ok I could do a better job in denying resources, probably.
But how come when I’m already in his base with 70 army and he has only 1 landmark and a keep, how did I loose? It is just mind blowing, how can one loose a game when the opponent is so dead as he was?
The only thing I think that would work is to create 10 rams, since I almost took his Berkshire Palace with my 3 rams if you saw.
Btw, I couldn’t build keeps as I’m Mongols.
He was not dead. He didn’t have any army but plenty of villagers and (defensive) buildings.
In my opinion there’s two options:
As you said you can build more rams and protect them very carefully + repair with villagers. Before going after landmarks you should go for production buildings though. Just make sure that he really is not able produce anything that counters your units anymore as for example springalds. Only go for landmarks if you are 100% sure that you can beat your opponent or/and if the landmark is very important for his strategy.
Take advantage of your map control. You had plenty of cavalry which is highly mobile so just keep your opponent away from gathering any ressources that are not located within his base. You can also raid positions nearby or in his base but make sure you only hit spots with limited or no protection by keeps, landmarks, TCs and ideally towers.
Generally speaking it would be best to follow approach 1 and 2 at the same time but that certainly requires some skill and APM and thus can easily backfire. Also take sacred sites etc…
As for the keeps as mongols: Your right, I didn’t consider that.
You sound like you know the game very well, would you mind share you rank in case you playing ranked?
I don’t play ranked. And if I did I wouldn’t land a far above average rank. I’ve pretty much stopped playing this game competitively in february due to defensive macro game design. If you want to learn the game just watch big tournaments on twitch and/or youtube e.g. here.
Yes I’m really with you about this one, it’s so pity actually, because it has the potential.
Your sentence that he was not dead because “he still had villagers and defensive buildings” is the root issue.
Because I really think a keep should be taken by 10-15 knights when the opponent has no army left, it doesn’t make any sense that 800 resources building can kill 20 knights before it dies that costs in total like 5k resources, it’s even pissing me off so bad while I’m writing this fact, a keep with no army to defend it should be taken down by 15 knights max.
i think you’re missing some of the core elements of what make the English so popular. As a civilization, they are touted as having extremely strong defense and economic benefits. They are designed to be easier to play in some regards, by allowing the player to have a strong home base for situations exactly like this.
Without watching your game, it feels like you’re expecting all keeps to be the same and not considering anything about the unique civ-specific buildings (ie China and English having extremely strong defenses). Aside from the advice that has already been provided, i would suggest that you venture out and try playing other civilizations to better understand the in’s and out’s of how they play. This will allow to you better see where they shine, and where they are vulnerable.
Attacking into an English base with a landmark TC and a Berkshire Palace is a very bold decision without having a definitively overwhelming level of military support. This is the kind of move that likely requires multi-prong harassment and constant unit production flooding in to support your push and keep your enemy busy. Mongols can be strong in a deathball, but they really shine when a player can leverage their mobility to maintain tempo across the entire game (and less on a single decisive engagement).
Regardless of how the game feels frustrating, there is a way to learn how to handle everything. It just takes time, and the only way you don’t learn is if you give up. Keep pushing, keep trying, and keep finding new ways to get ahead of your opponent!
I don’t mind anything about the game, but I really think keeps and landmark keeps simply doing too much damage.
As I see it, keeps supported by army should prevent the opponent from taking the base easily and slow him down by a little, but if the opponent simply lost all of his army in battle, the keeps should not hold into 20 knights that costs 5K resources, and definitely should not completely deny the attack, you keep telling me guys “attacking landmarks and keeps not good idea”, but what if we had a game where keeps supports army but not acting as an army by themselves, in our game 1 keep is stronger than almost any army, you can’t torch down a keep, I want the ability to loose knights and destroy a keep. it’s just doesn’t make any sense that the damage is so high to take a whole army down even without any support of units.
you’re only going to see so much success when you avoid the strengths of the civ you play, and dive headfirst into opponents strongest defenses instead
I just hit plat and im sitting with a 62% Winrate.
More trebs, and better micro on your units wins you this game.
When i was in silver/gold and people would slap a keep in front of my army to protect their base. My biggest hurdle, and seems like yours, is making sure you have the right units to defend your attack.
Preemptively make 4 or 5 springalds, as Mongals with an army this should be fairly easy, and add more trebs as you begin your assault You have 2 in the image, which will take forever to kill a keep, and never will win if they are repairing. Springalds counter Springalds, and Springalds are the only way he kills your trebs. If you see him pullin up, walk yours forward and start shooting. Even if they targets a treb or two, you should be able to wipe them and just rebuild/continue your assult.
Or you can awlays walk around the keep and hit from a new angle instead of facesmashing into it, but in the case if Berkshire, you have to take it down.
Now, on to Berkshire itself: It is a very strong landmark designed to stop exactly what you are doing, facemashing into it. Maybe the angle of the image is weird but it looks like you are WAY too close to that thing, even your trebs seem in range of it. Take it slow, build towers for vision. You are not in a hurry if he has no army. Think of how they seiged cities back then. It wasn’t done in 30min, it took literally days and weeks.
