everyone wanted castles, or the equivilant, not to be so powerfull in aom. I hated a castle rush and especially the treb wars that would ensue. (i believe these are the main reasons they are non existant in aom).
So what did ES do? they completely gotten rid of trebs, which in aom i dont think are missed, and made all the buildings a bit less powerful. Some people describe the buildings to be made out of cardboard, sorry, WET cardboard. I agree, this has made building hill forts and such completely worthless, unless for their unique units.
The thing about castles was that although some people exploited them by rushing TC's w/ them, there were plenty of pro's that are not seen in aom.
For example, the main purpose for a castle was to control a given area of the map. I mean, if your enemy put a castle down in any given area, you would, half the time, have to move your units around it and attack where you wanted to, or the best next place. Otherwise, the castle would easily take them down or give you a big dissadvantage. You'd have to be pretty prepared to take down a castle. Meaning, either have really strong and mass units, plenty of seige (excluding trebs which is a given, but treb wars would ensue... so we will exclude from this thread since they are non existant in aom), or just give up on the castle for a while, although it usually was a bad idea.
The offensive cualities were also very beneficiant. I can't recall how many times I made a castle to protect my 6 barracks or whatever military buildings that were close to my enemy while I gained back/build up resources to attack. This was a great strategy for fighting an opponent who was dominating the game in order to gain some advantage back. Also, by building castles near resources, i.e. gold, or wood (talking late game here, if you include food you'd have to TC rush cuz o' farms) on any game, you'd greatly affect your enemy, in any type of game situiation; losing or winning.
Defensively, castles were great. Next to your TC you'd be pretty confident that your vills and especially your econ would be protected. The advantage was that the combined fire power of the caslte and the TC was a very good method of stopping/delaying an attack.
I don't mean to whine here, it just seems to me that the only bulding with some "umph" to it is the town center. Which isnt bad but they can only be build in certain limited places. It also seems that seige has been given too much power. In my games i most always only need 2 seige to be a strong offensive power. In aok, i would need considerably more, which in my book seemed more realistic, although a bit discouraging and frustrating at times.
So strong seige + weak buildings = bad balance. IMO.
Perhaps we should go back to the castle way of fighting (sans the trebs), but w/ a few modifications?
- (units have bonus attack against a particular unit...) So could we take the inverse of that and make Hill forts and such (assuming theyve been improved, IMO, to act like aok castles) have a "deficiency" in attack versus Town Centers.
OR/AND
- You just CAN'T build hill forts, etc. near a certain radius of an enemy Town Center, while still being able to use it defencively on your own/allies. Balance here is that you can't build TCs anywhere,and are limited. Also the caslte rush, especially viable w/ the Norse would be somewhat contained. Let's put it this way, it would be easier to counter since your farms and res would be relatively safe from the caslte and only really be attacked by units, all you'd need would be some worthwhile towers to back you up, which some believe, that the ones in aom are not worhtwhile.
Also, nowadays, you wouldnt have to sweep up the remaining casltes to win in a game, unless you chose to. I mean, now you can just claim all the settlements and you win. No mess, no fuss.
I believe this would add a lot of strat to the game while ridding it of the things that made it dissliked in aok. Although i know, this is aom not aok, I believe it wouldn't hurt to borrow/use what worked and added strat/fun to aok in aom...
thoughts?
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