Well,if you expect to be rushed, a tower in age 2 is your best bet.
Sometimes I pick the tower+100 gold as British when I smell a very early rush coming. With minuteman and a few villies in TC, it can hold off almost every cheese I can think of.
Yes, I think a rate of fire buff or reduced wood cost.
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How to improve outposts?
For early game: Garrisoned villagers increase detachment attack like TC.
For late game: All tower or barrack type buildings after the fourth age upgrades gain siege damage instead of ranged damage, and also acquire a 0.20 tolerance against the siege (Torch Attacks). All negative multipliers are removed. (Or at least the negative multiplier against villagers, since it’s ridiculous that they don’t kill a fishing boat just because of the negative multiplier against villagers)
Heavy Fortifications
Rework: upgrades 50% cheaper. Gives 0.10 tolerance against siege attacks to walls, founts, and towers. Changes 50% of your lumber cost into coins.
4 Likes
Totally agree. This fits perfectly with their intended design and function.
They actually do get a secondary attack that deals siege damage, although I think siege damage should just be the damage type for all their attacks. Forts especially, should just always deal siege damage.
Adding armour to buildings is useless. All attacks against buildings deal siege damage so 20% armour is exactly the same as 20% more health. They should also probably keep some of the negative multipliers against siege units and artillery, especially if they are made to deal siege damage since that bypasses most resistances.
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You are right, but my idea is that somehow the torch attacks do not have as much effect against a building that is supposed to be made of stone. And only let real artillery and siege units like Grenadiers and Aztec AK be truly efficient against buildings.
that would kinda invalidate all rush builds since a single tc tower combo will be enough to kill any attack earlier then 5-6 mins and would be like having town militia for free unless the increase is like 5 dmg
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I think he means similar to a TC, not as strong as. If each villager garrisoned added a couple more attack strength or slightly increased ROF that would be enough of a buff for towers.
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even if its not as strong as a tc, its enough. Town militia raises tc attack from 90 to 135 so +45 dmg. Ignoring the tower’s base dmg any damage increase from garrisoning vils into towers cannot be higher then this else it makes town militia basically meaningless.
there is also problems with cut off points, Muskets have 150 hp (russian muskets 120) and strelet 130 range hp ish. currently a tower +tc combo can only one shot a russian musket, but not the strelet or normal musket, you need town militia for that. So just raising the outpost damage by 20 means that it one shots all unupgraded muskets, rendering alot of early musket attacks meaningless. the only ones that would survive are jan and sepoy and when you face those just add town militia to invalidate those.
It also kills puma in a single volley, so aztec rushes are even more dead then they already are.
so the max possible change is less then 20 from the current stat so unless we nerf the base stats as well to compensate I feel like its a meaningless change.
If we want it buffed just change the cost, their stats are good enough.
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keep in mind that aoe2 tower rush can’t happen in 3 due to no build zone around first TC which covers most starting resources
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I think outposts are fine as they are, except I wish they didn’t have such a large negative multiplier vs vills & fishing ships.
I’m thinking something very small, like +2 attack per villager up to a max of 10 villagers (at least for age 2). To achieve a full +20 attack out of that, you’d need to garrison 10 villagers in a structure that’s much more vulnerable than the TC so there would be an element of risk to it.
This could also be an opportunity to buff some mostly useless techs like Blunderbuss. I think it would make sense if that tech also increased attack per garrisoned villager by +1.
The fact that buildings can more easily kill a Musketeer than a Strelet is why I suggest they should deal siege damage. The base damage should be lowered slightly (-15 to 20% would be reasonable), and they’d probably need a 0.5x artillery multiplier to compensate. This would result in heavy infantry faring better and everything else doing about the same or slightly worse.
I think they should perhaps be built faster or reduced in cost, 250 wood is a lot and they take forever to build. There upgrades should be better too or cheaper currently they are really expensive.
3 Likes
If they would cost less like the same upgrades many civ in aoe3 would be reduced to tower spam where each game becomes a nr10 because the opponent cannot penetrate the opponent’s base for the 7 towers placed in the base with reduced cost, in team it would also make everything so unbalanced as to become nr40.
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Well, maybe in Age 2, but once artillery comes into play in Age 3 their defensive value would fall precipitously as all artillery units outgun them, and all but one ( the grenadier) outranges them.
I don’t want eternal games with intricate sim cities a la AoE2. I just want outposts to have a real niche in the game other than a forward drop off point in rushes. In my opinion their cost is too high early on, and their upgrades are ridiculously expensive for too little payoff.
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once in age 3 culvs come into play, and if malta is any indication, then cannons wont do anything.
it would push the game to age 4 for mortars or make the card that unlocks them in age 3 a necessity for all decks.
It would also weaken all non euro civs, russia would also suffer since they dont have outposts
Russia does not have this real problem, that is, the blockhouse is an outpost anyway, after all, you can also get some troops out of there so it’s not a real problem, the problem is as you said, they make culverins and the cannons become useless and would aim at 4 age for mortars for many civilizations while for some not like India which has siege elephants.
its a real problem in that it kills the russian age 2 play dead completely if other civs can build outpost for cheap while the reverse isnt true for russia since blockhouse are more costly to build (and you cant reduce their cost as well since that would be completely busted) and they cant build as many ( and they dont have the extensive fortifications card)
So in any game the russia player has to go to age 3 and will be super vulnerable to a timing or just giving up map control
The blockhouse costs 250w the outpost costs 250w they have the same damage points also the blockhouse acts as a barracks and trains troops faster than a barracks as well as cheaper but disgusting troops. They can build a maximum of 7 blockhouse as outposts. Extensive fortifications card do not have it because it causes for russia an impact too good for russia in the late game and a negative impact for the opponent late game especially in the teams as thanks to the 2 fast infantry training cards it will be able to train muskets and halberdiers instantly and almost instant strelets, also if they had a total of 14 forts available they would abuse them to expand the map much more conveniently. If you really want to make it balanced you simply have to give the blockhouse (war huts included) an extra 500 life, on the other hand also reduce the team card which increases the damage points of the blockhouse and barracks. I don’t see a big problem in that. For timing, go to age 3 and map control is up to the player’s abilities to do so.
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You could maybe go the route of just introducing a new card to buff outposts - that way the player has to commit to defensive play more and spend a shipment on it. It could be something like:
Advanced outposts( I ) - Outpost attack and hitpoints increased, and gain a charge attack.
The charge attack could be like a single area damage shot on a 30 second cooldown. This would allow an attentive opponent to bait out the shot with an explorer or a single unit before committing. For the fortified outpost, the charged shot could just have a bit more damage instead of more area.
3 Likes
I like the idea, but I would add that the outposts improve with the age-up. 
Advanced Outposts: (Age I)
Effect 1: Allows outposts to use a charged grenade launcher attack that deals siege damage in an area. (30 second cooldown)
Effect 2: Increases damage and health points by 5% for each age, present, past and future.
Age I = 5%
Age II = 10%
Age III = 15%
Age IV = 20%
Age V = 25%
In my opinion the Improved Buildings card should be merged with the Heavy Fortifications card.
Improved Buildings: (Age IV)
Effect 1: Buildings get +40% hit points.
Effect 2: Grants all defensive building upgrades (if not already)
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