Why don’t people build walls around relics to keep them safe until they’re ready to collect them? It could be a really strong strategy, especially as the Lithuanians, Burmese, and Aztecs, and significantly delays the opponent getting relics if they happen to advance first.
Because getting relics is a passive long term play. And most people want to keep the starting stone for town centres and mining stone too early sets you back and delays your up times. You can house wall them in but then there’s all the idle time with your villagers walking across the map to wall. Then you have to factor in the fact that you will be focusing your scouting on relics instead of your opponent. So you may succeed in snagging the relics but at the cost of economy, expansion, map control, initiative etc. Gold isnt a problem in the early to mid game because it’s more efficient to just mine it.
Idle eco. If you’ve got a villager on the map you should have a good reason for it.
Walling in a relic doesn’t really constitute a good reason most of the time.
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If you do that you gonna be CA after your opponent and he will have have monks and CA units before you.
Also if you do that, your opponent will understand that you are a beginner paying too much attention to relic and he will destroy while you are collecting relics.
This is a beginner move that shows your fear about fighting ) It’s like those who build excessively long stone walls or wall opponent doors in Arena or build random walls to prevent a drop castle.
The best defense is attack in AOE2 and playing to defensive is not the best solution (sometimes it is but in specific cases).
I don’t personally do it, nor have I seen anyone at any level doing it, but I thought maybe it wasn’t a totally bonkers strategy, just an off-the-wall and cheesy one.
If you’re talking about all maps, I wouldn’t recommend it. If you’re talking about closed maps, then it’s an excellent strategy against anyone playing a civ with a relic bonus. I once did it in a team game, and although me and my teammate ended up losing, it delayed the opponent from getting the relic.
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I definitely had Arena in mind when writing this post.
I’ve seen some players walling relics, low Elo players.
I forgot to mention, that by walling relics, you inform your opponent that you are going for relics so it can be even more difficult to get them )
I think probably the most amusing usage for the tactic is if you’re Burmese and know where they are right away. Then when the opponent tries to go for them, they’re already walled in.
Yeah but I think the Burmese bonus is too weak. Few months ago, I suggested to improve the Burmese bonus for they can see in real time 2 boxes quarter arround relics and to know the position of ennemy monasteries that countain relics.
Now the bonus sux because till castle age, we have time to scoot and we usually found already all relics.
Not to mention that on visible maps like Black Forest or Michi, the Burmese bonus becomes totally useless.
Wall the enemies tertiary gold and secondary stone while you’re at it for extra annoyance.
Obviously you don’t want to do this too early to not hurt your eco, but in maps like arena there can definitely be a window of opportunity where your eco can handle it but there isn’t much military on the field yet (probably around 50 vills into the boom).
Faster aging up to castle age and fielding monks faster will be more efficient than walling?
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