Casual player thoughts

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

I’m not very good at this game nor do I play it enough to be. I play 1v1 and usually sit between high bronze and low gold. Still, I have opinions:

  1. Battering spam is weird and obnoxious. Would be neat if battering rams and towers actually needed to be crewed to move (Move speed depends on how many crew). In exchange they can be made even tankier or something. I’d like to see a battering ram at the centre of a formation, not 8 battering rams just rolling around.

  2. Artillery cost 2 pop, cannons cost 3. Again, they can be buffed accordingly to make them stand out more as support units, rather than rolling out in mass.

  3. I rarely if ever see people put archers on walls. Have towers and gates spawn ally AI controlled archers that cost no pop and patrol your walls (die with the walls). Archer type match your civ / tech and can be upgraded to crossbows / guns as you upgrade the tower’s weapon type. Goal here is to make the sieges better looking rather than to really buff, I doubt a few free archers stuck on walls would be a huge balance changer.

  4. give stone towers, stone wall towers, stone gates, and keeps, resistance to non-artillery damage, just like walls. We might actually see people using siege towers?

I’m aware a lot of people I’m sure do not want too stray too far from the old school AoE formula, but people still play AoE2 and as someone who grew up on AoE1 and Age of Kings I just want something that feels a little more modern. I’m not even putting it in my list because I know its a little too much, but I’d even love to see all artillery pieces given a crew, and either taking artillery damage that destroys it, or regular damage that kills its crew and can then be re-crewed / stolen by peasants (i.e: CoH).

That’s my rant, don’t be mean <3

2 Likes
2

Hello there, I play mostly single player or as team against AI. So I guess that makes me more casual too, because the focus of the game seems to be multiplayer.

Nonetheless, I would like to see those AI soldier guarded walls. Sounds like a fun idea to bring some life to your defenses.
Not sure about the siege crews though, could look confusing maybe? Depending on the ability to differentiate the look of the siege crew enough from, say, an archer. But I guess people would adjust to it quickly.

I don’t understand your point there. Do you suggest to increase the population cost of siege to make them more quality instead of quantity?

3

Yes, pretty much. Investing in lots of siege weapons would mean a smaller army at the 200 pop cap. Just trying to keep them valuable interesting without making them appear en mass.

As for crewed weapons, even older games like COSSACK had cannons animated with a crew pushing and reloading it. Just adds immersion.

1 Like