Gunpowder civs. should have AoE III-like cannons as far as historically possible

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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One of the best parts of AoE III is for sure artillery. Cannons are really strong. When AoE III cannons defeat enemies, the corpses even fly back. The stronger the firepower, the further away the corpses go. AoE IV (medieval) artillery can’t be that strong, but surely it can be stronger than how it has been done in AoE II.

In AoE II gunpowder is mostly underwhelming. Even in post-imp. it’s not obvious a gunpowder civ. will want to massively go for it. The bombard cannon, the game’s most expensive unit!, is a pure counter unit, completely unworthy (too frail and expensive) to be used against non-siege units. Hand canonneers aren’t even always preferable to (fully upgraded but otherwise generic) arbalests to deal with infantry, which is really weird (see Hand Cannoneers bad state confirmed).

I’d like to see in AoE IV at least specialised gunpowder civs., like the Chinese, to train cannons which are capable to do actual damage in the way of being able to one-shot most infantry units.
Right now, in the published game footage, this doesn’t seem to be the case. Cav. archers did fall due to gunpowder, but it’s unclear how often they already got shot at.

Truly strong gunpowder (against non-cav. units) can be balanced through different means: a long reload time (AoE II & III); a huge elephant-like cost and training time (AoE II & III); different pop-space (AoE III; also already AoE II with the karambit warrior); or even maybe a training limit (eg no more than six heavy cannons at the same time). At last, it’s no problem if some rare, strongest infantry units, can survive one cannon shot, as that’s already the case in AoE III.

At last, it’s noticeable that AoE II gunpowder that’s already available in Castle Age is used and is strong. So gunpowder in AoE IV should imo also be available with also beefy stats in Castle Age - at least for specialised gunpowder civs like the Chinese.

Edit: Originally I was only thinking about the civ. identity of AoE IV Chinese, which is amongst others “strong gunpowder”. But considering AoE IV wants to be historically accurate and that Chinese apparently didn’t have at that period of time strong cannons, I have to adapt. If there’s another gunpowder-heavy civ. in AoE IV which also had at that time of history strong cannons (be it at the launch of AoE IV or in a future DLC), then I’d like it to have strong cannons which feel much more AoE III-like than AoE II-like. :slight_smile:
Perhaps the French? First their presence in AoE IV is like 99 % sure and secondly cannons significantly helped them win the Hundred Year’s war after all. According to a sourced sentence in wikipedia, “The French artillery developed a reputation as the best in the world”.

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I’m not sure the power of AoE III cannons lends itself to the gameplay II or IV. It is yet to be seen, but it seems like combat matches more closely with AoE II, and a cannon that is that power would easily become the most important unit.

The bombards in AoE III dominated the game in a way I really did not want them to. I loved AoE III but having my armies mowed down by three cannons or even mowing down opponents armies with three cannons always seemed cheap.

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According to the historical setting of the game, the latest setting of China is the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty gunpowder army is a relatively primitive prototype of gunpowder army, obviously can not have the power of the AOE3 gunpowder army. From this point of view, I think this setting of gunpower in AOE4 is very historic real.

In fact, the real gunpowder weapon of mass destruction acquired by the late Ming Dynasty, the red-coated cannon, was purchased from the Portuguese, and if such weapons were put into the game, it would be obvious that the European and Asian countries of this period should have the same gunpowder force. Take Indian civilization as an example, the Mughal Dynasty, which was contemporary with the late Ming Dynasty, has armed one thousand of field artillery, 20 thousands professional musket troops, and the size of gunpowder troops far exceeds that of the Ming Dynasty in China. If the game is set in this way, it will bring the game completely enter the category of AOE 3, which is obviously not what the development team wants to see.

To sum up, I think it is very scientific and in line with historical reality to limit Chinese gunpowder troops to the embryonic stage of early gunpowder weapons in the game.

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If you’re looking for gunpowder armies of mass destruction, for both the sake of the game’s setting and historical authenticity, I think you can look forward to the Turkish civilization. In the 15th century, they already had the Urban Connon,which had 0.8 meter caliber, 17 ton weight. I’m really looking forward to this monster weapon in AOE 4.

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