill.
TC drops in TG is cheesy and probably should be discouraged. Like more build time in dark age comparable to Cuman feudal tc or increasing build time. But castle drops and tower rushes are legit strategies. They’re neither cheesy nor broken.
Ideally this should just be low hp and 0 armor instead of negative. But the effect would be the same vs all civs except saracens.
Evidently your comprehension skills are lacking, so let me explain more clearly for you. I wasn’t saying forward Persian TCs in castle age are a thing right now. I was saying nerfing the d00sh in dark/feudal age would be enough to stop the strategy. Persian TCs would then just be there as a way to take neutral or forward golds with a bit more protection than a typical civ’s TC. It was a hypothetical point, i.e. “This is what would happen if they nerfed it”, not “This is what’s happening right now on the ranked ladder”.
If they’re not cheesy nor broken, why do almost all Arena games have some sort of castle drop? Similarly in nomad. Explain that one. And suffice to say about Persian TC drop. That’s soo lame that it’s the only civ with higher TC hp, hence, encouraging TC drops.
"Castle drop isn’t a low level tactic. If you watch Warlords 2 or some other S-tier event, the best players in the world do these strategies. Collecting stone for a castle delays up time for castle age and you have the ability to stop it with light cav. So many games where people even as high as Daut fail to finish their forward castle and lose the game. So its neither broken nor a low elo mechanic."
It’s a low floor high ceiling thing. Any noob can do it, and it’s quite effective. As for walling stone walling and booming, there are siege that can break through. At least ideally speaking, they should have encourage that sort of play.
DE did no changes to support or improve any of these. If anything towering has been nerfed to the ground in DE.
Either you didn’t play multiplayer Aoe 2 before DE or forgot how crazy strong the tower rushes in voobly were. Old school Tower rushes in legacy Arabia were a nightmare, DE balanced it out very well by decreasing tower hp and increasing villager bonus against towers.
My main focus is the TC drop and castle drop. Why are we steering the focus away from those topics? Tower is a form of cheese, however, I don’t see it as overly effective for its skill level compared to the other two.
Maybe if you articulate and communicate better, we can have an understanding. No where in your last post did you say nerfing the d00sh would be enough to stop it. You did say that since the Persian got a new tech, we should be expecting to see it less. This is wrong. They still d00sh
So I don’t know why you brought up the castle age thing. It’s completely irrelevant. The point is, Persian d00sh in dark age is such a low ceiling play that can work against better players. Or at least cripple one of their better players long enough so your teammates can finish them off. It doesn’t add up.
Persians TC ###### is known to be a losing strategy, it’s confusing to read from you that it is “effective”. You can also easily predict / scout it. And if you do so, just drop some foundations on spots where a TC could be drop to prevent your opponent from reaching yours. You could say that it’s easily breakable with villagers, then just move your villagers and start a fight. Your TC would be running you would have more villagers regardless the dark age TC work speed from Persians. No matter how bad one can be at villagers fight, as long as you find out the timing to scout it, you would almost never get damaged and certainly not losing.