ENT Gaming

In this topic I would like to discuss the innate problems that bases with double lane walls face. Let me introduce the concept of wall efficiency. Wall efficiency is the amount of towers who reach and are able to DPS the area of that individual wall so for example in this base single lane wall base the wall efficiency would look like this.

Let's compare the wall efficiency of river base (top right) and aztec base. The comparisons are with super towers and 700 range. Aztec looks like this https://i.imgur.com/JjUYZcF.png. A total of 65 towers. River looks like this https://i.imgur.com/Fhas5a2.png. A total of 50 towers. If you take the average wall efficiency/total towers it equals the percentage of towers that are attacking at a given wall. For Aztec this percentage would be 60% and for River it would be 80%, so for every 3 towers you build at river base aztec would need to build 4 towers to achieve the same DPS. Already if you would not consider other factors when comparing bases like for example, worker block possibilities, 3x3& 4x4 structure placements, worker lumber harvesting spots, nuke safety etc. it is abundantly clear that not only does River base have a greater average wall efficiency, the amount of lumber required to create the bases is vastly smaller for River. This in turn causes River base to be the superior base.

However it is not only double lane bases that suffer from poor wall efficiency, single lane bases are also affected if they are not supported by a proper wing like river, bay, and ovaries. I suggest the wall efficiency of the bases numbered in this image should be increased by adding additional tower spots https://i.imgur.com/vZkCDHo.png. I also recommend to further balance double lane and single lane bases is to increase the amount of lumber harvesting spots and 3x3&4x4 structure placements in double lane bases to accommodate two builders.

You used 700 range supers as an example, but what about 800 range supers, or 900-1000 range megas? The biggest flaw that makes a lot of the bases go unused is not the amount of towers, it's the lack of nuke-free areas.

Having different base layouts means that some bases are better for some builders than others, which adds variety and strategical thinking. For instance, Tommy Gun, Top of the World, and Tomb hold a lot of towers, and with megas they put out a lot of dps, but basing there with 700 range towers is just asking to feed, which is why a base like River, Trident or Ovaries would be better in that circumstance. If every base was capable of being used by all builders throughout all stages of the game to the same effect, there'd be no point in "picking" a base; just go to the nearest one.
a bit off topic: I am genuinly surprised to see an idea like this from you comsidering how outspoken you've been in the past about the importance of variety

I agree that double lane bases need to have something that makes them worthwhile using, but simply adding more space for towers and RCs is how Stronghold was created. It needs to be handled a bit more delicately.

I would like to think that the wall efficiency scales somewhat linearly with range. Of course that is not entirely the case as double lane bases would scale somewhat better as they mostly have more tower spaces, but only slightly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not proposing an attempt to make every base to have the same layout, rather I'm proposing to have each base have somewhat equal power. In the current version there is no scenario where an equal amount of lumber spent on a double lane base would have equal or greater power to a base like river, bay or ovaries. In my opinion the power of a base is consistent no matter what builder except in the case of ovaries where its power comes from mostly long range tower spots.

I think the power of stronghold comes from its entrance being strong rather than its size for a lot of 3x3 and 4x4s.

Off topic:
I would also like double entrance bases to be stronger to encourage using those bases, but it's a discussion for another time

While I do agree that many bases need tweaking and especially the balance of walling is off at some bases I do however think the issue is a lot more complex than how many towers can reach certain walls.

We have different ranges on different towers, evolving at different times during the gameplay - a base that offers more tower spots for early game might be picked and based in even if it would fall late game due to the lack of space for towers with 900+ attack range.
We also need to consider the location of the base, nukeability, like FollowingPath suggested, amount of space and many, many other aspects that play an important role when it comes down to whether or not a certain base works or not.

So I am not sold on the idea that bases should have "similar efficiency" in walling or tower space usage. However, I do agree on the wall-placement when we talk about the "optimal route for the Titan" and we can see that some bases are just badly balanced if the Titan picks the best route to go in from. For now there is little builders can do if Titan chooses the path that offers least tower hits, so I'd assume a smart Titan would always pick the same route to defeat a base - the route with least towers in range, but I might be wrong here as I am not a superb Titan with awesome tactics. Could certain aspects, like Healing Ward placement, positioning to allow easier healing from the Minions or to prevent rewalling play a role here, so that the route with least towers in range is not always the most optimal?

PS: I'd like to nerf River base as it is by far the most used base and it has next to no flaws, but many people think of it as a forbidden holy grail that shan't be touched.

I agree there are other factors to take into consideration when judging if a base is viable or not. However, the most important ones are 1) wall efficiency 2) worker block. If those two are not fulfilled to a proper degree a base can't be considered to be viable. Worker harvesting areas, 3x3&4x4 structure placements are luxuries that can't be taken advantage of if the base doesn't support good wall efficiency and worker block.

I truly don't believe the games revolves much at timings or different gameplay, either you build a weak base and titan will siege it when he sees it or you build a strong base and titan waits until a bit until GP and then he sieges. There is very little variety between the different builders in terms of basing strategy. The only difference is how many towers you can fit into ovaries if there is no murloc or makrura to help fill out the long range tower spots. The rest of the bases are equally good/bad completely unrelated to what builder you decide to base as, with the exception of tauren. I think we ID lovers like to hold up our game and think the gameplay is deeper than what it is in reality, there are very few tweaks you can adjust and attempt to counter what your opponent is doing.

Off topic:
Also just want to give a shoutout to followingpath for remembering one of the messages i've been trying to send throughout my threads on this forums, which is variety is good and was declining with the start of 4.0 but i starting to improve

Good post, we shouldn't discourage posts like these, we need more of these posts to balance the meta.
- Although the amount of walls is a smaller consideration compared to the amount of towers, lumber gathering and just the general space the base can have, and in some cases, worker block placement.

Remixer wrote:so I'd assume a smart Titan would always pick the same route to defeat a base - the route with least towers in range

Agreed, although worker block changes things.
- A tactic for the builder is just to upgrade towers first where to help out the side that's weaker, or create more towers on the weaker side, or even create less towers on the stronger side for more lumber efficiency.
- Personally I hate having ugly looking bases, so I prefer to go with the first option and just upgrade more towers in a way to help the weaker route out.

Regarding the other points, I more or less agree to lynx-, and disagree with the tower range ideas.
- In general most meta bases can fit a tonne of 800 range towers to make double wall entrances not really care about whether or not the towers are long or short ranged.
- For example, double basing in inhouses, players always have either a really strong base like radioactive + support, or will always have 800 range super towers before GP anyway.

To delve into another point, I'd like to see a triple wall entrance base spot that's on par or better than bay/river base with tower space, building space but mediocre chain bounce safety to discourage pent-bases but encourage duo-bases.

-Burn

Also, it's important to note only 1/3 of the basers actually have 800 range supers