You can always criticize anything, however I just wish people say what they mean, in some of these cases is:
"I want people to play my way"
I am not defending Castle Drop, but neither am I asking to change it since I can always adapt.
Since this game continues evolving and now my tactics from 20 years ago, do not work anymore due to several changes, new units, new buildings, etc. I just changed also.
Using your example
YES!!! , I would adapt and just choose the civilization with that militia and defend myself from other people trying Castle Drop, Simple,
It would be different if only one player could do it like using cheat codes, but as long both players are allowed to play any civilization and use any tactics, I have no issue, I just adapt.
Don’t play Arena if you don’t like defending against forward castles.
You have so many options vs. forward castle. Make your own defensive castle. Pull all your forward villagers back and boom up to imperial to treb it down. Jump on the castle and kill the villagers building it with whatever military you have (scouts, knights, archers, whatever). Even if the castle goes up, they will be way behind in economy if you kill enough villagers. Build outposts around your base so you can spot the villagers early. You can even put lots of little palisades in front of your walls so they can’t place the castle.
I hope you are not referring to me when you are talking about wishing people to say what they want to say and wanting people to “play my way.”
This topic isn’t about me and my play style. It’s about pointing out that the cheese are quite strong, too effective for what it’s worth. I’ve played RTS games like SC 1, 2, WC3, and the cheese there are not this prominent. It’s easier to defend vs canon rush, tower rush, etc. Which is reasonable and should be this way.
Arena is supposed to be known as a closed map. And the idea behind closed map is allow you time to boom. In theory, two sides should have a big army and a big fight. Of course either can rush. I’m not against it. I rush often myself. But castle dropping meh… I see it all day every day on Arena.
It really is not surprising that many players choose to ban Arena, it is quite demanding when it comes to figuring out the pace of the game. In Arabia it is a far simpler matter as your Scout can see deeper into the enemy encampment.
The only fair balance is to increase the build time. Anything else would reward turtle boom defensive play too much and draw out every game into epic hours long stalemates. For the longevity of the game and its future popularity, players need options to finish the game early, e.g. in castle age or feudal age on more open maps.
And btw I also used to ban Arena but not because of Castle dropping being one of the few vieable general strategies there. But because they were already so little in comparison to Arabia.
With nowatdays Arabia having become even more poor in viable strategic openers, Arena somehow became more attractive…
And then people start complaining about one of like 3 different opening strats you have for Arena…
Sadly, I am referring to this type of posts, and while I will believe you mean something else, that is the way these types of posts read to me. I am sorry, you may be the exception, I just making a general statement.
As you just pointed out Castle Drop is “Too Effective for what is worth”, it is “worth” for the people that use it, and while I hated it when it was done to me, I just adapted by doing it myself first or I use more patrolling and aggressive tactics. (Some of them have been mentioned in this discussion already).
I understand that can be annoying, I felt it before, but I learned to see it as a challenge and move on. That is one of the reasons I also prefer Costume Campaings or playing with my group of friends where we can make our own rules while leaving the game to progress as is.
Unfortunately the AOE OG devs didn’t have the forethought to implement features like the Bliz OG devs that mitigated the effectiveness of static defenses and rewards players that have map control through units. The age-up mechanic also hampers effective retaliation against castle drop cheese. Laddering is way more interesting in these games because the follow up from the cheesing player also has to be well executed and varied.
I actually get where you are coming from. Yes there are a lot of post that would try to get the game to go their way. So I get why some would think my post is just one of those.
But if they just stop and think of a moment about what I said, how castle drop is soo prevalent on Arena, then there’s merit to what’s said.
I use the strat sometimes tbh, and I do notice that it’s quite effective for how easy it is to execute. Basically, one of my allies just drop a castle, open up the guy’s base and I run in with knights and destroy the guy’s base.
But anyway, I hope they make it a bit more balanced for what it is now. Same goes for Persian TC drop. I just don’t see the point of letting a low skilled player crippling a higher level player simply by dropping a TC at their face.
Yup I think you’re on to something important here. It’s the foresight that was needed. Map control with units make more sense than just playing castle defense all day.
Despite that, I get that it’s hard to create a game where it encourages a defensive castle, or rather, not punish it, but yet discourage castle cheesing at the same time.
