[Anonymous Player]

I have always been a fan of Arena, however, I believe that it is not reaching its full potential.

The meta is often dominated by whoever is able to build a forward castle first, which can make team games a waste of time due to the opponent’s strategy being too advanced for the rest of the players.

There is no reward for variety of strategy, boom skills or interesting unit composition.

Although this is one of the most popular maps in Age of Empires 2, it does not quite hit the balance between the aggressive action of Arabia and the full turtle post imp mega battles of Black Forest or Michi.

I had a thought that could potentially fix all of these issues and make Arena even better.

The only change needed is to move the starting stone piles outside of the walls.

This would make tower rushes and castle pushes more risky, rewarding players for securing map control with military.

It would still allow aggressive play, but the closed map, full boom environment would remain.

This would reduce the reliance on castle and unique unit play and open up the map to a variety of viable unit compositions, allowing infantry to be more viable in castle age.

It would also allow for more variety in strategies.

The main tradeoffs of this change would be that some civs rely more on their castle than others, and producing trebuchets would be a different process.

I think this change would improve the spirit of Arena play, making it the map it was meant to be.

I am interested to hear what seasoned Arena players think of this idea.

[Dangerous-Swan-8167]

15xx-16xx arena player here.

Just my quick thoughts on it.

I only play TG’s, so that is what I will discuss here aswell.

For the current meta:
When you are flank against port or spanish you know for 80% sure that (s)he will CD.

This means that you will prepare for this by scouting there base and ask teammates to send sc aswell so you cab kill vills and delay CD.

Furthermore, from the start you prepare your base for a possible CD l.

As in where to place your buidlings and be prepared to stonewall (know where you want the walls).

If you can see (s)he is on stone heavily, stonewall already and ask for teammates scouts.

If you have 4 scouts there it is very risky form him to CD.

Start stonewalling.

Make monks and mangonel in defens and do a 2 or 3 tc boom behind it and try to go imp for trebs.

Your job is to stall as much as possible while building up more eco than he is doing.

Then your pocket cab steamroll him in imp.

Now lets look at your suggestion to place the stone outside the walls.

FC into CD is more difficult yes, but not impossible.

If you are flank as spanish or port, go to the save outside stone.

If it is between you and your pocket you cab even palise/house wall it in to be save.

If not than its still fine.

If your opponent sees you are heavy on stone he will have to repond.

He could go feudal a bit earlier and produce some archers or scouts to harass your stone.

For this you need to keep scouting him.

If he comes with arc or scouts just pull your vills inside and use that stone to boom.

If you almost have enough stone for a castle you can even buy it.

Since he produced feudal army and you went for fc you will be far ahead in vills.

If he doesnt make feudal army you cab CD him just like normally.

But now all his stone is outside so he wont be able to make a defensive castle, towers or wall and make 2 tcs.

So your CD now is even stronger than it already is in the current Arena map.

TLDR: defending against port or spanish CD is not impossible.

Placing the stones outside will only make it more difficult to defend against a CD.

Edit:
Trushing might now be a good strat aswell.

Make the first tower near one of his outside stones.

And mine that stone for your further towers.

Keep scouting his other outside stone.

Now you have acces to stone and he has 0.

Have fun defending a Trush without any access to stone

[malefiz123]

It makes tower rushes more powerful, not more risky.

You can control the opponents stone and then mine it.

Your opponent is limited to a single counter tower, or forced into market abuse.

[waywaykoolaid]

Just be glad double castle Arambai isn’t a thing anymore lol

[twitchstreetpeteaoc]

It’s a interesting idea that would definitely have a big effect on arena tgs which I would say you are correct about in that they are heavily influenced by UU plays and especially from specific civs.

So in that sense it could make some sense, if that is the goal.

Personally I feel like while arena has always been a pretty agressive map where the stone walls just lead to different aggressive strategies than in other maps.

These days it’s mostly trusting and UU play which your change would at least have an effect on.

But especially in 1v1 arena used to be known for monk and siege pushes and it’s still a good strat with many civs these days, and this change would definitely lead more to that kind of aggression, since you can’t make defensive Castle or towers, actually thinking about it trushing could be good as well since you can take the outside stone and the guy you trush then can’t, since he will have to move out on the map while trying to FC.

So to sum up I think this approach would likely mainly lead to a different kind of aggression than what you see now

[leading_suspect]

100% chance of your stone being lamed every game

[total_score2]

This sounds like a truly awful idea.

So if someone smushes you then you can never drop a castle to defend yourself, also means all UU based builds go to the damn hell.

Also worried about trushes as well.

You say it promotes depth of strategy, I think it removes various strategies and makes certain others much stronger, because you want to promote only playing one way as “that is in the spirit of arena”.

That said, I’m talking about 1v1, maybe a teamgame based arena is an entirely different story.

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