AOE-II Should Castle Age cost more?

[Paint]

First of all I know it will never happen no one will make a change this big. But would the game be better if Castle age cost more and we had more time to play with Feudal Age units? I was thinking 100 more Gold and Food each would be fine.

With the power creep of the latest expansion some civs can do a 22+2 FC no problem (I was thinking of Khmer, Mongols and Tatars but there are probably more) so a FC player gets to Feudal age only like 90 seconds later and it's very hard to tell if they just wall and make archers or go directly into Castle Age.

 

[OLADUSHEK]

Man, that's exactly what I thinking about last week! Some civs can do so ez fc or drush+fc nowadays.. Castle Age should cost 1000 250 - it will be perfect balance change for all!

 

[malamadre]

Think harder before posting a thread, this is just like aoe forums. Civs with bonus still will get to castle age with no problem, civs with no bonus and that did a fast feudal will have a harder time going up to castle age.

 

[HelloWorld]

Yeah as malamadre said, civs with stronger eco bonuses will reach castle age faster and weaker eco civs like Spanish will reach it later. Civs like Vikings will be even super broken with free wheelbarrow. And Slavs too. It feels like good suggestion at the start, but when you go through what will happen, it doesn't look good.

 

[Bourne2Die]

the issues is not the cost of castle age. that has been fine for the past 20 years. the issue are the civs. there are a few civs with way to strong eco bonusses these days. that is the issue. and i think core of that issue is, that devs keep buffing civs instead of nerfing the ones that are too strong. with that we keep moving up a spiral where civs get stronger and stronger. that has to lead to some weird imbalances and will at one point either require more expensive techs and units, or people have to realize that buffing is not the way to go, but nerf things that clearly are too strong.

 

[Paint]

I don't think any civ is actually stronger then Aztecs was in the pre DE days it's just that they have moved up more civs up to that level instead of reducing the best civs power to a more reasonable level of civs like Japanese or Malians.

 

[HyunaOP]

Should Castle Age cost more?

Italians: finally, my time has come

 

[SaladEsc]

No

Wanna buff italians? Give them cheaper universities and/or cheaper university techs

Wanna nerf drush fc? Make walling more expensive, or make palisades weaker in dark age and slightly weaker in feudal age

 

[RobChang]

No

Wanna buff italians? Give them cheaper universities and/or cheaper university techs

Wanna nerf drush fc? Make walling more expensive, or make palisades weaker in dark age and slightly weaker in feudal age

Remove sheepaggedon and portal gun Khmer. Silly desperate eco bonuses to make civs be played due to pure power but not interesting fun design.

And I am with you. Italian Monasteries and Universities should cost half 11

 

[Deathcounter]

Why not increase Villager train time by 5? Seriously that would nerf booming so much. You legit can just boom all day, wall up and just boom on arabia until you are imp and get arb

 

[RobChang]

Why not increase Villager train time by 5? Seriously that would nerf booming so much. You legit can just boom all day, wall up and just boom on arabia until you are imp and get arb

Or just delete the game when you wanna see the chaos.

 

[Tarsiz]

Remove sheepaggedon and portal gun Khmer. Silly desperate eco bonuses to make civs be played due to pure power but not interesting fun design.

And I am with you. Italian Monasteries and Universities should cost half 11

I'm genuinely curious, why do you find the Khmer bonus not to be an "interesting fun design" so badly?
It is definitely very fun to play with, gives you one of the strongest economies in the game and feels very unique. Extremely hard to balance correctly, I don't deny that (same thing applies to the Cuman second TC, unique and super fun to play with, but incredibly hard to balance).

Only talking about Khmer, I kinda agree the Tatar new bonus is a bit lazy.

 

[RobChang]

I'm genuinely curious, why do you find the Khmer bonus not to be an "interesting fun design" so badly?
It is definitely very fun to play with, gives you one of the strongest economies in the game and feels very unique. Extremely hard to balance correctly, I don't deny that (same thing applies to the Cuman second TC, unique and super fun to play with, but incredibly hard to balance).

Only talking about Khmer, I kinda agree the Tatar new bonus is a bit lazy.

Its not really a good idea imo, because its gamebreaking and avoids some generic rules of the game, which makes it very hard to balance and catch in again which means by itself the game needs to live with that unbalanced bonus for a long time. Why not go for a more stable version that has less problems and dangers of being worked on a lot.

