Civlization Synergy for Team Games. (Especially important considering ranked team games)

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Ok, I majorily play Team Games, and there is a thing or two I’ve noticed about teamgames.
And It was a “core” feature in AoE2 (consider all civ had a specific team bonus).

Which led to interesting Synergies and team composition for civilizations.

I personally Like it.
But there is a issue in AOE4 when it comes to it.

Not all Civ’s have Synergy capabilities.

Infact, very few Civs having Synergy capabilities.

The 2 absolute strongest ones being
1: Abbasid
2: Mongols.

And a Honorable mention to Rus.

Infact, no other Civ has a specific “bonus” that can effect other civs.

What I mean with this is, direct civ-specific buffs.

Yes you got some Conventional synergy, i.e French Royal knights + English longbow for a exceptionally stronk Feudal Push.
But those aren’t direct buffs applied to each other.

Abbasid Camels provide a debuff to all nearby cavalry.
This debuffs also indirectly benefit your teammate.
You can in essence, send 1 camel to support your teammates spearmen, and they will have a major advantage at dealing with cavalry.

Secondarily, Abbasid Camels in Imperial also grants +2 Armor, This also applies to FREINDLY units.
Meaning, abbasid camels running with HRE man at + spears, grants them some units with absolutely crazy amount of armor. (HRE spearman would have +3+3+2 armor, a whopping 8 armor, which makes them extremely efficient at killing melee cavalry and dealing with melee units in general).
The abbasid +2 armor also grants range armor, so its a very great boon to any non-armor units, such as ZN, longbows, Landsknecht, etc.

And then also Abbasid castle’s with the upgrade also heals any nearby units.

This is what makes abbasid my second favourite Civ in team games, as their overall teambuffs, gives such great benefits to your team in general.

  • The civ being as solid as it is.

This is great, and I hope they get to stay this way.

Mongols on the otherhand, aren’t as strong “teambuff” wise as Abbasid.
but the Khan arrow buffs also applies to friendly units.
Using Khan alongside teammates units can give you some really interesting results.
Movement speed arrow + Dheli forced march = Dheli racecar infantry in the early game.
The attackspeed arrow + English Longbows = English long range ZN. That is extremely strong at dealing with almost any unit. Especially good in a “last stand” scenario when surrounded by enemies.
The Attackspeed arrow + chinese ZN = Chinese Gattling gun that absolutely destroys any unit regardless of armor, if the ZN blob is of a descent size.
Defensive arrow + HRE man at arms/Landsknecht blob = Absolute juggernaut that can’t be stopped even by siege or castles, infact castleage blobs will just obliterate castles (if you have the first arrow upgrade so it last 5 seconds)
Defensive arrow + French knights = Knights can just ignore defenses and destroy non BS upgraded early spearmen.

Another one that is also increadible strong, is the Kurultai when used propertly alongside the Khan.
While it is micro intensive, it can become quite a gamechanger.

The Kurultai increases damage done by all units by 25%. This also applies to siege.
This causes some weapons such as Chinese and Rus bombards to do some hefty damge.
Strelskies blod under kurultai blob becomes an absolute killing machine.
And as far as I tried with the Ottoman Great Bombard, absolutely ridiculously strong. 25% damage also applies to splash damage. So opponent siege blobs or any blobs for that matter just gets destroyed.
Same can be said against walls and castles.

Another great feature, but it is going to be removed. is the Rus+Mongol synergy.
Give Rus enough pastures, and he won’t be needing gold miners. nor farms.
Rus with Pastures would be something akin to English Imperial age Farm enclosures, but far better, stronger, and applies from Dark age and onwards. (which is why i always build a early pasture and send it over to the rus player. He gets a bounty guarantee and in return I get extra wood for a fast second TC when hitting feudal.)

Features like this is very great and they should stay!