If you use SC2 as an example, look at the comparison between a planetary fortress and a Castle. Both are large buildings with high amounts of attack. You can still drop a PF, but there are built in factors that prevent you from easily getting one up in an opponent’s face; only one builder can construct it limiting the construction speed, it needs to be upgraded from a Command Center, most defending units and structures have enough LOS to detect it early with some base level of scouting. On top of that the defending player has access to counter units to the PF within a few minutes or less depending on their skill level. This then requires an immediate follow up from the dropping player to continue the cheese or use the chaos to gain an economic advantage. It isn’t a debilitating situation unless the defending player is unskilled. Also the cost of the PF is better proportional to the value it achieves. The Castle’s cost is relatively low for how much value it gives vs the cost (in both resources and time) of an effective counter. Hence why the PF is mostly not used offensively, but instead is used, as intended, to protect vulnerable areas from raiding. The castle on the other hand is like dropping a cheap deathstar that has few effective counters until Imp, which could be several minutes out for the defending player. There is obviously some economic trade off, but the amount of value through potential damage and disruption easily makes up for this, not to mention you can now spawn your civ’s signature unit at their base. Anyways, some people enjoy this design philosophy, but I think it’s a little immersion breaking and doesn’t lead to interesting play styles.
Maybe a solution could be like in Rise Of Nations, where you can not build anything outside your control area, and your perimeter is expanded by every building you construct.
In that way, it would take a series of buildings leading to your area before a Castle drop can be done, that would take time and would be easy to spot with some scouting.
Yup that’s pretty accurate about SC2 and planetary fortress drop. Basically, the value you get out of PF drop is in proportion to how effect it is. Unlike AOE 2, castle drop is, IMO a bit too effective on maps like Arena for what it’s worth. It is quite effective on nomad too.
I agree with the idea of having new and different play style. It sure does make the game more interesting. But I think there needs to be respect to balance. If you see a strat being too popular on a map or situation, it’s worth looking into why.
Ya I was thinking about something like having castle’s build time be in relation with how far away from your TC is. The further away it is from your your closest TC, the longer it takes. This does make a lot of logistical sense if it were a real life thing. Just an idea.
And if they do choose to do this, this means obviously castle drop has been nerfed. So they need to increase siege’s effectiveness vs walls. This will encourage more of a siege/unit attack instead of using castles offensively.
I agree for archers and knights, but in the case of castle drops, if the attacker himself had no military, even villagers or basic militia would suffice as defence, and those would still be much quicker to mobilize compared with building a castle. In the end, even if we had no idea why, the omnipresence of castle drops gives a hint that something is making them disproportionately efffective compared with reality.
I agree for higher vulnerability for unfinished buildings, or at least unfinished castles. Seems like a better way than territory mechanics imo.
TC drop is laughably weak, the Persian douche has never been a reliable strat and really, it takes both bad reactions by the opponent and a lot of luck on your side to pull it off (eg you can threaten gold AND berries with same TC drop). There are also numerous counters such as score scouting and dropping Palisades 1x1 around ur TC. Really though, I can’t stress this enough, Persian d0uche is more of a low elo, troll strat.
As for Castle drop, it can be powerful under the right circumstances, but once you climb a bit of elo, you will realize that the games where a lot of action happens, THOSE are the fun games. The 3 TC boom on Arabia and nobody attacks until Imp, and from there it’s Hussar vs Hussar… you will get tons of those once you climb, enjoy the full Castle Age games because those are rare and make you learn and enjoy the game more. Castle age is also probably the most skillful age because you need to juggle a ton of diverse units, from Monks to Mangonels to Skirmish switch to teching into Imp, lots of things to consider.
But really if 1 Castle drop kills you, it means you did something wrong in setting your base, making army, or all of the above. Most of the times, 1 Castle denies 2 production buildings and maybe 4 farms. Total wood destroyed = 590 and opponent gets a forward base plus potential UU tech. Destroying 590 rez from a 650 investment seems fair to me, from there on its an even game, like I said you shouldn’t overstress the threat of a forward Castle IF it’s not followed by a huge stream of units.
And anyway, opponent sacrifices eco to go to Stone, this means: less early Knights, a slower uptime (which potentially means dying to early timings like Xbow). Going to stone is not risk-free in high elo. If it is in your elo, learn to optimize your Feudal age and abuse the fact that opponent mines a useless (for Feudal) resource, part of the ability in this game is adapting, the way I see it if you die to Castle drop, you failed to adapt to your opponent’s strat, so loss deserved I dare say.
, I would adapt and just choose the civilization with that militia and defend myself from other people trying Castle Drop, Simple,