Both BeastyQT and MarineLord, the finalists in the Golden League today, agree that England late game is the best.
This is even after MarineLord’s epic late game with China against Viper yesterday in the Golden League. For context, BeastyQT made those comments yesterday in the EGCTV chat during the Golden League match between MarineLord and Viper. For MarineLord, he was asked today in Demuslim’s chat about BeastyQT’s comment that England has the best late game, and MarineLord responded that England has the best late game (implying that MarineLord agrees with BeastyQT).
I know the wider AoE 4 community may not agree on this, but the two finalists of Golden League seem to agree on this. I assume the reasoning is related to Enclosures, and possibly the English trebs in the late game.
English are the best lategame if you are good at the game itself.
Because if you know how to control your units well and use timing right.
England is far more powerful.
While on Paper, China is the by far the strongest, especially put into consideration, Grenadier units. and stronger siege.
They are limited when they are viable.
England, as well as France are flexible in the manner that they can do pretty much everything.
Strong feudal pushes, early econ harass, castle age timing push, very strong imperial age play.
So these become much more viable in the hands of a high skilled player with a good mind for strategy and tactics.
All the early game option also applies to Late game as they can significantly slow the opponents late game, meanwhile reaching imperial age well before them.
Once in Imperial age, England has a wide access to very good siege units and military forces such as tonkier MAA and Longbows are still fully viable, and actually counters Gunpowder units such as Strelskies, Grenadiers and Cannoneers.
this is why the wider AoE4 community might disagree as majority of players arent at that level of play.
English overall is much stronger than Chinese for the majority of the game. English is much more versatile. They can play prolonged Age 2 into MAA which Chinese have no answers for. Viper has defeated Chinese exactly like this many times. You creep up the map with towers, you keep skirmishing and eventually you add a couple MAA and then Chinese has to run away to their TC or Barbican. You take the entire map and contain Chinese. If they get no gold, you win.
English also gets a free TC with Age 3 unlike Chinese, so you get both economy and tech by going Age 3. Or depending on the map (like King of the Hill) you build that Keep. Spoiler Alert, the Keep can also build siege units because you are English. Must feel good to get atleast 1100 ressources worth in an Age 3 Landmark. And the Wyngard palace is extremely powerful aswell, saving you hundreds of gold every time and army is created, on a civ that has infinite gold.
Chinese is extremely predictable. They only have 1 gameplan: Get to 120 vills somehow and try to win with good economy. They are no threat in Age 2 at all and they are usually slow to Age 3 since they have to invest into IO and TC’s which take multiple minutes to pay off.
Oh and lets not forget the recent patch, which shows some incredible bias against Chinese from the devs:
English produce MAA 7 seconds faster than everyone else
English gets +50 starting wood
Chinese officials cost 50 gold now, meaning you can no longer skip mining camp in Age 1, this is the equivalent of -50 starting wood
Supervision was nerfed
Ancient Techniques was nerfed (another lategame nerf)
villages are 25 wood more expensive but you’re not going to build them before goign into Song Dynasty in most games, so another nerf
Ontop of that the devs tried to add +10 build time for Imperial Officials which would have killed Chinese in competitive yet again like they were in the past
Meanwhile there is still not good solution for the Dynasty System. Granaries are way overpriced and yet they got nerfed. Firelancers got nerfed and are not viable to even use or invest in. Ming Dynasty is the only lategame option and the only hope Chinese has is to get to grenadiers since everything else about them got nerfed or is just worse than what other factions get.
Fun fact: Rus and Chinese have the exact same tech for bombards: Rus and Chinese can research a tech to have bombards shoot faster. Except Chinese has to pay way more ressources for the exact same tech.And ontop of this Rus saves 20% ressources on all Siege units build around their Age IV Landmark.
And Rus Handcannoneers are 60 ressources cheaper than all other Handcannoneers while also being stronger. Rus Handcannoneers still have a 50 damage melee attack, the highest melee attack in the entire game because the devs never nerfed their melee attack when they nerfed Handcannoneer ranged attacks.
English and French are easiest civs to play while also being very synergistic and rewarding, Mongols too at some extent but at least they play very differently than other civs.
The other civs are designed to have gimmicks that help you and hinder you at the same time, for example Delhi get free techs but you need to make scholars and mosques so you actually get to use them in reasonable time. Chinese get the Song dynasty to make villagers 35% faster, but you have to invest in 2 feudal landmarks while your enemies can use those resources to go castle age or make a feudal push.
At the same time French get free melee damage techs and cheaper eco techs, get faster villager production and cheaper drop off building while having the best offensive feudal unit. Sure, those bonuses are smaller than free techs or 35% faster vil production but the French player not only gets them for free but also it helps his game plan.
Engish are pretty much the same but defensive, they have incredible earlly game defense and safer infinite gold in the late game. All that and also above average offensive options.
Why doesn’t people complain about these design-wise most consistent, highest win-rate civs (just look at the game stats) and instead claim that other civs should be nerfed everytime they get to have a niche.
