As you know, Early Pallisade Walling (EPW) can turn a game around. This is a major aspect that many players totally ignore. I hope this guide will help those players understand why these VS are definetly not wasted. But I really can not think of anything on the subject, so I will open up to comments.

I started this because of this comment:

Quoted from Novelist:

So please post below, and I will add to this. If you want your post to be within the guide, please also tell me where in the guide it shall be placed.

• Remember that you can delete walls at any time if you need to go through them. You can always rewall that one tile. This is one of the main reasons gates aren't as useful as they could be.
  
• About using buildings as walls, especially houses. Houses have lots of HP, cost only wood, and are needed anyway. They also build fairly quickly. Military buildings are also great as walls as you can choose which side your units pop out on. You can also have your base fully surrounded with buildings and walls and still be sending out units this way.
  
• Walling buildings happens mostly when your opponent goes forward and you beat them back. Bringing in vils to wall the forward military buildings (usually 1 or 2 ranges and a rax) can really cripple them early in Feudal.
  
• Walls are also extremely effective for beating off Drushes. Pallisades correctly placed on your foragers and woodies will stop any militia.
  
• Forcing enemy units to pass near your town center means you have to use your town center if they do. It's a minor point mostly for newbies, but it's still important.
  
• Move the pallisade hotkey from "p" to something slightly more accessible if you plan on using them a lot. If you already are used to this and have no problems, then forget it. Mine is the "i" key, but used to be "q" when I used them more.
  
• Walls are very helpful in protecting trade routes in post-Imp. This mostly applies to DM, though and doesn't mean walling the entire map off, just those sections that you can't cover with Castles and BTs. Walls can also help to stop raiding if placed well, but later in the game it's hard to find the micro time to lay them correctly. (All tips from here and up are from Gordon B)
  
• Instead of building your first gold mine adjacent to the gold piles, build it one tile distant. Then two villagers can stand between the gold and the mine, and a couple palisade walls can protect them from melee units. If your opponent sends ranged units simply delete a wall segment to flee. (All from here and below are from Novelist)
  
• If a builder might be attacked, have the builder first make palisade walls on three sides for protection.
  
• Surrounding towers with palisade walls really helps during Feudal Age. This is especially efficient when trushing and you build a tower "behind" the opponent's patch of forest with his wood-gatherers; against the trees, this tower has only vulnerable side that needs palisade walls.
  
• On Nomad, if you find a relic then partially build four palisade wall segments to make it more difficult for enemies to claim.
  
• Build 2-3 consecutive palisade walls adjacent to forward military buildings. If your opponent tries to wall in your building, you can delete these to create an open place for your units to emerge.
  
• Some maps (such as Arabia) have ideal places for your opponent to build forward military buildings: flat hilltops not far from your base. Put a few palisade wall segments here and there on such hilltops to prevent your opponent from making buildings there.
  
• A trick invented by GPA_Great Benze is to ruin an opponent's trade cart income without setting off any alarm bells by sneaking a few villagers to the enemy market and surrounding it with palisade walls.
  
• When drushing build a wall _between_ the opponent's camps/mines and resources, and then later return to try tofully enclose the opponent's camps/mines -- this keeps your forward villagers moving (i.e.--safer from swarms of opponent's villagers) and is maximally efficient at disrupting the opponent's economy.
  
• When advancing to Feudal Age, build a palisade wall from your town center to either your gold/stone or the edge of the map; the idea is to keep enemy military who flush you from being able to run back and forth from your wood-gatherers to your gold-gatherers without walking much farther or suffering town center arrows. (Do similarly when you have two lumber camps at opposite sides of your base.)
  
• To be more shocking than efficient, send a villager to the opponent's base almost immediately (works well on Black Forest or Highland, when people do so anyway) and wall up their boar. Alternately, on laggy games build an L-shaped "blocking wall" to safely lure your own boar without researching loom.
  
• Your own land units never need to touch your docks. Protecting them with palisade walls is worth the villager-seconds on certain maps.
  
• On Nomad, if one of your initial villagers happens upon an enemy docks then consider walling your villager in beside the dock and attacking it; this will safely destroy the dock before they reach Feudal Age, and your economic loss (one non-productive villager) is roughtly equivalent to their loss of the dock and it's use in the grush.
  
• Don't forget to add that when using pools of water as a barrier that one needs to put 1-2 tiles of palisades on each side of the water between the water and trees, otherwise those bad guys will sneak through. Even experts forget to do that and everybody should look for that oversight. (Tony Sillars)
  
• Walls can seem to buy you time, but you really only gain if the time it buys you is less than the time you spend gathering resources and building walls.
  
