So you’re telling me you have to scout your opponent. Dang. What a shame. Its almost like knowledge is power.
And not most your eco. He might get 1 or 2 resources but not beyond that.
There is a reason the person doing the video does it against the ai. On arena.
Again, i already replied to you, do you even read what people write? Just exploring the map doesn’t give you visibility on it as you have 1 scout.
And just because you have scout, it doesn’t mean you can instantly prepare a counter strategy.
Let’s see
That build shouldn’t work at any decent level with the exception of someone ragequitting.
If you see such a fast age up and a castle the answer is easy: wall behind, collect relics, faster to imp, treb it down and push with arbs (with a few xbow you’ll deny the second castle easily). Another option is to push with a mango and some xbow his base in castle, is eco is undefended.
If you go for this specific build (provided you are at the same elo of your opponent and that you are not at low elo) you are dead in most cases, if you go for a variant where you use TA you are mosy likely dead anyway
and you ignore the obvious. There is a reason this video was done on arena and against the ai.
A real player with such a fast up, considering the civ is playing against would scout for vills. It’s arena, you don’t have to cover a lot of area.
Yes, since it’s a very easy strat to counter
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Hera just recently survive a triple castle drop and went on to win the game. Against Viper?
As a crap player back in the day I hate quick walls and douching and laming and every other cheezy type of attack, but to me, I can learn how to do those things and employ them myself. These aren’t exploits, they are game mechanics that are available to all players so it’s hard to imagine them going away. This is principally the reason why I play against the AI in scenarios and standard games because I don’t have time to practise all the meta and I think it ruins it for other players to get a game started with someone who suddenly quits because of laming or douching et cetera. I have to say though, it can be a lot of fun to watch!
A long way for me to say that castle drops should be left as they are - it helps me kill the AI and it’s a lot of fun.
Cheers!
Lol, are you complaining about AI to show… you are good or to further emphasize something? Or why you wrote that point at all?
He doesn’t need eco on min 13 and he already has the number of vills you are supposed to have in castle age on normal castle age time.
Who cares about the second castle? The build is finished, he might have as well move those vills from stones to wood.
Because the Ai doesn’t see it, the castle was outside their LOS
The other things you wrote are just… just air really as this is perfectly viable strat.
-You can’t collect relic when your opponent has a castle on your face, especially given it guards one gate
-You can fast imp, then you won’t have any military and this same build has imp min 24
-he has enough stones for towers to defend from your home push (with slower units)
and those reason i already told you. I am saying again; you don’t read anything at all. Impossible to convince anyone that doesn’t even read.
Yes but scouting as far as I know doesn’t garant you eternal vision on that spot and the guy built the castle outside AI’s LOS and… you have 1 scout.
Which is?
It’s definitely a good build, but I dont think it proves castle drops are op. Trying to execute this build against even 1k elo players on anything but arena 80% of the time it will fail. And on arena against real people it won’t have a 100% win rate by any means.
Again though it’s a really cool build, and situationally with the hi level micro he has, it can be effective for sure.
It is situational like any build but due to the dialoganal spawn bug, anyone can block at least 2 of your resources while… taking it. And a castle isn’t like towers, you need to have a big investment of units to counter it in castle age.
But that itself is fine. Blocking main resources without being able to push it back on min 14 is the problem.
You’re absolutely right, but on arena the first castle outside the wall doesnt deny resources. And on any other map he would lose between minute 9 and 13 when drush, scouts, or archers get to him.
I agree castle drop is a strong strat, but it’s not unbeatable, and it’s not without it’s risks. If it’s not OP I don’t feel it should be nerfed.
Do you think castle drops are OP?
The castle came at a big cost though, as far as I could tell he had no eco upgrades and no good way to make military (pure throwing axemen isn’t very good as far as I’m aware).
He would have had no way to contest a tower denying the gold (except to counter-tower), and had no center control, even against the AI.
The only thing the first castle really gave him was a hole in the arena wall.
The overall strategy looked improbably bad.
It also implies that while the enemy can take 2 ressources, it’s not going to be two of the same so your safe eco shouldn’t miss anything important.
I personally don’t mind the castle drops, the only times it’s annoying is when you didn’t see it coming. So I’d suggest going in a different direction and just increasing scouting options for players. I think a +2 LOS for outposts could be beneficial and make the structure more useful in general. On another note, nerfing the strength of building foundations(as in removing armor) would also help in defending castle drops and other types of building cheese.
nice idea! Viper mentioned on his stream as well that building foundations/quickwalling should be nerfed as well.
I am complaining about IA because it is objectively bad.
While having a weak eco and less resources which means that if both play it correctly the one doing the normal FC is up to imp faster and with a bunch of xbows out. Your castle gets trebbed down and the other player has army while if you use the food to go up as franks you won’t have any army.
