Walls not sealing off on hill

Age of Empires II: DE II - Report a Bug
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:play_button: GAME INFORMATION

  • GAME BUILD #: 174992
  • GAME PLATFORM: Steam
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11

:play_button: ISSUE EXPERIENCED

Spent the entire game (1 v 2AI) trying to seal off this area with walls.

:play_button: REPRODUCTION STEPS

SP vs 2AI Skirmish - Oasis map

Try to build walls on hills and see them leak like a sieve the entire game

:play_button: EXPECTED RESULT

Have walls that seal off correctly on hills… no invisible holes/gaps for units to go through

:play_button: IMAGE

Blue units were streaming through holes in this area the entire game, starting around here:

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image877×581 846 KB

They still were getting through until I had these many walls built. One wasn’t enough, then another wasn’t enough, I think the 3rd one toward the middle of the stone pile being worked on is what finally sealed it. Visually, it didn’t look like there was or should be a gap:

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image976×613 339 KB

Then they were getting through these walls almost the entire game somehow:

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image1200×754 1.54 MB

Even after trying to build, and build, and build, there were still gaps they somehow kept streaming through and running rampant in my base. Impossible for me to see or fix the holes. Red line shows their general uninhibited path to the inside of my base:

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image1362×769 1.78 MB

I could never seal the gaps because (1) those blue horse units felt way OP (my Spanish units were all weaklings compared to them), (2) their endless stream of units through through my walls into my base, and (3) my horrible villager resource collection rates (I think patches and time have really tanked gather rates in AoE2:DE compared to HD and earlier). I could never push them back long enough or far enough to sneak a villager over to do much more wall caulking than I could muster in screenshots.

  • Correction: Toward the very end when it was pretty much over due to their onslaughts (blue from one side of my base, red from the other), I managed to barely get a couple villagers to make a straight wall from about the gate on right to the map’s edge in lower-left just off-screen (not pictured). That finally sealed it, but it avoids the hill so of course it did.

  • That was at the literal end of the game, though. Too many waves of enemies had come through over the course of over an hour, and I had to spend way too much time and resources trying to fix that wall area the entire game. Moments later I unleashed about 30-40 Cobra Cars to wipe red and blue out because there was no hope for me otherwise.

It was obvious to me that there were several occasions where seamless wall lines I constructed on the hill should have clearly been solid, impenetrable walls if the game engine worked correctly. I know there’s been a long-standing issue with walls on hills, but this was way worse than I’ve ever experienced

:play_button: GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)

  • :diamond_suit: I might have a recording, but will have to look tomorrow or some other time

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Turn on the grid to help you spot these holes. Hills are pretty steep on the north side and graphics don’t adjust the shape of their bases to the contour of the hill.

Another thing you can do is select the objects you think are forming the wall and check their outlines; the corners of buildings and resources are always placed at the grid intersections. So, if two corners of separate buildings are not touching then the buildings are not touching.

Of course, the simplest answer is to just always click and drag to place a continuous wall straight across the whole area you think might have a hole.