# Why we need to talk about Walls again **URL:** \ **Category:** II - Discussion\ **Created:** [September 25, 2026, 8:07am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/why-we-need-to-talk-about-walls-again/289953 "2026-09-25T08:07:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![casusincorrabil](https://forums.ageofempires.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@casusincorrabil](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/casusincorrabil)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2026, 8:07am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/why-we-need-to-talk-about-walls-again/289953/1 "2026-09-25T08:07:47Z")
Instead of adding sily open maps like the new Arabian Desert, just make walling more costly (but more durable). It doesn’t even change the meta to make the res out that far. We have a low-commitment strat meta that includes walling up at a later stage, as the priority is to just get some units out as early as possible. > **Summary** > > Make walling on Arabia a commitment again and we can hopefully finally return to a stage with commited feudal play. Players need to decide wether they want their early aggression or being defensively set up well. Generally speaking also Arabia should always slightly favor aggressive play, but like 60-40, not 80-20. When wallin is more of a commitment, then it allows also for stuff like full scouts to return to the meta, something we don’t see these days. > > Araibia was in the past the map with the biggest variety, yet the hamster meta made it repetitive, as there is a clear pattern of: Get the rush out, try to get an advantage. Wall Up + set up your eco. Get Up, Get the rush out. Ofc wall changes alone won’t completely break that, but if walls were more costly but durable, this would nerf that pattern, as it wouldn’t allow the hamsters to get their ridicilous castle timings as they do currently. > > It would also nerf stuff like Phosphoru who is relying on being able to scrap up some defensive walls when under pressure. If that costs more wood, then any form of early aggression can do more damage just by forcing him to invest more in the defense. Especially as his builds are designed super tight, this would actually be a big hit to those strats. > > Generally speaking, I see map designers struggling witth the current walls for years now. If they want maps to be aggressive they need absurd stuff like unbuildable terrain and whatelse. This should be just able by basic map layout. When the woodlines are further away, it should just make them aggressive. And we shouldn’t need to put them on Narnia for that. And for a map like Arabia it’s ridicilous how far res sometimes spawn. Especially noticable was the Arabia in the League tournament. Where almost all the woodlines had to spawn in the center or outside because they couldn’t be closer to the players starting positions. > Just freaking make walls more expensive but durable in compensation and we finally can get nice maps and a healthy meta on those maps again. With commitment strats rather than this “I don’t commit to anything, there is a timing for everything and my focus is on getting macro advantages” hamstering we currently have. ---
**Author:** ![casusincorrabil](https://forums.ageofempires.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@casusincorrabil](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/casusincorrabil)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 7:48am UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/why-we-need-to-talk-about-walls-again/289953/2 "2026-10-10T07:48:34Z")
I try to be explicite rn why I try to open the wall discussion again. The discussion has been “closed” because Walling has become embedded in the meta. That’s why there is no “complaining” about it currently. People just use it as part of their meta strats. But exactly that is to criticice. Walling SHOULD be an option, depending how “walllable” a map is. And I am talking about traditional early walling, not the feudal walling we see in the current meta. I know, that was what annoyed people. Most prominently Hera. Funnily he actually WON almost all the games against the early wallers anyways. Which points out that it was a principle discusion. And back then I criticized the wall nerf rigorously also exactly because of the WAY it was implemented. That was exactly how Hera wanted it - and what lead to the current “Walls being part of the Hamster meta” situation. Ofc his “solution” idea was to make early walling obsolete. But should we do that just because of a very vocal part of the community wants certain strats to be gone? It IS a RTS. Strategies are part of it. And ofc everybody has their favorite strats and strats they hate. I for exanple don’t like stuff like stupid unit spams (Goths) or pure raid the opponent to death stuff (Shrivamsha). Am I demanding that stuff to be gone? No. I fight it in the game. Because it’s a strat people figured out and want to use. And I feel good when I beat it. Ofc sometimes “cheese” strats can become OP and need nerfs. Some of the Phos strats are a good example and whilst I like phos (though I don’t play his style) - I think it’s fair that some of them get nerfed. But force-removing certain strats just because some vocal parts of the community demand it, because they claim it would be bad isn’t the solution of anything. It only reduces the strategic diversity of the game. What happened there was probably the most forcing step in the development of the “Hamster” meta. And it was demanded by the biggest Hamster of them all - Hera. Something he didn’t even NEED to become