Cistern of the First Hill

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Cistern of the First Hill is the alternate castle age landmark for the Byzantine that nobody uses.

Here are the reasons WHY th landmark is underwhelming.

  1. It doesn’t build with max flash charges or even 1…

  2. It doubles as a cistern but it needs to be properly spaced from other cistern which may require pre-planning base building in order to build it safely and defensively.

  3. The flask ability auto activates TOO late somewhere around 10-20% HP??? WHEN IMO it should kick in around 30-40%. Most auto flask uses I’ve seen gets wasted on a dead unit.

  4. The cooldown on flask re-use on a single unit is too long.

  5. The flask ability has a max usage and max storage meanwhile the other landmark keeps producing indefinitely with population as it’s only delimiter.

  6. Unlike the Horn landmark, the cistern landmark bonuses do NOT scale with cistern levels!!! No synergy.

These are some ideas to fix the Cistern landmark.

  1. Have it allow for a much faster age up. From 220s down to 140s.

  2. Have the building count as 2 cisterns and have it ignore the spacing requirements.

  3. Flask ability needs to activate sooner and have a shorter cooldown. And have no cap in storage but keep the 10 active flask limit. Also the landmark needs to build with at least 5 flask charges.

5 Likes
2

That would make an FC build order into cataphracts more attractive

2 Likes
3

Its fine the way it is. No changes needed.

The 5th cistern is very expensive to make and so this becomes the 5th,once its up there’s really nothing that can beat the power of the byzantines. Research becomes instant, and unit production is so fast that a siege workshop can make rams faster than spearman!

The flask ability is strong when used properly on Cataphracs or Elephants. Players often waste a flask on a unit which is barely hurt and this is where the player could improve. A group of 4 cataphracts can terrorize and raid non-stop and be healed up whenever threatened making them unstoppable.

Of all the things wrong with byzantine the cistern of the first hill is not one of them.

4

5th cistern cost 250 stone. And that’s amazing base building if you can build a level 4 cistern network AND leave a safe defensive location to build this landmark.

This makes me doubt your use of the flask in auto flask mode?? Because it doesnt auto activates until the unit is like sub 20% hp; which often is too low to give the regen enough time to negate the incoming dmg without some serious micro (I’m talking sizable engagements).

Lastly it appears you gloss over the alternative comparison? The Horn landmark scales with cistern level and provides constant production and need NO prerequisites (you can unlock both veterancy and contract in the landmark). And losing all those benefits for a 250 regen every 45s that has a long cooldown on single unit use and has a cap in how many flask you can use at once? Its not fair to say “but you get a “free” cistern,” because at best its saves one 250 stone cistern, out of the 4 to 5 more post level 5 cisterns you’ll have to keep building the spread uour network???

2 Likes
5

Auto flask isn’t intended to be used ever.

Flask should be used on cataphract and when combined with Hippodrome heal the cataphract becomes nearly unkillable.

So what you do is this - form a group of round 3-5 cataphract to harass with. With flask and hippodrome heal, these will never die. Part of the challenge of being harassed is knowing how many units to send to deal with the problem. So now the enemy has to either devote majorly to defensive structures OR send a large number of units back.

You see how flask is good now? It makes an otherwise easy to deal with unit a nightmare. You would need like 15 spears to deal with 3 cataphract which are being flask spammned with hyppodrome heal

6

I’d like to see a pro mess about with it maybe - but while I’ve had some success in Gold/Plat, I don’t think its good.

You do get a free cistern - but what of it? With 5 Cisterns the Golden Horn tower can produce around 360-400~ resources per minute. A one off 250 stone is just not that special (and that depends on building 4 already which isn’t exactly free, especially in what is presumably meant to be a fast castle->raid ASAP build).

