You have the option to go and play aoe2 definitive edition, we dont have another option to play aoe4 if it becomes just like aoe2 so therefore it shouldn’t follow the same path as aoe2.
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tbh i did wish the Abbasid had flying carpets. Just so I can sing Aladdin arabian nights having an imam flying around the opponent base while its being defeated. perhaps converting a unit or two.
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These civs in AOE4 are so massively different from each other compared to AOE2 that it is honestly not a concern for me. They all have completely different build orders and much more variety in unit access than AOE2 civs do since they are all like 95% similar. So while maybe some of these changes push them slightly closer in similarity, they are still extremely unique.
Even the Rus “getting stone wall access”. They have to make an otherwise awful landmark in order to get them and it is still later access than the other civs. This adds viability to an otherwise unused landmark and gives the player a big strategic decision to make regarding their potential path to victory.
Now about the Chinese “identity”. They are an extremely unique civ and these changes don’t really change that, they just make them weaker late game but also force them to play more honest. Let’s face it, late game siege balls are awful and forcing the Chinese to actually make some different units besides mass siege and grenadiers is a good design decision. Grenadiers just straight up needed a nerf but siege being the counter to siege has always been bad design because higher mass wins. Now, if the opponent makes a bunch of horsemen to counter your siege you might need to start making spearmen. Then they might react by starting to mix in more archers and so on. Just spamming siege and grenadiers no matter what units your opponent is making is not how the counter system should work. In my opinion, being mediocre for most of the game and trying to survive until 45 minutes in where you become unbeatable is not a great identity for a civ. I would like to see every civ be at least somewhat viable in each age and in every map. Are the Chinese going to need to be buffed in some other areas to compensate for no longer having their absurd power in lategane? Probably so but I still feel like this is a step in the right direction
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I don’t like that repairing defensive buildings now costs stone instead of wood. Stone is a much more limited resources than wood. Please revert this change.
Agree with OP. Asymmetry is the essence of AoE4. The initial AoE4 hype, those 60k-80k players, was because it had always promised to be different from boring Crossbow - Knight - Skirmisher - Pike aoe2.
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i do hope for further military asymmetry with any upcoming dlc (pretty certain there’s one in development), as in, actually unique and still viable units, current civs with how their unique techs work force you into the same units no matter what civ is played, when it really should’ve been the other way around
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I can’t really agree on this. They’re not just “nerffing” something they’re butchering.
As of currently China can only produce clockwork bombards at rate of 1x which also is tied to location of clockwork tower. So lets put it perspective. Lets change council hall and school of cavalry same way. Now french and english can only produce their unique units at rate of 1x or 2x but its tied to location which results them almost always reinforcing from their base, but because longbows / royal knights are faster than siege its not as bad as clockwork. This fact is neglected all the guys who say “oh china just goes mass siege”. Its hardly a mass siege if you see 3-10 bombards in single game. TG’s are different story because its team comp that matters and not individual comp plus lets face it cavalry is most broken unit in TG’s because of their mobility.
And devs previously nerffing sieges mobility and making them extremely vulnerable to any form of mobile army which can just go around them and take engagement they want leaves the siege even worse position where you wont be able to run away or relocate but now in pup you cant even heal them effectively which was very strong for china because extra HP. This paired with production rate makes the bombard borderline shit, but if that wasn’t enough then they take away its range which is the most important part. If it was still usable it wont be anymore. Every other civ (outside of delhi) hardcounters chinese siege and they have no imperial age answer to siege.
These changes hurt china MOST. Yes siege could use some more counterplay but cavalry was ALREADY really good against siege so maybe only nerf the healing from 20 to 10 and see what happens? I play siegeless, boomless and dynastless china most of my games because why wouldn’t I? Just go mass lancers and run over your opponent.
You call spears counters to lancer? HA. Not going to happen. Ill tell you secret. You need like over 2x number of spears to win a fight against cavalry thats not utilizing their charge and just does surround. Top of that because siege takes now charge dmg so what? You run to their melee and just smash them to death instantly. No one in right mind would just charge to spears and take the stun + dmg. Against horsemen they do well but not against lancers.
