Simple improvement for walls

[gui456wSERTDYF]

I come to suggest that walls should only be attackable by siege, and maybe elephants, but not by soldiers. There are two reasons motivating this proposal:

1. Walls are rarely used in the game, the reason is that the cost/benefit is very low. I just played a game in which I decided to surround my city with walls, to avoid it being simply taken by horses, to discover that my enemy brought (roman) swordsmen, destroyed the wall in less than a minute with the swordsmen and took my city. Not only this is completely unrealistic, but also makes the wall even more useless than I thought...
2. When attacking the iberians, sometimes my own soldiers end up attacking the walls instead of soldiers, which is completely useless.

I think that removing the possibility of walls being attacked by anything but siege may improve things.

[Dizaka]

I actually have a different viewpoint.  I think walls are under-rated, especially for multiplayer games.

What I have figured out, especially with palisades, that if are an archer civ going vs Sparta (or some other sword-heavy civ or cav-heavy civ) you use walls not in a blocking-way.  Instead, the purpose of walls is to make it possible to reach your army (so that you're engaged) but making a retreat difficult (so that the enemy is forced to commit on mistakes).  The goal of palisades (and walls) seems to be more about making targets hard to reach without making them impossible to reach (e.g., iberian wall circle around CC).

With archers, xbows, archer cav (maybe skrim, but not really.  You want range as defender.), and elephant archers walls work the best.  Even more so with persians and mauryans who have a range bonus.  Walls allow you to wait for the attack and then do a counter attack.  Best walls seem to be 5-8 unit segments with houses inbetween.  Units can travel through these (the holes) but it breaks formations, makes your units hard to reach, and makes it extremely difficult for the enemy to retreat.  

TLDR:  For me, walls are about creating obstacles that slow down the advance and the retreat so that I can get as many arrows as possible into enemy units.  I've learned there's no reason to block troop movements.  If you block troop movements players attack other positions that aren't as fortified.  I use walls to basically "set a trap."

 

  

47 minutes ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

I come to suggest that walls should only be attackable by siege, and maybe elephants, but not by soldiers. There are two reasons motivating this proposal:

1. Walls are rarely used in the game, the reason is that the cost/benefit is very low. I just played a game in which I decided to surround my city with walls, to avoid it being simply taken by horses, to discover that my enemy brought (roman) swordsmen, destroyed the wall in less than a minute with the swordsmen and took my city. Not only this is completely unrealistic, but also makes the wall even more useless than I thought...

Again, I use walls a lot.  Especially if rushed in the 8-12 minute timeframe.  By the time the enemy gets to my base, especially if I believe they are competent, I will have a defensive perimiter established.  More then likely it will be disconnected and irregular walls to let the enemy through but increase travel distance and force 1by1 lines of units rather than allowing for large formations from the enemy.

 

  

47 minutes ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

I come to suggest that walls should only be attackable by siege, and maybe elephants, but not by soldiers. There are two reasons motivating this proposal:

1. When attacking the iberians, sometimes my own soldiers end up attacking the walls instead of soldiers, which is completely useless.

Double check your shortcuts and clicks.  Walls need to be attackable by units, imo.

 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Dizaka

[Gurken Khan]

40 minutes ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

makes the wall even more useless

40 minutes ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

my own soldiers end up attacking the walls instead of soldiers, which is completely useless

This seems contradictory for me. Walls are useless against soldiers because they can destroy them AND soldiers attacking walls is useless? (I like to use attack move to prevent my troops from attacking structures.)

 

21 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

mounted cav

Ranged cav?

[Grautvornix]

@Dizaka I do agree with your statements - the only thing I am however missing is a "protection factor" that walls have for those hiding behind them, i.e. effect of ranged attacks should be reduced (except for catapults etc.). Hence I believe units should attack a wall first before attacking those hiding behind. 

Not sure this is easy to implement.

 

I would be interested to know how often walls are actually manned in your games. Is it worth the effort? Just curious...

[Dizaka]

1 minute ago, Gurken Khan said:

Ranged cav?

Yes, lol.  No idea why I wrote that and corrected.  TY.

[Dizaka]

2 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

@Dizaka I do agree with your statements - the only thing I am however missing is a "protection factor" that walls have for those hiding behind them, i.e. effect of ranged attacks should be reduced (except for catapults etc.). Hence I believe units should attack a wall first before attacking those hiding behind. 

Not sure this is easy to implement.

 

I would be interested to know how often walls are actually manned in your games. Is it worth the effort? Just curious...

Agree and disagree at the same time.  If defenders should be damaging their own walls I think walls should have more HP.  I understand the simulation aspect of it towards realism but there's also KISS, to keep the simulation simple.  With ranged units hitting own buildings it may be impossible to shoot with archers from behind a CC and archers/ranged units may need more dmg upgrades.  Currently, we are at the stage of "it takes 10-20 arrows to kill a unit" not "1-2 arrows" which would be more realistic. 