Small numbers of healing Cataphracts into small numbers of anything can work. I think my best result was destroying JD and 6 royal knights with just 3 Cataphracts (the opponent decided screaming about how OP this was in chat was a better use of their time than microing). If your opponent puts together a reasonable number of spearmen/crossbowmen however (and they can afford over 4/almost 3 for every Cataphract you have) its no longer possible to really heal them - as they start getting two shot. As the game goes on the ability to heal a Cataphract (never mind anything less valuable) really drops off versus just having lots of free mercenaries.

The net result is that there’s a very narrow window where its worthwhile versus the Golden Horn Tower. This might be okay if Byz fast castle was HRE/Ayyubid speed - or just somehow flowed naturally - but it isn’t and doesn’t. At the pro level I feel its going to be really transparent and therefore easy to stop.

Whether it needs changing is I guess up for debate. The same could be said of Burgrave Palace for instance.
But I think in this case - given Byzantine’s slow start, it just isn’t really a good strategy. The Golden Horn Tower under 5 Cisterns is the main mechanism that allows Byzantines to catch up with the other civs.

2 Likes
7

Its also a strong building for chokepoint maps, which barely exist in this map pool. If the cystern of the first hill were placed at the choke behind a wall, it would take a while to break through the wall, and unlike other cysterns, this one has a lot more hp.

Generally, a cistern is an easy target. And once the 5th is lost they are not cheap to replace. So if the frontmost building in a choke were supported by this particular cystern it would be very hard to destroy along with any walls and keeps, while instantly replenishing lost troops off one 2 nearby unit production buildings.

Its a very niche landmark but it has its place. Far more useful than some alternative landmarks for other civs, such as those which rely exclusively on trade to be useful.

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Imo you just displayed a clear understanding of the niche functionality of this landmark and how it DEscales as the game progresses WHILE it offers extremely minimal momentum potential by comparison to the alternative landmark that just keeps giving consistently.

Making the landmark cheaper or build faster OR… make the landmark all in itself count as a level 5 cistern. Each idea doesn’t address the tapering effects of flask uses later into the game BUT maybe it would help with setting a momentum.

The last idea i think I’m really liking??? Level 5 cistern network would cost 750 stone in cisterns costs plus X stone in aqueduct costs. Since you essentially get level 2 cistern plus aqueduct network for free by the time you hit feudal age. This idea would cost as a saving in level 3 4 an 5 and the 2 of the 3 aqueduct connects necessary. If we average the cost of the 2 connections to 20 stone each the total savings would come out to = 2×20 +150+200+250= 640 stone saved.

NOW that is a momentum builder?!!!

1 Like
9

I’d agree it’s not the biggest priority, feudal is where Byz dies, but it’s a bad landmark. There’s a reason basically no top players build it. There’s one potential castle/cataphract rush build it’s okay with, and otherwise it’s bad.

I was typing up more, but I see Tyelacoirii basically made my points. I’ll just summarize and say the Golden horn outputs more HP into your army then the cistern heal does, and also increases your damage output. In a direct fight the Golden horn is overwhelming better. And having extra free units to harass a second location is even stronger than healing your cataphracts that harass. The golden horn does everything better as the game goes on.

The cistern is basically an all-in on diving your enemy with cataphracts shortly after castle. If that doesn’t do big damage, you’re way behind where you could have been. The fact it gives you a free cistern is nice, but not a big deal.

10

That doesnt make any sense. We should have a function in game that we’re NEVER to use?? Then why do we have the option? As a jebait…

2 Likes
11

Ty relic. This is definitely a start.

150hp is about that of a veteran horsemen so its as if we save 120 resources each cav saved. So if we could theoretically save 1 horsemen every 30s then we’d be effectively saving 240 resources per min. Theoretically…

The other benefit is definitely reducing cooldown for successive use. Given th faster execution ( 6s instead of 10s) and the faster cd (20s instead of 45s) this added flexibility might prove useful especially with FC cataphract harrassments. Especially since we start with 3 flask and will absolutely have a total of 4 to 5 by the time our raiders reaches the enemy base.

I still would like to see the first hill provide a bonus to our overall cistern level… but let’s test an see if the current momentum boost is already enough.

Again ty