why does this community hate defensive suggestions

*Only read title*
The community doesnt hate defensive suggestions, the best defense is a good offense.

 

What. The. Fuck. I NEVER SAID IGNORE GAME THEORY.

game theory =/= theorycraft. I am fairly well-versed in game theory and am a huge fan of using it in everyday life.

To clarify, theorycraft is when people who barely ever play a game talk about all of these silly theoretical possibilities which in reality occur in a very small minority of game situations (95% of the empires forums and forums in general). I think the term began with starcraft when people with ladder scores of ~900 would sit in fucking chatrooms all day and talk about awesome strats and what unique and original tactic they used "a while ago" to defeat a difficult opponent. No actually, I retract that statement about ladder scores of 900. At least these people had the balls to play a few ladder games.

lol, go back to tower defense n00b

 

A big problem is that any defensive addition would have to come with a whole set of them, to keep everything balanced and a whole set of offensive additions to offset the defensive ones. It would be cool, but it is too much work.

 

not exactly, for example inplementing a big version of the normal wall (for our example as high as normal wall but 5 times the thickness and people can walk on them with cover (think castle walls)


now giving those a pretty big weakness (the new damage modifiers) against artillery would effectively create a wall strong enough to close off your weak spots in defence, but if you decide to wall off everything, then enemy will find it worth while to research artillery and shell the hell out of you, effectively making your chinese wall a chinese death coffin

if you just use it to close off your flanks, or for example make a large passage narrower to force the enemy to direct his offence trough a small funnel of concentrated firepower the wall just adds an extra facet of strategy (a "troop multiplier" so to speak) where the attacker will ether have to be smarter, stronger or faster (or decide to wait and research artillery again, but risk to lose the head start, since i am assuming "needing" to reseach artillery is a handicap because it is being moved a tier up in the research tree, thus making it lose your valuable time for example the walled in team could use this time to get heavies, build up an army and rape you while you just started rolling out arillery)

in the concentrated firepower case, a squad with a couple of decent tanks in there team could hold this "gate" from an entire team of attackers for a reasonable time if they work together well

"attacking head on" becomes a punished strategy, but being clever and using strategy (researching arties, taking another path, secretly recycle a "new" hole in the wall, making the passage bigger before you go trough and attack while they repair etc etc) can turn the odds again

 

That's so astoundingly imbalanced I think my head is going to explode. You just made arty required to win. What the hell? It makes attacking that point utterly fruitless, as they can hold it with a couple people, and you would have to use their team. Meanwhile, they can destroy you on the rest of the map.

The problem with any defensive upgrades is the resource system. Either you can get the majority of res points, turn them invincible with your new upgrades, and spam tanks, or you shut up in a corner and die. That's why you need to make a set of defensive upgrades, and a set of offensive upgrades to counter them, so you can have a more active battle. That's a lot of work. It would definitely take a major patch to do something like that.

For an example, let's assume you only added more defensive fortifications, and you're on a map like slaughtered. There are only 2 main ways through to the enemy. You fortify both, they fortify both. Since you can't attack them with anything but arty, you both just research arty, spam them, and lob arty rounds at each other for the next 30 mins until the game ends. Thrilling? Not really.

Now, let's take that same example, and assume we have a "Wall Destroyer" of some kind. Let's assume that it is a melee type of vehicle that drives up to the enemy and quickly decons their walls. That way, you have an offensive counter. Then, you have to do a real assault of escorting it up to the walls, destroying them, and rushing tanks through. That's quite a bit more interesting than sitting and throwing arty, don't you think?

 

By jove I think he's on to something there.

For added support I put forward the point that my current comm strategy is to secure half or more than half of the refineries, then wall, armory, and rax spam to lock them down, then wait for the res advantage to build while sending out groups of infantry to harrass their refineries.

I've found this to be very effective if the enemy don't get arties, especially if they don't do the same thing because my infantry can often break through in small numbers and disrupt their res flow, while they tend to throw simple tanks against the walls, not losing many, but not making much progress either.

Doing that with better defences would only make it more effective.

 

Again, this wouldn't be imbalancing for most maps if there was a cap put on the number of wall segments available to each team. Maybe on slaughtered, 3 "castle walls" could dam up the S-curve, but then they wouldn't have any to guard the bridge.

 

It would, however, be utterly useless on maps other than slaughtered.

And being able to dam up one entrance leaves you entirely free to defend the other, which is usually what people do anyway, they block off the bridge with turrets, a rax, and walls, then fight over the S bend.

If you made the bridge defence even tougher, it'd just make it a shitload harder to take it back.

 

i agree, was never a real suggestion anyway

then again that wasn't the point now was it?

 

I liked the idea of a ram/siege Tank. Would work vs a defended bunker idea and make turtling shitloads harder - or they just primary the ram..