@Elessar
I was talking about how towers make it very difficult(/ impossible) to attack nearby buildings, thereby forcing a player into getting catapults - so they can attack from range. They do this because moving near a tower destroys your units very quickly, so it is beneficial to attack from a distance with catapults - this leads to the (almost objectively - i mean seriously who thinks these battles are interesting and fun!) ugly and frustrating catapult battles.
I think the only difference between Outposts and Bases is this:
Outposts tend to have less towers, therefore there are chances for the enemy to come in and attack with his units (whether he uses catapults too is up to him). However, in many cases, the best way to siege an outpost is to sit back with catapults, defend them with units and slowly destroy the outpost, just like you said. So that's outposts.
Now, Bases on the other hand have many more towers and so it is almost
always suicide to move into, or near, the base with units. Therefore the attacker is
forced to sit back with catapults and slowly destroy all the buildings in the base from a distance. This is the point at which the defender uses all of his energies on destroying the catapults and it becomes very frustrating and boring.
Yes you make a valid point about how expensive it is to make upgraded towers. Once again, I think that going for outposts with towers is usually a bad idea. With the exceptions i mentioned - mirkwood, dunedain, angmar tower upgrade - this is where outpost towers can help decide a game in the defenders favour. Equally, you could get 3 economy buildings at an outpost and upgrade them with towers, thereby getting more eco and towers at the same time.
No one would build an outpost with 3 upgraded towers for no other reasons, all things being equal. It would simply be a waste of money. The only situation where doing that is viable is if your completely winning and you build an outpost near your enemy's base, so as to set up an impenetrable position on the map and launch attacks from there.
If you want to destroy this outpost, you're still gonna have to invest in some catapults. So towers on an outpost can be a pain-in-the-butt to deal with and can even turn the tide of the game if you get a good one like mirkwood
However, the big problem-area in which towers are too powerful is sieging a base. Especially Gondor's base. The upgraded walls, towers and wall catapults all combine to make it extremely difficult to penetrate. The only option is to spam catapults and avoid denethor's attacks. Mordor is a similarly extreame case. Once they get free upgrades on all their towers - and catas at the citadel. All other factions are basically the same, just not as extreme as gondor or mordor.
No good player would play as gondor and instantly start building towers and turtleing. You would lose every game so long as your opponent spammed catapults. I'm not saying it is an imbalance in that towers are so good they win you the game. I'm simply saying that the power of them makes sieging boring and fustrating!
Most importantly:
WHY SHOULD THIS BE THE CASE?!
Why should this be the only way of sieging a faction? To sit outside the base and slowly destroy all the walls/buildings - whilst constantly dodging attacks on your catapults!?
Imagine if you could move into or near a gondor castle even with lots of towers up with your UNITS. You could launch an attack on the gate with a ram, whilst your units valiantly protect the ram from attack. You could use siege ladders, you could sneak in isenguard mines, you could destroy the gate and storm the keep with your army. You could still use catapults as an additional weapon in your arsenal to fire from a distance, with a few units back their protecting them.
It would 'feel' more like a siege, it would feel more 'lord-of-the-ringsy' it might even 'look' more like the battle at helms deep or minas tirith.
Imagine if you had multiple siegeing techniques occurring simultaneously. Imagine how cool and intense it would be to be defending against a ram at the gate, having uruk-hai scale your walls with siege ladders - attacking your archers that are trying to bring down the ram. All the while your walls are being pelted with ballistas, then all of a sudden
BOOM!!!
Your wall is blown up by a mine that you missed because your focus was split all over the place, and you're forced to retreat to the citadel for a final stand. Perhaps your powers will recharge in time (the ents, or rohan, or the eagles may save you) and you can stop the attack and have a chance of a comeback, or perhaps your enemy is too skillull and he wins a deserved victory because of his great micro management of the siege.
Now imagine how cool it will be for others to watch it live in tournaments and on youtube. What a great advertisement these kind of sieges would be for edain!
This is the ideal, it may never work like that but that's what i think the edain team should have as the end-goal!
