Watching Tournament games on Twitch, I feel a deep admiration for Age of Empires 2. I really like it.
However, I think that booming with minimal defenses works excessively well.
If Units had more power to destroy buildings, you would get that epic feeling of accomplishing the impossible, of winning because you caught your opponent off-guard with brilliant attacks.
Troops would feel more like heroes, instead of “economy trades”.
What do you guys think? My idea is inspired a bit by units like Zeus’ Hoplites in Age of Mythology (or Loki rushes), which really had the power to forge destiny.
No, that would be bad because it would destroy turtling and sling strategies in team games and completely change the meta. You would also nerf Siege weapons. Cuman Feudal Siege workshops would be useless after such a change.
Siege Weapons would still be useful against heavy opposition (Castles, Town Centers, etc.).
It’s just a damage buff against structures, so brilliant attacks feel more epic and rewarding.
Turtling and Slinging are practices usually “discouraged” by RTS games.
Already you can quickly lose a TC or a Castle to a group of swordsmen/paladin. MAA can take out barracks. If structures were significantly weaker defence would become impossible.
Ok, but Paladins are one of the strongest Imperial Age units. Champions would lose quickly if there is a bit of opposition.
I still think regular buildings are too sturdy. It’s almost a win for the opponent to attack minor buildings like Houses (especially before Imperial Age). It doesn’t feel right…
Perhaps a little buff damage for Regular Units (non-Paladins, etc.)?
Or I think buildings crumble pretty fast in Age III, if I’m not mistaken? If so, is another reason why Age III isn’t my favorite. I enjoy longer amounts of time to make buildings, walls, towers, and castles to crumble in Age II. I’d actually vote for some buildings to get more HPs
Indeed, and almost all civs get an age 2 heavy infantry unit that deals tons and tons of damage to buildings. Or alternatively you could use ranged infantry and other units that are really bad against buildings but that would be still be faster than using normal archers in AoE2
This game is already early rush end game already. Why make it even worse? Granted, not everyone is defeated by a rush. But you are asking to buff rushes even more when it’s already very powerful.
Your idea would make turtling even worse than it already is. It may make maps like Black Forest possibly not as viable for those who like to turtle and hide behind walls. Quite a sizable portion of people like to turtle regardless even if it’s not the most viable of strategies.
Depends if you read the title its the other way round… I know what he says is ambiguous though.
With weaker buildings, siege would kill them faster thus be more of a threat. Now its quite easy to shred rams with vils before they can kill much. Mangonels can be ignored for a while before they kill a building.
So a lot of times we rather raid/kill vils as opposed to actually killing buildings. And more often then not gg occurs due to rekt eco,not necessarily rekt base…
I apologize, I realize that I sounded ambiguous. In general, I would like buildings to be weaker, because as you said, attacking regular buildings can be quite ineffective. Even mangonels can be ignored for a good while.
Siege Weapons would still be essential for large-scale attacks against Castles, Town Centers, or just to clear regular buildings faster.
The thing is that attacking buildings would no longer feel like a waste of time (from better pursuits), and it would affect the course of the game. This would lead to a more epic feeling, since catching your opponent off-guard would have greater consequences. Comebacks would become more common, and the E-sports scene would benefit.
Perhaps non-stone buildings could receive an HP reduction, or damage amplifiers?
I think this is a great idea. Hiding behind the walls is complete non sense. Especially when you go to attack someone’s lumber camp and they just spam half built house that never break.
Towers are, in my opinion, already niche enough as is.
I only see maybe 5-6 civs build towers on average. 3 of them mostly do it to Tower Rush (Koreans, Teutons and Incas), 2 use it to push a line (Portuguese and Turks), and only 1 really builds them in their base (Japanese).
Turtling is already not an above average strategy for most civs because of the existence of powerful siege like Trebs and Rams. In lower end games it’s more viable but as your skill level increases it becomes less valuable due to giving up map space and resources.
The discussion was mostly about minor buildings, like Houses or Mills, which take ages to destroy even when half-built. Attacking buildings is mostly a benefit for the opponent.
Even Mangonels can spend ages before destroying minor buildings. Perhaps a buff would be appropriate.
Contrary to popular belief, mangonels are actually only supposed to be able to deal with groups of melee units, historically they were never used to take down buildings, mangonels are already doing more than they should be doing against buildings, especially against towers.
also talking about towers, those are heavily used at high level regardless of civ, and even so they can still get very easily taken down by vills or enemy towers if u don’t micro properly.
Also really? You want to make skirmishers do more damage against buildings? Archers are already not meant at all to destroy buildings (unless you’re saracens or mayans), much less a unit that’s meant to have horrible ranged damage that does nothing but deal heavy damage to archers and archers only. No, they should still suck against buildings.
Same for pikemen, the role of destroying buildings properly is reserved to the militia line, rams, trebuchets, bombard cannons and some unique units.
Doesn’t it go both ways tho? Maybe with your changes some situations that were previously hopeless would become comeback potential, but in many others ones, where previously buildings would have been able to buy the disadvantaged player enough time to come back, the attacker would just crush everything way too fast to leave his opponent a chance.
