The current RM meta revolves around having a walled base in feudal to enable a boom to castle. Players are able to naked FC on any land map. The risk involved is quite low as the ability to layer walls as needed is easy.
Issue Walls are defining the meta rewarding a passive playstyle.
Suggestions These suggestions are not symbiotic, but are potential fixes to an otherwise meta-defining problem.
Remove walls from Dark Age, with Palisade walls only in Feudal Age. Castle Age being when you can build stone walls. What this does? Encourages more early aggression and increases the difficulty of “turtling”.
Reduce HP of walls in Feudal Age (mirroring the current tower HP rework). What this does? Encourages early aggression and increases the risk of the naked FC.
Increase cost of walls (3 > 5). What this does? It increases the investment of the waller, while not significantly changing current gameplay.
Wild Idea
4. Feudal Technology - Siege Ladder
Allows dismounted units to climb Palisade walls (similar function to siege tower in Castle Age)
Researched at Barracks
Cost ~150wood 50gold (similar price concept to supplies and arson - not viable every game) What this does? Mitigates the palisade fortresses and rewards Feudal aggression.
No to everything. Just play open maps with poor resources. Rushing good already. No changes needed.
This would ruin black forest. Yes, guys like to play that map. Everyone would just play goths since their big weakness is that they lack stone walls. Building walls costs wood/stone and can be attacked while making them. Plus on very open maps, it’s very hard to wall and costly.
This will “encourage early aggression” in the sense that Drush builds will likely be far too dominant since you’re guaranteed to be able to hit your opponent while still in Dark Age. While Drush builds are cool, I don’t think it would be healthy for the meta for them to dominate.
I would not be against this, but most players will simply wall behind any wall being attacked with other buildings to mitigate, not a lot would change.
Another potential idea, but I wouldn’t do this alongside your earlier suggestion, I think you have to do one or the other, or you risk over-nerfing, walling still has a place.
In the end, I’m with the poster above, I would want to adjust open maps so that they’re less wallable instead of nerfing walls.
While i dont mind the walling meta, i think more importantly this changes the game too much.
Firstly pros will never agree to this. Fast walling (nevermind walling the base) is way too meta to completely remove it.
Afaik devs intentionally made it easier to wall arabia. Which makes me think the devs believe tje majority of arabia players prefer the slightly more defensive starts.
I wouldn’t mind walls being slightly more expensive, but mayan allies will still have just as easy time to wall.
So if anything i think the reduced dark age hp will be better.
But imo any nerfs to walling will heavily buff civs like magyars that have such a good scout rush…
I’m curious what made the change to this meta from Voobly/HD? Is it the combination of Arabia being easier to wall and pathing encouraging archer play which is a bit slower? Seems like the solution is to try to fix bugs that are creating this meta, rather then changing stats, technologies, and units.
Firstsly, people realized how strong full walling early is. Sounds stupid but is a fact.
Secondly, the maps have been reworked to be more fair and consistent. Meaning you very often have back ressources (gold/stone) and 2,3 good woodlines. This means people are less likely too be at a heavy disadvantage because of the map, but it also had the side effect of significantly weakening early aggression, since you can often wall at least easy enough to have safe gold/wood.
Thirdly, towers have lost a lot of HP in feudal age, making them simply way weaker to hold a position. This was a good change to end the fwd tower meta, but also had the side effect of making it harder to punish an (dr) fc.
At last DE’s QoL improvements made people execute Drush FC builds cleaner in general and the effeciency of a small group of xbow got way higher with the reduced input delay.
It’s a combination of map changes making arabia more closed, pathing favoring archers (although with the latest patch melee pathing is pretty good), and, in my opinion, the reduced input lag makes it much easier to quick-wall, whereas before you had to react much faster.