3 ms·
A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll o
by Arrath 5y ago
A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll over the opponent's base.
So, a few hundred riflemen or dozens and dozens of tanks.
The death part of it comes from the numerical advantage, if an enemy unit walks into range of many times its number it'll get blown to hell before it can inflict meaningful damage, even if it is a technologically superior or inherently stronger unit.
- teawrecks 5y agoNot always monoculture. The most effective deathballs have a balanced composition of units which complement each other.
- Arrath 5y agoAbsolutely, this can vary. IME at least in the old days, it did tend to be a single unit type (eg Red Alert Medium/Heavy tank rushes, or a well timed Zerg Rush) but it is by no means a hard and fast rule.
- dragontamer 5y agoAoE2 is usually a monoculture, due to the nature of its upgrade systems. If your knights are +2 armor and +2 damage, you'll probably want a mono-culture of knights. Futhermore, a singular upgrade (aka: Cavalier research) immediately applies to all knights. Your +2 armor / +2 damage Cavaliers are probably superior to your +0 / +0 archers from the Feudal age, even if those archers are theoretically useful against some units. Strictly speaking: its not a monoculture: Scouts + Knights is the common combination for cavalry civs, because Knights lose vs Monks/Archers, while Scouts win vs Monks/Archers. Furthermore, Scouts share the +2 armor / +2 damage upgrade with Knights. But still, the upgrade system almost "forces" a monoculture (or close to a monoculture): its far more efficient to only research one or two units, rather than researching many, many different kinds of units.