[Grautvornix]

Oops, maybe I have chosen the wrong words - I tried to say that walls are meant to protect those hiding inside from attacking units, including ranged units to some extent. Walls might thus have an effect to the damage range that a ranged unit can achieve from either side (and protect from sword or spear units).

[Dizaka]

9 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

Oops, maybe I have chosen the wrong words - I tried to say that walls are meant to protect those hiding inside from attacking units, including ranged units to some extent. Walls might thus have an effect to the damage range that a ranged unit can achieve from either side (and protect from sword or spear units).

OH.  Meaning that if a wall is "owned" by Player A then Player A units behind the wall would received dampened damage from Player B, who is attacking Player A units through Player A walls.

That's an extremely interesting mechanic!  @real_tabasco_sauce @BreakfastBurrito_007  @wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Grautvornix]

And vice versa! This should be independent who actually owns that wall. Player A' ranged units behind the wall should also be dampened against player B on the other side (shorter damage range) - except for those ranged troops of player A that are placed on the wall/the towers. They could possibly have increased damage range.

[Norse_Harold]

2 hours ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

When attacking the iberians, sometimes my own soldiers end up attacking the walls instead of soldiers, which is completely useless.

To order your units to attack units only, use the hotkey Ctrl+Q+RightMouseButton. This will order them to attack-ground and prioritize fighting units instead of structures.

 

51 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

And vice versa! This should be independent who actually owns that wall. Player A' ranged units behind the wall should also be dampened against player B on the other side (shorter damage range) - except for those ranged troops of player A that are placed on the wall/the towers. They could possibly have increased damage range.

I think that what's realistic is allowing units to fire through firing ports in the walls. These are small gaps that allow firing out, but make it very difficult for opposing units at range to fire in. It can potentially be used by the enemy if the enemy is close enough (point blank) to the wall. I think that it should not depend on who "controls" the wall section, unless it's a sophisticated structure that has the ability to close a door on the firing port from inside the wall.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, Grautvornix said:

I would be interested to know how often walls are actually manned in your games. Is it worth the effort? Just curious...

Right now the issue with garrisoning walls it you cannot get enough units up there to make a difference. No matter how strong the buff is, they will still be hugely outnumbered. With this in mind, I already doubled the garrison space on walls so that this approach can be much more effective. https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP27527 It also looks much cooler.

I see the discussion on the wall protection and I have thought about this before, for example to restrict ranged attacks that can pass walls. However, this can be a pretty complex problem. For some of the above suggestions, the wall would need to have a 'direction' whereas they currently don't have one. So you can imagine the user accidentally placing the walls inside out and causing issues. I believe aoe4 does things like this but i'm not sure how successful that was.

Potentially one option could be to restrict certain attack types over stone walls for any player, but even then there would be so many cases to take care of: would you make projectiles collide with the walls so that harmless arrows don't hit their targets? Would you make ranged units try to path around the wall when tasked to attack a unit inside? Would you make units within the walls unavailable for units to attack? It is intricate for sure.

@gui456wSERTDYF were your walls stone walls or just palisades that were destroyed so quickly? Were you playing as the mauryans with stone walls? They have much cheaper but also weaker wooden walls.

In general I think stone walls stay up for the right amount of time vs non-siege units, and that maybe palisades are a tiny bit too weak vs sword cavalry.

 

[gui456wSERTDYF]

@real_tabasco_sauce I was using Persians and these were stone walls, and I had developed the "Persian architecture" tech. The enemy simply "cut" the wall with roman swordsmen; more than one segment of wall btw. They were a lot of swordsmen, but still...

@Dizaka what you mention about the usage of walls as obstacles is true and I do it as well, but with palisades. Stone walls, on the contrary, are much more expensive and take longer to build, and usually you expect them to protect your city hermetically from whatever that comes without siege. Normally it works that way, ranged units cannot break down a wall, and this is the expected behavior. I was expecting the same for any kind of soldier units, but enough swordsmen can bring down walls.

In my experience, in multiplayer games (which I play a lot), the only ones that build stone walls are new players expecting they will protect them. I never see experienced players building stone walls.

Edited November 1, 2023 by gui456wSERTDYF

[man_s_our]

I think the best approach is to reduce sword damage against walls for significant amount and make the infantry prefer targeting units over structure.

[alre]

4 hours ago, gui456wSERTDYF said:

@real_tabasco_sauce I was using Persians and these were stone walls, and I had developed the "Persian architecture" tech. The enemy simply "cut" the wall with roman swordsmen; more than one segment of wall btw. They were a lot of swordsmen, but still...

