Archers don't have any ranged counter in Feudal Age and Counter Chart Issue

In Aoe 2 players were able to train skirmishers that dealt bonus damage to ranged units. This allowed players to have a wide range of options to counter archers in the game. In AOE4 which is released in 2021, archers are countered by horsemen and nothing else in the Feudal Age (Except some civs with castle age units in Feudal Age). And then suddenly In Castle Age Crossbowmen and heavy sieges dominate the game.


The Unit Counter Chart does not have Fire Lancers, Grenadiers, Camels, Horse Archers, Sieges, Elephants, Ships, etc. It is the most horrible counter-chart I have ever seen.

It tells that the villager does not counter Knight and Knight counters the villager heavily. But… What about other units?

It must include all unique units and their counters against all units.
As we can see, the developers messed this big time.
From the start of the development of this game, the devs used this chart to build and balance this game. And now it is becoming more and more clear that the issue was laying in this. It is totally incomplete chart and now causing all the balance issues because many civs have unique units that are different than some illustrated in this chart…

This is why the game is so “unbalanced”.

  • No sieges in the counter chart mean it does not have any counter and so goes to the units that are not in the chart! But some are totally useless too.
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This is a good observation and I agree, the units are wholly underwhelming and lacking, to the point of affecting balance.

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For the most part, this game hits sort of like very old RTS games in which you had to learn counters via platime experience. Games like Tiberian Sun or Generals: Zero Hour come to mind for me, in which regular counters were loosely listed and mostly irrelevant in favor of greater counters.

In this game I have learned, as a Delhiman, that Elephants counter cavalry, not my spears. And mangonels counter all foot units, not MAA, horses, or archers. And defeating the Rus player before he masses HAs counters HAs.

And 10 tower elephants with crossbow upgrade and 8 mangonel behind walls with two castles counters FLs.

I wish it were that easy haha, my problem with FL is if I am built for something else and not expecting it, or if my elephants aren’t literally right there at the wall breach.

Archers + Spears are most annoying to counter. Most civs don’t have access to MAA in Age 2. Their only option is to either make Horsemen/Knights which cost a lot and die from spears or make archers which you can never out number the enemies, but you dont have to, when defending if TC did its job. It kills one unit and starts spamming on ram doing nothing while the army is roaming in your base. Same with towers and castles. They should counter ranged units instead of throwing arrows on wood.

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There’s a better unit counter chart in the companion book.

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Thanks for sharing this

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completely agree, very frustrating & bad game design imo