Age of Empires IV promotional trailers show Delhi with elephants everywhere, but balance team made elephants useless. No one likes Delhi anymore, it’s super boring.
Malians and Ottomans promotional trailers are all about Great Bombards and Janissary as core of a very diverse army. But in reality it’s all: Archers. So boring. Balance team killed Great Bombard, never seen anyone use it, never. So boring
Mongols and Egnlish are super OP for a long time and devs do nothing. Boring.
No wonder Age of Empires IV is going down every week.
You know, for a game touting drastically different civs, they sure lack unique units. Sure, some of their recent design has gone against this–but, lots of civilizations retroactively look dull.
And yea… This is the issue when the game is being designed as a “competitive” game first and foremost. It isn’t about “fun” anymore. The fact that AoE4 wasn’t launched with a good campaign shows that their priorities lie with artificially making it an esport.
As someone who paid good money for it–why? I don’t care about esports. Esports can screw itself. Big mistake on microsoft for making that the focus.
EDIT: A lot of things that are “fun” have just kinda been ignored. No day/night cycles or different time of day lighting (we know their engine is capable, and it is shown in their campaigns). Biomes are either European grassy or Asian grassy with the newest biomes finally having personality. UI and menu look so sterile with no personality in it. Siege units move by themselves instead of being pushed/carried. Maps don’t feel different–procedurally generated maps are good when there can be meaningful distinction between them. In AoE4 it is all so sterile. Delhi’s elephants being good or unique units being added is the last of their worries; the game apparently simply needs to be balanced and that was worth 60 quid.
Not to mention, both civs should have the Horse Archer. The Ottomans Sipahi unit sadly doesn’t use the ranged ability despite it being shown in the first trailer of AoE4’s Ottomans and Malians.
What are you talking about?
Is this particular match about how great elephants and Great Bombard are?
This is topic is expressing my opinion that the Delhi Sultanate and Ottoman civilizations are not FUN to play, the game lacks unique units and the few available are simply HORRIBLE.
Do you understand what I mean.
That elephants and Great Bombard should be a core element of fun, but have been slaughtered by balance team.
You’re absolutely right. War elephant is almost useless, tower Elephant is a bit better, but its cost opportunity is still terrible. I think old tower elephant needed a nerf, but this is just so bad. In my opinion elephants would need some kind of auras, so the player is incentivized to train them, but not to spam them.
Ottomans are just terrible, i have no fun at all in playing them, really a badly designed civ in my opinion.
wanted to add my 2 cents not to esports focus, that would be beating a dead horse, devs won’t change course, they made that much clear, now my point, ever notice how relic stream and promotion camera angles and zoom cannot be reproduced no matter what you do? old aoe promotion, even up to DEs was always reproducable ingame. They basically show how they could solve zoom and other camera issues, but simply refuse to, for anyone saying panoramic solved this completely, it didn’t, it was only 50% of the fix that is needed, and my metric here is extremely generous for relic, balance killing fun also isn’t suprising unfortunately
Delhi has a singular optimal playstyle; prioritize securing sacred sites; get free upgrades and mass units and scholars. Sites are everything hence why you’re forced as delhi to get them and agaisnt delhi to contest them. With the nerf to tower elephants and the niche role of war elephants, castle age is all about knights/maa’s and their support… since knights and maa are generic units it takes away uniqueness from the civ.
If you don’t make elephants then youre just like any other civ making standard units plus healers.
And keep in mind Delhi is a lot of clicking and quing and houses and unhouses scholars…so you stay busy to just be generic…
This Christmas Turkey had become my main civ and I really love snowballing with it. Why is it bad design lol? Beside the great bombard being quite expensive and squishy, all other stuff are quite handy and being in good shape.
You might want to rephrase this, I found it incredibly confusing, I thought you meant Turkey as in the bird at first. Changing it to Ottomans could prevent that.
In my case,i liked the Ottomans because their free creation of troops and their visier points system (it’s like the deck system of aoe 3)…then come the Malians (because their unique roster of units and the automatic generation of gold and food),finally come the Mongols (because the mobile bases)…but yeah maybe more civs or mechanics would be great to the game…
I agree and disagree with what you say. On the one hand, if it is true that they should make the elephants more viable with Delhi, because they ARE part of the essence of civilization, but they are not the only thing, since there are also the scholars and the system of free technologies, sacred sites, etc.
The same with the Janizaries and the Great Bombard with the Ottomans, but to say that the game is boring and that it is not well balanced, or that the civilizations are not fun to play, I think it is a very wrong argument, AGE4 is in a very good state and is on the right track, compared to how it was released. It just needs little by little improvements that come out in each patch or in the new seasons. Truth be told, all civs are fun to play, you just have to figure out how to learn how to play each game. I love playing with Delhi and in some of my games I use the elephants because they become very useful in certain circumstances, it would be optimal if they were on more occasions, but it will be seen in future patches.
There’s no need to say that the game is horrible or be pessimistic, if you don’t like AGE4 there are plenty of games out there to play. AGE4 occupies the support of the community.
You got flagged, but you’re not wrong. Unique units should be the star of any civilization, lest that civilization returns to the typical Spearman, Archer and Horseman trio in which case why even play that civ over any other?
Their design allows for the user to break away from that and for them to have their own identity. You can argue “but they can’t be too strong, that makes it unfair”–you can easily balance around that by making other features of that civilization weaker–Usually things that happen in the background like economy.
The elephants should really be the “wow” factor for Delhi. For me, it isn’t even to do with making them “good”. Putting aside that they aren’t the optimal way of playing, they just kinda suck. They are slow, they don’t do AoE. I get that the game needs to be balanced, but does it need to be boring too?
Honestly I don’t know how you can mess up an Elephant in a game like this. Even the War Elephant animation is underwhelming, you can barely tell that it is attacking. Sad.
