A plan to improve the balance of siege weapons

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Despite the current springgald’s nuff, the siege weapon is still too powerful. (Especially the nest of bees)

They are actually a powerful unit, so I think they should adjust the price side rather than the stat nerf.

Among them, I suggest that their population consumption should be set as high as 8.(or 6?)
(I think the current figure of the 3 population is too low.)

If their population increases, the unit will be produced more carefully while maintaining its strength.

In fact, it should also be taken into account that many engineers were needed to operate the weapons.

5 Likes
2

Include the engineers as low attack melee infantry that operates the siege. Killing them turns the siege neutral and can be captured using infantry. Regular infantry (instead of engineers) has accuracy and attack speed penalization.

4 Likes
3

This would snowball way too hard. I would never want my opponent being able to capture my siege nor do I want to be able to captures his siege and snowball to victory.

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4

I think the problem with siege is currently they have too much HP and move too fast.

I see the role of most siege is providing a hefty increase in firepower of a particular army comp but at the price of slowing the army down and needing a lot of screening units.

Currently siege move too fast. Most moves almost as fast as fast as infantry. Faster if you have yuan dynasty or you are mongols. This should not be the case plus this means that infantry can just place a few hits on retreating siege.

I suggest to decrease their speed by maybe 20-25% and decrease their hp to the same ammount. That way you are really punished for misplacing siege or placing them unprotected.

8 Likes
5

I think you’re right, I think sieges HP should be reduced, ranged defense should be improved, and they should be a support unit rather than a main force.

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6

Siege needs nerfed sooo bad. I just fought against 20 cannons. People are just making massed cannons, and NOW THAT HORSEMN HAVE LOWER HP, THERE IS NO COUNTER TO 20 CANNONS. Cannons kill everything, springalds cannt easily kill a 500+ hp cannon but enemy can easily kill 250 ~ Hp springald easy. This game is so unbalanced and I am quitting until this is fixed. I have 150 villaers, unlimited resources and the only way to win is to make your own siege, WHY BUILD A HAND CANNON WITH 5 RANGE FOR 1 POP SPACE WHEN YOU CAN MAKE A 500+ HP CANNON WITH 10 RANGE FOR 3 POP!!! Population and damage and move speed and NERFS must happen soon. EVEN HERA is upset with the SIEGE META!!! Imagine There's No Siege Meta #shorts - YouTube

Age 2 is fun, no siege, and just units, Age 3 just ruins it, people spam mangonels ( i know i do cause they are so good and LONGBOWS ARE WORTHLESS, so are xbows, WHy make 21 longbows or xbows WHEN YOU CAN HAVE 7 MANGONELS INSTEAD. Lets see, 21 longbows vs 7 mangonels… HMMM I WONDER WHICH IS BETTER TO FILL YOUR POPULATION SPACE… Noob teamates dont know any of this and just DIE and makes the game utterly disgusting to me. Enemy using siege meta, while noob teamates making archers or men at arms to fight bees nests… I give up. Goodbye.
Bottom line, BOMBARDS NEED TO BE NERFED LIKE SPRINGALDS AND DO LESS DAMAGE VS UNITS! they kill knights way to easy, THey are to destroy buildings not crush every unit in game easily…
20 cannons or so… Just so DUMB. image|626x499

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2 Likes
7

While you got somehow a point.

7 Mangonals do cost as much as 52 archers not 21.
And yes, you are not supposed to fight with 52 archers against 7 Mangonals since they are the obvious counter.

Instead lets take the same amount of ressources as 7 Mangonals:
You can build 4 Springalds and 27 longbow and with some micro you will easily win by destroying one Mangonal after another.
But yes, AoE4 is age of siege.

Oh and the 20 canons you mentioned. Those are ressources worth 166 Horseman. 2 waves of 80 horseman would also wreck those canons. And since horseman do only cost wood and food you should be able to spam them “forever”, just need enough stables.

Pure siege armies won’t win but with a decently mixed army siege becomes so overpowered.

3 Likes
8

The problem is that we don’t have any non-siege units that are meant to counter sieges specifically (except Chinese fire Lancer)

In AOE 1, 2, and 3 we have non-siege units to counter siege in every civilization. Not just scouts!

Now we have only 1 civilization that counters siege! Which is the Chinese…
They have the strongest and tackiest sieges and have the only non-siege unit that deals more damage to siege…
It is utterly poor balancing!
Relic must look at AOE3 for balancing the sieges and they will understand how to balance sieges.

Melee units using Torch to destroy siege is the worst thing in AOE.

