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 canât so easily be stopped from deer shoving, but thatâs 3 or so civs out of 18? I hope the devs donât 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 youâre 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, thatâs 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 canât 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 weâre 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
1 Like
Pushing deer for example in Japanese is the only viable strategy, the game should be viable for several strategies
I think itâs less that itâs the only viable strategy and more that itâs 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 itâs not exactly free.
Iâm kind of shocked people have an issue with this mechanic. This is iconic to the series and should not receive nerfs. Theyâve already reduced complexity in so many places with IV.
Edit: I took more time to think about it, and the idea that itâs 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 itâs tucked under your main TC? Making farms cheaper means you now how faster infinite food SAFE under your base.
1 Like
I mean if they nerf deer pushing, maybe leading more necessary to buff Farming.
I donât think the high safety of Farm is a problem, Farm is weak enough after Horticulture get nerfed, maybe we should nerf TCâs 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).
From reddit:
This change pushed me away from the game.
Imagine if melee patched out wavedashing
Or aoe2 patched out quick walls.
Or sc:bw patched out magic box.
Or sm64 patched out blj.
Or dota patched out stacking or creep aggro or denies.
These sorts of observations of the game system and the exploitation of said systems is part of why I really enjoy games at all.
Some people are saying âit was boring.â This is subjective. I really enjoyed this. It gave me a place for skill expression through practicing something repeatable in this game with so much variance.
As for a civ being base bound instead of on the map, there are times where you canât be in the opponentâs base or face, and this gave units something to be doing.
And, like, give us some time to figure things out. This sort of âhot fix everything rapidlyâ mentality is great for truly gamebreaking things like phalanx recursion, but for things like this⊠it feels punishing. Like I spent time practicing deer pushing and developing build orders around it and now I cant? What about the next thing thatâs found that I practice that enables new playstyles? Is that going to get patched, too?
Im just really saddened by this.
This fully captures my feelings on this situation. They reduced one of the few things we could do to exert actual micro skill in gameplay. Itâs a pretty bad move, especially considering this has been here since launch and only changed because of a very recent meta shift.
Imagine removing any number of aoe 2 mini micros, things that started as unintended and became a big part of the games identity.
Boar pulling, deer pushing, quick walling, archer/mangonel micro.
This team seems like they are set on taking a sledgehammer to anything interesting about this gameâs gameplay. Very frustrated with their 1 step forward 2 steps back approach to balance.
"Deer pushing sucks for two reasons:
- itâs such a boring mechanic.
- It makes for civs to be more base bound where the whole point of the game is to active around the map.
I think the devs removed this due to point number 2".
I like this answer in the Reddit thread.
I have always been very much in favor of more micromanagement in the game, but that micro should be fun to watch and play for most, be it a small exploit or mechanic.
The mechanic of pushing deer I see it fine if they are already very close to the base like in some map, in the rest, either let them proscout or risk hunting far away.
Maybe they have to keep digging and look for the formula that aggression really does more damage to proscouts.
I have always been very much in favor of more micromanagement in the game, but that micromanagement should be fun to watch and play for most, be it a small exploit or mechanic.
The mechanic of pushing deer I see it fine if they are already very close to the base like in some map, in the rest, either do proscout or risk hunting far away.
Maybe they have to keep digging and look for the formula that aggression really does more damage to proscouts.
The best Reddit answer was the most upvoted.
What they did to deer pushing was so much that it effectively eliminates it as something you can do to bring deer to your base. The amount of effort required really does make it unviable outside of pushing it towards buildings that are close. Gone are the days of being able to take a hunt and push it into a base. This is something that every other AoE game has as a feature, and this game is the single exception to that rule.
For reference, there are tutorial scenarios in AoE 2 and 3 based around teaching the players to utilize hunts this way.
