Imo it does not make any sense that many/most civs can’t respond to Maa in age2.
Especially against English it can be frustating and against HRE it forces you to sit on their gold and stop them from aging up.
Probably the answer would be bringing crossbows into Feudal age for all civs that don’t have access to feudal knights, but make them slightly weaker in age2 (early crossbows).
This would allow more counterplay and would make the game WAY more interesting.
Just look at aoe3(de). You can counter EVERY UNIT in EVERY AGE.
It is so much more enjoyable…
Getting siege units, many upgrades, technologies, access to keeps and many other things in age3 is more than enough of an advantage from aging up.
If it was for me, they could also move the ability to build non-capital towncenters to age3, to stop the Feudal TC spam.
This corroborates the theory that the “Meta” of the game was not carefully planned, they just thought about the variety and that’s it, an example of this was the battles of the sea at the beginning.
Things were just thrown into the game under the name of diversity, without checking the bigger picture and actually thinking about consequences for different matchups.
The balancing and meta pay the price…
I repeat, in aoe3(legacy AND DE) you could counter EVERY unit in EVERY age with EVERY civ.
Of course an age3 unit or veteran unit is stronger than an age2 unit, but the counter-logic is there.
Example:
Melee cavalry.
In age2 you can counter it with musketeers, pikemen and special units like Doppelsöldner or just make melee cav on your own, which EVERY (!) civ had access to in age2.
In age3, you can train dragoons or dragoon-type units and hard-counter it again on range.
But the dragoon gets mega-countered by skirmishers (age3 unit), archers (age2 unit), pikemen (age2 unit) and doppelsödner-type units (age2/3).
Aoe4:
Enemy makes maa age2 or goes burgrave into age3 maa, you are f*** unless you play a civ that has maa/knights age2.
End of story.
In aoe3 you could punish a fast fortress age up(aging to age3 very quickly) by a heavy timing-push and massively outmass him at this critical point just after aging up and win the game with good micro.
And why?
Because you can counter EVERY age3 unit even with age2 units!!!
Also, because you could snare the enemy army, make it unable to kite/run away and just smash it with sheer numbers.
Or you could age yourself.
You had all the options.
I want this in aoe4 and until the devs make this possible, I can not take this game seriously as an age of empires game, top tier real time strategy.
I don’t mind age2 maa to be honest because u can counter them with archers. Ootd is a different story but they cost a lot.
I my opinion u have a point with age3 maa. For most civs it’s hard to counter castle maa in feudal. The Maa have 155 hp and if u got the upgrades, 6 armor, english even more. Your archers have 6 dmg with upgrade and your tc do shit against them as well. If he’s attacking your gold and u can’t age up you start stuggleing soon.
It took numerous years before Skirms were really a decent counter for Dragoons. The balance in AOE3 was pretty atrocious when the first expansion came out. It was even more broken after the second expansion came out. I would argue that this games balance has been consistently better when compared to AOE3 at the same period in its lifecycle.
Na, not really. Dragoons had 10% more ranged armor and skirms had a lower multiplier for years. Was a soft counter at best. There were literally tournaments for years where you would see Dragoon + cannon vs Dragoon + cannon. BTW, I was a top 50 player on elo in AOE3.
Well, About the topic of the post, you’re right: ALL civs should have an answer for 3rd age units advanced in 2nd, at least for balance.
In general, almost all civs have a minimum of “4” military units of feudal age:
3 basics: Spearman, Horseman, Archer
1 extra: Castle Age Early Unit (Early Knight, Early Man-at-Arms), Special Unique Unit (Musofadi, Mehter).
About Early Man-at-Arms: The detail is that Heavy Cavalry can still be countered in feudal with Spearman, but in the case of Men at Arms, neither spearman, archers or Horsemen are their counter, so really in some cases the 4th feudal unit has to be at least strong enough against Man-at-arm for there to be balance.
In fact, due to balance issues in Feudal, the Ghazi Rider appeared for the Delhi Sultanate. Let’s count all the civs and their 4th Age Extra Units:
FEUDAL EXTRA UNIT OF EVERY CIV
English.- Feudal Man-at-Arms
HRE.- Feudal Man-at-Arms
French (and JoanDA’rc).- Royal Knights defeat Man-at-Arms
Order of the Dragon.- Gilded Men-at-Arm
Rus.- Early Knight beats Man-at-Arms
Mongols.- Keshick beats Man-at-Arms
Abbasid.- Camel archer, manages to defeat Man-at-Arms.
Ayyubid (X).- Dessert Riders don’t beat in front Man-at-arms, but they can harass them. Technically, the Beduin Swordman can beat early M-a-A, but only if they come in the 1st Bazaar shipment.
Delhi Sultanate.- Ghazi Raider does great damage to the Man-at-Arm but is not his counter. But Delhi Sultanate also has Scholars, who can heals the Raiders, so they have a combo anti MaA in feudal.
Chinese (X).- ######## en masse, manages to defeat Man-at-arms, but only en masse.
Japan.- Samurais, can beat Man-at-arms
Zhu Xi.- Early Palace Guard, manages to tie, with some losses, with Man-at-Arms.
Mali.- Early Heavy Cavalry (Sofa), Musofadi Warrior (Anti-Heavy)
Byzantines.- Mercenary Keshik, can beat Man-at-Arms
CONCLUSIONS.- Well, there it is. Apparently the only civ that “Lack” a specific counter for the Early Man-at-Arms or a rush for them if they do Fast-Castle, would be the Chinese, Ottomans and the Ayyubid.