Then about grenadiers. They’re most expensive unit in game to unlock and 240 resources to make and after spirit way changes they’re even more expensive to make. In return what china gets? Absolutely nothing.
Sure nerf late game and sure nerf IO and sure nerf everything but god sake give something in return that is worthwhile. So far only decent buff to china was IO change with 40/80gold and 15 second but it still doesnt address taxation issue or how useless dynasties has become.
Meanwhile its alright constantly buff stronger civs or just slightly slap mongols because not like they have not been top tier since launch while china been bottom feeder or mediocore at best
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i think the issue is its never just 1 nerf, its always a ton of them at once, alongside the trend of nerfing 1 unit type to oblivion and buffing another to heaven, all in one patch, this is far from healthy for the game
I’m talking about this from a design perspective not a balance perspective. I want the counter system to work as designed and for everything to have a counter that makes sense. I think these changes are a good step in terms of game design. Sure Chinese are probably hit the hardest and they will definitely need some buffs to compensate
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Its not good design aspect to overhaul everything and throw everything into chaos and leave certain civs to worse state by far.
Good design is something that works.
I have said time and time again. Create more counters to siege instead of nerffing. For example mangonels deal less dmg to cavalry. This essentially means cavalry can run to siege line without instantly getting butchered but they went first to kill mangonel completely then add extra dmg to archers.
They also failed to realize that the torch animation stopped units to move which left them behind from siege unable to effectively catch up with them. This same applies to mongol buildings. If you try to torch escaping mongol building you will deal a lot less dmg than simply running past it and surrounding it. So they decided to nerf the movement speed to make siege even more clunky to use and weakened clockwork tower even further.
China has since start had certain issues and they have been voiced and yet time after time they just move to butcher their identity which is gunpowder and dynasties + expansion. So far Gunpowder killed one by one and alongside of dynasties.
Yuan become worthless dynasty moment they nerffed FL because of TG’s. They didn’t rework the unit but nerffed it. Where was compensation for that? None existing. Then they moved Pagoda to Yuan but no one does those anyway cuz China has hard time getting relics and still cost is 1800 resources. And about this I might be mistaken but FL does charge dmg to siege on pup (correct me if im wron) which is literally huge nerf to FL because they cant just charge in and torch them but now put 10 spears and they hard counter 20FL easily cuz unit has no HP, armor or can’t fight back and it costs 160 resources. Great deal.
Ming lost pagoda and provides exactly what? 10% hp to military units? Wow. Grenadiers still might do nice dmg and be more balanced but the cost is still way too high.
Zhuge Nu is just meme. They were designed to be unit that would stand ground thats why they had higher HP and higher cost. Its how the unit works in core. Shooting 3 shots that deal less dmg is so much worse than shooting 1 arrow for max dmg when it comes down to kiting and microing. They cant chase, they got no good range and only good at standing still and killing targets but lets face it. If you go zhuge nu opponent isn’t necessary gonna make horsemen to counter them when archers do better job with micro.
So only thing that now is remaining is song dynasty and wouldn’t be surprising if they nerffed it to 15% or something stupid. At that point China would stay in tang dynasty.
Fact is since they butchered clockwork they have continued to nerf without compensating anything. Just like prof scout was nerffed. They nerffed it to ground and very rarely (tho I still use it because ppl don’t counter it) we see it used and deer stealing strategy was lost thanks to it yet price is same?!?!?!?!
Meanwhile its fine for french to spam best unit in game royal knights from feudal age to imperial age in TG’s with -20 production rate and cost when under keep. Because lancers / knights take 1 pop, but are more expensive if your economy can stand it then your opponent cant match it with spears and top of that the knights can just go around and kill your eco and everything. Yup yup “let get rid of chinese one dimensional play” but every other civ can continue as before.
So how long do we have to wait to see this compensation? Basically been 5 or 6 months since this started and they keep going.