It’s the second castle the one who is putting pressure on the ia, not the first. By himself that firat castle achieve absolutely nothing with the exception of letting him gather some gold from the opponent base
You should scout this easily. Keep yout scout active, such a fast up times means with franks means only a castle drop is coming (btw, it’s possible depending on the stone position to scout it even in dark age). If you don’t know how to properly use your scour that’s another thing, but you should be able to see it coming.
Yes you can. That castle achieve nothing with the exception of opening your walls and controlling the third gold. He has absolutely no unit and map control outside of the castle range, you are free to take the relics whenever you want.
… you know that fast imp strats generally rely on pumping out some arbalest to push with, right?
Towers easily go down against castle age siege. You need university and guard tower to defend it and he doesn’t have the eco for it
And that’s why i said that doing this against ia or a low skilled player doesn’t mean it’s viable.
It’s easy to scout, it’s even easy to expect some kind of ultra aggression build given the time he goes up. Use the scout well and, especially on a map like arena who has a lower area that need to be scouted, you’ll have no problem to spot it.
Are you going up really fast (25/26 pop)? Then, there’s a chance you’ll have some form of military out (archers or scout) that in a normal game are used to contest the relics: if that’s the case, use them
Build walls behind: the danger comes from the follow up, be it siege or UU. Keep you eco safe
Some xbows are more than enough to prevent a second castle, or you can use them offensively and defend with a siege shop.
Your eco WILL be stronger because he had so much vills on stone in dark age and feudal age, where you collected other res: go up faster. If you defended properly you won’t even need to treb that castle down, you can just go for his eco with arbs and a couple of rams
This strat can work only in two cases: ia or low elo players. Going for this against a competent player of your same level is suicide
Yes, i did. And i have faced many castle drops on me. So i have experience with castle dropping.
This seems more like a ’ I won the game, get out my game castle’. Probably only possible at 600 elo. I dont think we need that level as base line for balance changes.
If you didnt notice that the enemy build a castle in your LOS in your base, killing most of your eco, then you are just a bad player. Sorry to say… You know you can already wall your base, build your own castles/TCs in strategic spots. If the enemy is able to build a castle just in front of your eco and military buildings, that just means you already lost the game.
If the castle drop is pretty early in castle age, then you dont have a castle (I dont go for castles early, except if i want to go for UU, like mayan Plums of mongol Mangudai). I just boom and have multiple TCs running. The enemy dont have this, because they collect resources for the castle and goes forward at that moment with villagers. That sets them way behind in eco. Yes, you might have to relocate a part of your eco, but you are mostly ahead in eco in this game, which means you can still win the game in the end. So the castle isnt deadly at al in most games. Yes, the enemy will follow it is with more pressure and you have to defend for a while. But in the end you can hit back and punish the forward castle, is my experience. In most games with a forward castle, the game is over and you won the game if you kill the forward castle.
Someone already mentioned a game that Hera played. He got triple castle dropped and even survided and won the game.
I can sympathize with your argument that you find it more fun to fight with units and not builldings, at least offencivly. Mayby make an agreement with your opponent that its a no castle drop game is the only way to avoid it. And if your opponent refuses, then you know what to expect. 
There are so many things in this game that could be concidered cheesy, unfair and even cheaty but taking them away would only make playing the game very boringly uniformed.
Well 2 days ago i suggested to make a nerf about the Incas for their hard tower rush especially for their blacksmith bonuse that applied to vills because i think it is really broken.
But about your post with the castle drop, i don’t agree with you about that, when we are talking about castle drop then we are talking about a castle age rush, not like the Incas tower rush with their superpower ville in the early feudal!!! So when we are talking about a castle rush, then you must have a good time to prepare until the castle age!!! If the enemy can just drop a castle easly in your base and you couldn’t do anything then you are late from the beginning, ofcourse there are special cases because most of the castle drop rush happened in the spanish civ, because they can build 30% faster, and also the bulgarians with krepost, and also the franks with their 25% disscount on castle…those like a keys that lead you to know if the enemy will do this or not and if some changes need to do they must include those civs for their bonuses on castles and kreposts.
For me castle drop means that you have some time to response if you just build a siege and make few rams you will be able to destroy it easly and i suggest for you to redo the Art of war “destroying a castle” chapter, this will be helpful.
I know they aren’t going to disallow forward buildings, like they did in AOE3. My suggestion is to make it harder to just drop one with no supporting units. For example by reducing the foundation armor on buildings, as Viper himself suggests, so that your villagers could take down a forward castle being constructed more easily, despite quick walls, etc.
The suggestion that it only happens to 600 ELO players is just plain incorrect, I am not 600 ELO, and as I’ve said multiple times, you can see it in pro games as well. I am merely reporting the facts, not opinions, of what I see in my games online. Lots of people are castle dropping. Its a fact. They are doing it because presumably it is very effective, otherwise it wouldn’t be so common.
These kind of argreements are possible in unranked, but not in ranked. I would never agree, even if i dont plan to Castle drop.