Fixing the Siege meta

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

These would be the changes I recommend for siege:

Bombard:
HP reduced from 480 to 400
Slower projectile speed, making it dodgeable for units most of the time except for elephants, siege
Rate of fired reduced by 15%
Setup/unsetup time increased by 15%

Trebuchet:
Wood cost reduced from 500 to 400
Gold cost reduced from 250 to 200
Base movement speed increased by 15%
Rate of fire increased by 15%

Mangonel:
Fire rate reduced by 20%

Springald:
Bonus damage vs siege reduced from +90 to + 70

Culverin:
Gold cost reduced to 450 from 600

Clocktower bonus hp reduced to +25% instead of 50%

Villagers:
Repair speed reduced by 20%

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2

I am not an expert in siege, but if you think about it: going to the third age is expensive and you cannot replace the army soon, besides the siege is expensive. Against siege I recommend you attack from the rear with horsemen and scouts, lance knights it is very expensive to lose them in that. try it, regards

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3

Yea, what changes do you disagree with? It doesn’t make siege worthless.

4

I am still not in the capacity to assess that.

5

I’ve had great battles placing springalds right behind gate, they shoot through the gate, also bringing Lancers +Springals around the side during enemy siege, even if I lose my Springalds they lost much more expensive bombards/trebs.
People complain about siege so much but if you just build springals or culverines with knights enemy siege is almost useless. Also seen landshnekts used properly destroy siege armies, formation and micro matters

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6

I don’t believe siege needs to be nerfed, I believe defenses need to be buffed.

Bear with me here

Imagine wall mountable springalds, and no not the towers that get taken out in two shots, I mean taking your 30 springalds from the ground and putting them on the walls like the archers (like a defensive fortress during this time period would have done)

Walls should have even more HP, even with early bombards sieges of castles would take weeks, this should reflect in-game at least to the point where you have enough time to react and train troops before your wall gives. At current, 4 bombards will one shot a wall segment.

Edit:

Artillery should also be crewed, so instead of having to eat the entire cannon, you can pick off the guy loading the cannonball, or kill enough of the team to render the cannon useless (similar to how artillery in total war:Napoleon works)

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7

I think this
Bombard:
Siege bonus reduced from 340 to 300 and rof increased from 5.25 to 6. Movement speed reduced from 0.88 to 0.75. Do not change the cost and hp.
Trebuchet:
Wood cost reduced from 500 to 450.
Mangonel:
Movement speed reduced from 0.88 to 0.75.
Springald and nest of bees movement speed reduced from 0.93 to 0.8.
Research “Pulley” movement speed reduced from 20% to 15%.
And all influences like Things like dynasty/yam network/networks no longer affect siege machines.

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8

Sorry to add, Trebuchet’s wood has been reduced from 500 to 450, and the minimum range has been increased from 2.75 to 3, in line with Mangonel.

9

I would like to see siege be given a speed debuff when being torched as well to reward flanking/punish players who let enemy units get into their siege lines.

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10

i also would like to see an increase in pop cost for some siege unit, i would leave the actual cost for spingards, rams and trebuchet and try to increase all the others to 5 cost. Honestly i think it’s the only way to reduce the actual spam, they need to not be worth in high number and only nerfing dmg or att. speed stats could be not the right way to do that. When people see that its impossible to spam them without sacrificing a lot more troops then they’ll stop

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11

With these changes, this seems will switch to Knights spam festival. Knights need to have 2 population too

12

Well i play with no mangans or nest of bee for my personal choice, never had any problem against full spam of knights, they are a problem only if you havent walled strategic points (because they go to sniping your landmarks). It is true however that if you put pressure on an enemy he cant go for a mass knight strategy because he need to defend

13

I’d like to test: workers .5 pop space; infantry/archers 1; cavalry 2; siege 5; navy 20.

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14

I just want to ask why?

15

Also either reduce the range on Chinese bombards or increase the range of culverins and springalds.
Another option could be to have age4 springalds doing extra damage to siege units. They only tickle bombards atm.

16

I rather increase torch damage versus siege by x3, except for scouts (because they already fill way to many roles) and reduce in-combat repair rate to 1/4 or 1/5 of the normal value. If you don’t want your siege to be dunked, use your unit to stand ground around it (or don’t get in a bad position, in the first place). I’m okay with siege being super strong, but it should be also super fragile.

Besides that, I only have a real problem with springalds having the same range as culverins, in Imp. Oh, and Mongols having acess to Improved Siege Engineering and Improved Roller Shutter Triggers, but I think this one is more civ specific.

17

you are dreaming sooooo much. the patch will include minor changes and they would never guide themselves to change things like this by one post here. We have to propose GENERAL AND BROAD changes first.

18

Springalds are a bit too cost effective vs siege IMO.

19

Siege needs to have slower movement, also repair rate needs to be reduced. Less HP for bombards, currently they are tanks, good vs everything, fast and can be repaired faster than it can be damaged by melee units, by just using a handful of villagers.
Siege needs to be powerful, but you have to be careful when using it and need to guard it.

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20

Agreed. Some siege do feel like WWII tanks sometimes. As much as I enjoyed Company of Heroes way back when, it’s silly in AoE sometimes.

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