A Siege-Monk rush shortened Smush or a Castle-drop strategy can be usually seen after having reached the Castle Age. Here specifically, the players try to get to Castle Age as fast as possible to gain access to Castles, Siege Weapons and Monks to acquire map control and breach the opponent's walls. Therefore, a Fast Castle-strategy is seen the most frequently. The layout of the map leads to a general delay of any aggression into Castle Age due to having a safe starting base and safe access to ressources.
The latter two features distinguishes Arena heavily from the other well-known map Fortress, where you also start with a stone-walled base. No hills to avoid camping on hills benefitting the player on top with hill bonus.Extensive woodlines around the edges of the map.Every player starts with a base surrounded by stone-walls.It is the classic map when it comes to so-called closed maps, that is why this map has always been in the ranked mappool for AoE II DE next to Arabia. This setup leads often to longer games as early rush strategies are less effective.
All players start with pre-built stone walls around their starting Town Center. Arena is a Age of Empires 2 multiplayer map.
