If you decide to stay in your base and build anything within a 8 tile radius considering your opponent doesn’t have Blacksmith upgrades, then yes.
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if you’re losing that much to 1 castle, i have to wonder what you are doing that you don’t notice a castle going up that close to you.
furthermore you can easily move away from castles and rebuild. those castles cannot move at all. they are stuck where they are.
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Really funny all the castle droppers here are try to argue is not op because they have to use eco resources and labor to build it but is super easy to counter because idling your eco while you rebuild somewhere else it is super easy.
If you want to win a game buy building a single structure maybe play wonder victory
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Show me a single castle so strong it was utterly game ending and ill show you someone who wasnt scouting, paying attention or responding well.
And for the record i dont castle drop. I just see no need to nerf it
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Yeah I know, one castle which destroys most of your farms and your tc which you can’t get rid of without being in the next age and getting trebs (don’t tell me 5 rams work, very few people think 5 rams are good versus a castle, I’ve seen Viper try it with even more than 5 and it usually doesn’t work out well). Basically to deal with a castle you need to get trebs. It is amazing how anyone can think that gathering stone and right clicking to build a forward castle in early castle age is ‘hard’.
Its not just gathering stone and right click castle.
First you need to ensure you have enough army to stay alive, and protect your workers who are building said castle.
Then you need to have enough stone to actually drop said castle, which is going to delay your castle age.
You need to scout a spot good enough to destroy their tc, farms, yet not be seen going up.
You then need to march your army and villagers across the map and build said castle right in the middle of your opponents base. Meanwhile hoping that somehow your army can defend your workers against an army that should be bigger then yours, or that you building said castle goes unnoticed.
Then you have to hope that he thinks that he has no options, and because this castle is sitting on his tc he has to resign, instead of just moving away and rebuilding.
But hey, youve proven that you really dont care about anything realistic and just want to nerf castles no matter what actually happens.
Seriously though. Show me an actual game where this game ending castle happened. Since according to you it happens so often, it shouldn’t be hard to provide
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Go to you tube and type in ‘Aoe 2 Castle drop’. There are TONS of videos. Most of them are how to try to defend against it, how it is the #1 annoying strategy, etc. If it is so ‘difficult’ to do, why is it that most of the videos are about how to defend against it and not how to do it? If it is so easy for pros to deal with and how it is only a ‘low elo’ technique, how come one of the top search results is Hera bragging about how he defended a triple castle drop? Wait, I thought pros don’t castle drop? I haven’t watched any AOE 2 content in two years so you’ll have to watch a Viper or some other stream where the players play Arena, it happens almost every Arena game.
I said show me. Send me this magical game ending castle drop in early castle age with no units.
You made the claim, provide the video. Burden of proof is on you.
Huge difference between what hera defended against and your claim of an early castle age castle with no units ending the game.
Arena castle drops arent game ending, tc and farm destroying castles. They are a forward position with which to launch an actual assault from, complete with units and siege. Wiich isnt what your complaint is about. Try again
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those videos are there to help beginner to defend against it. They are the only one who got defeated by a full castle drop (without units to defend villager). So it explain why there are a tons of videos about it.
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If you check portuguese versus slave match (it start at 1hour and 30 min). The opponent tried to castle drop with organ gun. Guess what? He won this match by a push on his base and destroy the few villagers he has. And truth be told i think the organ gun were more a threat than the castle on itself.
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The funny thing about this is that there’s an Art of War mission about destroying castles. You play Berbers vs Saracens so you also have to deal with Mamelukes which deal Melee damage, so higher damage output vs rams.
It starts in Castle Age, you can advance to the Imperial Age but it’s not worth it. You can win by simply ramming the castle down + distracting the units protecting it. So yes - 5 rams (or even less) work against castles. You’ve also got the Petard from the Castle Age on which is useful against Castles but ofc first must arrive at the destination and requires to build a castle yourself.
No one ever said pros are not Castle dropping. It’s a valid, yet risky strat. Most castles I see from pros are however forward castles to gain map control.
Castle dropping is one of the most standard tactics on Arena, it’s almost part of the map’s identity, especially with a civ like Franks that get cheaper castles, so if you expect it, build a protective Castle yourself inside your base at a location you most likely expect to get dropped (gates e.g.) and spoil the castle dropper’s day - or ban Arena in first place.
If you resign because of an offsensively placed castle, it’s more like a mindset kind of thing rather than a game decider.
In general, if your opponent is up for an aggresive strat, whether it’s the Tati Rush (forward archery ranges in Feudal Age), Castle Drop, TC Drop as Persians etc, you can be assured that their eco at home is horrible. The video with the match @Malycos654 linked is a prime example of that.
The T-West vid I linked earlier also shows a situation with Viper where he used monks against a castle drop which bought him time.
