Abbasid gameplay

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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For a while i’ve been playing Abbasid and i want to share my experience and some things i think should be changed/be better.

In the early ages it is great to have early access to ram’s to rush. The ‘Fresh foodstuffs’ and ‘Camel support’ are very nice early techs. One for eco and the other military. Only the ram’s are an early big military bonus. But, they still cost 300 wood, which is a lot for early eco. Okay that is to say it’s balanced. Which makes it a timewindow. The Camel support tech is more a late age2 or early age3 upgrade because you first need to build that archery range and pop one or two camel archers. Because usually the attack is already on the way. So the second wave hits stronger and is able to hold better against missile attacks. Which makes the second wave hit harder with Abbasid.
The eco tech ‘Fresh foodstuffs’ is more a longterm thingy that has to build up over time.
All these economy upgrades are more late things that need to build up. Although i do find the first trade tech very good, it really stimulates you to focus on traders as an important unit next to villagers. So you build up more gold gatherers when you include traders. So i usually start that up immediately to gain the most out of it.

So i realised, for the early age these are quite light and more make for anticipating an eco build up later in the game lets say age3 and age4. The other bonus is the golden age, i asked myself how fast can you get this done. Then i tried focussing more on hitting those 30 buildings as soon as possible. Usually just after i went up i hit 30 buildings and that second golden age hits. This bonus makes that you barely need the eco upgrades in the early game. So in age3 you more focus on the secondary eco upgrades. This gives a nice advantage compared to other factions. But this is also an economic bonus. Than you hope to outboom the other factions.

Meanwhile the early attacks have passed and you try to build a grip and some defenses to keep the trade and add in those trade techs. Meanwhile there is a bonus for camels that adds armor. But besides siege there aren’t really that strong human military units for late game.

This evening i was playing a 2v2 and i mostly had to deal with a Delhi boomer, who ended up popping elephants. And my camels and spears wouldn’t even cleave through. As a Abbasid player i’m quite disappointed in the combat abilities of the Camel rider. It’s really not like Aoe2 or AoM where Camels are an easy counter against any form of cavalry or elephants. Sure there’s extra armor, but what sword is going to cleave through those fat elephant hitpoints. Especially if there is a big group of them. Added with some siege and man-at-arms, there is nothing much what you can do against those elephants.

Meanwhile the berrybush bonus is really great, so you can focus the wood on building the many buildings you need for the golden age, but also the forward siege. And you still have a good wood income to transition to farms if necessary. But in general you’re very wood dependent for your bonuses.

In age3 when all the momentum is out of the window, all you prefer to do is make trash to keep your opponent busy and smash with some gold units. The eco is formidable, that is really sweet. But there is no strong military to back it up. All you keep doing is spamming trash. This feeling is what keeps coming staying as a bad taste in my mouth in the end. As if something is missing. Sure i’m not the best player. In the late game you really feel the bonusses are eco focused, and the 4 military upgrades are not going to do the job that needs to be done.
Oh and i’m mostly a landmap player, not a fan of water maps. That might also add to the feeling.

Also Abbasid doesn’t have any fancy fortresses or fancy landmarks that provide military bonus. Especially that is why it feels so meager. Sure there is a production bonus from the third golden age, but that just adds to the eco bonus. They all focus on numbers.

I’m curious what your experience is with Abbasid. And if anyone might have some nice ideas or tips for military. Or ideas for changes.

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I like playing the Abbasid, but they are currently at the bottom in term of win% for a reason (several, actually). The top players that seem to have figure out how to play them use food/wood “trash” units to fight scrappy battles to win, but even then it doesn’t look easy.

You either do a timing push (Abbasid infantry can build siege w/o researching at blacksmith) or hold out until lategame when you can outboom your opponent. Their unique units, camel rider and camel archers, are expensive and not terribly useful - they don’t trade well, hard to mass, and not effective when massed (unlike the Rus horsearcher).

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abbassid are trash tier because they suck in naval, theyr unique unit are a way too expensive for the damage done and because the monument dont tank enough and are unwallable in comparaison of other civ.

In feodal you are very vulnerable to all other civ in castle you have a small timing for man at arms and siege weapons push and in imperial some other civ overhelm you because they have strong imperial unit and your are useless and too expensive (and you need 5 expensive tech for have normal unique unit on battlefield)

The monument dont tank enough and are unwallable in comparaison of other civ. In 50 firelancer can got you out of a game in 17 min and you can do nothing against that. And i don’t speak about castle that are useless in this game because castle tank nothing.

we will not speak about the unique technology for convert unit one by one that don’t work ( a nice counter to elephant so) , etc…

actually pro player play abassid for counter broken russian with spam of trash unit ( 50 vils on food 50 on wood) and spam trash unit.

So balance team have to work.

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i usually start trade early with 3 markets. In my opinion the trade wing early on is vey usefull to mass up gold.

