Stone Walls

[Cacomistle]

People talk a lot about the siege meta, but I wanna hear what people think about something I think enforces the siege meta. Stone walls are pretty cheap (it costs like 1000 stone to place a stone wall across the entire center of arabia for example), build insanely fast, and don't die to anything but bombards. Well technically trebs and rams, but trebs kill super slow per cost and rams both kill slow and can be easily defended with melee units/springalds leaving the gates and/or archers on walls.

Lets just walk through an example. Lets say I'm playing french pass as Chinese vs French. I decided on Chinese to go 2 tc, my opponent goes perhaps professional scouts into a few knights as French. But, they add in stone.

Lets say I build some spears to protect myself, push out a bit when I realize he doesn't have much, and find a few vills building a stone wall. He's already stone walling the other side (and I can't do much about it with the slower army), but here I should be able to stop it right? In this example (even though he spends fewer resources on stone walls than I do on the 2nd tc) my army is better.

But, its not meant to be. He simply charges in to delay me for a moment, then pounds the foundation of each stone wall for .1 seconds and the entire thing is now unkillable despite having 10 hp. He finishes the stone wall.

He then brings his food home, goes up to castle, takes sacred sites+relics, and goes 2nd+3rd tc himself. Maybe gets a few additional units and some archers on the walls.

What is my counter to play this?

The answer is, go imperial and get bombards. Why imperial? Because he can just put archers on the walls and I can't really kill the walls with rams (and I'll just lose because rams delay my imp), and I can't scout him so if he doesn't have any archer/xbow I won't know. And rams is a pretty big investment since I need at minimum siege engineering and 1 ram to even damage the wall (at which point I've probably spent almost as much as he spent on stone walls even after the vill idle time).

I can't go trebs, because I need like 3-4 trebs for him to not just outrepair my trebs.

So my only option is bombards.

So know, he can just assume I'm going bombards, definitely that I'm going siege. But what is he gonna do about it? They're good vs pretty much everything. So either he goes scouts to try and cheese my siege, or he spams springalds to defend longer, but realistically I bring some vills forward and place my own castle and now he needs either bombards or more army than springalds too.

Now I've got a decent chance to win here. Actually pretty likely because I said Chinese, but just ignore that (I don't feel like editing it out). As any civ though, I'd still have a decent chance , maybe he wins cause of sacred site+relic gold and the timer, but the point is, its naturally going to devolve into siege. I simply have to go bombards.

Now I put that there on French Pass just because its an obvious example, but there's several maps that are easy to wall. And more importantly, I think this is doable even on Arabia.

I mean you can't wall in the opponent at 7 minutes on arabia and expect to win. But if you get map control at say 15 minutes and you're thinking about placing a keep on one of the neutral golds, you could instead use that stone to wall 2/3rds of the map. Once you have stone walls, your opponent can't push.

I think they should build way slower, and they should be torchable (for reduced damage perhaps). 1 minute of map control should not give you the ability to cut off the entire map. But as long as they build that fast, and as long as an unbuilt segment of 10 hp is unkillable without investing into expensive units that take a long time to train (and suck in the case of trebs), stone walling everything will be incredibly easy. And spending 300-400 stone to secure an 8000 gold mine will always be a positive trade, and is actually something keeps can't do (if I run say 50 maa at a keep, its gonna die. If I run 50 maa at a stone wall, they do nothing).

So I was wondering what other people think about stone walls. Right now I think even if they made bombards do literally 0 damage to units, they'd be a necessity in late game simply because there's no other way to beat stone walls (and keeps would be good vs most things, but I think keeps are balanced).

[skooma]

Yeah stone walls are annoying thats for sure, i dont mind siege being strong even if stone was not an issue. its age 4 tech and is expensive to get its suppose to be the best units you can get.

[JefferyNothing]

I think they fall way too quick with trebs and cannons tbh

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by skooma:

Yeah stone walls are annoying thats for sure, i dont mind siege being strong even if stone was not an issue. its age 4 tech and is expensive to get its suppose to be the best units you can get.

I don't really agree with that.

You pay 1000 resources to upgrade a unit to elite. At that point, its an imperial age unit, and should be balanced with other imperial age units. Why should bombards kill everything, but for example elite royal knight with the 35% hp tech should just get 2 shot by an anti building unit that they take like 40 seconds to kill?