Again, this wasnât an issue for more than 3 years UNTIL pro player picked it up in the current meta. Thereâs certainly merit to some balance, but what they did was remove it as a reasonable option. (You can more than likely move the deer using building blueprints, which is probably too much effort for standard play, but still possible)
Edit: I want to clarify because I think some people may be a bit confused about what it is specifically that theyâve done to completely eliminate it:
Deer pushing has a cooldown increase from 1-8 seconds to 14-20 seconds. It remains to be seen how this will impact when a deer moves after being pushed. If they have not made changes to the reset behavior of deer, this means that after you push a deer you will not have enough time to push it again before it moves back. This potentially means that deer can no longer be pushed from their original position. At all.
When the patch releases we will be able to see the impact of this change.
Thereâs a lot to say about what a reddit answer is. It being the âbestâ, (which I think youâre saying makes it most correct), because it is upvoted or downvoted is not something Iâm inclined to care too much about. Populism is a plague for discourse, and it discourages discussion based solely on the idea of ânot being a popular opinionâ. Many of the upvoted posts focus completely on downplaying other peopleâs emotions and experiences with their posts. Most of reddit is driven by conflict, not by merit or correctness.
This also really isnât about having a correct feeling about the situation. Itâs just an open statement on my feelings on the changes they are making based off of my experience playing the game, and the history they have with patches.
Deer pushing, with the exception of Rus required Dark Age mechanics, where otherwise you just collect sheep and circle the enemy base near feudal transition to catch a glimpse of whatâs to come.
The point of Interest on ONE RANK MAP does give Dark Age more meaning, but now weâre back to the humdrum collect feudal enabling resources, then the game starts at 4minsâŠ
I am a BIT hopeful that the new expansion will expand on viable DARK AGE strategies and interactions that weâll not miss deer shoving, and ALL safe resource civ will be very NICHE in whatâs safeâitâs my sincere belief that ALL civs should have SOME type of resource they NEED to grab from the open map in order to stay competitive.
1 Like
Well, when I said that the top rated Reddit answer is the best I didnât mean itâs necessarily because itâs the top rated, but because it perfectly argues the sentiment of a large portion of the playerbase. Itâs an unappealing and rather tedious mechanic to play for several and to watch and encourages not leaving the base for food for a longer time.
Since practically almost the release of AoE2 and AoE3 it was already as a mechanic to lure you the boar (easier to do) and that hunt in AoE3, it is not something that was discovered over the years. And the animals were relatively close to the base. Not to mention that the TCs in those 2 games are weaker than in AoE4.
There will be a part of the players who wanted to lure deer from miles away from the base to their TC, but for me the identity of AoE4 in the matter of hunting animals is this:
Deer relatively close to base (Hill and Dale for example): You can lure them to the main TC.
Deer in a standard map: Go outside the base and push them near the economic building (mill or equivalent) or proscout.
I understand that you want to be rewarded for skill or micromanagement, but I think other solutions should be found for it and be more accepted (POI is a good way to start).
What I want is freedom to make that decision for myself rather than have my options reduced because others find it tedious.
When altering a feature to the point it loses its identity and needs a completely different approach, justifying that with âit is boring and many find it tediousâ just doesnât cut it. Itâs been in the game since AoE 1. Thatâs why I compared it to removing boar pulling and quick walling. How could they make this change now, after nearly 4 years. Just because audiences on twitch tv yawned? Because the vast majority of players, who are in gold league and below, dictate balance?
As you said, this mechanic wasnât discovered recently, itâs been a part of the series from the very beginning. Ignorance of some aside, Iâve been deer pushing since launchâŠ
Technically itâs not been removed but it will no longer be a viable strat and very very very easily debunked. And I will concede it synergies waaaaay to well with pro scouts. Imagine you shove your near deer now all you need to is haul in your far and possibly enemyâs deer. Which is something Iâve done before on gorge when both my deer and enemy deer spawn in the middle. On Japan I pull his pack into my pack then towered it. Then had only my flank and his flank to worry about.
