Hello Everyone.
So, to my understanding - Hill Bonus only increases LOS of units.
I feel like the bonus should be buffed, at least slightly. High ground played major role both in historical battles and in previous AOE. Capturing hills and maintaining them is a staple mark of the series.
I’ve heard someone saying archers gain more range when on a hill and that cavalry can’t charge uphill, but I feel like those statements have no base. Can anyone clarify if thats actually true?
The hill bonus doesn’t have to be strong.
Maybe reduce the range of none siege units that shoot uphill a little (so it doesn’t change the keep vs. siege range balance.)
The bonus doesn’t have to be huge and also doesn’t have to scale linearly with the hight difference.
I mean if the hill bonus is not going to be significant then they might as well leave it as is. I honestly don’t think that we need a hill bonus that is different from what we currently have.
I would prefer a slight buff as well. There have been many good ideas stated so far and I believe, the developers tested many of them already.
There is one idea I haven’t seen so far, which came to mind.
A charge system. Origionally I would have liked a randomized system, but I know people couldn’t accept this in competitive gameplay.
Example1:
Hill_privileged_unit: Every 6th executed attack does one extra (total) damage.*
After the third bonus damage in between 75 seconds, it only takes every 3th attack.
But last only applies for 30 seconds.
Example2:
The same as in Example1, but it starts with every 3th attack and changes to every 6th attack after 20 seconds.
Example3:
Tale_discriminated_unit: Every 6th suffered attack (from above) does one extra (total) damage.
After the third bonus damage in between 75 seconds, it only takes every 3th attack.
But last only applies for 30 seconds.
Example 4:
The same as in Example3, but it starts with every 3th suffered attack (from above) and changes to every 6th attack after 20 seconds.
Of course, there are still many things to consider to avoid abuse and performance issues, if anything like this should ever be edited into the game.
*This may not sound like much, but for non-siege armies this would (naively) roughly translate to a bonus between 0.5 % (handcannoneer vs pikes) and 16 % (bows vs men at arms).
Most times it should be lower, as long as enemy and friendly armies have similar unit numbers, and higher, as long as friendly army has greater unit numbers.
Enemy units need to go close to units, that are on hill/montain/wall, because of the balistic of projectile.
Maybe give range malus on units downhill and more sigth to units that are uphill.
Maybe give a movement malus to units going up hill/montain.
Maybe Cancel cavalery charge going up hill/montain, but give a bonus of velosity to units going down hill/montain, for swordmen/pikemen/cavalery. (More higth alow close combat units to put all their body mass on the sword attack, insted of only swing the sword and alow horse to trample harder or get more damage from pikemen when hose charge down hill toward pikemen)
Hill bonus was great for team games when you are outnumbered and can take a hill. Since in AoE4 maps have plenty of hills i think they should have had some kind of benefit other than just LoS.
Swordmen and cavalery used elevation to give blow to enemy down hill.
Pikemen used spear down hill to give more mass to the charging enemy, allowing pike to pierce the enemy more easely, but the pike would break under that presure when it face cavalery, forcing the pikemen to figth whit sword or daggers.
Hill bonuses would have to be decently subtle imo. This is kinda what in thinking, plus with a small concept for if Incans are ever a thing.
-Cav is unable to charge up steep hills.
-Units going up a steep slope go 15% slower.
-Spears do slightly more damage when stationed by a slope.
-LoS
-Incan bonuses for farms and stone palisades on hills.
It’d be hard to add with generated maps unfortunately.
I’m a bit disappointed it is only LoS. Especially because they said they had iterated on it and bunch and in the end did this because map generations could make it unfair. To me that sounds like they needed to tighten up map generation, not remove terrain bonuses.
The varied terrain looks so great compared to previous AoE games, but it isn’t as relevant as it feels like it should be.
They aren’t true. But it seems they may have been at some point. Now it’s just LoS according to a dev during a showmatch, unless they have changed it again in the final build.