Hand cannons for example are balanced with other imperial age units. They're strong, but they're fragile, and they have a tendency to overkill which makes them perform worse vs cheap units like archers/spears/scouts/horsemen. Its honestly pretty hard to justify them when they get 1 shot by bombards from over twice the range and if you get like 10 of them hit by 3-4 mangonels you can lose 2000+ resources in under a second. I honestly think they're pretty bad right now.

Meanwhile bombards counter... everything. They counter knights (knights do no siege damage). They counter all ranged units (tons of ranged armor). They counter other siege (except for the springald because its a specific anti siege unit, but even then Chinese bombards beat those). They do fine vs maa and counter them if you have a wall to retreat behind. And the units they don't counter (spears+horsemen+scouts) are pop inefficient, easily countered by other units, and largely lack the power to kill an opponent by themselves which means its easy to stall till you have a siege doomstack.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by rH:

I think they fall way too quick with trebs and cannons tbh

Cannons sure. I think they're just overtuned units. I think stone walls are balanced because of how good bombards are.

But trebs? They kill 1 stone wall segment (which is like 15 maybe 30 stone to replace cause of that whole thing where you can't build a single segment) in like a minute for 750 resources, and that's if vills don't repair. You can cut the map in half with stone walls for cheaper than 2 trebs. If you stone wall and your opponent tries to go trebs, just repair against 1 and go kill their pathetic worthless -1500 resources army if they build 2 or more.

[Detective Conan]

I wish you could only build stone walls a certain distance away from a town center or castle. I hate it when a wall appears in 30 sec due to a few ninja villagers cutting off more then half the map. I would also like it if a wall could not be repaired when being attacked. You should also be able to walk through an unbuilt wall.

[TheDiaper]

I feel like maps are also an issue. Water maps are undesirable because of game design, not map design. But who on earth would put maps like french pass / mountain pass into the pool? Just leave those to lobbies ffs.

[PeteSkTemplar]

Stone wall is build fast but bombards are on drugs then. Give bombards 10x reduction of rof then stone walls might be build more slowly.

[ShadowReaper]

You can build Stone Walls faster than you can Repair them.

Game has balance issues

[Harris]

Stone walls. They don't get built as much as they probably should, and for a good reason. While you're building walls, your opponent is buidling an army. You are literally diverting resources (villager time) away from your economy, from aging up faster, from your army.

In most cases getting a wall up is not worth it, unless you can pull it off very cheap on maps like Confluence. I mean, a cheap 300 wood ram is all it takes to break through, and break through it will. Repairing a wall is not really an option - it will drain your wood continiously and even then, you wouldn't be able to outrepair the damage. While ram is a one-time investment that will bring you value throughout the game (you can then use it go wreck his base), a wall only has one purpose and only lasts you so much. Moreover, rams are a very durable target, and you can't take it down outside of melee units or springalds, and those can't fire over stone walls. Archers will be useless. Long story short, stone walls are easily counterable.

Then again, you never specified the mode. In 4v4s, China can abuse map size along with the fact it can erect those 9k hp walls in a blink of an eye, layer after layer after layer, and stall the enemy as the wonder victory timer runs out.

Bombards.. if there's any "I win" unit in the game right now, that's probably it. Its only downside is lack of aoe, which ceases to be a problem in numbers. And they're also expensive, so a springald blob can make quite a dent in your economy.

Bombards singlehandedly make the whole civ irrelevant. I am speaking of HRE right now. They can build elaborate 6x6 wonder grids - a wonder surrounded by outposts surrounded by TC for emergency repairs, by Elzbach for -33% damage taken, as well as some keeps with relics inside for better stats and what not. In theory, this should be a great setup. In practise, bombards blob comes along. Boom - there's no Elzbach. Boom - there's no TC. Boom - there's no wonder. They just one-shot anything. There is no point going Berkshire or Red Palace in 4v4 - bombard blob just one-shots them.

Bombards deal a lot of damage against anything. They move fast for a siege unit and absurdly fast if it's Yuan China (not to mention Chinese bonus range and tons of hp). They pack and unpack almost instantly, which makes French cannon bonus irrelevant. They indeed dominate the late-game battlefiend and turn it into a siege fest. And this is problematic, because it makes civs and mechanics irrelevant. Why should I bother building up any networks of castles, if they will be gone over a second?