• In general use walls to direct your enemy to the slaughter, i.e. to create choke points.
  
• Where possible make your walls out of houses instead of creating a pallisade.
  
• A bum's rush of villagers can pallasade in an advanced barracks, range, or stable. It only works when you're playing a crappy player, but hell, it sure is fun when it does work.
  
• Finally, you don't see the best players throwing up a vast labyrinth of walls for a reason. (From here and up are from right reverend)
  
• Single palisades dropped in a grid every 4 tiles in outlying areas around your base - prevents enemy from being able to do a castle drop while your attention is elsewhere. Houses are best for this job (i.e. this is the area where I would normally house), but palisades are cheaper, build quicker, and Huns don't get houses.
  
• If you are a ranged civ (including Celts, Saracens etc), single palisades or walls in a grid/random array spaced every 2 or 3 tiles (i.e. 1 or 2 tiles between them) are a cunning defence against Paladins, Elite War Elephants and also rams and onagers. Those physically large units have trouble maneuvering in tight spaces and are slow turning corners, and will therefore move very slowly or ideally get themselves completely jammed amongst your palisades. Meanwhile you slaughter them with your ranged units. Many players will not appreciate the disastrous effect that sending their gold-costly power units through such a 'minefield' can have.
  
• An obvious one: palisades or walls around towers, if you are tower rushing
  
• Especially on a large map single palisades by or close to all the enemies' outlying resources will (1) give you some scouting function (especially if Byzantines) (2) irritate the enemy as they spoil his ideal TC placement, thus slowing his castle-age economy.
  
• A few times on Land Nomad, the enemy has done the seriously irritating thing of building an early palisade wall between me and my boars. Having had that experience, I would say that being walled off from your boars in Dark Age does you more damage than any other kind of wall, even complete walls around your gold (by the time you need the gold, you will have a few pikes to take down the walls). This trick is most effective on Land Nomad where two opposing players may happen to build their starting TCs very close to each other.
  
• Instead of walling off an enemy's gold, a mean trick if you can achieve it without your vil being detected on the minimap (e.g. if your colour is yellow or grey) is to wall around his Mining Camp some time after he has built it. It only takes 8 palisade walls to block it up and then his vils will be taking a very long walk to the TC or the next nearest mining camp, effectively cutting his gold income from that mine by something like 2/3. Assuming you are attacking elsewhere, many players will not notice that you have done this to them until it is far too late, since even a player who is good at multi-tasking tends not to look at his mining camps often, if at all.
  
• In a very long (like 2 hour) team game, a goal for me would be to have one edge of the map for trading, completely walled off with fortified walls (positioned so that not even ranged units can touch the trade). All forests etc would have been cleared out of the way. The reason for doing this is that trade carts are very costly (including gold cost), and are very fragile. By this stage in the game I might well have 30-40 trade carts and 3-4 markets, so it is obviously worth spending some stone to protect all that; equally your teammate's trade is protected. (From here and up are from Intimatum)
  
• Palisades are good against people who use siege extensively without microing enough. I mean, a short curtain of three segments in an important pass through messes their path finding AI real bad. Not to mention that it delays them if they have units on attack stance, and he’s not looking: the rams (and many other units) loose valuable time smashing the palisade. In that case, the palisade work as decoy for my own SOs. (toesmasher)
  

Most new players have an intrinsic fascination with walls. Rather than using them to their full advantage (both tactically and economically), some players choose to wrap their base with a thick layer (or layers) of walls. The effect of this? Admittedly, the defense can work, against players of weaker skill. The response to this may be that the walls will give a player warning of attack, but the expense of such a large amount of stone (not to mention the villagers required to build them, and the resources required to upgrade them) seem to make any such warning much too late - you have already damaged your own economy far more than the enemy could ever aspire to! Naturally, the advanced warning argument can be accomplished by building useful, strategic buildings in key locations, rather than squandering one's resources on layer after layer of walls.

SOLUTION

That being said, walls are still exceptionally useful, if used in moderation, in key locations, and for the right reasons. Before we discuss the uses of walls, let's have a look at what we will be talking about.