RUS as i mentioned is a honorable mention, while as not as strong or direct like the mongols and abbasid.
They have some really neat features for teamates.
First of all is that Rus teammate tend to scout the map very fast, due to going multiple scouts early.
but what directly effects you having a Rus teammate, is their wooden fortresses.

Their wooden fortresses provide far greater LOS.
But you can also garrison your units inside of them.
Wooden fortresses being far stronger tower than a regular tower. Can secure you some really good early frontline resources, such as a gold node or Boar.
Due note you can’t be pressing G to garrison all villagers, you have to manually use F and select the friendly building to garrison them in.
Another direct thing Rus also provides is a very strong early wall.
But the Rus fall off in the late game in how effective it becomes.

What is rather sad though is how other Civ’s who could have some neat buffs for fellow teammates, dosn’t.

Example is the HRE Prelate. His inspiration only works on the players own units.
Also it would be a very neat feature if HRE emergency repair could be applied to friendly buildings under HRE influence area.
English Network of Castles. Only applies to player units.
Malian Trade-outpost does not apply to Teammates traders.
Dheli can buff a teammates Berry patch by placing a mill near them, but not much else to give And abbasids can do this also. The old Tower of Victory that used to apply 35% increased attack speed perma buff to any nearby units, could have also effected teammates units (but it didn’t, also the landmark is changed now.)
Ottoman Great Sea Gate landmark, causing castles to grant +10 armor and 40% increased movement speed for traders, could have effected teammate traders as well.
Same can be said about Mongol Yam speed network.
Chinese Extra Materials could also effect Friendly buildings, making building keeps and towers near friendly defenses quite valuable and a nice defensive synergy.
French keep influence, could apply to friendly archery range/Stable buildings aswell within the keeps influence., giving your teammate a nice economical boon.

These are just a few mentions of current in game mechanics that could be opened up to create some interesting synergies.

2

Simply no. I would want to leave it to that, because explaining it will feel like wasteful

While it sounds good on paper, but in reality this will even further favor premades over solo players in TG’s. More you have to rely on your ally as solo player more you put yourself into disadvantage and this is exactly what would happen.

Premades would be easily coordinating all necessary things into army comps / economy with such things, but when it comes down 2, 3 or 4 solo players it won’t happen.

There is already many tricks that ppl can use to provide support to their ally. I won’t name them cuz I don’t want ppl to find out and put me into disadvantage when facing premades.

Then another fact is that because in TG’s another civ and compensate one civs greatest weakness which makes them more balanced in 1v1 but in TG’s such combinations become extremely broken and giving them another way to boost another civ to even broken level is something that we don’t need.

For example here is 2 strategies that I have not found counterplay or the counterplay is knowing it during civ pick to pick exactly right civ and be sure that strategy is happening.

Abbasid + English. This strategy is one of the most cancerous I have faced and it renders one player completely dead stage at early stage of game. There is other variants but they’re not as good as this because of longbows. Firstly english sends 5-7 villagers to targets base and proceeds to deny the gold. If you don’t know that this is coming or u r not playing as China you won’t be able to age up if you take your gold later or move villagers to another gold mine that also gets denied if scouted. English proceeds to proxy council hall next to your base and builds stonewalls into your base while abbasid brings spears and makes constantly rams. English keeps LB’s on the wall and they’re unkillable. They deny villager production or hinder it due LB’s having 9 tile range and 66% dmg reduction. You cant fight LB’s on the walls. Meanwhile abbasid just spams rams and if you try to kill rams with spears or horsemen they die to LB’s. If your ally tries to help best way is to play french and rush to english base to stop their eco other alternative is fast castle into rushing english base. Another way to stop this is to play English yourself and know its coming and stop council hall before it gets up.

Any other variant of this is considerably easier to deal with because if english is replaced with another civ then the vills can be killed with early spears or scouts or vills, but because english vills are most broken vills in game u cant do anything to them during dark age. Also because LB got 7 tile range as default they become absolutely beast on stone walls.