So I definetely don't think stone walls are a problem right now. They're an investment, you can play some nice mind games with them. You can exert map control or buy time, but you only get so much time with them. I know it can be annoying to see the enemy walling up and you being able to do nothing about it. This is the matter of scouting. You can pressure their vills and deny walling. English is particularly good at this, btw. Send 5 vills and their shortbows will do away with any vills or a scout.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Harris:

Stone walls. They don't get built as much as they probably should, and for a good reason. While you're building walls, your opponent is buidling an army. You are literally diverting resources (villager time) away from your economy, from aging up faster, from your army.

In most cases getting a wall up is not worth it, unless you can pull it off very cheap on maps like Confluence. I mean, a cheap 300 wood ram is all it takes to break through, and break through it will. Repairing a wall is not really an option - it will drain your wood continiously and even then, you wouldn't be able to outrepair the damage. While ram is a one-time investment that will bring you value throughout the game (you can then use it go wreck his base), a wall only has one purpose and only lasts you so much. Moreover, rams are a very durable target, and you can't take it down outside of melee units or springalds, and those can't fire over stone walls. Archers will be useless. Long story short, stone walls are easily counterable.

Then again, you never specified the mode. In 4v4s, China can abuse map size along with the fact it can erect those 9k hp walls in a blink of an eye, layer after layer after layer, and stall the enemy as the wonder victory timer runs out.

Bombards.. if there's any "I win" unit in the game right now, that's probably it. Its only downside is lack of aoe, which ceases to be a problem in numbers. And they're also expensive, so a springald blob can make quite a dent in your economy.

Bombards singlehandedly make the whole civ irrelevant. I am speaking of HRE right now. They can build elaborate 6x6 wonder grids - a wonder surrounded by outposts surrounded by TC for emergency repairs, by Elzbach for -33% damage taken, as well as some keeps with relics inside for better stats and what not. In theory, this should be a great setup. In practise, bombards blob comes along. Boom - there's no Elzbach. Boom - there's no TC. Boom - there's no wonder. They just one-shot anything. There is no point going Berkshire or Red Palace in 4v4 - bombard blob just one-shots them.

Bombards deal a lot of damage against anything. They move fast for a siege unit and absurdly fast if it's Yuan China (not to mention Chinese bonus range and tons of hp). They pack and unpack almost instantly, which makes French cannon bonus irrelevant. They indeed dominate the late-game battlefiend and turn it into a siege fest. And this is problematic, because it makes civs and mechanics irrelevant. Why should I bother building up any networks of castles, if they will be gone over a second?

So I definetely don't think stone walls are a problem right now. They're an investment, you can play some nice mind games with them. You can exert map control or buy time, but you only get so much time with them. I know it can be annoying to see the enemy walling up and you being able to do nothing about it. This is the matter of scouting. You can pressure their vills and deny walling. English is particularly good at this, btw. Send 5 vills and their shortbows will do away with any vills or a scout.

A ram isn't just 300 wood, its also siege engineering, and it takes a while to kill walls so you can build more walls behind while you prepare archers. If you put a few archers on your wall and get a few melee units, your opponent pretty much has to back off (a stone wall is barely more of a commitment than ram+siege engineering on closed maps so you'll be about even on army but you'll have 7 range 66% damage reduction archers that can't be hit by melee). It seems like you forgot that the wall player can just walk outside and burn the ram down while they have archers shooting from above.

Also just don't repair the wall. Build a wall behind it. It takes like 60 stone and 15 seconds of villager time to place another segment of wall behind the first.

I don't think stone walls are a problem only because of bombards. But bombards are broken units. I've never seen more people agree about something in a video game than the amount of people who agree that siege meta is not fun, so I have to figure bombards will be nerfed at some point. After bombards aren't a universal unit that counters everything, committing to 2-3 bombards to break yourself out of a contain will actually matter.

And I'm referring to 1v1 btw. I think they're way way worse in team games because you can't wall off 2/3rds of the map for the price of a keep in a team game. Even on open maps like arabia, you can spend 400-500 stone to secure a gold mine or a sacred site and your opponent basically can't do anything without bombards, which takes them a bit and gives you a lot of time to react. Then if you hold them off, you just patch the wall for 15-30 stone.

Compare that to a keep, which costs 800 stone, can be killed by units, and if a bombard snipes it you're out the full 800 stone instead of 30, and it goes down just as fast to bombards as stone walls do despite costing far more.

I think that people are sleeping on stone walls as a sort of replacement for defensive keeps. I hate walls, so I haven't experimented with it much, but I think in situations where you are placing a keep to defend a resource, or your base from raids, a stone wall can almost always accomplish the same goal better for cheaper.

