Make rams only effective against walls, towers and docks.
and
Remove the damage bonus of Grand Bombard and give it greater range instead. Range would be much more useful to this unit than damage.
Thanks!
Small things to add.
Increase ram pop space to 2. Allow it to target siege weapons.
Great bombards lose splash and infantry bonus. It really never was used as field artillery. Just turn it into a gunpowder hui hui pao with a faster fire rate and bigger anti/building ship bonus.
I dont agree with that, i think ram should be able to attack any building. Why would it be only walls and towers? Doesn’t make any sense.
Ram pop 2 could be fine if the balance ask for it. Personally at platinum rank I see zero problem with rams as they are. I also think the great bombard are fine, they’re like a mix of bombard and mangonel and are quite useful.
Here is an opinion everyone will hate;
Make Rams require infantry to work. Currently, every civilization can pump out Rams like there is no tomorrow with no questions asked.
But, what if those very same infantry had to enter it in order for it to move/attack?
Make it proportional to how many are inside; more infantry, more damage.
This would limit how many Rams a player would put out there, as well as reduce the potential damage (as infantry wouldn’t be torching at the same time).
No one wants this because it’d be a pain in the ass to control. So here is an actual suggestion;
Remove Siege Engineering from all civilizations except Mongols and Abbasid. Allow Mongols to tech it, and allow Abbasids to keep their passive.
Unlock Siege Workshops in Feudal, and limit the production to only Rams. This will limit the amount of Rams a player can produce by the amount of production buildings he has nearby/afar. It will also give the other player a chance to react and tear down nearby Siege Workshop buildings rather than having to win the battle by defeating every single infantry.
This solves the fundamental problem because right now, an attacker can “set up production” by having 3 - 6 infantry producing Rams while his main army deters attackers. This makes it really hard for defenders to beat, and causes a snowball effect where eventually they lose to hundreds of Rams.
So instead of that, forcing players to build a Feudal Siege Workshop will make this decision an actual risk on the attacker’s side, and give the space for defenders to react if they are good with scouting. And production would be limited to the amount of Workshops they build–these are expensive buildings that share resources with other infantry, so depending on the attacker’s strategy, he could choose between creating more Rams or more Infantry.
No one wants to listen to this suggestion for the fear that it will slow down the game. But, the current Ram snowball is really boring and makes the game feel less interactive in terms of decision making.
Unless you are conqueror level, your rank has zero bearing in how I take your ideas into consideration…
With that said, you offered very little solution to what is in my opinion am area of balancing that needs improvement.
Right now, one barely needs bombards or trebs because one can just build rams.
Springalds do too little damage to rams imho
There are many problems which I can’t go into right now, but just look it up on YouTube…
Your solution of possibly increasing ram pop to 2 is meager at best.
I think if there was one thing to change about the Great Bombard, it would be to slightly reduce the rate of fire time. It is an expensive Late Game unit and it is logical that it costs to produce it.
Regarding the Late Game Ram issue. I think they are slightly weak in Early and slightly strong in Late. A lot of people’s favorite option is to put it at 2 pop, although I would add that the infantry units inside the ram should give it a bit more attack and speed.
Of course, if the battering ram is nerfed in Late Game, this has to be paired with a Rework to the Springald and the culverin. There should be no “anti-siege” siege units in AoE4.