u/space-goats

I'm kind of curious what the downside of the Elroq is given how cost competitive it is to the ID3/ID4.

(I'm Gold 3, if you're better this is unlikely to be relevant for you).

Lots of build orders for China say to age up with the Clocktower castle age landmark. This makes sense to strong players, as they carefully micro their siege to get value out of the extra HP, and they have good scouting and map awareness skills. As a lower ELO player though, I'm not sure either are true for me.

The Imperial Palace on the other hand is dead easy to use, provides immediate defensive value, and punishes a popular low elo play of sending a bunch of undefended vills to a resource node. A few horseman or lancers will get multiple villager kills.

Because if you then win it's incredibly satisfying. Also makes for more dynamic, chaotic games since it's hard for either of you to stick to a plan.