However, with towers being as powerful as they are, all these options are worthless, except for using catapults from a distance, because you can't attack a base with units when your enemy has 6+ towers, every unit in range of the towers is toast. Nerfing towers would free up so much more dynamic tactics to be viable. Instead we are left in the current state where we must use catapults once your enemy gets towers, and the defender can easily focus all his attention on the one threat of catapults.
If we are talking about camps then as I said before if you already let someone take a camp and build 6+ towers on it you should have played wrong. It is already not a normal or advantageous thing to have more then one tower in the main building plots in the starting camp. I don't build towers in the beginning camp of mine.
How can you stop a good player building towers? I really don't see how i can stop someone from doing this.
If they play mordor or isen, each tower is like 150-200 resources, that is super cheap and even if they are a castle-faction, the inside economy will be strong enough to support towers.
This is how almost all my games go, and how the games of almost all online players go atm:
The game starts and we fight for map control, for economy buildings, for map presence and sometimes for outposts.
The player with the better macro and micro skill will win the fight for the map control (just as long as no one uses anything mega OP (e.g. thorin iii :p))
Now, 1 of 2 things will happen:
1. The player will be a nice well-respecting pleasant edain player and concede defeat to your mighty pro skills and resign
OR
2. They will refuse to resign in the face of the better play and decided to make it as painful as possible. They'll set up camp in their base, build towers, build catapults and (if they're a real sum-bag) build denethor
If option 1 happens we both leave happy and content that a good game has been played by both.
If option 2 happens the game will continue for an extra 10-40 minutes (depending on your catapult skills) in which neither player learns anything new about the game, and all units, heroes and powers are used to attack or defend one-and-other's catapults.
How can i stop my enemy from making towers if we have fought for 20 mins and both have a strong inside economy? The only way is rushing his base and getting his citadel before he can build them. Sometimes this works but sometimes the towers come up in time and your army is too far into the base and it gets rekt.
It has therefore resulted that, with many people, it is common courtesy to resign once you have lost map control/ your army. Lots of people get annoyed if people continue to play after this. This should not be the case! Sieging should be every bit a part of this game as outside fighting.
This is why I for one am happy about the edain team's decision to change sieging. If it can become an interesting and dynamic part of the game it will make edain even better, and even, truly unique to the rts world.
A big nerf to towers is such a simple change that may lead to such an improvement in the quality of games. It will make attacking outposts that little bit nicer, sure. But more importantly it will make siegeing a castle so much more fun and dynamic. It is a small change and will not fix everything, but it is key to the sieging gameplay changes in 4.5 imo!
And siege weapons against towers thing. I said that you don't need to have siege weapons to take an outpost with upgraded towers but of course you can make them an overtake the outpost easily for example ballistas, they can shoot the towers at a distance the towers can not even touch them. So if you want to win a game you should not go near a fully upgraded outpost with your army in the mid-game phase but you can use siege weapons an wait the opponent comes to your siege weapons so you can win that hand against your opponents with a larger army you have because the opponent would not be able to have a larger army then yours. As I said before you should destroy every other thing to come to that outpost.
Yes i agree, making outposts with towers is, for the most part, a bad idea as you're investing money in static defence, whilst your enemy invests in actual units. There are exceptions to this and it all depends on the balance of power in the game.
Yes, you're also saying that it is very often the better option to use catapults which out-range towers to destroy the outpost and minimise loses to your units, now imagine the defender makes catapults to target your own! Or summons some orcs behind the catapults and hits them in that way. Or uses a combination of both, (and more) to kill your catapults, so that you have to dodge incoming catapult shots after every shot you take, but also not send that cata outside of your infantry clump otherwise the summon or cavalry will get them.
Now imagine what you must do to attack the outpost: target your enemy's catapults with your catapults and summons. But wait! you can't send your cavalry in because they will be destroyed by towers. And your summons will drop like flies to the towers. This is catapult battling^.
Whoever has denethor wins. This is why he is so OP, he's the steward of gondor but the king of catapult-battling!
Siege weapon fight thing. Okay. It is not a necessary or natural thing just because there are players who make it.
Please tell us, if it is not necessary how do you fight a gondor base that has had all its upgrades? If you could tell us that, all the people in the multiplayer community would have much more fun when sieging.