Next is

Mongol & HRE: Mongol goes normal early harass with horsemen (anything else is not worth). Mongols goal is nothing but to posses threat. Its enough that he shows up with 10-20 horsemen or early horsemen and just poke building once. This triggers defensive stance and reaction from opponent. While mongol is being nuisance (dont lose units) HRE gets into castle. Usually with this strategy HRE gets into castle around 7min mark with burger, at this point if one of the opponents are not going FC then its over. You got no chance of stopping castle age MAA with burger and Aachen behind it. If you go FC and Xbow which would be normal, you’re playing right into opponents trap and giving up on map control and relics. Even if you successfully defend MAA push, behind it HRE gets 3-7 relics and either insta imperial or mangonels and you’re dead and because Mongol is constantly running between 2 bases and forcing reaction with big number of horsemen you’re either dead to horsemen or giving up massive advantage to HRE. About this strat I have discussed with ppl who use this and even they said there is no counter to this unless you somehow stop HRE in feudal but this is nearly impossible because of rush distance between bases and by the time you get there to do anything HRE is already in castle.

There are many other strategies that involve HRE and their insanely broken early economy especially when supported by another civ and giving civ specified bonuses to boost other civs will just make them even more broken and even more unbalanced.

3

While yes, I do not want to have the Team-bonus effect from AOE2 in to this game.

I do find it unfair that Civ such as Abbasid can buff everyone else, but nobody else can buff others.

This makes the META of almost obligatory to have 1 Abbasid teammate. If you don’t have abbasid on your team, your team has a severe disadvantage.
Regardless of what unit composition you can give.

Which is why I’d prefer to just open up some of the unique effects to effect friendly units.

I mean, if Mongol Kurultai can give 25% damage and supposedly healing (although this is bugged)
Then why can’t english towers give NoC to friendly units?

I mean, they don’t have much else effets to give to friendly units.

Rus is a example of not having any effects but still greatly benefit your team through other passive effects, i,e the wooden fortresses.

Not much in the game would actually change other than trying to find good pairs and rewarding tighter teamwork and cooperation.
4v4 would be even more interesting.

but instead of nerfing the abbasid, as playing support is quite fun.

They should lift the other civs to be able to be more competable with the abbasid alternative.

4

All the benefits to other civs should be removed simple as that. More you give more unbalanced it becomes and more unfair it becomes to solo players.

Greatest advantage of playing with premade is the ability to coordinate and communicate. Thats completely different level for solo players who lack of that and it puts premades even further ahead.

For example 2v2 that I only play. If 2 players are decently skilled they get automatic elo boost of 200-500 elo just by being in premade. This is not case for solo players who throw coin on every lobby what ever they get good ally or somewhat useful or useless.

And because its super easy to manipulate matchmaking in TG’s to favor premades even more its just giving them another unfair advantage.

Solo players can cooperate and work together to get these benefits but barrier for ppl to do so is massive and rarely they do.

Do you know how many abbasid/delhi players I have seen place mill next to my berries during my +3k games and hundreds of them being with abbasid or delhi. Only once and that was only when I requested it from ally that I knew could do it without screwing up too much, but ever since that ally has never placed mill once again. Tho not even asked.

Even often times when I see opponent having Rus as civ I don’t see their allies bringing wolf to them. I do this basically every time I got Rus as teammate and I can tell now its bothersome to me and I don’t want to do it because I know my ally is most likely being not worth it, but yet I still do it. I even defend their deer even tho it hinders my own gameplay.

So in fact that you’re suggesting adding more features that give big advantages to premades is bad enough yet alone how it impacts balance making more variables into mess that cannot be solved and further separating certain civ comps from other civ comps.

Then for example English / French is extremely powerful civ comp because both civ have the best feudal units in the game. Best archers paired with best knights. This makes comp insanely strong and now you would want to give attack speed to knights? Yeah no. Other civs are already in massive disadvantage when trying to take fight against that comp and then even further improve it by buffing knights through english.