It is not very innovative in my opinion, it is just making Khmer farms refugees from AoE3 with their simplified dropoff-less economy. Its not an idea I think, wow what a genious idea, it feels more like they were out of design space for a food bonus in which Khmer were in need of. It feels so artificial and alien in the game and doesnt deliver any deeper flavour for the civ, I mean whats the explanation for Khmer not having to drop off food, its nothing that enriches the game from a flavour perspective in a sense of a history simulation (with a lot of fantasy added, but that has its limits too).

As well, as I find the balance attempts rather ugly nerfing the generic farming rate of villagers feels like sakrileg especially since it is not stated in the tech tree. In addition of the removal of the BBc, which hurt DM at least, where Khmer mirror was a classic matchup of the newer expansions. Now scorpions are somewhat uncounterable.

I also believe once it is balanced, like it might be now, its not really interesting anymore but just another different stated slavs bonus plus the trickle effect. It lives from very special shenanigans. But it might also not be balanced since it makes super huge jumps after having researched wheelbarrow/handcart leading to Khmer Hussar spam.

I just believe that the addition of the bonus was no good idea and brought more harm than benefit and for the game it might have been better not opening that box of the pandora and choosing a smaller eco boost and then moving from low to up instead of having a oppressive civ around for months, or even better going back to the sketchboard and try to find a new design for Khmer in their entirety, as it seems that the civ as originally planned in RoR is impossible to include into the game and being competitive. Adding a huge eco bonus on such a powerhouse civ, is dangerous. For me Khmer are just really not even close to be a civ I can be happy about being in the game the way they are.

Just because they can do something very special like 23+0 FC that doesnt mean its blowing my mind off everytime, it is done. Since it feels more like an oversight side effect than intentional addition to the game design.

 

[siestes]

I just don't get why the dev didn't just think of "farmers can drop off food at houses" before the relicfarm thign. Would have been less broken, you still save quite a bit of wood, you are less likely to be housed and it's a good synergy with the vils garrison in houses bonus (synergy in bonuses makes for civs feeling well designed) would have been the perfect bonus tbh to buff the civ just a bit and see how it goes. And then if it's still not enough they could have tried the relicfarm

Of course now it's too late, it's been almost a year that they've been nerfing other areas of the civ just because of this bonus, if they remove it now the civ will be so incredibly bad

 

[Umdeuter]

and it's very hard to tell if they just wall and make archers or go directly into Castle Age.

I am not sure if that is a bad thing. appears to be rather interesting to me.

on topic: I think it's rather that it's way too easy and cheap to get knights going, and a bit too easy to get Xbows going as you can mass them before. if both would be more difficult to get them rolling, with some additional or expensive or slower upgrades, as it is the case with infantry, then it would feel like a better balance to me.

just making castle age more expensive would probably rather end in a too feudal heavy (and archer heavy) game. (Dark Age and Feudal Age should not be the core of the game, because the fighting options are so limited. Archers are basically the only viable gold unit there and therefore extremely dominant, while there is several Cavalry, CA, Siege, UUs and Monks added in Castle, which puts Castle Age in a place that it should be the core of the game as it is the case.)

 

[Instinctz]

Silly desperate eco bonuses to make civs be played due to pure power but not interesting fun design.

some people actually want to see civs other then aztecs, khmer, franks, britons, chinese, mongols and mayans played in tournaments.

 

[I_Sniper_]

FC is not the problem, if you go scouts, you can up to castle just right after with a better eco, and there is a lot of way to play vs FC.

The problem is dark rush is to powerfull, the goal is to buy time and to secure your fast castle, but in fact you can easely kill villagers, and in that case it's just gg. The pressure is to strong for the defender, you have to fast wall everything and with DE, vils sometimes just doesnt want to work in small spaces...

There was a lot of titanics vs Dark Rush in KOTD3 and Tournament Champions League, it happened even to Viper (vs Lereyy).

So maybe nerf militia, 3 attacks instead of 4 and let's go. It does not affect man at arms or fast castle.

Dark rush push people to wall everytimes cuz that's the safe way to counter it. Nerf drush and going feudal army without walls will be stronger than anything in open ans sometimes semi open maps.

 

[RobChang]

some people actually want to see civs other then aztecs, khmer, franks, britons, chinese, mongols and mayans played in tournaments.

