What Is the Distinction Between Fortress and Arena?
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As far as I know, Arena is known for having very secure wood lines, while Fortress may not be as safe.
Additionally, Arena gameplay tends to focus on fast castle strategy, competing for relics, and possibly fast imp afterwards.
The two maps have different playstyles, and it’s important to be aware of these differences.
Regarding preference, Arabian and Arena tend to be the most popular maps, and I don’t have enough information to say which is better.
Fortress (as compared to Arena) discourages all in 1TC yolo play for a couple of reasons: firstly there’s the obvious one that you start with a castle and depending on its placement that can shut down a lot of potential aggression.
The less obvious and more significant reason is that on Arena it is possible (and in fact not even difficult) to basically trap your opponent in their base with some aggressive strategy (whether it’s tower rush, monk rush, castle drop etc.) This is not possible on Fortress, your enemy will basically always have the space and the ability to expand to the rest of the map.
This also makes 1TC aggression harder to pull off.
So Fortress is a more boomy map than Arena most of the time.
In Imp however Fortress forces you to expand your eco outside of your walls in a significant way to get the neutral gold/stones, but also *wood*, again unlike Arena.
There are hills on Fortress which makes map control and castle placement etc.
on these hills very important, which obviously is a feautre absent from Arena.
This makes late game on Fortress a lot more like late game on Arabia than late game on Arena where your eco is spread around the map, the walls in your base are full of holes, you need to raid your opponent and expand for neutral resources etc.
Mobility is a lot more favoured on Fortress than Arena.
The main difference is that I favorite one and ban the other! 11
Fortress is more open.
You can expand a lot more of the map, secure new areas by dragging a stone wall from your initial base to the edge of the map, etc.
There are neutral gold/stone far away from both bases.
You are more likely to see unique units thanks to the pre-built castle.
It’s a lot less claustrophobic than Arena.
Fortress usually is played with the Regicide game mode instead of Random Map (I still wish the ranked pool would do this for 1v1s).
That means you have a King as an extra Scout, and you start with a Castle, more Villagers, and more Food and Wood.
The original version of Fortress also had large bodies of water.
Those could be extremely unfair and are removed in most if not all “modern” versions of the map.
Arena is a closed map compared to fortress and so non mobility power units are more viable.
Fortress does not have the enclosed forest so there is more space for expansion out of your walls.
Fortress has a different start as well where you start with more vills, castles, farms.
Since you already have a castle, unique unit compositions are more viable.
Both maps favor FC builds.
I feel castle drops and castle age pushes are stronger on Arena as you don’t already have castles and towers which act as good defences.
Strong eco civs with good unique units are strong on Fortress.
Eg: Chinese, Slavs
Fast Imp/Castle drop Civs are strong on Arena.
Eg: Turks, Portuguese
Some Civs are indeed strong on both such as Bengalis, Burgundians.
I think the biggest thing about Fortress is that you start with a castle, which really helps with strats that involve making units from a castle (e.g., trebs and UU).
Tarkan rush and Goth-Condo + treb come to mind as being good options for Fortress.
Both of those strats can be done on Arena too, but not as well, IMO.
Also important to keep in mind that starting with a castle on Fortress means you don’t have to build buildings to go up to Imp.
You can literally do a Fast-imp build where you arrive to Castle with resources for Imp and then immediately click up to Imp.
I’d say arena is the better map because it’s much more diverse strategically while fortress games tend to play out very similarly (one tc play isn’t viable here while it totally is on arena).
I’m much more aggressive on Fortress personally, I normally go Spanish and with 5 -10 conqs and some scouts you can control the map and even snipe vills behind walls.
With less wood and resources inside your walls you have to get control of the sides quicker so being forward footed helps you greatly.
Arena makes You haté yourself for not banning it, fortress is a truly strategic map
Arena is better
I prefer Fortress because for me there is a scope of some comeback in the game.
In Arena, I feel that if you failed to stop a Spanish or Portuguese castle drop that ranges your Stone then you have basically lost or if your Civ doesn’t have redemption then it is a massive disadvantage.
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