I think the Ayyubid answer would be to also do Fast Castle to unlock Camel Lancer, but of course, this is only situational. I think the Ottomans can also make a fast castle, but I don’t think the Chinese could.
Technically, the Beduin Swordman can beat early M-a-A, but only if they come in the 1st Trade Wing shipment, which I understand, is by a random algorithm.
Ayyubid IDEA.- It occurs to me for Ayyubid, the Baazar should ALWAYS contain in its feudal recharges at least 1 Beduin Swordmen, or at least the 1st time, then they would have a 100% guaranteed counter in feudal, or at least the few minutes one has to be in it.
What do you think? Any unique historical unit ideas to add to Chinese and Ottomans to counter Men-at-Arms in feudal?
Why should feudal units be able to counter castle units? What kind of dumb logic is this? Thankfully, the devs don’t listen to Silver and Gold players for balance.
Also, the stats, which are public, show that the game is mostly balanced. If you think there is too much imbalance in the game, then you can be absolutely certain that it’s a skill issue on your end.
Archers counter feudal MAA cost-effectively so long as you kite with your archers. Learn how to kite, and you’ll learn how to crush feudal MAA with archers.
If they make feudal MAA weaker than they are now, they’ll become useless at the higher ranks where players know how to micro. It’s very bad when devs balance a game for the players that aren’t playing the game optimally, and thankfully the devs of this game have avoided that a lot.
right…
Dude, you either don’t play 1v1 ranked or are live in a different reality.
You must be conq3 and playing in the top 50 then to talk like that.
Are you?
It’s not a dumb logic at all.
Age2 spearmen hard-countering Feudal Knights is very logical and age2 spearmen softcountering or at least having even fights (ressource wise) against Castle Knights is VERY logical.
Same should apply to maa and a specific vs heavy/heavy inf unit for EVERY civ.
The thing is, if the only counterplay vs HRE is sitting on their gold and not letting them age, then sorry… the game is very very much fail-designed.
There should be more ways of counterplay.
Literally 90% of the matches against HRE go like that unless you have a civ with a strong and fast castle timing also, which many civs can’t excecute efficiently.
Do they? Ever tried defending against Burgrave rush with archers?
You will do between 1 and 2 damage against these maa.
That means between 60 and 155 arrows to kill one (!) single maa.
Let’s say you have 20 archers and the enemy has 10 mma, it would take you 49 seconds to kill all of them, if all of your archers stayed alive and you didn’t skip a single auto-attack.
Come on…
Maa only cost 1.5 times as much as archers, so realistically it would be 15 archers only for 10 maa.
If the maa player goes feudal maa+archers age2, it would be almost impossible to hold.
As he can attackmove and you have to hard-core micro. If you shoot the maa, your archers get shredded by his.
If you go horsemen, he can easily win as well bc he has maa.
Maa > horsemen
I’ve not played seriously in 2-3 weeks… and having been away so long, gave me some perspective now looking at the game.
The current “balance” isn’t set anywhere near the medium skill level in this game. And i think the truth is: it is too hard to bring the balance down to a lower skill level and keep the game competitive at the higher levels.
Often concepts that are “broken” at lower leagues get utterly relegated at the higher levels.
Example white tower drop, it’s a legit tactic at diamond’s and below but at conq2+, that shi is getting snuffed, bc higher level players more consistently scout and gauge BO’s, and more consistently understand the proper responds to said tactics.
I say all that to say, maa in feudal isn’t an issue at much higher leagues, but personally i wish this game could make the counter system more intuitive.
The only civs that have an issue with PROLONGED maa feudal aggression are:
Abbasid
Ottoman (if they don’t maintain military mass superiority)
Byzantine (if they can’t sustain oil unit production)
Every other civ has a counter, soft counter, and/or their own broken feudal unit.
I don’t see why there should be a feudal counter to Age 3 MaA.
That tech advantage is the benefit of getting to Age 3.
If they’re in Castle and you’re still in Feudal you should have way more units than them and be pushing their base, and/or be about to hit Castle yourself.
Enemy ages up, you are ################ Amazing, makes sense! yep, so good idea!
Seems like you haven’t played the best game of the series, aoe3.
The civs are way more unique there (through home city also) in their playstyle than aoe4, it offers FAR more variation in strategies AND every unit has a counter EVERY age.
And still, fast age3 is very viable, as it brings you OPTIONS but doesn’t hardcounter all age2 units by default…
In aoe3 you also have the option to stay in age2 OR age up to age3 or even 4 quickly.
How are you gonna contest an HRE player who just went to age3 with emergency repairs, springald towers and age3 maa/knights? With age2 archers, horsemen and spears? You can’t. You HAVE to age yourself.
You can’t even contest his towers/buildings with your light units and rams, because of emergency repairs and his heavy armored units.
You HAVE to age to contest that #####nse.
And that is absolute BULLSHIT
I played Abbasid and this was a big problem that I noticed. Guess they still haven’t balanced it? The rock-paper-scissors system they set up doesn’t come into effect until castle age, at least for Abbasid. Defending against English and HRE MAA was one of the most annoying challenges. Supposedly double stable production of horsemen can work, or double camel archer production. But it’s ridiculous that we have such a disadvantage to armor. Apparently they were one of the first civilizations to arm infantry with pitch-filled pottery as a sort of flammable projectile. Missed opportunity.
