With the emphaize on pro scouts generally diminished, a hyper sensitivity to deer pushing has taken center stage. Player skill across the board has improved which more and more of the AOE4 populace is capable of deer shoving, which in terms of investment cost is much much cheaper and execute way faster than pro scouts ever could accomplish.
I personally do NOT see it as a problem for the majority of civs bc the counter is merely to use your scout and lame the enemy deer when you come across it. I will agree civs like Rus that have 2 to 4 scouts in dark age and likewise ottoman mongols that have early spearman can’t so easily be stopped from deer shoving, but that’s 3 or so civs out of 18? I hope the devs don’t overreact to this measily plight.
IMO a better safe food issue is farms!! I think maps like caramel suggest the community greatly appreciates an abundance of food out on the map, among the other benefits of said map? (Make all farms generate food at 0.9F per sec [like a board] but make farms cost 100w. This results in 2 slight nerfs. Slower establishment of safe food and a tiny nerf to gather rate/cost)
But higher farm gather rate per population? No thanks
Multiple long term benefits to this.
- More expensive farms means harder initial transition and reestablishment (raiding farms themselves becomes more impactful)
- More powerful farms means less total villagers needed on food once you’re completely established which means more room for military to have bigger fights. Current max vils are around 120 130 vils with easily 50-60 on food. Imagine even 10 less villagers, that’s meaningful pop space for additional military.
- More on the first point, bc farms are pricey it means you need to control more of the initial food on the map to keep competitive. Lots of FC starts will fissle out if they can’t pivot to reclaim said food requirements.
Making infinite food weaker means in the long term means you have more vils on food and less and less pop space for military. We want armies to fight!!! Imagine if 100 vils was the max vil all civs could ever need instead of the 120 130+?
Safe, cheap, infinite and efficient food is what we’re trying to nerf. I just nerfed the cost and slightly reduced the efficiency per cost but in the long term buffed the late game to support more military.
I think this should have a counterplay, so I propose that the scouts have 5 damage against deer so that it is faster to kill them, this could make an opening with two scouts profitable.
Why ? Deer pushing is already super easy to counter. It takes no time to kill the deers
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Pushing deer for example in Japanese is the only viable strategy, the game should be viable for several strategies
I think it’s less that it’s the only viable strategy and more that it’s more viable than others. It has better value than going for a 5 minute 2tc for example, and pushing deer into main tc provides safe food for a relatively lower cost.
It can be countered by sending your scout towards the enemy base and killing their nearby deerpack ASAP. This can be done before the Japanese player can build spearmen.
Deer pushing also requires a significant level of micro alongside the cost of building a production building + units, so it’s not exactly free.
I’m kind of shocked people have an issue with this mechanic. This is iconic to the series and should not receive nerfs. They’ve already reduced complexity in so many places with IV.
Edit: I took more time to think about it, and the idea that it’s the only viable strategy is a bit sus
How about buff Farm a little, like reduce wood cost to 65.
What the hell? Why would you want to make farms even easier to transition into??
I argue the whole complaint about the deer is how SAFE the deer meat becomes when it’s tucked under your main TC? Making farms cheaper means you now how faster infinite food SAFE under your base.
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I mean if they nerf deer pushing, maybe leading more necessary to buff Farming.
I don’t think the high safety of Farm is a problem, Farm is weak enough after Horticulture get nerfed, maybe we should nerf TC’s defence but not Farm if we wanna accelerate every match.
Guys i think farms and deers are all well balanced and dont need change, the dev should focus on other things instead like making water battles more fun and more balanced between the civs ( not looking for 3 sec and losing your entire fleet to demo ship not exactly fun).
