I think what you mean is that castle drop & ###### have too high reward/skill ratio (in low ELO)
Which probably is true, but I don’t really see how you can resolve it without heavily altering the meta.
As a mid-high (2k+) player, I don’t really want walls to be buffed further (some games are literally Arena in Arabia already)
To balance all that, building in construction should receive more damage than if they are build (I know that a bit the case for some building).
For example in construction, a building received 30% more damage (with not rounding the number for the calculation of the remaining hp) (Yes there is float number in aoe2 for example all resources have digit avec the coma).
Like this a TC, castle… drop without control of the aera it will be destroy by the oponent. You will be able to have very effective TC, castle or tower drop if you have control of the area as it should be.
Maybe you should try this before you claim it.
It’s called a “strategy” game. Which means that it has different strategies that are intended to compete against each other. Only because you don’t like these strats they aren’t “cheesy” (ie STINK).
Everybody has their favorite strats in this game. And the game is about the interactions of these differnt strats. You have to learn that in a competitive game you have to deal with what the opponent is doing and you have no right to restrict him just because you don’t like what he’s doing.
That said these tactics are (except the castle drop as followup to a sucessfull rush and on certain maps like arena) aren’t even meta rn, so it’s fairly uncommon to face them on the ladder.
So I don’t even understand what you’re complaining about, cause the vast majority of games you play you don’t even have to face them.
And I think that’s also what causes youre issue with them, cause you aren’t willing to spent reading into how to deal with them as they are not common enough for you to invest dealing with them. Ofc you then have issues dealing with them cause you don’t know how.
So imo it’s actually that these strats need buffs so there is more encouragement to actually learn to deal with them and not complaining every time in the forum when you get to face them once in maybe 20 games or so.
My personal problem with it is that it’s boring. I have had only two games recently that I can think of on a closed map where someone did not attempt a castle drop.
I would personally support making the building of Castles slightly slower.
It wouldn’t much affect using them defensively, but it would make obnoxious castle-drops slightly less ubiquitous/more risky.
Persian doush isn’t actually that strong, the player comitting to it is taking a huge risk, unlike a castle drop.
They should nerf castle drop effectiveness at busting through walls and enhanced siege units like mangonels, rams.
Yea I actually had this thought/idea.
Tell me what you think about this idea, everyone’s open to sharing their feedbacks of course.
But how about them creating the idea of home base castle being built at a normal or even slightly faster speed than forward castle. This is well within their coding skillset range. The game can determine where the home base is based on where the first TC location is. The further you are building your castle away from your base, the slower it should be, but of course with a limit. Meaning, it will not take an hour to build a castle all the way across the map. Don’t be silly.
Logic behind it is that it will help discourage castle dropping and encourage a more standard game play. You can definitely still kill your opponent with rams and mass units. Also, it make sense on a “realistic logistic approach.” 
Regarding the Persian TC drop, it’s definitely risk. But the problem is, a really low level player can inflict soo much damage to a high level player. I’ve seen it all the time, experienced it too, on nomad. It’s just too good for its required skill set.
So basically, if the worst player on my team just finds the best player on the other team and drops a TC at their face, we’d have a huge advantage.
Forward Castle play is fine at the moment. Map generation necessarily plays a role in how effective it is as does a player’s ability to cope with said generation. Scouting is another variable.
If anything these things are nerfed. They shall be buffed again to make them more viable. At least the tower rush is now a death strat. It was much more common in the last.
I’ve been playing AOE 2 forever, since the original released till now. And it seems to me, all the small changes have been made to make it easier for players to do these cheesy castle drop, tc drop, tower rush tactics.
Now disclaimer here. Firstly, every RTS game got some cheesy tactics involved. And I’m not against it at all. But what I notice in AOE de’s recent changes is that they make these tactics a lot easier to pull off.
Persian TC HP Bonus is from original AoK. And it’s nothing compared to the old Teutons bonus with TC +5 range. So I’d argue the opposite that the game has gotten less cheesier with TC drops.
