Age of Empires 2 newcomer's idea to build gates around the town center was mocked

The idea looks simple enough. Surround the town center with four gates so no free tile remains underneath for enemy troops to stand on. The player who posted the concept in the Age of Empires 2 community calls the setup a tactical base.

The logic relies on how melee units behave. Infantry and cavalry bunch up directly under the town center and tear it down faster thanks to that density, and blocking those tiles takes away the option entirely. A sealed perimeter also stops enemies from stealing sheep, finishing off villagers, or hitting anyone repairing the building.

The plan calls for moving archers inside the perimeter during an attack. For convenience, the player recommends installing a mod with smaller walls, since standard gates make it harder to see through and click on units. Starting in the second age, wooden gates upgrade to stone, and farms fit right into the layout.

A follow-up post expanded on the design. A walls-only version survives longer and takes less damage, while a version with towers hits harder but loses the corners, which enemies tend to break first. The six-tile square size was chosen so farms line up evenly with no gaps.

The community response came down hard. Some suggested skipping villagers entirely, since an economy that doesn't exist can't be raided, or building gates around an ally town center for their protection instead. Others recommended walling off the enemy base so their villagers can't put up production buildings at all.

The real critique centers on cost. Four gates run 120 wood right at the start, at a point when every resource matters for development.

That's 120 wood in weak walls for a scenario where your town center is under pressure, and the walls buy you five extra seconds at best. You're either losing 120 wood early or playing with bad farm layouts for a hypothetical situation where you'd even want those walls up.

At high elo this adds zero value, delays the start of a normal game, and honestly makes the match kind of unplayable. Town centers usually get pressured with mangonels in castle age, or trebuchets and bombard cannons in imperial age, and none of that changes with this setup. This gate trick costs you minus 15 elo every game.

The second complaint targets gate mechanics themselves. Villagers constantly walk through the gates to drop off resources, and the doors swing open every time.

Did you actually test this? The gates will keep opening the whole time villagers are hauling food, and attackers just need to wait for the right moment to walk in. Better to leave the corners open and keep the gates locked – villagers can still drop resources, and nothing gets inside.

The community clocked manually locking and unlocking gates for every single villager at 412 actions per minute. Another player pointed out that with enough troops parked under the town center, a palisade wouldn't save you anyway, and reaching that point already means the game is lost.

Poles and Khmer get a partial pass here, since their bonuses soften the economic hit. For every other civilization, the math stays negative.

Someone also brought up how gate value shifts with skill level. Around 400 elo, regular gates delay aggression by almost ten minutes, while around 2000 elo the gate foundation becomes useful again, since it can trap Mongol cavalry between two castles. The same discussion dug up the early-2000s meta of placing town centers away from resources just to pack farms in tighter.

The original poster isn't fighting back against the criticism. They say they just come up with random ideas and post them without any competitive calculation, hoping some tricks might work out in the hands of stronger players.

The discussion also dug up a detail from an early build of the game. In the Age of Empires 2 alpha, gates would close directly on units standing under them and kill them outright, regardless of which side they belonged to.