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There is Liereryy vs Vinchester? match, one castle to heart of Vinchester’s? eco finished the game in which Liereyy was getting destroyed. Forward Castle is OP if you can finish, 1 TC, 8 farmers and gold/stone mine and wood field are much more vauable than 650 stone castle. Even pros use forward Castles 60% of the games because it is very strong tactic. For lower ELOS, it is OP, sudden game finishing tactic.
Edit: I found the match, it is Liereyy vs Sonsong in Wardering Cup Round of 32. Firstly Liereyy threw the game with this very aggressive Castle Drop try, though it almost went up in 97.5%. Then, he took the game by sneaking 5 villagers to 97.5% Castle.
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so again, what do we see. Lierry was able to march his villagers straight through a TC and Song Song didn’t even notice until the villagers were already past his first TC.
so SongSong wasn’t paying attention.
Furthermore, this is deep into IMP (39 minutes) and not some early castle age castle, for which you have no answer.
No this was a game where both had made it into imperial age and already traded blows and had extensive unit use.
and again - Songsong didn’t even respond to those villagers until they were past his first TC.
ergo as i said he wasn’t…
thanks for proving my point.
and again - the whole point of this entire thread, back to the very first post was that the OP made…
is a 39 minute game ending prematurely because a castle in Imperial Age? and in Imp you have all sorts of answers to castles.
Yes, even Sonsong who is in top 30 AOE2 can miss 4 villagers running under his TCs. Under 1700 ELO players miss Castle dropping villagers more frequently.
In my opinion, alone Castles should be killable by +15 Knights or +22 Longsword melee in Castle Age, maybe their MA should decrease from 8 to 4 in Castle Age. Weakness of Ram is another issue. Ram should have 0.55 speed instead of 0.5 in my opinion.
AoE2’ way of salvation is to automate 90 percent of the game’s works (all units should not only fight automatically but also run automatically (like scout run from Spearman, or Knights run from Monk’s conversion), player should only determine game strategy and control units when units needs to be controlled very precisely) players with artificial intelligence, but that’s another topic of discussion.
Sorry but Song Song was heavily outclassed and I wouldn’t call him a top 30 player. Just because he has top 30 ELO means nothing.
one of the most beloved RTS of all time, a game that is still being played over 20 years later, and you think it needs SALVATION?
I am SO SO SO GLAD that you are in charge of Nothing when it comes to game design.
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That is how you kill an rts, not how you save it.
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In pro games, players always doesn’t notice something like raidings before cavalry attacking villagers, archers targeting villagers, scouts getting hit by spears, unpacked idle trebuckets, Bombard Cannon getting hit by Trebucket etc. This happens because 10-15 thing must be made and controlled at the same time in the game, and even pros can look at 5-7 of things max at the same time. Multitasking is impossible in the game. And it is very boring to watch.
If scout automatically escape from spears in the range of 1, villagers automatically escaping and garrisoning TCs from units (like cavalries in the range of 3 or 2 archers in the range of 7 etc.), or Bombard Cannon escaping Trebucket shots and approaching cavalry units in the range of 8 if Bombard Cannon or Mangonel doesn’t have units in front, game will be more managable and multitasking will be possible for at least good players (like 1300+ ELO). Game already a lot of automatized things. In AOE2 Age of Kings, villagers doesn’t start to work after buildings eco buildings, now villagers start to collect resources automatically after building eco buildings (Lumber Camp, Town Center, Mill etc.). Units attacks close enemy units (they used to do before that as well), escaping from close counter units (Halberdier for Cavalry, Mangonel for archers) can be also possible (of course player can manually force his units to attack everything).
The proof is it ended MY games prematurely in early castle age, so much so that I quit playing after 1000 hours and haven’t played again for two years. If it didn’t why would I make this thread and quit the game? Of course now the response will be ‘git good noob’. If I was going to have my APM magically improve, it would have after 1000 hours of gameplay. It didn’t, and dealing with castle drops never became fun, for example one game I dealt with it by building a castle in the opponents base which killed him. Or you make two defensive towers to shoot down the tower builders. The games still sucked because castles were made and few if any units were made.
Sorry but i cant take your sole experience as a “proof”. Otherwise i can take the opinions of all the others who disagreed with you right?
But more seriously, when players try to castle drop on a early castle age. Most of the time they dont have an army to cover them, or at least 3-5 soldiers. But it cost more than 650 stone and delay your castle drop.
if we add to that, the time it takes to 8-10 villagers to come at your base (knowing how slow they are) and to build that castle we have at least 1 min 30.
At this time if you say you dont have a single men to defend against it and go full economy. Then you deserve to lose.
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I think everyone knows how much cost a castle drop which is 650 stone and 300 resources from walking and building castle time and risk to be stopped by fast and vigilant players. You are writing unnecessary sentences to appear as if you are making arguments. Null politicians and academics uses this technique.
However, it’s impossible to watch the entire map on the alert, and if you don’t have archers and you notice when the castles rises to 30%, this castle will go up, you must abandon area around Castle (TCs, farms, gold mines). I proposed my solution. Castle should have 4 melee armor instead of 8 and Ram speed increasing from 0.5 to 0.55.