Even many offensive keeps I think could be replaced by stone walls. Your offense is far safer if you can just back up your siege behind a wall whenever your opponent tries to engage. But I think keep+pallside wall is the best if you have time to build it since you simply need something that you can retreat through to keep your stupid overly speedy tank artillery alive and the keep means they take a lot of damage diving you.

[GrimRita]

Originally posted by rH:

I think they fall way too quick with trebs and cannons tbh

this. 4-5 canons just demolish walls in a flash - keeps and castles too.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by GrimRita:

Originally posted by rH:

I think they fall way too quick with trebs and cannons tbh

this. 4-5 canons just demolish walls in a flash - keeps and castles too.

That's 4000-5000 resources. Incredibly expensive to just take out a stone wall.

The only reason that works is because that 4000-5000 resources is also a unit killer with no hard counter.

But even now, walls still prevent all raids. If you bring 4-5k resources just to break a wall on the side of the map protecting a gold mine, that's 4-5k resources you don't have in the main battle. Your opponent can just push in and wipe out your (far more expensive) keeps, army, or main buildings.

Then what do you gain? You force them to walk away from the gold mine. You don't kill any villagers because they still have like 10-15 seconds to react. If you back up to defend your base that they're now pushing into, they replace the stone wall segement you broke for 30 stone.

I don't know how insanely cost effective you want stone walls to be, but they should die fast to bombards. That's the entire point of bombards, they kill buildings fast. If several thousand resources of bombards killed stone walls slow, then what would kill stone walls? If you got walled in at 8 minutes on french pass, how would you ever stand a chance of winning if getting to imperial and getting 4-5 bombards was still not enough to kill their walls quickly?

[Harris]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

But even now, walls still prevent all raids.

Maybe we are playing different games, but the one I recently clocked over 500 hours in, it is nothing like you need a bombard blob just to get beyond a random stone wall. A screenshot I showed you - sure thing, but a small wall on Confluence to delay agression? I never (and 4v4s aside I also do 2v2s and even an occassional 1v1) encountered a situation like you describe - melee units behind the wall ready to torch the ram, archers on the walls protecting them... 99% of the time ram goes uncontested. As soon as it comes I'm most of the time "OMG I need to stop booming and get an army of some sorts". So it's a trade of 300 wood (that you can use to push all the landmarks afterwards) and some stone that after you've used up, is gone. Repairing a wall being attacked also does not work - you will get outdamaged at worst, and have your wood drained at best. And if the attackers brought a mangonel they simply deny any attempt at wall repairing.

Moreover, it never even came to me that I even should go out and try to contest the ram, as I've never encountered a scenario a ram would be sent unsupported - there's an army waiting out there, and losing my melee units just to torch a ram? Doesn't sound like a good trade to me.

Wall is mostly for booming scenarios. If I'm English or French, I have an early feudal army and pulling agression - why would I bother walling in the first place. I got noone to contest me, I enjoy map control, and I best spare my resources to maintain it. A wall can't fight after all.

[TheDiaper]

He is 14+ 1v1.

[Demon of Razgriz]

Originally posted by Harris:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

But even now, walls still prevent all raids.

Maybe we are playing different games, but the one I recently clocked over 500 hours in, it is nothing like you need a bombard blob just to get beyond a random stone wall. A screenshot I showed you - sure thing, but a small wall on Confluence to delay agression? I never (and 4v4s aside I also do 2v2s and even an occassional 1v1) encountered a situation like you describe - melee units behind the wall ready to torch the ram, archers on the walls protecting them... 99% of the time ram goes uncontested. As soon as it comes I'm most of the time "OMG I need to stop booming and get an army of some sorts". So it's a trade of 300 wood (that you can use to push all the landmarks afterwards) and some stone that after you've used up, is gone. Repairing a wall being attacked also does not work - you will get outdamaged at worst, and have your wood drained at best. And if the attackers brought a mangonel they simply deny any attempt at wall repairing.

Moreover, it never even came to me that I even should go out and try to contest the ram, as I've never encountered a scenario a ram would be sent unsupported - there's an army waiting out there, and losing my melee units just to torch a ram? Doesn't sound like a good trade to me.

Wall is mostly for booming scenarios. If I'm English or French, I have an early feudal army and pulling agression - why would I bother walling in the first place. I got noone to contest me, I enjoy map control, and I best spare my resources to maintain it. A wall can't fight after all.

I did want to add that you can put melee units on a wall and they will throw torches at the ram below. They will have wall protection against ranged and melee can't get to them.