The French are really fun to play, I hope they don’t nerf them too much on their combat mechanics (I love the healing paladins).
If they want to keep it, early paladins, or paladins healing in feudal needs to be out. The sheer ■■■■■■■ utility of it all is just insane. Imagine getting the best unit in the game early. Now imagine that EACH unit has a monk riding on it’s back that can keep up with it. (BEFORE THE OPPONENT CAN HAVE MONKS)
AOE2 has both these balancing decisions but AOE4 gives them both to one civ and cranks it up to 11. (Spanish have Missionaries which can keep up with a mounted unit. Burgundians have early Cavalier (not in an age where nobody can get the Knight line even, like AOE4 pallys in the feudal age, just Knight to Cav in castle instead of imp).
It’s VERY imbalanced. More imbalanced than other infamous AOE balancing decisions like Obsidian Arrows. They’d need some serious curtailing but AOE4 doesn’t withhold standardized techs from any civs so something like castle or imperial age weapon upgrades not being able to be researched would never happen. Balancing this while still making it matter (IE don’t just give Paladins Horseman stats in Feudal or limit healing to the point of being a nonfactor) sounds next to impossible given the framework of AOE4. From healing your army without any gold sunk on monks to being able to retreat and grow stronger from it to countering feudal age spears with a cavalry unit, all backed up by strong, passive eco bonus is such an extreme advantage that nothing else in the series 1-4+M really compares to.
MAYBE if French got Delhi’s not early game eco and Delhi got French’s “just good” eco bonuses things would workable.
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Age 4 has much higher power spikes than Age 2. Perhaps the current balance, with fast Villager production, favours the French too much (but we need to see how the Genesis tournament ends after all).
But, for example, Abbasids can quickly get Villagers at a ridiculous price, and they can spam pikes and make sturdy Rams at any time. So in a not-so-distant balance patch, they could be so OP that the French Healing Paladins are nothing. You can’t compare healing Paladins in Feudal as if the French were the only civ with impressive bonuses.
A similar thing could be said about the English Longbowmen, with auto-healing + teleporting pikes, and Castle Landmarks that increase attack speed A LOT. Also in a near future, they could deathball (sniping everything) and push with Rams to victory in early Castle at the latest. Or even better than Rams, they could just sit with a forward castle + trebuchets near your base. The balance in Age 4 is a lot more dynamic and fun 
… in the overall context, Healing Paladins have a lot more place than you make it sound like.
Lol 90% french is the one picked, what else is needed ? Do you think pros pick French because they like it? They just want the money
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I was only mentioning that the game needs to be adjusted, but the French aren’t that many changes away from losing (or sharing) the S-tier spot. A lot of civs could have impressive strategies, that might be unlocked with only a few modifications.
For those who dont play competitive online the patch is not indispensable for now. Also a change in balance is hard to test.
But yeah, it will happen at some point. I’ve seen a expert player showing how to beat the super powerful French, but I havent watched the video yet.
How on earth is that becoming obvious? We haven’t even had our first patch yet. Obviously they are going to be making balance changes as time goes on.
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Likely a patch wouldnt drop until next week. They’re collecting data from the Genesis Tournament as well. French is definitely OP but we already knew that. My prediction is that chivalry tech gets moved to castle, gambesons tech nerfed to +2 or +3 melee armor, removal of Hulk in Feudal, removal of free melee blacksmith upgrade, removed drop off building cost reduction, TC bonus decreased. That would make their feudal knights more in check and a slower eco ramp up.
Rus will probably get a few nerfs. Golden gate stone trade reduced to 100, so you dont have double TC almost instantly at Feudal, small bounty nerf for hunting cabins, probably a small nerf to streltsy price and changing High Armory springald tech from 1.5+ range to something else like faster firing.
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Oh god I hope feudal hulk is removed.
I think on land they should start by moving chivalry to age3 and removing the free attack upgrade from the blacksmith and if that doesn’t work then tweak some of their other bonuses. That will definitely stop players from taking what would normally be favourable trades since they won’t have the ability to heal up that much
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. However in your case, the mistake was not playing french in this game called age of franks 4 feudal knights
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Haha I mean people keep repeating this, but you’re simply repeating something you heard.
Explain how this is logical.
It’s courtesy to who? Some people who focused only on playing a broken civ to win a tourney?
“Guys we won’t change the doping laws because we want to be courteous to the 8 athletes who have been doping”
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Cool man, let us know how it goes and how we can all suddenly be the viper… thanks for that
Again these echo chamber comments. You don’t need to test jack. Simply reduce the French eco bonuses. They won’t suddenly become unusuable…
The equivalent of dopage in a game like aoe is macro cheating, playing french is not cheating so your comparison make absolutly no sort of a beginning of a sens.
And by the way, what is called “dopage” is definit by the rule and in fact the rule dont change during an event, so if at the begining of a sport event, a molecule is allowed, it can’t be called “dopage”. SO yea “dopage” rules don’t change during an event but at the end of it.
It’s obvious because they released their game in this state. I know you love to see this game as a magical service product. But it is not. They had a release date and this is the balance we got in the final game. So it is worth of criticism. Nobody needs to wait for any post-launch patches to do so.
There is not even an official roadmap suggesting upcoming post-launch changes.
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Please actually read.
Also the French being strong isn’t equivalent to doping or cheating. Tone down the hyperbole.
Let’s 200k people wait for some “unofficial” tourney ends.
If I announce the next tourney in the next weekend, we wont have patches for an month, or what?
Anyway, devs should make statement, not some random people on the forum.
Good luck, try getting the biggest Aoe pros to join your tournament. You are aware there is a $20k prize pool right?
Obviously you should only take our speculation with a grain of salt. I don’t intend for you to take my theorizing as objective truth.
They don’t need to collect immense amount of data to fix basic stuff like Prelates not doing their basic stuff properly/at all.
The fact that they work under Microsoft doesn’t help at all. They need to go through a certification process for every simple hotfix.
here is the video, he has to use abbasids
CÓMO VENCER a FRANCIA: la FACCIÓN MÁS ROTA de AGE OF EMPIRES 4 - YouTube
There is something called patience, I see so many people loosing their minds for not seeing a patch two weeks after the release of the game. And I love all the people who suddenly has become an expert of how fast a patch should come out post-launch and how “easy” it’s to just implement it.
I’m sure a patch is coming and we can just but wait for now. The important thing is that once the patch comes it solves all the priority issues, that’s all that matters.