I really like the concept that when a non-engineer uses the siege unit it gets damage, until it breaks.
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Its is a game balance, that people are comming up whit it.
By braking the siege weapon, by none enginear units, you low a captured siege unit to do limited damage, only work for a litle push back, but not a big invasion.
It give a litle more game stability.
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Siege isn’t OP, it’s powerful and you have to respect it. If you find yourself on the receiving end of a ram push you shouldn’t ask yourself how you can counter it but rather where you went wrong so this could happen in the first place.
Remember that rams can’t be build in TC range so when in doubt, scout!
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I feel safe in saying they aren’t going to completely re-make the game, which would be required for siege to be “neutral” or work only with siege engineers or anything like that.
The solution I think is to just make siege slower. Give a longer deployment time and give a lower movement speed.
The whole “what about 20 Bombards” just runs into that’s 20k resources. In a 1v1 game you could have done thousands of things to stop the game reaching that point.
To my mind the issue with artillery is how flexible they are. You have a fight, oh look its going badly? Just run the artillery away. With various upgrades they can go about the same speed as infantry - and even horsemen take a long time to chase, throw a torch, chase again, throw another torch etc. That gives plenty of time to get back to incoming reinforcements, or your own lines. Or just duke around your own army as the battle is going on, so any units sent to attack the artillery get chopped/shot to bits.
Obviously if you can get 10 knights etc jumping on 2 isolated Bombards they do tend to die - but it just feels like it takes too long.
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This just struck me today:
AoE IV siege moving extremely fast and shooting with 100% accuracy = they’re CoH tanks. (Knew this already)
But also: AoE IV units not using swords but throwing torches = they’re CoH infantry throwing grenades.
Age of Siege gameplay just has nothing to do with Medieval warfare at the moment. The skirmishes in early ages are fun and like in older AoE games, but it eventually just turns into who can build tanks, ahem I mean mangonels and bombards, fastest and win.
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Yes, you are right: the change I propose means re-making the game , but it’s a nice fantasy.
Now, having more realistic expectations: the main problem with siege is (as many say) its flexibility and speed: Medieval cannons shouldn’t be faster to assemble, move and attack: they were quite rudimentary, many times built and repaired by blacksmiths or created by experimenting with stuff that would hardly work. It would make sense that the reload time and assembly/disassembly time would be long.
Another topic is the flexibility: Rotation of the siege once assembled should also be limited: bombards, springards and trebuchets shouldn’t rotate 360°, doing so would require a rotating platform that holds the weight of the whole siege engine and that would be quite expensive. By limiting its rotation (only 90° or 45°) attacks from behind should be more letal, and siege more fragile.
These changes (speed, assembly/disassembly time and rotation) should be easy to put in practice and would allow the artillery a powerful tool (as it should be) but not the solution for everything that is now.
Also, if siege units are not buildings, cavalry and infantry shouldn’t be throwing torches at them.
One thing i just realised the other day, not sure if mentioned already, but siege weapons can reload while moving.
That buggs me, and allows example for a springald kite or mangonel kite in some level.
Siege weapons should only reload while stationary.
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This game before castle Age is so fun, once siege enters the fray it becomes really weird, I agree there is counters and what not but it still feels unbalanced for some reason, mid+ to late game feels like bizarro age of empires and that kind of turned me off it.
I could get good at countering siege, but that’s not really why I enjoy the game, it’s either gonna finish into a siege vs siege situation which tbh is not why I enjoy the game, or some weird ■■■ shenanigans with scouts, which again is not the reason why I play the game, it just feels like degenerate gameplay.
I feel like Relic made a really good job in everything, then copied the siege part from COH which imho is the dumbest idea ever if you really have any understanding on how the Age series plays
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Second this !
They should aslo pack/unpack slower.
Team games are pretty much impossible right now, even more so if there are Chinese. Pretty much 1k hp bombards, even with Knights + Springalds it takes far too long to kill them
Castle age siege since the springald nerf has been very reasonable, worst case the enemy gets a mango or two out but that still has clear counters and they are extremely expensive in castle age. The issues are largely in team games and imp, bombards are just so beefy.
Also Relic made it so most units got +HP and/or plus damage in imp to balance each other out, however siege gets a nice tankiness tech and there’s no torch damage tech to compensate (incendiary arrows helps, but shooting siege with arrows is often suicidal)
Siege gets noticeably tankier in imp, so there should be some tech that buffs torch damage vs siege that era too!
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In my opinion, if you are similar to AOE2, all siege units now have 50% more health than they should, and the springald should not be a powerful counterattack siege.
If you are similar to AOE3, the archers should be able to kill siege weapons as efficiently as AOE3, instead of needing to hit them hundreds of times.
If AOE4 should be AOE4, it would not be possible to only use siege weapons against siege weapons as it is now.
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In 1v1 it is currently not that bad as game rarely goes into deep imperial or even castle. But in 2v2 and +, it is a bombard fest, siege fest. It is not fun at all. Siege weapon should be supporting the army, otherwise it doesnt feel like a medieval battlefield, and its kind of boring…
They need to be more sqeashy, manny times ive pushed a spam of bombard just to get my knights obliterated by the cannons and the couple of supporting unit they had.
It should be as in COH1, when you leave your AT Gun unatended it is almost like it is already gone.
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They need removed bombards completely and nerf the other seiges a bit.ti make it more fun late game.not a fan of how seige is way to op
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You’re totally right about the team games part, I mostly play 3v3 with some friends against other people, I guess the unbalance is felt strongly in that setup.
I believe that AoE4’s heavy emphasis on siege weapons is an intentional design decision, so I do not expect we will be seeing siege every being nerfed back down to levels similar to other Age games.
I do not believe that the present design of the civs would support this change – they don’t really have enough late game Infantry, Cavalry, or Ranged.
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I don’t think Relic’s idea of speeding up the game is bad. But siege weapons are the ultimate weapon in the AOE series,
AOE4 siege weapons were formed too early, or too easily mechanized, which greatly reduced the use of other units.
Aoe1/2/3 siege weapons tend to have a high price and lengthy technology upgrade route, which makes it appear in large numbers, often near the end of the game. Previously they tended to appear in small numbers as siege units rather than as anti-personnel weapons.
But AOE4 will have a bunch of Springald and Mangonels in 15 minutes.
If I can replace a bunch of crossbowmen with Mangonels, who’s going to train crossbowmen ? Besides, the crossbowmen still need to upgrade a lot of technology, and there are only one or two technologies for siege.
Remember that often design for defense can be used for offense, and design for offense can also be used for defense, the current siege actually slows down the pace of the game compared to the previous version.
sieges (excluding RAMS)’ HP should be reduced.
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I think Siege should be treated as normal units and can be attack by melee attacks, torch attack are way too slow to kill Sieges!!
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Give them more armor but able to be attacked by normal damage. not that torch crap, thats why there to strong. Having to torch all siege is why its OP.
Mele damage dose 100%
Ranged no siege mabe 50%
and seige ranged 100%
no torch. Add armor to them if you must
Be able to make regular attacks should be the logic. In real life, once you reqach melee you just need kill the crew (usually very few men and not fully prepared to combat)
Also break the siege engine and let it useless is easy.
Even with range attacks should be not hard **** most of siege but rams.
Siege has an absolute absurd destructive power on the GAME. So they should be as resistant as glass…
BUT we have that siege is tanky as hell xDDD
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