Stone walls

Hello friends, I'm posting to have a discussion regarding stone walls in aoe 4.

Aoe 4 has some of the best wall systems in RTS games. Outside of battle for Middle Earth, I can't think of another RTS game that allows players to place units atop walls to defend.

It's one of, if not my favourite feature in the game. I love when I'm able to encircle my base with walls and perch archers across the walls, having cavalry inside ready to charge siege and infantry ready to sally out.

Sieging a base is even better, the sound of trebs launching, bombards ringing out, siege towers rolling up and depositing my men on the walls, fighting against enemy troops. I love this stuff.

My issue comes from this type of situation being completely undermined (pun intended) by the fact that troops can destroy gates with their bare hands. I feel like age 4 has such great siege options for all the civs, you have these interesting mechanics with walls, with siege towers, you have burning oil, bombards, rams and the developers have undercut their own hard work by just making gates easily able to be destroyed by spearmen.

I've heard arguments for and against, I know lots of people don't like walls as it just slows down the game, but the siege mechanics are so rich and primed to make the game have incredibly memorable moments of siege defense or attack and instead it feels like there is little to no reason to build siege at all, atleast when talking about walls.

I'm interested to hear the communities thoughts. Maybe I'm missing an obvious reason why making walls only able to be brought down by siege is a bad thing, but in my head it feels like this is a pretty minor change that could really reinforce decision making and forward planning by players. Having to adjust decision making if you scout an enemy walling, being punished for not scouting effectively by having your army stopped in their tracks.

Some reasons why I think this wouldn't be a big issue:

* Lots of civs are able to construct siege with their infantry on the front lines

* Lots of players build rams already to support their pushes, even if the player doesn't have walls

* Many civs have incredibly powerful siege which can easily dismantle walls

* It's an easy change for the developers to make in terms of implementation and would shake up the meta

In terms of balancing this:

* Low end siege like rams could be cheaper

* Stone walls could cost more stone or be slower to build

* More stone cost would have knock on effect of players having less castles and less towers

* Walls could have less overall health

In general I think this change would overall reinforce sieges position in the game, and give more usefulness and utility to things like the siege tower which is often pointless to use over a treb or a ram in these situations outside of pure flair. It would require players to strategize differently against walls and lead to more "cool" moments of siege warfare.

As it stands stone walls don't really offer much of a gameplay difference to wooden walls once a gate is attached to them.

Interested to hear your thoughts on this, could this be a good change? Is this a bad change? How do you feel about siege like the towers and their usefulness?

Thanks