THE PALISADE WALL- Availability: Dark Age (all civilizations)
- Cost: 2W per section
- Hit Points: 250

THE STONE WALL
- Availability: Feudal Age (most civilizations)
- Cost: 5S per section
- Hit Points: 1800

THE FORTIFIED WALL
- Availability: Castle Age (many civilizations)
- Cost: 5S per section
- Hit Points: 3000

THE GATE
- Availability: Feudal Age (most civilizations)
- Cost: 30S per gate
- Hit Points: 2750

THE FORTIFIED GATE
- Availability: Castle Age (many civilizations)
- Cost: 30S per gate
- Hit Points: 4000

Note: Mayans have half cost (-50%) walls. This is very good when walling early.

USING WALLS FOR PROTECTION

Choke Points. The age old choke point is still excellent place for a wall. Walling a choke point is not "turtleing" -it is common sense. If you are (for whatever reason) playing on Black Forest, you'd be silly not to place a wall at the chokepoint. I'm not saying, of course, to wall and surround it with castles, towers, and bombard towers, because your opponent can simply go through the forest with siege onagers. Nevertheless, Black Forest screams for some choke point walling. Naturally, there are choke points on other maps, as well. On Continental, for instance, walls can be placed between your base and the main island. Is this the only means of access to your base? Of course not. Are you now secure from enemy attack? Of course not. But now the enemy must spend time getting through your walls, or go around the long way, triggering many warnings from your carefully placed houses, or active scouts. Even Arabia has a choke point or two between clumps of trees.

Funelling. When you are being rushed, it never hurts to lay down a quick wall to not only protect your villagers, but also to direct enemy traffic. Most people use this effectively: if you are being rushed, build a wall from your wood to your town center. Hopefully, this will also protect your gold miners. You are protected, and you direct enemy traffic through your town center fire if they wish to destroy your miners or choppers. Though "forcing enemy units to pass near your town center means you have to use your town center if they do." "Walls are also extremely effective for beating off Drushes. Pallisades correctly placed on your foragers and woodies will stop any militia." (Gordon B)

Using Terrain. Don't wall around forests. It never ceases to amaze me when players wall a forest in. Use the forest to your advantage. It saves both time and stone. This is not simply for forests, either. Use water, as well, and even gold or stone! Gold and stone are far more secure than any wall - they are indestructible and totally impassable, as are cliffs. When possible, wall so that you are on top of the cliff to get an attack bonus.

Gates By: Chewmen_ldr
Gates are only necessary if the walled choke point is a major passageway for your own/allied units. (i.e. Trade carts or a highland shallow.) "Remember that you can delete walls at any time if you need to go through them. You can always rewall that one tile. This is one of the main reasons gates aren't as useful as they could be." (Gordon B)

Building Blocks/Walls By: Chewmen_ldr
This is a very nice way to get what you need, plus extra Protection. "Houses have lots of HP, cost only wood, and are needed anyway. They also build fairly quickly. Military buildings are also great as walls as you can choose which side your units pop out on. You can also have your base fully surrounded with buildings and walls and still be sending out units this way." (Gordon B)
If you do use towers (castles will work too), then you may place it in between a wall. This will give you a little more protection, and a gate. To use as a gate, you can garrison some people inside and set the rally point to the other side so that when you ungarison them, some of them will end up on the other side. Very high micro though, and not very useful in the midst of battle. "Walling buildings happens mostly when your opponent goes forward and you beat them back. Bringing in vils to wall the forward military buildings (usually 1 or 2 ranges and a rax) can really cripple them early in Feudal."(Gordon B)

Palisade Walls By:Novelist
Instead of building your first gold mine adjacent to the gold piles, build it one tile distant. Then two villagers can stand between the gold and the mine, and a couple palisade walls can protect them from melee units. If your opponent sends ranged units simply delete a wall segment to flee.

If a builder might be attacked, have the builder first make palisade walls on three sides for protection.

Surrounding towers with palisade walls really helps during Feudal Age. This is especially efficient when trushing and you build a tower "behind" the opponent's patch of forest with his wood-gatherers; against the trees, this tower has only vulnerable side that needs palisade walls.

On Nomad, if you find a relic then partially build four palisade wall segments to make it more difficult for enemies to claim.

Build 2-3 consecutive palisade walls adjacent to forward military buildings. If your opponent tries to wall in your building, you can delete these to create an open place for your units to emerge.

Some maps (such as Arabia) have ideal places for your opponent to build forward military buildings: flat hilltops not far from your base. Put a few palisade wall segments here and there on such hilltops to prevent your opponent from making buildings there.

A trick invented by GPA_Great Benze is to ruin an opponent's trade cart income without setting off any alarm bells by sneaking a few villagers to the enemy market and surrounding it with palisade walls.