Thats also achievable by not introducing silly stuff. But devs couldnt show that sadly. Just give some weaker civs so op bonuses that they are at least tried out.

So just take the idea of the forums. Every civ that are the weakest 5 civs by winrate start with an archer. Problem solved :D And then we just pass around archers in dark age to have all civs be played.

 

[Tarsiz]

Its not really a good idea imo, because its gamebreaking and avoids some generic rules of the game, which makes it very hard to balance and catch in again which means by itself the game needs to live with that unbalanced bonus for a long time. Why not go for a more stable version that has less problems and dangers of being worked on a lot.

It is not very innovative in my opinion, it is just making Khmer farms refugees from AoE3 with their simplified dropoff-less economy. Its not an idea I think, wow what a genious idea, it feels more like they were out of design space for a food bonus in which Khmer were in need of. It feels so artificial and alien in the game and doesnt deliver any deeper flavour for the civ, I mean whats the explanation for Khmer not having to drop off food, its nothing that enriches the game from a flavour perspective in a sense of a history simulation (with a lot of fantasy added, but that has its limits too).

As well, as I find the balance attempts rather ugly nerfing the generic farming rate of villagers feels like sakrileg especially since it is not stated in the tech tree. In addition of the removal of the BBc, which hurt DM at least, where Khmer mirror was a classic matchup of the newer expansions. Now scorpions are somewhat uncounterable.

I also believe once it is balanced, like it might be now, its not really interesting anymore but just another different stated slavs bonus plus the trickle effect. It lives from very special shenanigans. But it might also not be balanced since it makes super huge jumps after having researched wheelbarrow/handcart leading to Khmer Hussar spam.

I just believe that the addition of the bonus was no good idea and brought more harm than benefit and for the game it might have been better not opening that box of the pandora and choosing a smaller eco boost and then moving from low to up instead of having a oppressive civ around for months, or even better going back to the sketchboard and try to find a new design for Khmer in their entirety, as it seems that the civ as originally planned in RoR is impossible to include into the game and being competitive. Adding a huge eco bonus on such a powerhouse civ, is dangerous. For me Khmer are just really not even close to be a civ I can be happy about being in the game the way they are.

Just because they can do something very special like 23+0 FC that doesnt mean its blowing my mind off everytime, it is done. Since it feels more like an oversight side effect than intentional addition to the game design.

I see your point but the only thing I think we can "objectively" agree on is that the need to artificially nerf the Khmer farming rate in order to compensate the bonus is quite ugly. The rest is all personal preference (which is fine, I did ask for your opinion after all).

You can always find some explanations (I don't know how historically accurate though), imagine a civilization where agriculture would run all year round and not just at specific times and voilà, you have a justification for a continuous trickle of food.

I don't think civs should be balanced for DM and onagers are counters to scorpions anyways. Losing BBC was much needed for Khmer, otherwise their boom into arbs/rams push on closed maps is just too strong. Now at least onagers counter that pretty hard.

Due to the original design of Khmer they have always been a civ capable of advancing through ages faster than other civs, their strong eco now plays to their cav role. To me the main drawback was that elephants were far too OP in team games but other than that I find the civ smooth to play which is ideal.

Hussar spam is OP regardless of the eco bonus. Any civ that gets fully upgraded hussars and can build 80 farms can spam them for days. I think people are just starting to realize how unstoppable that is in the hands of the best players.

 

[OLADUSHEK]

What are you talking about? The thing is you can easy skip feodal age and other player barely can punish it..

 

[Biz]

what happens in other RTS games is that the offensive player can just kill random buildings if the opposing workers are protected too well. it doesn't win the game, but at least it delays the counterattack. the town center can only protect about 8 things. if you use those 8 slots on farms, then your buildings should be exposed. in aoe2, buildings have way too much HP for that to be an option.

but most of the FC problems are just arabia problems, not aoe2 problems

drushing is not effective on good maps where you can spend resources on something more interesting than farms

feudal age military is only useful if resource denial is an option, but arabia has a million resources in base with no real way to harass enough of them. even when your opponent gets a bad map, resource denial relies on planning/scouting, and people are too busy pushing deer instead

arabia is a barren map. you don't need to make army because there's nothing to do except farm. and it's hard to build an army+blacksmith if you have to dump so many resources into farms. when you have other food options outside your base, you can spend less on farms/farm-upgrades and use military to harass foragers/hunters/fishboats/shorefishers instead

to fix shallow maps like arabia, you'd probably have to alter the economics of farming. the high initial cost of farms makes it hard to switch to them at a later time, so people are incentivized to plant them early, which basically railroads them into a defensive/castle-age oriented build and closes off the alternatives. the dominance of gold units instead of food units can also be traced back to the inefficiency of farms (although part of that is their cheap upgrade costs and pathing/kiting as well). i don't think changing farms would be a bad thing, but i don't know how you'd help out the other options without just making villager spam easier

