I wouldn’t say that in general. The thing is, that opposed to general thinking, defence is much harder to master than offense. A beginner learns the basics, a mediocre learns to attack and deal damage to the enemy eco, a good player can defend against this.
Because defensive playstyle needs higher skill than offensive, for newer players the game will generally be more offensive-reliant than defensive.
That’s also why they nerf certain defensive plays now, because the common skill level raises and most players in higher elos are able to quickwall, garrison moving etc. Some years ago this wasn’t a thing also because of the lag.
So I can totally understand why newer players think offense is op and its also an issue because as a newer player you tend to be more interested to learn defence first for a safer playstyle. Defensive minded players have a hard time learning aoe2. But this is a general trend in almost all games i know.
So the actual nerfs to defences hit the newer players most, becaus they feel almost chanceless against them fith a bit more experience who already learned how to damage the eco.
That would imply they are new players to the whole genre, since RTS is traditionally laser-focused on offense and micro tricks, of which AoE2 actually has very little of.
Play any C&C or -Craft game, and you get is instant 1 minute rushes all the ay through ladder, which AoE is actually too slow for.
Most RTS games are so offensive in gameplay style, that a single unit lost too soon can mean a game loss.
This is not the case with Aoe, specially not AoE2, in which the Vills can hide in the TC, and Castles are so brutally effective, you need units an entire Age after them to properly counter them.
What happen if you have 4 player with no team? No one will fight because they have nothing to earn. If they attack they will loose more than the opponnent.
If there is only two opponents, you will have to wait and the first one to do an attack move will lost.
The only way to have fast game it’s with offensive game play
FFA matches are already this way and would be even if you removed every defensive structure from the game, the first person to attack is automatically putting themselves at a disadvantage to everyone besides the person that they actually attacked both short and long term unless there are a lot of resources they can take from whoever they defeat, the last player to start fighting in FFA is going to have the most resources to fight with because they have not been using anything up
Defensive gameplay in 1v1 is limited even if the defensive structures are decent because of the extra resources in the rest of the map, if you turtle behind walls and towers you are denying access to these for yourself, someone playing aggressive does not have to knock their opponent out in feudal age to win because of it if they can get 2k extra stone and gold that the defensive player cannot access because they invested more into buildings and less into army - I think nerfing defense to the point it isn’t viable to use against a feudal age scout rush is going way too far and people asking for that are just wanting to get easy wins for themselves by getting their particular play style buffed over everything else, like with people that ask for buffs to civs that are already in the top 5 by win rate
Well the deal is I don’t think what you say next is that different. Turns out plopping a house behind a palissade tile that is getting attacked isn’t hard at all.
The most I can do to agree with you is to say that indeed sometimes defensive players are all lost once they successfully defended and lsoe because they just don’t attack back, but let’s be real unless you make wonders only 500w 500g and allow them in ranked there is no way to win without getting out of your base unless the enemy went out of their way to waste all their ressources.
If someone would try just spamming walls against me i woul go fc + forward siege, 2 tc behind to make sure he can’t outboom me.
nothing special about this, these are basick attack things you learn.
Defence play only works if you don’t spend so much ressoureces so you can boom behind. Thats what i’m talking about. Also the importance of counter raiding etc. all these things which make good defensive plays. This is very hard to learn and execute and learned well after how you defeat silly wall spammers.
Of course being fully walled helps a lot in defensive play, but a good defense is much more than this.
If something needs to be nerfed, then it is defense. Currently players are more concerned about not loosing the with winning. 1v1 Ranked is the proof for this. So i agree with you.
I also really like empire wars for this reason. You can be offensive from the start, before your enemy is able to full wall his base. It is ashame EW is only part of quick play, which sucks. So i dont really play EW.
So i fully disagree with @VibrantBoot6207. The game doesnt value offense more then defense. For me it seems the other way around.
Of course, but if you already invested in some rush units and arrive too late it’s kind of a bummer that walls and houses are the most effective counter. Sometimes it makes one wonder why spear and skirms exist when wall and houses are cheaper 11
Totally for buffing defenses more because I want to see more wall-in cheese. Which is the entire problem with a defensive mindset; defenses in other RTS tend to be conducive to “risk” strategies wherein you do something that normally would get you killed (teching up very fast, getting an expansion quickly, etc).
Also, if you have a problem with offensive play, increase the map size. A sufficiently large map neuters offenses; rushes and harasses are usually more viable when the map size is small and it’s quick to go in on an enemy force.
Spears and skirms will kill your units, the houses and walls do not and allow you to mass more units as long as they will not be made obsolete in later ages (so man at arms are utterly defeated by walls but scout cavalry and archers are not, especially archers, except goths as they will probably continue to upgrade their MAA)
This problem is not large enough to invalidate MAA because you can create them earlier than scouts and are less likely to encounter walls(make militia in dark age and start them walking so they arrive right before you research MAA upgrade), if you do encounter walls and made them in a reasonable time the waller is idling villagers to house wall behind if you just set them on their palisades so you are still doing some economic damage even if you aren’t actually killing anything - more damage the earlier you make them pull a vil off resource collection, if they have 20 villagers one vil is 5% of their income
Palisade walls, imo, are intended to be built mid-battle or pre-battle to provide protection for your archers and siege against cavalry. They’re not the same as stone walls, which are intended for more permanent fortification.