Early game raid effectiveness nerf

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

In this game , early game raid are too strong .

Vill has low hp and towers just tickles without vill inside .

2-3 horseman or knight or archer can easily kill 2-3 vills , before u move ur army there .

Ur only bet is if I can see attack before they come or ur have archer or horceman in place already . Else it’s almost guarantee to losee some vill .

Early game rush civ like france and mangols are so effective becoz of this , u have 3-4 spearman , and they have 2-3 knights/cav archer , still they can run arround and kill few vills .

Early game even a single vill matters a lot , loosing can lead to snowball effect .

I request Dev’s to either buff vill hop/armour , or boost tower demage .

Harash was not as effective in any previous game like aoe4 .

4-5 vill can’t even defend themselves against a horseman or scout . In previous games 4-5 vill use to kill a single cav , but in this game , even a single cav is enough to attack a group of vill and likely kill few .

It’s even hard for pro players to keep vill safe from raid , in lower level games , games just end becoz someone just loose too much by just raid even before a fight .

2

This is why I keep a scout between my base and the enemies, usually hidden in a thicket. However I do somewhat agree with outposts. They only hold 5 villagers, and I normally have way more then that on each resource, well besides stone. Come to think of it stone is not really a priority at all early game (unless you are Mongols). Maybe they should lower the ridiculous 200wood cost to 100wood, and add an extra 25stone to at least have people put 1 villager on stone for cheaper outposts for early game.

3

Even of u see them , horseman run faster and u can’t have ur 4-5 pike al all place , woodline berries gold , stone , it’s wlmost garentee of vill dying .

One charge +2 attack = a single knight can skill a vill . And it’s easy before ur pike get in position to do unless u start moving ur vill in advance .

4

i don’t feel like early raid is so effective without french knight…
the opponent choose to build these militry with so many resources, and it takes time to move those to your base, if it cannot trade for 2-3 vills even when your’re not prepared, then early raid is totolly useless.
actually if you build watchtower at distant resource point, and doing the macros correctly, even 4 horseman can not kill one vills. French knight is another story though, but i managed to do the defend after some practice and watching replay of french player’s timing.
The knights are much more expansive than some spears.

And once you successfully defend without losing too much, you should have some economy advantages.

Well, if you truly believe early game raid is soooo effective, you can try doing it your self, see how far it will go.

My exprience with this game is that when I found something is too strong and don’t know how to counter, try use it myself, see how the opponents react. You’ll find no strategy is unbreakable.

5

What u said make no sense , to defend u also have to Marco early military building and make army , so even if u don’t lose vill , u r even . But if u lose vill , u r WAY BEHIND by snowball effect . Early vill lose make cripple u hard . Losing 6 vill from 30 is 20% economy lose , 20% unit production lose which will snowball hard , delay age up by 20% , delay ur expension . It’s a huge lose to overcome , u can easily sacrifice much of army to gain that upperhand .

Making 4 horceman/knights and send them , don’t cost anything more than what defender has to invest in making spearman . And I don’t know how pro u r , look at any tournament , look gensis , even pros can’t save their vill no matter how vigilant u r . May be u can teach community and even pros how to do that . And how do u keep ur 5-6 pikes at all places , woodline , berries , gold and stone .

Every game is france minnor or mangol vs france and everyone goes agressive early , becoz none want to be on receiving end of cav raid .

U r even or barely behind if u don’t kill vill . Becoz if u r raiding and ur enemy is making new tc , he is not gonna have any militry for quite some time to defend . With proper timing u can deny his tc , or even his age up landmark , if he is too greedy .

Btw longbow rush is also very annoying . 3 archer/longbow can kill a vill in two volloy . It’s just blink when u notice u lost a vill from some arrows coming from corner of woodline .

6

I’m a mongol main, so to defend against french early raid, I keep my resource point in the TC coverage since I can move the building. He won’t come before 2nd age. When I’m going 2nd age, I build barracks, make 2-4 spears with OVOO, super cheap, easy defend. And some watchtowers to provide vision and cover.
Doing scout is another key, having a Khan sitting in front of his base can provide early warning of whether and how strong the raid is, and defend accordingly. Also to know how many vills he put to each resources can provide clear vision of whether he’s going fast age up or 2tc or build a big army, and you can react over that.

I saw one game a chinese can be really fast going 2nd age and starts to wall up with stone at choke points, that’s an another way to defend.

Early raid should be a high profit high risk movement, as a mongol main, I don’t think mongol’s darkage horseman raid can do any good against non-noob. Dark age eco cannot give you resourses to build many of these, I could at best build 4 before fast french going 2nd age, and they really can do nothing effective at the enemy base.

Also utilizing the map is another thing, no one should play the same at different map.

Utilizing civ specialty is pretty can really help defend for some. To defend at open maps, Chinese have a landmark work like a small castle, provide very good cover over the resourse point. Just by adding another TC, your eco could boom fast, and with 3 TC like defend building, I don’t think the early raid can do any harm to you. When you have 2 tc and the opponent has only 1, losing 5-6 vills are not a big deal.
I don’t know much about other civs, but maybe there is their own way to do the defend.

Early raid is just like the 5d strategy for zerg in SC, extreamly effective against noob and unprepared fully eco opponent, but as soon as people doing the scout well or learned how to do the defend properly, doing 5d is more of a suicide strategy rather than a winning strategy.

Learn from the opponent, if they use early raid to destroy you, you can copy that, can see how other guys defend that. You may get several wins until your rank is going up, and face the guy who can really do these things well. Then you’d learn there are multiple ways to defend any strategy.

Currently there aren’t any real pro guys with AOE4, everyone is experinmenting all kinds of strategy, even the top ones. And by learning from top ones, watching their replays, you can get much better very soon.

7

mangol main is as cancer as france main ,

8

well i don’t do tc rush, i don’t do dark age horseman rush… it’s fine…

9

Yeah but maigandi rush is so hard to defend , u can easily dive towers and still kill many vill once u have 4-5 maigandi

10

emmm, why i didn’t find my maigandi so effective. my own experience is that if i’m to run into enemy towers to kill vills, i can clear one resource point, but i’ll lost them all very quickly…
If you see enemy doing maigandi, you just do archers. more cheaper, and shoot further, counters maigadi pretty well.
and those maigandi is quite expensive actually

11

I main mongols and at level 107 My personal experience is that mongols should have the early rush as everyone else has walls makes it harder if you
Put walls up the fact that people don’t put walls up makes it that much Easter for me too come along with my 6 rams and 15 horsemen and raid you if you put walls up you would see me coming but most of you don’t I love rushing and mongols are perfect for that it don’t need a nerf you all just need to practice and think ahead of time if I play a french player I start pumping out spearman ect the good thing with mongols is the best way to defend is to attack with mongols in my personal experience