[Discussion] Arabia Reinvestigation (Meta, Walls, Towers)

"Who've you just call a Wallerboy?" -Anonymous 2019

These days there is no such thing a Wallerboy, everyone is walling, it has become an integral part of the game, the meta, the actual build-order, we send vills to seal our base completely pre-Feudal Age, both Pros/Streamers and plebs.

Developers have been trying desperately to nerf walls, either by opening most maps to a unprecedented extent or a directly nerfing the actual palaside wall. As we can tell by far, it hasn't worked, everyone simply wall earlier, bigger.

Do not let it misguide you gentlemen, it's not about walls, wallers are just a symptom of something wider. Long long ago, 2 years from now, we had a diverse meta, not ideal yet stratigically we had more options, we used to see plenty of alternative playstyles, both competitively and casually.

Over the years meta has evolved organically, towers used to counter full-walls, (side note- who would have thought back in 1998 that people would use towers offensively at Feudal Age), full-walls used to counter/deal-well with a late Feudal army aggression, and tower rush used to be countered quite nicely by Feudal militaristic aggression. Some sort of Rock Paper Scissors, but not fully.

Once towers got out of the equation, by getting nerfed by the developers, we were left with a very Arena-ish Fast-Castle walling meta, and ever since developers have been trying to balance it by opening the map to an absurd degree, where we have no about 40% of the amount of trees we had in AOC/Voobly.

Buffing back towers is an inevitable move, however, is that all? is this what we need to fix the meta? not quite. Since Arabia now is based on multiple tiny woodlines that are for the most part far from any other resource (berries, gold, stone, or TC range farms)- towers are simply inefficient. In order to justify a tower you'd have to already have a lead and the awareness that you'd end up 1TC All-INing.

We'd have to fix Arabia as well, that's an easy one though, there were plenty of balanced dry Arabia's back then. walling used to be punished by simply having a compact base, and an incablity to maintain large farming eco and an efficient boom. Unlike now where people just go 4TC boom fest in a mandatory fashion, without any consideration of space, since base is quarter-map large.

It's not about Blackforesting Arabia, but the structure of woodlines and their radius from the TC. More trees - less woodlines- will encourage tower-rushers to act, emptiness does the opposite. Within two successful towers you can shut down any FC attempt, however it takes skill, scouting, and a high risk high reward, as strategy should be.

We definitely don't want to eliminate FC out of the equation, we need them all, all possible strategies, in order to achieve a prosper diverse tactical game. It applies to mid-game as well, the current meta is about playing too safe, no risks, no noticable signs of inovation, the standart mass Town Center into double gold composition while having a prolonged Castle Age.

Remember that we used to have people go for 1TC Arbalest play? relying only on sheer micro, it was one of Liereyy's signature plays, or MbL going for Pike+ Siege All-In push on early castle age, DauT and TheViper going often for Castle Drop into a fancy Unique Unit, or casually amazing Chinese players going for a deadly Tower Rush followed up by a 1TC Siege Monk play. (Kudos to Hoang, pretty much the only one who fights the odds)

All these strats are way too edgy for the current meta, you can no longer set up an offensive position by using Feudal Tower rush, you can't go for any immobile Siege + Pike / Monk play due to map being too open (open isn't the right word to describe it, but empty), and lastly any attempt to 1TC aggression is just punished by nature- not having enough wood to pursue your win condition, you'd be systematically forced to build more TC's to secure the most elementary fuel in AOE, wood.

These days watching Pros play is boring than ever, the meta is narrower and restrictive than it has been in 5 years, and the outrageous thing about all this- is the fact it's highly solvable, developers can fix it or atleast try, instead of fighting the wind, as if it was an island overpopulated by rabbits- where all it needs is a single wolf rather than endless amount of attempts to sterilize the rabbits.

Bring Strategy back to AOE, the single dimesional meta has to end.
Thank you for reading this far guys!
Would love to hear what you got in mind.