It seems like a LARGE number of players like to castle drop, especially at average to low skill levels. The problem with this is, it ends a fun game prematurely. If it goes up, you lose most of your economy and likely the game because the castle shoots all your farms and tc down and any nearby military buildings. All done by a single building! If you deny it, the enemy is likely to lose, because you just killed ten of his villagers and he lost the castle as well. Either way, I end up feeling disgusted and not wanting to play anymore. âoh man why did you have to go and ruin a good game by doing thatâŠâ
This causes a LOT of otherwise close, fun games to end prematurely, and for no good reason. And it really does happen A LOT at lower levels, which is where most of the active player base is. So, a lot of games are ending prematurely, for no reason and fun is decreased.
There could be many solutions to this, maybe a nerf to castle building foundation hp, similar to the tower nerf meant to dissuable feudal tower rushes? If villagers got bonus damage versus uncompleted castles, it would nerf forward castle drops while keeping the castle to be being built where it is intended, as a defensive builiding to secure resources. It is fun as a defensive measure, like you are attacking an enemy town and his last hope is to quickly get up a castle.
AOM and AOE3 took the approach of simply not allowing castles to be built too close to an enemy tc. In AOE3 it simply says âtoo close to enemy TCâ and the building cannot be placed when you try to place a forward castle. In all honesty that would be the best approach, to disallow castle building too close to the enemyâs starting tc. Apparently Ensemble themselves thought preventing forward castles was important enough to prohibit it in all of their projects since AOE2.
They also loved it in the Middle Ages.
Many times, Castles were built at borders to project power over foreign lands, and as preparation for expansion.
Seems like a case where game mechanics actually align with real History.
And yet AoE2 is still considered a better game then both AoM and AoE3. comparisons to other projects hold no water, by that logic castles shouldnât exist at all since castles didnât exist in AoE. neither did gates. oh guess we got to go with a 50 pop cap too!
Getting outsmarted by the strategy of the enemy is a good reason to lose the game. The issue for average and low skill levels (this included myself) is that most of them dont know how to react and panic. That makes them loose the game. If you know how to deal with a castle drop (even if the castle goes up), then the strat isnt that strong anymore.
I do love being castle dropped. It will result in more fun for me. I like to defend the rush of the enemy and hit back at my own time. If the enemy goes for a forward castle, his eco is much likely much weaker. He invest much resources into the forward. That means if you just boom behind it, (while holding his push) your eco will be much stronger and in the end you can just push back. If you succeed (i do more often succed than not), it is most likely GG for the enemy, since he has no eco behind his push, while you did had eco.
Since there is no issue for me, i dont see why we need to change things.
As you can already see from the replies AOE2 players love cheese tactics. And thereâs tons of other types of cheese than a castle drop.
While you might want castle drop changed, others will advocate for Tower rushes, or drushes, or douches, or laming, or dropping a rax behind front lines in black forest, or walling opponents res, nevermind all the game exploits like foundation scouting or resource scoutingâŠ
Castle drop is just another type of cheese youâre gonna have to accept if you play AOE2.
Imo it does reduce the level of strategy (of course people will argue cheese is strategy) but i myself will still play cheese as well
In aoe 2 castle in your face is one of the hardest things you are able to pull off, and most of the time when you can do it, it is more like a get out of my game castle; you are so far ahead that you just can get away with it. I think its perfectly balanced, and easy to stop.
@MrCrispyButt play smart and spread the word! scout! does enemy have a powerful (fast-ranged) Unique Unit? scout! is enemy heavy on stone? scout! make walls that prevent enemy castle arrow hit your Town Center or farms. Scout! Put some army in the field, after all, enemy is already 650 resource units behind. Did I say SCOUT!
If you love to castle drop, thats your opinion, fine, but lets not pretend âits one of the hardest things to pull offâ. Send villagers to spot ANYWHERE around the enemy town, click âbuild castleâ. Especially if the enemy is managing his units in battle, its extremely unlikely that he would notice or even if he did, be able to do anything about it in time. At least on my levels that is. Add quick walling to it, and unless the enemy has ranged units or enough stone and nearby villagers to quickly build 1-2 towers in time AND if you didnât send that many to build it so it takes longer to go up, its extremely easy. Not that I would know, because Iâve never dropped a castle on someone myself because of the reasons I outlined in my initial post.
