Countering builders emptying towers

[Siegfried]

WTF is happening here? I just wanted to know what I am missing. Because in your screenshot we see that you just need to get past 2 or 3 towers when attacking from the right. This does not look so frigthening.

[Lewin]

Here is a picture of tower abuse on a very wide open entrance. If I can do this in 60 minutes, think of what a good player could do in 1:45

I don't understand. You can get right into the base by passing just 4-5 towers at most. A lot of maps don't have enough room to spam many towers, you run into the enemy's village and have to stop building. In open maps it's almost impossible to defend every entrance with more than 5-6 towers that the player must pass. And if a guy has been making towers for 1:45, why did you let him do that for so long without stopping him? On an open map he can't possibly defend all his entrances where he's building towers (since he'll be building a lot of them in "no mans land") so you can destroy his construction sites, and if he can defend that many places while he builds towers then he has a much bigger army than you anyway.

If you play on a map with narrow entrances (e.g. Volcano Valley) then you expect to be fighting through a lot of towers. If you play on an open map like Back in the Desert then it's not possible to block off every entrance with too many towers because it's quite open. It's all about the map you choose.

[Ben]

I understand, Lewin, how you feel when you need to repeat things many times, which is why I am getting so very sick of saying: long game. Do you all think me so naïve to think that this defense of mine is inpenetrable? Of course not! Though this is a strong tower defense, it certainly isn't overpowered. In fact, I have no problem with the tower's strength when playing decent maps (ones open like Westren Desert, for example). It's the long game that I don't like. Read my post and you'll see that I wrote "If I can do this in 60 minutes, think of what a good player can do in 1:45." Look at my towers again and triple them, because I made these in 15 minutes. Heck, quatrible them, because I have nothing else to do with my 24 labourers. Might as well build more towers!

[Lewin]

I don't think having to get past 4-5 towers makes the game too long, and as I said on open maps there's not that much room for more than that at every entrance. And if you can let your opponent build towers out in the open without killing his labourers for a whole 45 minutes after peacetime ends then he probably has a large enough army to beat you anyway (he could have spent that much time making more farms/weapons production too remember)

When/if we make mutators we'll probably have one that disables towers, which should solve your problem of the game being too long due to having to fight through a few towers. But to be honest I find games way too short in general, it's really disheartening to spend 1 hour building a village and see it destroyed in the first 10 minutes after peacetime. I personally like battles that rage for 2 hours, it makes it seem much more worth my while to have spent so long building my beautiful village

[The Dark Lord]

It it's such a long game, I guess you had loads of time to destroy those towers the old-fashioned way: with arrows, from a safe distance.

[Ben]

Well I don't like the idea of no towers at all, because a few towers is all nice and good. I'm almost thinking that their should be a limit, but that's a problem also because some maps might require more towers to defend your base, and artificial limits like this are silly imo (AoE III had a limit on buildings, and I hated that).

It's slightly off topic, but I do like a long game (2 hours playtime) once in a while, but I actually like the building stage more so I don't mind short games at all. But again, this has nothing to do with my opinion on tower spam

[Lewin]

I'm a bit confused, in one topic you say the game is too easy and ends too quickly (and nobody feeds troops), but here you're saying you don't like towers prolonging the game at all, and complain if you have to fight through more than 1 or 2. Building more towers is a good way to make the game last a little longer, the reason nobody produces enough food to feed troops is because they know the game will probably have ended in 10 or 20 minutes after peacetime so there's no point investing in food, which is only required for long games (because with only 1-2 towers as soon as one team has a slightly larger army they've won, even if the other team could have made some soldiers in a few minutes that won't help, because the door to their village is wide open and undefended).

But if everybody makes more towers then it's not possible to win in the first 10-20 minutes of fighting, you have to build up a large army or destroy the towers from a distance with bowmen (which is slightly faster now with their new rate of fire). I personally think a few more towers would make the game last for longer on average and thus people would produce food more often because it would pay off in the long term (and your opponents without food would find themselves starving). I can see why you don't like a map like Volcano Valley when someone fills the entrance with towers, but on open maps when you still don't have to get through too many towers (like the screenshot you posted) towers make the game more interesting and encourage more food production.

[Krom]

I agree with Lewin, well described!

Our intent is to make PT last shorter (especially boring parts of it) and Fighting last longer (troops maneuvering, tactics). So that both parts are equally contributing to the gameplay experience (50/50). And of course that leaves plenty of space for mapmakers to tilt the balance from 0 to 100 (economy goals map and pure fighting maps)

[dicsoupcan]

I do think to know what ben means. there are different ways to make something more challenging, an annoying and a not so annoying way. Imagine boss fights, one boss is very hard because it is a balanced fighter and you have to watch out to not get wiped out. But once you defeated him you feel good since you have overcome a nice challenge. The other boss is hard because it has a ridiculous amount of hp and what makes it hard is because the battle lasts very long and it is more a challenge to not get bored instead of the challenge of the boss fight. once you defeat a boss like this you do not feel good about overcoming it, but you feel releaved that it is finally over. And imagine towercamping as the ridiculous amount of hp boss fight and a normal game where you and the enemy armies fight each other and you keep pushing each other back to their towns is the balanced fighter boss. I would enjoy the second kind of game more, even though it is over faster then the towercamping game.

I do appreciate the efforts to speed up pt and i think that the gamespeed multipliers are a very good solution for this, but like ben i also enjoy building and i am not exactly bored when building. at the start i take a look in statistics how many serfs and builders i have to calculate what i need to hire at first. Then i block nearly every ware in th storehouse and also very important i select the song i want to listen to while building. i also do plan a bit ahead, planning where i put stonemasons and cuters and sawmill and distribute the wares(this term had the most votes right? ). offcourse the goals in building is , like every other rts, to get as many soldiers as soon as possible. What makes kam unique is the production chain (not like red alert put war factory and spam tanks) and the fighting system.

although i agree that the fighting aspect takes less time at the moment and that towercamping can be a strategy, i can also imagine that someone can be annoyed by it. *cough* volcany valley 80pt *cough*
I once renember a game where romek made 50 towers and i had 100-120 units at pt and for fun i tried to get as far in his town as i could, and all my units died halfway through the towers. I do know this is an extreme example but i have seen some players who do build 20 towers on both open and closed maps, and both of the situations are pretty annoying since they hardly have any army and/or production so basically all i do is play demolition man.

About troop feeding, most of us only have food to provide the town, but sometimes we sacrifice a bit of food for the town for keysoldiers like knights or other iron units. sadly leather units and militia suffer a terrible fate, but i am sure the farmpatch makes feeding armies easier.

I have totally no idea if this makes any sense or does contribute well to the discussion going on here, but i tried.

[Krom]

... normal game where you and the enemy armies fight each other and you keep pushing each other back to their towns ...

That's what the Towers are for. When player is pushed back to his town, what stops the enemy to wreck havoc in the town? Towers. They buy him some precious time before his town is demolished, so he can train new soldiers and fight back. At least that is the intent.

[dicsoupcan]

Agreed, i am actually more concerned about this:

but i have seen some players who do build 20 towers on both open and closed maps, and both of the situations are pretty annoying since they hardly have any army and/or production so basically all i do is play demolition man.

[Krom]

Lets discuss tower demolishing strategies in new topic, what do you say?

[Ben]

I'm a bit confused, in one topic you say the game is too easy and ends too quickly (and nobody feeds troops)

No, I never said that. Not to my knowledge anyway.