Thanks for bringing this up! It makes sense to unlock towers with any military feudal age building (archery range, blacksmith, stable) so that by scouting an early blacksmith it would help anticipate and prepare against a trush.
I feel that towers must be unlocked because they are the strongest unit in feudal age and they have no counter but another tower or a town center.
Though I must admit that playing against a tower rush in a 1v1 is so much for me. However in Team games It becomes problematic when it hits both pockets or two players without any genuine investment.
I understand that towers now have lower range and cost slightly more wood yet in my opinion we should be able to scout it coming and force an investment in any feudal age building…duh!! It’s the only strategy that needs NOT any building.
Often maps are unforgiving… You could get most of your resources in one spot then a coin-flip tower behind denies all.
And from a spectator point view, I’d rather watch a newbie fail so badly at a drush or a scout rush than to watch someone spamming towers every game without a visual plan.
Aoe 2 is a 20 years old game. Tower rush is also 20 years old tactic. If it was the best tactic, everybody would use only it. Tower rush is very often used by Rook players( 1200-1300 points at Voobly), who do NOT know how to use archers and cavalry… Learn the game and all different tactics !!!
Interesting idea. My easiest wins came when my enemy tower rushed me, but this won’t stop me from hating this tactic.
From a historic point of view, building walls around your opponent base are more realistic than tower rushing, yet here we are.
My best guess to work this out is to put a range around the first enemy tc where you can’t place your buildings - like aoe3 - but your idea is way more plausible.
The problem with this idea is that it also makes it harder to get towers up for defense. It isn’t addressing the underlying issue: that towers are as good or better offensively than they are defensively. How often do people build defensive towers when they aren’t being tower rushed? Ever?
Offensive towers control the map and destroy the opponents economy by denying resources. Defensive towers can usually just be ignored by walking past. At best they protect a small part of the economy, but units can do that just as effectively against anything except offensive towers.
If the goal is simply to remove tower rushes from the game, this idea might work. Might. But it will simply result in towers never being built. Something needs to be done to make towers better on defense than offense if you want towers to actual serve their originally intended purpose.
Your post is very hard to read, please learn better english. It seems your example is that in other RTS games an attack unit can be made before a tower. But this is already the case for AoE 2, as the militia unit can be made a whole age before towers. I think the real problem is that towers are relatively strong in AoE 2.
This change would break with the way the AoE 2 tech tree works. All tech (except age advancement) is unlocked by age and the building it’s researched in. In SC2 al tech is unlocked by having buildings.
What do you think about my solution?
With building foundations having no armor, they can easily be destroyed before finished. Currently it’s suicide to send your villagers to counter an enemy tower if you discover it. Mostly because villagers do very little damage to buildings. This is fine in general, but makes no sense for building foundations.
This change makes outposts useful, it will allow you to detect tower rushes in time. It’s not good enough for the attacking player to start walling around their tower, as those walls too can be destroyed easily. If the tower rusher does get a tower up, there will be a much greater need to place the next one within range of the first. As the defending player is now paying attention and will surely destroy any new tower not properly defended. It rarely works the other way around because defending towers will be defended by the town center.
I agree, building foundations shouldn’t have armor. Its so ridiculous that 2 villagers can build anything faster than 5 m@a attacking it.
The cherry on top is that it won’t just nerf Tower-Rushing, it would also nerf quickwalling, which although is a high-micro tactic, it is extremely boring and annoying because if those who are good at it (like TheViper) can basically play carelessly and not “prepare” for an incoming attack because when the attack arrives he will just quickwall and be ok.
“Oh, I didn’t scout properly and missed you walking in with those 4 scouts, its ok I’ll just build 5% of a house and a palisade and all of your investment will sink.”
I agree that high-level tactics are beautiful to see, but they feel so weird and out of place. I trained quickwallking against AI for a bit and its absolutely broken. F# quickwalling.
It is so weird that Towers in AoE2 are actually better OFFENSIVELY than DEFENSIVELY !!!
I don’t know if the engine supports anything like that, but Watch Towers should get a -1 Base Atk followed up by a +2 if built within X distance from your TC, this bonus could be removed upon researching Guard Towers, becoming exclusive to the Watch Towers.
But, as I said, I don’t know if the engine supports it.
I loved the oldArrowslits upgrade making towers so strong, it was awesome because for the first time I could punish enemies for just “walking” into my base without Siege, but on the other hand, offensive towers became a ridiculous beast. The meta was basically Tower Rush into FC/Arrowslits and that was not only boring but frustrating.
They are researched at the IMPERIAL AGE nowadays, back when they were researched in the CASTLE AGE they were a problem, yes.
The meta was basically: Tower-Rush your opponent and FC, if you managed to reach Castle before your opponent, you would build an university, get arrowslits, take 90% of the map away from your opponent and then just finish with Knights/Mangs, assuming your opponent didn’t already resigned by then.
How would your opponent get Rams if you reached CA first? Then Guard Towers with +6 Damage at CA were extremely difficult to deal with (old Arrowslits gave 2/4/6 bonus attack to towers, adding with Bodkin Arrow for a total of 6 damage)
From what I remember reading at Reddit r/aoe2 during a discussion about the topic, the general sentiment among most players is that quick-walling is a cheap tactic, even those who can execute it agree (assuming they are speaking truthfully).
Honestly the best way to nerf tower rushes is stop giving vils the ability to shoot arrows from towers. If someone wants super buff towers with added arrows they should invest in archers which is a big investment. Vils should still be able to shoot out of TCs because TC drops aren’t a big deal in the game, but shooting out of towers just is nonsense.
I don’t think towers are nearly as OP as they were in the recent versions and much less strong than in AOC balance. Someone mentioned the Viper game he posted recently, which he also lost… offensive towers go down so easily to villagers now that rushing them down is far more effective for the defensive player. The only thing I believe they need to adjust is guard tower, which should be more expensive.
I think the combination of making building foundations zero armor, plus give villagers a bonus against walls and towers might work. Not a big bonus, just a small one. That might make it easier for villagers to rush down a construction in the dark or feudal era, as well as make walls a bit easier to take down early on.
As for requiring buildings to build towers, that would be unique, but we already have certain units requiring tech to build, and you could argue that Harbors require a tech to be built (although that is more of an upgrade).
I don’t think it would would need the defender too much. Keep in mind, it would slow down the tower rush a bit, putting it on par with a scout or Archer rush. Both of those rushes require at least one building before they can happen. Having the tower require the blacksmith or even the market (now that would mess with people) would put it on a similar level.
And again, having this requirement would slow down defender, but also the attack.
Removing building armor during construction is fine for Feudal age, but when you get into Castle age and your TC builders or castle builders get caught and have to retreat, that armor comes in handy against much stronger units, and losing those buildings before completion is much more impactful than losing a tower.
Quick walling can (and should) be solved by simply making 1-tile building foundations (i.e. walls and gates) traversable up until completion.
Requiring a barracks before being allowed to make towers should be a sufficient nerf to pure tower rushes. No need to get too carried away.