the no1. But for sure it helped him at that time to become it, as specifically the building time increase made it almost impossible to get the early walls down without sacrificing too much. But on the other end it allows still to place walls in Feudal. Especially to snowball an early lead. Which is exactly what Hera and the Hamsters tried to achieve. So we forcingly nerfed a before hand balanced strat but indirectly buffed an already upcoming meta dominating strat because of the dominators claims (that were wrong - he won those games). Better would have been to increase the wood cost slightly. And that’s what I would now also tend towards. My basic conceptional idea would be: - Increase durability (specifically dark age walls could have possibly the same HP as feudal ones, but lesser melee armor (possibly even negative) so militias and scouts do more against them) - increase wood cost - reduce building time - (reduce payback for partially finished walls and gates) This would allow walling to /become a stable (off-meta) strat on Arabia with traditional woodline distances (hello!). And allow map designers to adjust the “wallabilty” of their maps with that easy tweak. Move the woodlines in or out depending on their size. How I think it should be. I don’t think we need unwallable terrain or other absurdities, just an adjustment to walls like that and at the same time we can reactivate the good old “defense vs offense” play, that was way, way more attractive than the current hamster meta. (yes walling should NOT become the meta strat. I’m not asking for that. But if 20 % of openers are early walling we would get nearly 40 % of defense vs offense again. That would be amazing.) PS: Does anybody else also notice the irony that they called early walling when it was doable broken and OP. But nowadays when it is basically nerfed to oblivion nobody of them even mentions it in terms of “balance”. Evil to who thinks evil of it… ---
**Author:** ![casusincorrabil](https://forums.ageofempires.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@casusincorrabil](https://forums.ageofempires.com/u/casusincorrabil)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2026, 8:43pm UTC](https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/why-we-need-to-talk-about-walls-again/289953/13 "2026-10-12T20:43:31Z")
So here is my conceptional idea for Palisade Walls. Cost 3 W - 6 W Construction time 7s - 5s Effectively including walking time increasing the villager time investment for a single wall tile from about 15 s to 20 s. 250 (150 in dark age) HP - 400 HP Dark age melee armor 2 - -1 This would theoretically make dark age scouts better at destroying palisades, which is ofc basically irrelevant. Most units will take a fair bit longer to destroy dark age palisades, but eg it would reuire MAA with arson and forging to make it double. Militias would basically take the same time as now (against more expensive walls). From feudal ofc this would make palisades generally 60 % more durable for the effectively 33 % cost increase. Which is in my eyes a fair tradeoff. Also considereing how much more upfront investment has to be done to be walled. It is imo crucial though to reduce the construction time of palisades to make walling “on the way up” to feudal attractive agains. Currently it just takes too long. The ofset I propose is ofc that it will be more of an overall investment to do so. If you think about 3 scouts vs walling, the investment for the scouts is about 1400 vill seconds (including the stable). This would be aneuivalent of 70 palisade wall tiles. And the person doing the walls has nothing to deal damage back to the rusher. So depending on the openness of the map, it’s possible that walling against a scrush is just objectively a bad play then. Ofc it would still be required for the rushers to react properly to that to snowball that advantage. Theoretically the higher cost of the walls makes it also more expensive to repair, but the difference is marginal. What is a difference is that you will need then more than 2 lumberjacks for one waller, whilst currently one is sufficient. Which means, people who want to wall early need to use special buildorders which ofc will also delay the feudal time. So it’s a tradeoff strategic decision with an associated commitment. Even miniature walling ressources will be more expensive and potentially require adaptations then. This is an absolutely intended effect. Using wals as a protection tool in any form should be associated with a appropriate commitment cost. The value of even just buying a few seconds time so your vills can’t be surprised at a woodline and get in safety in time is huge - and has to have a cost associated that reflects that value. A cost that ideally should need build adaptations - stuff that allows people who take the risk to get their rushes out quicker, depending on the scale of the protection. It’s ofc a balance question and I don’t know if the tweak I propose will be “optimal”. That’s unpredictable. The proposal is about the conceptional idea to give all the different forms of early walling their place, depending on the basic map design. Especially again talking about that “very open maps” should make full walling basically a self kill as the investment is just too high and gives the opponent a huge advantage to snowball. On the other end I hope that this change would allow to put the woodlines closere to the bases on arabia, so we can see early walls there again. Just ofc not too much - as I said like 20 % of openers would imo be sufficient to diversify the plays enough to make the games more interesting.