How do you stop your enemy attacking your catapults, i can find no way. If my opponent really wants to do it, he will!
If I don't attack his, he will keep attacking mine and i will never be able to destroy his base. What do you do to stop this?
I looked at the videos briefly there are some mistakes at the beginning or middle of the game.
Yes, they were not perfect games.
So you must play the perfect game to avoid catapult battles?
What's more, if both players play well, the defender will have built a large inside economy - so he will be able to afford his towers and catapults. So even with perfect play on both sides the game can descend into catapult-battles
And I realised that these are mainly occurs in castle maps and of course you should have siege weapons to destroy the gate and to pass the defence . They should not be happen on normal settlements.
Ok, but we need interesting siegeing for castle maps AND camp maps - not one ore the other- nerfing towers may help to do this.
In Ruuddevil and The Silver Elf's game why he wait with that army in front of the castle before his siege weapons destroy gate? And once the gate are destroyed he could push all of his forces inside to wound his opponent. He just waited being afraid to lose his army and as far as I seen he didn't have proper archers to be effective at distace. LOL.
If he did this, his units would die to the towers, that is my point. he can only do what he did in that game: Sit outside with catapults. He just didn't spam them enough and called it a draw.
Watch the elite kryptik's video again. See how he gets frustrated with haman and decides to send his army in. His command points plummet at this very moment. He loses his entire army and then even the heroes are being killed by the towers! There is one good thing about that: it freed up command points for 30 more catapults, so he made them and won.
It is such a shame that losing your entire army and many heroes like kryptik did in that game was a GOOD thing - if he hadn't done that he never would of had enough command points for all those catapults - surely this is something that should be removed as a viable option from the game (if we can)!
If you are patient and play in the correct way, you should still be able to win by spamming catapults (unless your enemy has a vastly superior cavalry army - then he can harass from his base and regain map control and potentially make a comeback - but this point is for another post!).
You can win, but it is a silly, strange, dull and uninteresting win when you spam catapults like this.
Let me clarify, I was talking about outposts not camps or castles. And if one just sits at one's outposts camps or whatever, one can't win the game. It is just meaningless. One who is a good player just doesn't do that. As I said before, it is just mistakes of both sides to carry the situation to a siege war. The sole purpose of this game is winning and to surrender is a fact of the war. End of story.
Sorry Elessar, i still don't understand (see below)
I think you admit that there are ways of destroying an outpost. Actually there is no need to siege weapons to destroy a outpost which has three upgraded towers. In addition siege weapons are not for shooting each other it would be very funny and ridiculous scene watching them trying to shoot each other. It is never needed to carry the situation into that. For me if you want to use your siege weapon you should learn how to defend them. And there is nothing easier to defender when one has already spent his high amounts of money to build an outpost, build towers and upgrade them.
I thought you meant by this that it is easy to defend siege weapons if you are at your outpost with 3 upgraded towers. If you were at your outpost with towers, you wouldn't be near the base and therefore wouldn't be able to siege anyway. Maybe i misunderstood what you meant.
As I said before, it is just mistakes of both sides to carry the situation to a siege war.
How does one destroy a castle without siegeing it? Every game will end in a siege war if the defender does not surrender.
I'm not saying we should not have sieging, I'm saying we should make sieging more interesting and dynamic (which the team aims to do! - partly by nerfing towers).
All I'm trying to say in these posts is that allowing units near (or in) a base to deal damage to buildings(/ enemy units) would drastically improve the sieging in edain and that cannot be achieved with towers doing as much relative damage as they currently do!
And also that the team should not underestimate the degree to which towers damage should be reduced
I think that fire rate or damage of the towers can be discussed but me and my friends think that health points of towers will be right if they will not be decreased too much.
Yeah i don't mind if the health of towers stay the same either. In fact i would much rather see a big damage nerf to towers, but with similar health, - than less health but the same damage.
I'll have to read through your discussion with Gnomi and maybe even make a post on that thread, to discuss your idea.
Hope you have a nice weekend too!
Shout out to the edain team for all the great work! I hope you can make sieging as cool as it can be in the confines of this very old game!