From my point of view, Chinese civilization can get great enhancements in the late stage, but in the early stage, there is no defensive advantage other than a slightly enhanced hand turret and BBQ. It would be nice if the early stage could strengthen China’s defensive capabilities a little bit. .
You guys possibly see it that way because you’re likely average to low META china players… Because ALL FORMS of previous China were OP As ■■■!!
Old BBQ rush with 200 stone towers?
Fast Castle keep drops??
Supervision on Clock Tower?
Fire lancers costing as much as a horseman AND having range bonus damage and DOING more siege damage AND doing full charge damage to all units 150 degrees in front of their target??? (their range is 1 tile from the point of impact so more than 50% the splash zone of a single mango boulder)
Old ming dynasty pagoda generating 1200 resources/min for 3 relics?? You though Regnitz was busted? subtract the “useless food” and you still got 900 (wood, gold , stone) all essentially scares resources late game.
NOW I will concede that China has been OVER nerfed, but that’s the nature of trying to figure something out! Now that China has suffered lower win rates and few power spikes; let’s see if upcoming PUP has some good stuff in store??
People do in fact complain about them. We have had many people asking things like “why does French get so many free bonuses”?
But people never get an answer.
Another fun fact: Chinese is the most-nerfed civ in terms of starting bonuses in the entire game. In the very first playable iteration of the game, they used to start with 6 villagers, whereas everyone used to start with 4. As you know, right now everyone starts with 6 villagers, but Chinese doesn’t start with 8.
The devs took away the +2 starting villagers for Chinese. At first, they replaced this bonus with a +100 starting food bonus. Obviously its a worse bonus, but its still a bonus. But when the game got released, Chinese completely lost their starting bonus.
And now the devs simply added a free Prelate for HRE.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. Why are other civs getting treated like this, but Chinese does not? Why did the devs almost add a +10 second build time for Imperial Officials, but have no problem giving English a +50 starting wood and HRE a free starting Prelate?
The game is not balanced we all saw that in the GL. FFS the second place complained he lost to a sheep bug.
You have a unit that throws homing bombs? What tech is that? What are they homing on to? the stench of the horses, the sweat of the spearmen?
There are Landmarks that didn’t get picked ONCE by anyone in the entire tournament. Did anyone see Tower of Victory (Defeat)?
I am a Delhi main and there is absolutely only one play with this Civ that is it, anyone disagree?
MarineLord won because he picked the civs that win the matchup on the map being played, BeastyQT lost because of the sheep, so laughable BUT i will keep on playing cuz I LOVE THIS GAME> but so sad that as delhi most of the time I am not even building Elephants because why would you? just rush the sites that is your only win condition.
Delhi is one of the strongest civs right now. And yes we don’t see any variety in their 2nd Age Landmark, however if it would get buffed too much then Delhi could easily get out of control once again. And then we would either not see Delhi at all because its permanently banned or we would only see Delhi in most games.
So far their Age 3 Landmarks seem to be in a good spot, we see both types of Landmarks. Not sure about Age 4 since most games with Delhi don’t get to Age 4, since Delhi either steamrolls in Age 3 or the player decide they don’t want to go Age 4.
While Landmark variety is an issue, so is Landmark balance. Chinese Landmarks are the worst in the entire game. And despite that, the developers nerfed the Clocktower. They completely ignored the Great Wall Gatehouse, which no one ever builds to unlock Age 4. Its always the Spirit Way. I say first and foremost the devs have to improve the Landmark balance in general, and after that work on Landmark variety. Chinese somehow keeps getting nerfed by the developers and the recent buffs to Landmarks still didn’t improve enough.
The Kremlin is still a better Barbican and yet no one ever builds the Kremlin, because the Trade House Landmark is better. The Tax Landmark got a small buff recently but its still not even close to the strength of other civ Landmarks. The Great Wall Gatehouse remains a joke. And the Spirit Way is still too situational, requires too much setup and is still straight up worse then the Armory for Rus, which reduces cost of all artillery around it by 20% and ontop of that unlocks unique technologies.
I think the issue is that they are not willing to do the work to make things better. The balance with units, landmarks and the needless micro of defensive structures these are all related to bad mechanics. Fix the mechanics first. Make ranged attack have a miss chance, defensive buildings are fixed. Make melle units have crit possibility when they come in hand to hand with ranged. Allow siege to be unfolded and make them longer to setup. The cav archers should have lower hit percentage when moving and shooting. Cause elephants to do trample damage on melle units while melle units have crit against them. But they won’t because it makes everything super hard for the devs and they would rather have this as a paper, rock and scissors kind of simplistic matchups.
English produce MAA 7 seconds faster than everyone else
They messed up with this. HRE can’t keep up with English in feudal because of this. They should immediately revert this back. Maybe even It was supposed to be HRE to train MAA faster instead of English. They tried to force English players to mix up some MAA in to game to overcome the problem of early Longbow rush but they just gave them a massive boost…
