I have noticed that some players wall up completely, some just wall a few chokes, and some dont wall at all besides using their buildings. Since AOE does not give vils any army like loom in AOE2, is walling something that I should consider most games? I have not been doing so, and have lost to several quick raids of cavalry that could have been prevented with some stone. Or perhaps are towers something I should invest in instead of walls, or am I just a noob and good players don’t need defenses
Yes, you should definitely try to wall. Scouting is very important, and once you’ve found enough food sources to get you to bronze, your main priority for scouting should be to find suitable chokepoints to wall off as soon as you hit tool. Especially if you’re going CAs, to keep the cavalry off you while you research wheel.
Even if you can’t wall off completely, you should be able to make them run through your army buildings (and ergo, your army) rather than straight into your villagers, by walling off the sides.
Note though that walls are only there to give you time to get your army in place, you won’t be able to just sit back and boom behind them for very long before any decent player brings a stonethrower or transport boat.
I suppose the exception to all this would be when you can see from the statistics screen that you’re going to bronze faster and stronger than your opponents - then you might just focus everything on hitting them first. But it’s still probably a good habit to get into.
Walling has nothing to do with being a noob or good player. If you watch several skilled players’s game, they wall as well. Towers aren’t going to help you out entirely. The raiding cavalry can give you idle time, even if they don’t actively attack.
Yes, these answers are perfect, thanks. It does seem that walls play a decent role in games. Would you then not use towers unless tower rushing?
Towers definitely have their uses, not just for tower rushing but also for defense. It is extremely situational and at the decision of the player during game play.
There isn’t a pre-written list when towers or walls are used or not. But generally walls do a better job at defending your base because they are cheaper and faster to build.
In most circumstances getting a tower before Bronze would be the least useful way to spend your starting stone. Late bronze though, once you’ve spread over the map with multiple TCs, having some towers to help defend against harassment can be worthwhile. In Iron when you push out further to keep mining gold, you’ll usually want to tower up pretty well around those locations.
Just remember, no gates!
@AvallachAOE said:
In most circumstances getting a tower before Bronze would be the least useful way to spend your starting stone. Late bronze though, once you’ve spread over the map with multiple TCs, having some towers to help defend against harassment can be worthwhile. In Iron when you push out further to keep mining gold, you’ll usually want to tower up pretty well around those locations.
This was very helpful. I have found that as weak as AOE vils are, towers do virtually nothing to stop an enemy once they’re around my TC. My vils all die and it doesn’t really matter if my tower kills the raiders afterward. As far as gates, using rally points on buildings lets you train units to walk outside the town wall
Normally, my 7th villager is off exploring and ranging the map looking, not only for resources, but also choke points that can be temporarily walled with houses and your barracks in the transition to
Tool Age. The game like most RTS is about map control so I wouldn’t hesitate walling near to the enemy if there is a choke as controlling movement is a tactical advantage.
I would say that 99/100 spending the 150 starting stone on wall is more effective than a tower, especially as slingers seem to be the go to tool rush unit at the moment.
If you tool rush the first thing that the person who recieves the tool rush often does is wall himself into a corner and I have had times where its been sensible to add to their wall with my own, so they are essentially trapped and denied resources and you can transport troops in via the water on inland/Conti and they cannot then delete wall to get out as yours is there blocking them.
One of the main counters to a tool rush is cavalry, so if you are playing against a gold dependent civ and rushing, it can be worthwhile using your forward builders to wall the enemy gold. Cutting a Minoan off from their gold means that it doesn’t matter as much them surviving a tool rush and getting to Bronze.
As previous posters have said, if you are in Iron and gold starts to diminish then it’s usually a good idea to have some towers covering your farmers as you cannot garauntee that a few scythes might not get past your main defences, ballistics is important.
In Bronze and without ballistics I’ll happily just ignore towers to hit the villagers as usually they will only hit when the cavalry stops, and cavalry usually only stop when they are hitting something usually a villager and I’ll take 3/4 damage on my cavalry man for 8-12 damage on a villager in return.
great tips there
also, docks on river crossings have saved my bacon a good few times in bronze
@Potdindy said:
I have noticed that some players wall up completely, some just wall a few chokes, and some dont wall at all besides using their buildings. Since AOE does not give vils any army like loom in AOE2, is walling something that I should consider most games? I have not been doing so, and have lost to several quick raids of cavalry that could have been prevented with some stone. Or perhaps are towers something I should invest in instead of walls, or am I just a noob and good players don’t need defenses
To answer your question, good players…won’t spend a lot of energy micromanaging wall building nor mining stone. Is some strategic walling sensible? Yes. But it has to be Strategic—which means, is it worth spending 50 food on research and is it worth spending time micro-managing a villager or 2 building walls here and there. By doing this, you give up 50 food (which could be 1 ‘free’ villager or faster bronze time) plus the time it takes for your villagers to build walls (when they could have been chopping wood or getting berries). Not to mention the player (your) time focusing on building walls somewhere and then a potential idle villager later when he’s done building the wall. Not to mention, odds are, you can’t wall it all so a cav rush will still get you somehow. Not to mention, perhaps an enemy villager is closer to your base than you know and building a stable(s) nearby. A ‘good’ player will put energy and resources into offensive weapons instead of wall-building, usually.
However, strategically, if you came across sweet spots of walling small gaps, it can be worth it. Still a bit of a cost associated with it, so the trick is—if you invest time and resources into walling in a few spots, and it buys you time later, what will YOU do with that time? Without gates, a bit of pain with teammates, too, when their troops can’t get around the map to help you (or kill somebody else).