Byzantines Losing Royal Cannons

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Upcoming patch is seeing the foreign engineering companies Royal Cannons replaced with the standard cannon.

Curious if the Royal Cannon is really a problematic option for the Byzantines? Royal Cannons are very cool and seem like a reasonable place to spend your olive oil, I’ve always yearned for the old meta of springald v springald and cannons can often play that role so getting the royals was always something i greatly enjoyed.

The oils fairly limited compared to other resources, the landmark can only make 1 thing at a time, the build time for all the options even when fully plugged in to level 5 cisterns is pretty lengthy. All these limitations seem like they warrant a pretty powerful payoff.

I’m not sure why I would ever build a regular cannon out of a landmark that can only build 1 thing at a time and costs me my highly limited olive oil when I could just throw down a few siege workshops and build them normally since they are already on the Byzantine unit roster.

Were there some recent high level games where the Royal Cannons proved too strong in the hands of Byz? Would like to check them out if so to get a better understanding.

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Honestly, I find that a bit odd too. After all, olive oil hasn’t been used to buy standard units before, and the Cannon isn’t exactly OP. And…if we’re going by historical accuracy, then units like NoBs and War Elephants shouldn’t even be in the tech tree.

Does this mean a balance adjustment is coming up?

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I guess devs want to delete royal cannons from this game, bcs no FR player will choose that landmark

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I interpreted the Elephants as belonging to the Timurids (temporary allies of the Byzantine Empire in Trebizond), and the Nest of Bees to Chinese operators who came with the Mongols (who were indeed mercenaries of the Byzantines).

But about the Streltsy (1545) and Landsknecht (1480), yeah, those are indefensible. They chose them because there were no other European civilizations from which to draw mercenaries. If there had been Venetians or Genoese, perhaps they would have given them something else.

I suppose that in 2023, the developers thought they could “save resources” and not create specific units (Genoese, Wallachians, Hungarians, Almogavars, etc.) as Byzantine mercenaries, so they simply decided to use those already present in the game. The same reason we had “cost-saving” variants like Jean ne’ d’Arc, which was 90% the same as its base civilization plus one hero.

Only because of the feedback and what happened with Sega in 2024, and the support from Forgotten Studios, did the developers get serious about historical accuracy, and two years later with the Templars, where this time we did have allied units from the Templar era (1118-1312).

I think future civilizations for AoE4 and future variants should follow the example of Knight Templar or Dynasties of the East civs:

    1. Enough unique units, especially if they were iconic
    1. Historical accuracy above all, but could have some original content as a extra.
    1. A specific time period: either before the gunpowder era (“Templars”), during a gunpowder era (“Sengoku”), or from Late Middle Ages to Modern Age / 1300-1500 (Lancaster). This is so that it doesn’t compete with future variants for unique units, bonuses, and landmarks.

Is only a supposition but I think the desition of this is NERF for the sake of Uniqueness:
So, that “some unique units”, specially the Best of the civs, remain exclusive to their respective civilizations, like the Sultan Tower Elephant of Deli, HuoHuo Pao for Mongols, or the Royal Artillery of French.

Furthermore, the Nest of Bees seems to be a “Regional Unit” since the Jin will also have it, and in theory, the Mongols can also produce it as a landmark. Thats why Bizantines still has that.

I also suppose it’s for balance reasons, since they’ve modified almost all the Mercenary contracts, cost, time production, and number of units per batch.

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I had interpreted the French and HRE support of the Byzantines as the support of the West to the East during the crusades when the Byzantines called for Christian aid. I know that this may be an overgeneralization of what the western contracts are actually intended to represent and that cannons specifically don’t line up with this time period.

(Not to mention the actual implementation of the Templars as a civ further muddies this idea.)

But for aligning in game design mechanics with historical events, if your willing to suspend some disbelief for the sake of embracing game design. It does seem at least imaginable as a fictional alternative to historical events, timelines, etc.

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You’re mixing cannons and bombards up.

The Royal Cannon and Cannon are both the special French one. The Royal version is just the higher damage one the French can make from their siege landmark.

The bombard is the standard one that Byzantines and others have.

The Cannon has more damage, moves faster, and doesn’t require setup when compared to a bombard. So still worth considering making.