Melee units must use their melee weapon to kill the siege and needs bonus damage to siege.
Otherwise, sieges are too tanky and operate like Light tanks and vehicles…

2 Likes
9

Resources dont matter late game I have 10k of everything, Population spaces matters. Pop space matters more in this game than any other resource during late game. 60 persian elephants always crush 60 paladins late game, due to hp/damage per pop space in aoe 2 de. sure they cost more but if game goes long enough, cost DOESN’T MATTER.
If you make longbow past age 2 , you are a noob. THey are utter trash. 3 mangonels are better than 21 longbows. I was just saying ABOUT THE POPULATION SPACE. You completely missed my point ,are you sure your not helping with the game balance? lol
I would build 200 archers if i could but POPULATION SPACE LIMITS EVERYTHING. Why make low damage per population space units at all? Why make any archer with weak hp, need 30-50 to be effective when 50 knights have so much more damage, speed, and HP compared to any archery units or barracks units, FOR THE SAME POPULATION SPACE COST and why make knights when you can make 20 cannons with more damage, range and hp , which ends up becoming knights and cannons as the most hp/damage/good front line vs all units in game… and archers cant even destory buildings, so why even make them. Good players know this and use the meta…

THIS IS ABOUT HOW MUCH DAMAGE AND HP FIT IN A POPULATION SPACE. Knights always win vs men at arms. with almost 2x more damage and much higher hp FOR THE SAME population space , why even make men at arms. I know I dont. (this is all talking about late game! not mid game and all the trash). Why make any unit at the archery range when Mangonels and cannons currently and previously springalds were better damage, range, and hitpoints than any archery range unit… hmmm. do you see my point now. I am done, Sick of even talking about it.
I hope you understand, I dont care anymore, Hopefully it’s fixed soon, otherwise, gg bye.

Knights should be 2 population space to help encourage buidling of soldiers and bows, and siege should be 5-8 population space. Or you just have to kill all your villagers, do one final attack with 200 units and call it gg because this is ridiculous.

With 120 villagers. You can only have 80 pop space. Sure a noob can make 80 longbows, a pro can make 80 knights, a semi noob can make 80 men at arms , and horrible noob can make 80 pikemen , but … a pro can make 26 siege units, or 20 siege units with a front line of 20 knights… FOR 80 POPULATION SPACE.
10 mangonels will crush every barracks unit, archery range unit and horsemen, knights are the only non siege unit to use, springalds are ok vs mangonels but die bad to cannons due to them having soooo much hp (500+ anyone!?). while springald hp is like 250 or so… all of this added together makes it so bad.

4 mangonels is better for me every single time than even 30 longbows…

1 Like
10

Seige needs a limit to how any person can. Not have a army of seige.i hope the devs look into that soon nand nerf seige

11

Can I have your stuff?

12

That’s true, but if you lose a position and your enemy manages to defeat your army, it’s only logical that he continues to win: that’s how battles are won in real life, by taking strategic positions and obtaining resources.

Of course, you should also de capable to destroy the neutral siege unit (as armies did in real life) but captured weapon, horses, fortress were the tools that both sides of the different conflicts used to get the victory.

I also like that in AoE4 the enemy can take your walls and fire you from there: that was a common situation in medieval warfare, and that even applied to castles and towers… I know that may be too hard to balance, but at least now we are one step closer to reality.

1 Like
13

If someone goes too heavy on cannons, mass scouts is the easiest answer, since they are dirty cheap, cannons only kill one at a time and too many cannons means not enough real units.

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But there are some issues that are often overlooked in the discussion, which is population limits and training speed. Training siege units can efficiently expend resources immediately to create a fighting force, and the 3 point population occupancy also makes siege units of high quality.
However, units such as scouts occupy a valuable population in the late game and are useless except against siege weapons.

The root cause of this is the high health of siege weapons. The attacker starts building vulnerable ranged siege weapons in fear of the enemy defensive building fire, but discovers that the defender has also trained siege weapons to shoot your siege weapons with the protection of castle fire and the advantage of sight. The high hitpoints combined with the villagers’ repairs make it almost impossible to burn siege weapons.
Now in the late game it’s all about who has the most powerful siege weapons and then advances from there.
For now, in late-game situations, only the Chinese can take on the Chinese.
Siege weapons, movable defensive structures, moving forts, which make the game strange.

15

You can also not add population, just reduce health, so that the siege can be quickly burned by 4-5 torches. This will reduce the number of siege units on the battlefield and act as siege units instead of the main force.
Now I don’t feel like I’m playing age of Empires – a medieval game, I feel like I’m playing a World War II game, like Steel Division, Company of Heroes.