When drushing build a wall _between_ the opponent's camps/mines and resources, and then later return to try tofully enclose the opponent's camps/mines -- this keeps your forward villagers moving (i.e.--safer from swarms of opponent's villagers) and is maximally efficient at disrupting the opponent's economy.

When advancing to Feudal Age, build a palisade wall from your town center to either your gold/stone or the edge of the map; the idea is to keep enemy military who flush you from being able to run back and forth from your wood-gatherers to your gold-gatherers without walking much farther or suffering town center arrows. (Do similarly when you have two lumber camps at opposite sides of your base.)

To be more shocking than efficient, send a villager to the opponent's base almost immediately (works well on Black Forest or Highland, when people do so anyway) and wall up their boar. Alternately, on laggy games build an L-shaped "blocking wall" to safely lure your own boar without researching loom.

Your own land units never need to touch your docks. Protecting them with palisade walls is worth the villager-seconds on certain maps.

On Nomad, if one of your initial villagers happens upon an enemy docks then consider walling your villager in beside the dock and attacking it; this will safely destroy the dock before they reach Feudal Age, and your economic loss (one non-productive villager) is roughtly equivalent to their loss of the dock and it's use in the grush.

USING WALLS FOR OFFENSE

Divide and Conquer. Before attacking a pair of teammates, drive a small army between them and bring along some villagers. Build a wall in a strategic place to try to minimize the ability of one player getting to the other easily. You now have two options. You and your ally can both attack one player at the same time, from different sides, rendering him helpless. Alternatively, you and your ally can take each player one-on-one, knowing that your opponents cannot help each other. This tactic is also advantageous in the late Imperial Age when gold is scarce. A well-placed Fortified Wall can render trade nearly impossible, or at least very difficult, and result in little gold for your opponents.

Claim Conquered Territory. If you have fought an enemy off and now control their territory, be sure to keep it that way. If they have run to a particular place, wall after them to keep them from claiming it back. A simple idea, but forgotten often. If you thought the area was worth fighting over, then it is worth protecting!

Steal Resources. A particularly nasty tactic if timed right and executed stealthily. Nothing can shut down an opponent like seeing a wall around an important gold mine or stone mine. For a few stone (or wood), you can block an opponents access to thousands of gold! This is far better than most military attacks can offer, so take advantage of it.

Walling Buildings. This can also be a nasty tactic, but it's usefulness is debatable. You must place villagers outside an opponent's military building. The villagers are essentially at the mercy of the opponent's ignorance - hopefully they won't notice and slaughter your villager(s). The wall, of course, will be destroyed quickly, or, if not, military buildings aren't terribly expensive anyway. I personally don't find this to be of particular use, but it can have some strategic advantages early in the game. Obviously, this is not effective at all in the later parts of any game.

GENERAL NOTES ON WALLING

How to Wall a Choke Point. Choke points should be walled in a specific manner to take the most advantage of the space given. If the choke point is small, a regular straight wall will probably suffice (perhaps double if you are ambitious, but only on the smallest of segments!). Another good way of walling is to make a v-shape with the v opening away from your side of the choke point. This allows you to put towers/castles around the choke point if you are so inclined. Again, don't over do it. Remember that your enemy is not going to attack your there if there is another way to get to you. But, at the same time, you shouldn't make the choke point the easiest way to get there.

Gates. A new idea in Age of Kings, gates are an important aspect to walling, but very expensive. You essentially get four tiles of wall with a gate, all of which share the same Hit Points. Gates are more expensive per tile than a wall. This extra costs earns you the ability to walk through your wall, which is of some value. Gates should be placed in areas in which they will actually be used. Do not blindly place gates all over the place. Gates are a weakness in any defense - enemies can walk through them if they are open (although this is easy to protect against, it does happen from time to time), and they simply aren't as strong as a real wall, not to mention more costly than paying for four wall tiles. As for keeping gates locked, that depends on their location. The two things to consider are, will locking the gate stop your trade, and will unlocking the gate leave you vulnerable. If you don't want your troops to storm through the gate, move them.

Walling Discretion. Let me be perfectly clear about one thing: given the choice between a wall unit and a military unit, 99% of the time, go for a military unit. They are much better for defense - they can be moved to where they are needed, and they can inflict damage on your opponent. That having been said, one cannot completely ignore the occasional need for a wall. If you spend more than a few hundred stone on defensive walls, you may have gone wrong somewhere. The goal is not to turtle, the goal is to fight -but use walls so that you do so in your opponent's base, not yours.

[This message has been edited by Chewmen_ldr (edited 04-24-2004 @ 12:43 PM).]