@Dizaka what you mention about the usage of walls as obstacles is true and I do it as well, but with palisades. Stone walls, on the contrary, are much more expensive and take longer to build, and usually you expect them to protect your city hermetically from whatever that comes without siege. Normally it works that way, ranged units cannot break down a wall, and this is the expected behavior. I was expecting the same for any kind of soldier units, but enough swordsmen can bring down walls.

In my experience, in multiplayer games (which I play a lot), the only ones that build stone walls are new players expecting they will protect them. I never see experienced players building stone walls.

whenever I think about building walls, I will end up building palisades instead. units already prefer targeting units to walls, so I think taking out the possibility entirely can be beneficial. It will be a substantial buff thought, to walls and to iberians. chokepoints (never present in the maps used online) can be a pain point.

[Gurken Khan]

4 hours ago, alre said:

taking out the possibility entirely can be beneficial

NOOOOOOOOOOO !!!

Spoiler

I mostly play without siege, don't need it against the AI; they're just sooo clunky... I really want my soldiers to be able to chisel away the occasional iber gate.

 

[Dakara]

Hi

[alre]

actually, I just remembered I built a pretty long wall during a 1v1 against seeh in the last tournament. It was a classic wall case where I wanted to avoid being hit in the side after coming out bad from an attempted t2 infantry rush. Wasn't necessary in the end and it felt too slow to build.

Mostly I think either prevent non-siege from attacking wall, or nerf wall and make it faster to build. 

also please balance the cost of walls segment vs stumps.

[Feldfeld]

I think it's bad for gameplay if palisades are built for the sole purpose of hindering pathfinding. To mitigate that, I could suggest to make it so when one section of palisade is broken then nearby sections are destroyed as well so it doesn't make a super tiny opening. Could consider making them weaker to pierce damage as well. On the other hand, they could be quicker to build so it doesn't take too much economy to build them early game.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Feldfeld

[hyperion]

Well, me thinks the biggest issue with walls is placing and repairing

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

The damage dampening across walls would be really challenging to balance considering not all civs have a full siege capability. We already sort of have a version of this regarding the units atop stone walls, only its level of exploitation is much more controllable. 

About palisade walls I agree they should be used not for slowing down pathfinding, but by blocking it altogether (closing off sections) like walls are supposed to do. palisades are very bad at stopping melee cavalry (in particular axe and sword), so I think melee cav (not sword/axe inf) should have a 0.3x multiplier against palisades. If they are too effective at stopping all aggression, then we could consider a cost increase or some other action. nerfing melee cav vs walls would also give some advantages to using infantry rushes which we rarely see in MP anymore. 

Ease of placement improvements would also work wonders for palisades and stone walls. It may look ugly, but increasing the allowable overlap would help a lot especially for straggler trees, small mines, and other res and terrain.

 

[Grautvornix]

I do understand the point that, implementing walls reducing damage onto troops on the respective other side, is difficult to achieve. (Only wall/tower-garrisoned troops should have a range and protection bonus,; most likely they already do)

When looking at the ballistics this should be the same issue if firing across a hill or ridge or another obstacle (building). Not sure the current engine takes this fully into account.

I believe there is already a height bonus/malus for shooting from above/from below, but firing across an elevated obstacle could indeed generally reduce damage, possibly depending on the height of that obstruction. Hmm, I smell added complexity here...

I'd be interested in getting your opinions here.

Thanks!

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

It would be really helpful if Wall snapping was extended to include shorelines and cliffs, and Gaia objects such as mines and trees. Snapping new walls/hubs to the ends of a segment so that you can repair the end of a wall would be helpful too. Also, walls snappable to Fortresses and also the ability to upgrade wall hubs to ballista towers, etc. to make them more interesting and defensive.

[Dizaka]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It would be really helpful if Wall snapping was extended to include shorelines and cliffs, and Gaia objects such as mines and trees. Snapping new walls/hubs to the ends of a segment so that you can repair the end of a wall would be helpful too. Also, walls snappable to Fortresses and also the ability to upgrade wall hubs to ballista towers, etc. to make them more interesting and defensive.

The issue with ballista tower wall hubs is the concentration of arrows.  I believe in one of the alphas arrows from wall hubs were removed as players started placing wall hub towers and deleting walls for the purpose of free arrows.

 

(Note:  I love the idea of ballista towers)

Edited November 2, 2023 by Dizaka

[zozio32]

would it just be possible to "garrison" bolt throwers or other ranged siege engine into wall towers?   with off course a small range benefit

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

12 hours ago, Dizaka said:

The issue with ballista tower wall hubs is the concentration of arrows.  I believe in one of the alphas arrows from wall hubs were removed as players started placing wall hub towers and deleting walls for the purpose of free arrows.

 

(Note:  I love the idea of ballista towers)

Could just have a build limit.