1 Like
16

According to the opinions of some of the bros who commented, if you lower the HP of the siege weapon, it will probably take a very long time to penetrate the castle wall.This is because it becomes very easy to remove the venomous weapon. I think the siege weapon should be powerful enough. However, since the siege weapon should not be the main unit, it insists on adjusting the number of people who can maintain its strength but reduce the number of holdings

17

Siege generally seems to be in a decent place right now, but I’d like to seem more civs have access to the culverin. They are a good counter, and if you play a cover without them it can make siege feel overpowered imo.

18

The game has been completely ruined by the poor design of siege weapons.
AOE4 is very similar to AOE2 in terms of data, compared to AOE2. Units cost about twice as much as AOE2, and the villagers in AOE4 are nearly twice as efficient at collecting all resource.

You can see that before the Springald price was adjusted, the Springald, mangonel, and counterweight trebuchet all cost similar to AOE2, and even had similar damage results.
The mangonel damage in AOE4 is lower than in AOE2, but since there is no friendly damage in AOE4, this adjustment is reasonable.
1.Springald
Damage prices are similar, but survivability is vastly different. The siege weapon with the lowest health - based Springald in AOE4 200 HP, considering the different AOE4/2, 2 can be reduced to the empire of the Springald is 40 HP, knight 10 attacks, for example, four damage can kill a Springald, and AOE4 Springald 200 HP, even the imperial age the torch also needs to 7 times, 30 * 7. For comparison, the AOE3 culverin (280HP) has 0.75 ranged defense and can be killed by ranged damage, while the light cavalry with 30 melee damage needs 9 kills. In this comparison, we will find that culverin and springald are similar in price and quantity.
2.mangonel
AOE2 160 wood 135 gold (multiplied by 2=320,270) 50HP, castle age , 5 melee damage (10), 50 ranged damage (7-6=2)
AOE4 is 400 wood, 200 gold, 240HP, 7 imperial torch (30 damage), 120 ranged damage (10-8=2)
AOE3 falconet resources total 500,200 HP, 7 melee attacks (30 damage), 50 ranged damage (16*0.25=4)
Aoe 4/2 is more similar in price,
3.Counterweight trebuchet
AOE2 (200 wood, 200 gold)*2 150HP 15 melee damage (12-2=10 damage), 150 melee damage (7-6=1 damage)
AOE4 500 wood 250 gold 400Hp, 14 imperial torches (30 damage), 200 ranged damage (10-8=2)
AOE3 mortar 100 wood 350 gold 300HP
Aoe4/2 is more similar in price and destroys castles at roughly the same speed as AOE4 destroys Keep
**4.**Now we come to the most fearsome bombard
Armor: 2, Pierce Armor: 5, 8 melee attacks (12-2 damage), 40 (7-6 damage)
AOE4 400 Wood 600 Gold 480HP Attack: 170, Pierce Armor: 12, 16 Imperial Torches (30 damage), 48 Ranged damage (22-12)
？？？？？？？ I haven’t calculated the tech of AOE4 siege weapons yet, using the imperial torches!
It looks like AOE2’s bombard have more range, but everyone knows its accuracy and damage.
AOE4 has been almost destroyed by completely irrational siege weapon numbers. Now, as long as the defenders have more springald , the attackers can’t take them down. To destroy the defensive structures, you need more springald to keep your RAMS from being destroyed, or more springald to protect your artillery from being destroyed.
The Chinese bombard, not to mention, is an upgraded version of the super springald. The age of the springald, the age of the bombard! Age of siege weapons!
sieges
Lengthy and expensive upgrades
Siege weapons are units that demolish buildings, even the mangonel, which has a long tech line in AOE 2/3, and not staying ahead of the tech will greatly hinder its ability, which AOE4 does not require. And even in AOE3, same Age ranged infantry units were able to kill siege weapons from ranged with some efficiency. There shouldn’t be more than 6 siege weapons on a team, both AOE2 and AOE3 are well balanced, but AOE4 weirdly increases the survivability of siege weapons, resulting in the destruction of the entire game mechanic, just increasing population is not enough, siege health must be reduced!
From my point of view, sieges (excluding RAMS) should directly reduce HP by 50%

3 Likes
19

Siege weapon need to be a neutral building, that only need one torch or fire arrow, to set it on fire.

You can capture a siege weapon, by sending unit to control it.

Except when a other enemy units is using it, you need to kill it first, befor being able to capture the siege weapon.

Any units can capture the siege weapon and use it, to make the siege weapon do randum attack and self healt danage.

Only siege enginear can use siege weapons to their full potential, whit out damaging it.

2 Likes
20

The seige engineer idea is a cool one in concept, but I don’t see how it would work without siege becoming even more snowballed than it already is. Win a decisive battle, double up your siege and then how does anyone come back from that?

And what about if you are at pop limit? Not fair to let the player go over cap, and not fair to just leave the unit on the field.

Probably a better way to work on balance.