Balancing is not just about nerffing but also giving something back when something is too weak and yet time after time China receives very minor buffs and costly nerfs.
Its same with dev note regarding gateway. Let me be clear. I hardly ever utilize stone walls cuz it leads to passive play so I just leave it and I go aggro castle timings and just run over my opponents with lancers. But back to note. It makes no sense. “gate way wall hp bonus lead to more passive games so we designed it all over” but in return they want china to build walls and sit on top of walls? How the heck that makes senes. It doesn’t. Either say we feel it was too strong so we designed this another more useless bonus which has very niche usage just take your handcannoneers there and try to wait and see if mongols go through your wall of china that you suppose to build all over your base.
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Why repairing with stone makes the game more age 2 ? Like people really like castle spam ?
For me I dont care what resource is used as long as the repair is balanced but as of now get 2 trebs and you cant out heal it without inveting ■■■■ tons of your eco to it. Also stone is more rare than wood.
Also I heard that some AOE2 pros been pushing this change because its the way its in aoe2
Joder enserio? si es así que los jugadores de starcraft y warcraft se vengan al age of empires 3 ya que será el age of empires con mas cosas únicas por civilización de la saga (Bueno ya de por si lo era junto al age of mithology.
The most obvious sight the devs have been listening to the wrong crowds and have no idea what they were doing:
Meanwhile, English sieges get up to 50% attack speed. But no, it’s not OP because it’s English!
Now they have decided to cover that up by reverting the nerf to Chinese bombard attack speed. Suddenmagically, reload speed reductions are not extremely powerful, doesn’t have the highest outputs in the game anymore? Wow!
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wanna know how to make such techs more balanced, add some tech to reduce training time across the board, still painfully absent in 4
Range is most important thing in siege warfare. If siege was more microable then I would say it comes more to control and range but because siege is clunky af it means the player that has better range outside of very certain situations where siege has to move uphill or downhill will always win the war.
When I came back after my break and played my very first games which was on mountain pass against french and english. They went to boom and fortified mid with their landmarks I was “ok i go boom too”. Boomed etc and when it was time to push it was impossible to push anywhere because of 2x defensive landmarks that outranged bombards paired with 10 trebs behind stone wall nuking my bombards. Ofc this was my own fault and not saying this or that should be nerffed but I was caught completely off guard and wasn’t expecting trebs to able to nuke down bombards. Moment I got wall down it got replaced with another wall so bombards were useless. If I had known that this happens I would have played it differently and since then I abandoned siege completely.
This is also in preparation for next patch knowing how stupid the changes are. China goes from best siege / gunpowder civ to lowest tier with 1 change and the reload speed is so ■■■■■■ irrelevant when units cant do even dps… Also it means china is only civ with no imperial age anti siege weaponry. Its not like Rus or Mongols that got extra range to springalds, no culverin. Delhi is also like this if I recall correctly but they get their op fants at castle age
Same with grenadiers. Their attack is so slow that you lose many of them before they do anything and with reduced range and losing pyrotechnics it just means you lose even more of them then the fact that they lose 20-30% of their dmg which is ridiculous. Range units need either good range or insane dmg to compensate all the losses that they suffer when they try to ditch dmg.
Same was with FL. Either unit is decent or its ■■■■ and devs decided to do ridiculous nerf to it which resulted unit being dead. They got no dmg, fighting power or good raiders or even cheap to make.
Then the siege vs cavalry change is stupid too which is indirect nerf to firelancers because if your opponent positions 10 spears vs 20 FL. FL loses that battle 100-0. So they’re not even usable against siege anymore. Then the fact that devs got some weird power fantasy of spears stopping cavalry which isn’t the case. Lancers / knights are by best units in game rn because they got good mobility, tankiness, dmg and spears can’t fight on equal terms with them. Only time they might stand chance is when they won’t get surrounded and player is stupid enough to use charge against spears but moment players just moves to their melee and starts meleeing spears down then spears losses. Also because both are 1 pop units, its impossible to have such number of spears that player can win the fight