Same with towers, since they increased the cost.
If you somehow still die to Persian TC drop here is what you should do:
A.) Micro-fight his vills, you should have more since he spent alot of time walking to your base.
B.) Block the foundation with palisades.
C.) If you scouted it too late or suck at micro. Let him finish his silly TC. Then delete yours and build a new one further away. If he tries a second time, rinse and repeat. He will be out of stone after the second attempt and considerably behind in economy.
Firstly, I appreciate the advice.
Though I can just adequately deal with this cheese. The problem is not so much about dealing with it, but it’s about a low skill level player doing this to a better player. They go for this kamakaze attack, crippling you, and their allies come in later and kill you. It’s not a fair trade. That’s where I’m complaining about. It has happened to my teammates all the time.
I see it too often, all day, every day on Arena
Well, the point is these cheesy tactics you describe has existed since the start of AoE2. It was easier to cheese back then. Alot has been nerfed.
I’d say the only thing that changed is easier online matchmaking. It’s much faster to get a game going nowadays so I guess people tend to cheese more often. If you spent 40+ mins getting a game going like back in the days then you would tend to cheese less.
Oh yes I’ve heard of the long queue time. I heard it has something to due with the lack of maps that people like. There’s also a problem with people Alt F4 on maps were randomly assigned to that they do not want to play.
But anyhow, I still feel they can do better with the castle and TC cheesing that’s happening. There’s also the teuton Trush.
To get map control, for uu play, because opponent went to fight water on Nomad or tried to boom on Arena. Its usually done with gunpowder uu civs because they’re very strong even without any upgrades. So the damage potential with such units is high. And those are the maps where these strategies can work and such civs are designed to be good on such maps.
A strategy can work in noob games doesn’t imply its cheesy. It could imply others at that elo don’t know how to predict or respond to it. There’s nothing cheesy about it.
Exactly. everything has a counter play. If you anticipate your opponent is going to drop a forward castle, gather stone and counter castle and kill his vills, make cavalry units and kill the vills moving forward. Its not an uncounterable strategy either. You choose to boom with market and blacksmith and get forward castle dropped and declare its cheesy. Its not. Just go for the stable light cav into relic gathering build.
Because in your original post, you say that the small changes have been made in the game to make it easier for players to do cheesy castle drop or tower rush. While forward castle drop existed from 2000, and the stone cost, stone gathering rate, build time or damage done by castle to walls hasn’t changed since then. So the number of changes made to make these effective is — ZERO. These mechanics have remained the same, towers even weaker now. So neither are these low elo tactics, nor has the game received changes to make them easier to do.
Tower isn’t cheese at all. Its a very high skilled strategy, actually very difficult to make it work. Lots of micro and repairing involved, you need to track where the enemy moved to continue the rush, wall villagers, wall the tower, so much of decision making involved.
Castle drops might not be “cheesing”. But they make no sense at all from a historic, or even just basic military strategy perspective, and make for boring games imo. Not to mention their extreme ubiquitousness in certain maps. I agree that castles breaking walls should not be a substitute for effective siege, although at my level I have found that siege is relatively efficient to break through walls.
I was saying battering ram is a bad option in general, and it is also expensive to get because you need workshop first. With the same cost, mangonel is a better choice, however, both of them are poor options compare with castle.
Yes that’s true. So that sort of supports my statement of saying castle dropping is too effective at busting through enemy defenses then right?
So maybe make siege units more cheaper and effective at busting through walls? That would make sense
Right. Imagine if history was actually like that… where two sides are at war. And one said said, hold up, let me run some of my vils to your territory and build a castle in your face to break through your castle wall. Siege and trebs not required. Just shoot arrows to break their castle stone wall okay?
I suspect all the people who are white knighting for castle drop and especially persian tc drops rely solely on that tactic to win.
Pretty sure historical warfare was nothing like aoe2.