I think phoenix1089 is probably right, a certain percentage of aoe2 players love cheese tactics, who knows whether it is the majority or not. However, since they DID nerf tower rushes, multiple times, (raise wood cost, then lower feudal tower hp) there is a chance they might do the same for forward castle drops, which are similar. (i.e. lower castle foundation hp, give foundation attack bonus to villagers similar to sappers except only vs the foundation, or even just give villagers bonus damage versus castles in general, like sappers). Or, make sappers available for research in the castle age, which is where castle drops often occur. (Although often it is early castle age so might not be practical or affordable to quickly research it).
If it is considered desirable to nerf castle drops and quickwalling, there would be very thorough methods.
Making foundations traversable when they have less than a certain amount of hp would kill both quickening and unsupported castle drops. (If you have more military than your opponent you should be able to drop a castle either way.) I doubt making the foundations more fragile would help much.
However my impression is that most people like castle drops to be in the game.
I also think they can be very fun.
I do agree castle drops can be very hard to stop. I often only notice when the castle is half-build and at that point there usually is no way to kill the vills quickly enough to deny the castle, especially due to quickwalling.
Me and some others have been discussing recently about toning down Castle HP in castle age, and tuning it back when it reaches imperial age (similar to how stone walls are 900 hp before castle age, and 1800 hp after). I was thinking something like 3200 HP in castle age, and returning it back to 4800 hp in imperial age. Some people were saying it should be even lower.
Will make rams a much better answer to castles. Currently, you need at least 5-6 rams, and a huge army to support the rams, else the enemy is just gonna kill the rams with villagers or mangonels, and constantly repairing/jumping around with vills via the garrison.
Thatâs right, it is extremely difficult and almost never cost efficient to attempt taking down a castle in castle age. Castles really are uber powerful.
My comment/suggestion is exactly aimed at nerfing defensive play lol. So many players today the meta is wall, fast castle, and drop defensive castles. This aims to counter those types of players by allowing you to actually kill castles in Castle Age.
I donât care about offensive castle drop on arabia, if you allow your enemy to drop a castle on your face on that map you deserve to lose.
Thatâs the point of castles though, that theyâre strong defensive structures which are extremely hard to take down with Castle-age military. Itâs not called the castle-age for nothing
So much thing can end games prematurely. Flushes can end games in feudal age, failed boar lure can end game in dark age, and the list could go on.
Nothing prevents you from building in your enemyâs base in AoM. There are even games that end when one of the players has towered the entire map 11
Speaking of which, you can just plant your own castle near theirs to greatly hinder their plans.
Defensive play has more to do with maps being more wallable nowadays. Nerfing castle HP wonât change the fact that you can turn Arabia into Arena from dark age anyways. And nerfing castles would nerf their offensive potential too.
So the two of you are figthing, and the enemy hold you back in the figth, and still manages to get 650 stone AND some villagers to your base AND still produces enough units to hold you back in the battle (otherwise he would need a defensive castle at home and probably would not castle drop you). Well then the opponent has played better and deserves the win.
Like someone already said: Thats more a
than anything elseâŠ
The game was nowhere close, if the enemy can have 10 vills in your base, while having a close figth at the same time. Because if he would use these 10 vills for eco, he would have more ressources â more military â win the âcloseâ battle
Yeah, and none of these came even close to the success and popularity of AOE2.
AOM you could only build a limited number of settlements in fixed positions whereas you could build a theoretically infinite number of castles. Thereâs obvious reasons why you wouldnât want to allow castles being built next to settlements.
Lower skill levels are plagued with castle drops because players there donât invest into military and even when they do, they donât know how to use it. Castles and towers are great for these players because they are a build it and forget about it solution to everything. As soon as you get better at the game and start using your military units, youâll naturally see the number of forward castle drops decrease.
this argument about âwat were you doingâ doesnât hold up where there are tutorials for castle drop min 13⊠and only one military can effectively counter it. I am not for a castle nerf itself, as it should be a solid defensive building, but something around it.
Just build around the castle (if you canât stop it with tower or army), imp faster and treb it down. Thatâs the main weakness of a castle in your face.