FC is not the problem, if you go scouts, you can up to castle just right after with a better eco, and there is a lot of way to play vs FC.

this is correct, but i found it funny

"you can do something other than FC. just rush to castle age" is not the solution people are looking for

 

[I_Sniper_]

what happens in other RTS games is that the offensive player can just kill random buildings if the opposing workers are protected too well. it doesn't win the game, but at least it delays the counterattack. the town center can only protect about 8 things. if you use those 8 slots on farms, then your buildings should be exposed. in aoe2, buildings have way too much HP for that to be an option.

but most of the FC problems are just arabia problems, not aoe2 problems

drushing is not effective on good maps where you can spend resources on something more interesting than farms

feudal age military is only useful if resource denial is an option, but arabia has a million resources in base with no real way to harass enough of them. even when your opponent gets a bad map, resource denial relies on planning/scouting, and people are too busy pushing deer instead

arabia is a barren map. you don't need to make army because there's nothing to do except farm. and it's hard to build an army+blacksmith if you have to dump so many resources into farms. when you have other food options outside your base, you can spend less on farms/farm-upgrades and use military to harass foragers/hunters/fishboats/shorefishers instead

to fix shallow maps like arabia, you'd probably have to alter the economics of farming. the high initial cost of farms makes it hard to switch to them at a later time, so people are incentivized to plant them early, which basically railroads them into a defensive/castle-age oriented build and closes off the alternatives. the dominance of gold units instead of food units can also be traced back to the inefficiency of farms (although part of that is their cheap upgrade costs and pathing/kiting as well). i don't think changing farms would be a bad thing, but i don't know how you'd help out the other options without just making villager spam easier



this is correct, but i found it funny

"you can do something other than FC. just rush to castle age" is not the solution people are looking for

Not the solution that you are looking for. Dont speak for others. And It was an example. Every feodal strategy with a -good- build order can win vs FC : Archers, maa archers or scouts. Because it's like doing a build order vs an IA unless your opponent is doing dark rush wich will put a lot of pressure and that change everything.

 

[RobChang]

You see. The imbalance is of fundamental nature. The only solution to solve too connected issues is to buff the role of infantry in mid early to end of mid game. They are meant to break in fastest of all units into walls. But they are not better than scouts in that regard but have a lot of disadvantages. Give m@a +2 damage vs palisades and move arson to feudal half the cost and make it +1 vs building +2 pallisades. Compensate by adding another upgrade in castle to get back go old late game building damage.

In addition maybe being able to push deer totally destroys the flavour of the game, when it was intended to take your best land ressource outside the base not lure it push it under tc paving the game into greedy FC strats. Maybe deer/boar should not be lurable to infinity. It's also a major difference of the meta today that 1200s lure 4 deer and go naked FC as Khmer against being drushed scout rushed but don't care that much when in aok you invested into a mill outside your base to get that extra food.

 

[Instinctz]

So just take the idea of the forums. Every civ that are the weakest 5 civs by winrate start with an archer

that's a dumb idea all around, and yes i know where it came from. i was against it there too.

The only solution to solve too connected issues is to buff the role of infantry in mid early to end of mid game.

Infantry in general feel kind of neglected but honestly with how cheap they are and their low training time it's hard to balance them as anything other then fodder.

They are meant to break in fastest of all units into walls. But they are not better than scouts in that regard but have a lot of disadvantages. Give m@a +2 damage vs palisades and move arson to feudal half the cost and make it +1 vs building +2 pallisades. Compensate by adding another upgrade in castle to get back go old late game building damage.

the problem with this is it makes infantry even more expensive to fully tech into.
and frankly so long as infantry remain weak against archers they aren't going to be something you see often even if you buff them against buildings.

 

[Paint]

I think think this is more relevant then ever, it's still way too easy to skip feudal age.