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in dark+feudal is a time window to fully focus on wood and some food. Popout 4 spearmen and foward build 3 rams somewhere in a forest and hit the opponents landmark. This usually works against boomers.

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Oh thanks! i haven’t tried the monks yet to counter elephants!
And yes i must be honest i do the same. With trash and back up with some camel archers you get a lot done. And sometimes camel riders can raid eco well too. Later on with full armor they’re okay.

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Monks vs. Elephants worked in Age 2 very well. There’s a tech that allows Abbasid Imams to convert a single unit w/o a relic, but I have never tried this tech in game.

Regarding the camel riders - raiding can be similarly accomplished with horsemen, which I believe are faster, versatile, and cost-effective.

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it’s pretty simple.

Unique abbasid unit are totaly trash.

You wanna raid eco normal horseman or men at arms are better because they don’t need a tech for have a normal speed ( a tech that took 1 minutes).

You wanna counter spearmen? Simple buy archer because (if you suppose to one wood = one food)
you need to pay 180 food and 60 wood each 35 sec for 10 range damage and +20 so 240 ressource for 30 damage on a spearmen and your slow than a normal horse with 170 hitpoint… and because it’s well balance if spearmen hit you you … they have theyr bonus working… clap DEV!

For comparison a normal archer 30 food 50 wood 15 sec. 5 damage +5 against light and 70 hitpoint. That means for 80 ressource you have 10 damage against pikemen for one camel you have 3 archer so with 3 archer you have 210 effective hitpoint on 3 different target with 30 damage on spearman and spearman don’t have bonus against you…
that means normal trash unit are more effective on the role than your specialise unit…

you can add another parameter the range of your bow. a camel have 3.5 tiles of range a normal archer 5 tile. That means in case of you wanna to have one camel and normal archer for have the armor bonus(after a tech ofc). Your camel rider will be in frontline all the time for just applying damage. obliging you to over micromanaging your unit for not loose him and loose your bonus …

For laugh let make a camel rider comparison. On this time 1 gold = 3 food. (because we are not russian we need to mine gold …)
180 food 60 gold =180 food = 360 food in total. 270 hitpoint 9 melee damage + 18 against horse.
spearman cast 60 food and 20 wood for 90 hitpoint for 8 damage and +16 against cav.
That mean for one camel rider you have 4 spearman so for 4 spearman you have 96 damage against cavalry … instead of 27.
So trash unit are better too… now you know why abbasid unique unit are trash.

If you beign to compare with horseman archer from russian it’s a pure joke.

If you begin to compare naval unit it’s worse and worse.

the real problem of abbasid right now is simple. They have no unique unit on landmap AND theyr is no naval gameplay on naval because there naval suck too. Thet the main problem on abassid. Unit suck.

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It’s because Elephant have a bonus against cavalry as well. You better just use Spear and MAA against them

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Bad unit and expensive price
Most players will choose public units to win the game
it’s difficult :joy:

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yes this is my experience now too, there really is a tier system of early and late units.

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thank you for clearifying that! and that is how it feels to play abbasid.
Only late game when units are fully upgraded do i like to mix in camels for the high armor. But even then they are extremely expensive and totally not efficiënt.
So when you advance beyond the early units, all you make is MaA + Crossbowmen. That is all there is to Abbasid.

The only naval bonus is the cheaper docks which makes it possible to go fishing boats earlier. Thats all.

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Back then, some Camel riders used to strap light-cannons on their camels. They’d train them to kneel down, and the rider would go nuts, shooting anything and everything.True story.

Camels were absolutely badass.

Huge missed opportunity in AoE4. Now all they do is give your infantry 1 armor and reduce cavalry damage by 20%. rolls eyes. Oh wow, such an innovative and unique unit.

You can tell the AoE4 team didn’t care too much for the Caliphate.

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Same for all the inginuity and engineering all from the house of wisdom. And that is not even considering the religious parts. Like India and it’s scholars. They could add way more technologies and possibilities for both of them.

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The developers will say. Wow. ABBASID can choose any dynasty, which is a huge innovation. But all choices are fixed, people in feudal times will not choose merchants and technology

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I actually like the trade wing, its the same as the mongols landmark and the french landmark.

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…

hopes he doesn’t find out about going technology instead of agriculture in some games

Yeah! Who’s the noob not picking fresh food stuck/military wing…

craps his pants

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Do you have a source for the cannon camels? Because that would definitely be a cool unit to add.

The camel debuff and bonus are actually quite good in combat support, and function similarly to warrior monks or prelates (in theory). The problem is that camels are expensive, easily sniped, have to research camel support, and not good at actual combat.

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Here’s a video of it in a movie, there’s more historical writings and other documentaries about it.

Huge miss by AoE4 team.

Camel Cannons – Zamburak - YouTube

Zamburak | Military Wiki | Fandom

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Camels need a buff, theyre honestly one of the worst unique units in the game, and most of what makes abbasid unique focuses on them.

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