It is objectively false to say this game favors defensive turtling as a strategy. Sure, a majority of low level players default to it, but even then, they do it poorly because they just aren’t that good. The issue is that it isn’t punished quickly enough by the more aggressive players in the same bracket, so it just wins by default. Maybe Teamgames are more turtley, but this sounds like a 1v1 situation.
With the repair cost changed to stone, and the overall stone reduced in a revent patch, making normal keeps is nich less powerful than before purely because the sustainability isn’t there. Very few games at the higher levels go into imperial, and if they do, it isn’t very long before the game is done anyway.
More barracks/stables so you can replensih your army as it dies. Build units AS your old ones die in the attacks, not after they are gone. Keep the pressure on, and eventually they will crack. Think of it like breaking a diamond, not an egg. Constantly increaseing pressure slowly, not swiftly smacking it once.
Thanks for the advices, I think 10 rams could be the best here since he had no army at all, and the only thing to kill my rams with is villagers - which I really want him to do.
In the picture it’s all orange color, everything is his army, it’s a very late into the game picture, after I was giving him tons of time to create new army because I just couldn’t enter his base and deny it.
Just note that before this picture all he had is the keeps and landmarks, with no army what so ever.
But he could kill my trebs because my micro sucks and he could sneak in 1 springald.
My point of favor defense is like I said, 800 resources structure, how many resources it can take down by itself before it dies, 5K sounds right? To me it doesn’t, all I say here, is AOE4 desperately needs to buff torch damage against keeps, I really think 20 knights should take down a keep with torches, a keep should support an army, right now it acts like an entire 100 units army that can be taken down by only siege, which is wrong imo.
Makes more sense.
This is simply not true though. A single trebuchet will kill a keep if left alone to do so, and they are much cheaper than the keep (550 resources). If you have two, its more than the keep, but it’ll die very fast without repairs, which currently is more stone investment into that same keep. So over time the keep can cost morenthan those 2 trebs, etc.
Exactly as I said above, siege is the only way to take it down, I just think that together with siege if the keep is unguarded it should fall down also to torch damage of melee units, and yes - this will cause the enemy to loose the game if he lost all of his army and has only keeps left, I think this is a better design than the current one, which giving him way too much time to recover from any attack due to the time it takes to create the siege and get the resources to kill the keeps
If a handful of knight can kill a keep it would literally never be worth the investment. You’d need to make them cheaper if that was the case, and then it’d just be a glorified outpost
are you serious? I suggest that a keep that costs 800 stone will kill 15-20 knights before it’s going down when completely unguarded, this is 800 resources trade for 5000 resources, you really saying there is no point of investing in this deal? It’s still OP actually even with my suggestion, but today it’s just unstoppable completely for anything but siege, I just say taking it down with units should be somehow possible with reasonable casualties.
It is possible if you flood it with 60 imperial knights or something, but the entire point of the structure is to secure a location against units, and it is hard countered by bombard/trebuchets. If you could kill it with 20 knights there would be almost 0 reason to have these siege engines in the game at all.
This games entire playloop is building units to counter the opponent. You don’t have to like it, but keeps are not overpowered, they just counter units HEAVILY and are literally useless against long-range siege units.
If they were as strong as you say, every game would be a wonder victory whith 3 keeps protecting it.
I’m not saying they can’t be frustrating to play against sometimes, but with the correct knowledge and appropriate execution they are handled just as anything esle in the game is. With a counter.
There are two ways to finish an opponent.
One is to create army and go for big push. But in this case its turtle vs push. You don’t wanna give opponent any chance to expand on anywhere else. You have army and they don’t. Don’t let them breathe. Isolate all resources. If they are able to defend and turtle the game is already over. You either need to turtle even more than him i.e going 3 TC.
Second is bleeding the enemy. Its about picking off villagers and preventing them from gathering resources. Causing a lot of idle time. You don’t wanna push with army. Your army should be mobile e.g horsemen or knights and you wanna attack from different angles. Forcing micro idle time and investment in static defenses. You can do mongol dark age horsemen rush or feudal horsemen/knight push with french etc. You can boom behind while you distract the enemy and go for kill in late game.
I take down keeps with infantry and cavalry quite often. The fact that you are deadlocked on this concept is preventing you from growing to overcome your obstacle. 15-20 knights is not going to be a good trade, but you’d be surprised to see how much faster it goes down when you scale your military numbers higher.
You’re simply arguing that you believe it should be different, but the reality is that you need to learn how to play the game properly. As previously mentioned, keeps are stationary units - if you lose cavalry into them, that’s unfortunately almost entirely on you at some point. Try leveraging your lancers for raids or multi-pronged attacks to keep your opponent busy while you build siege. Or simply keep your cavalry behind your siege until you are able to trim down some health on the keeps.
Learn to adapt to the challenge, don’t just say the game needs to be changed because the way you prefer to play isn’t working. Especially as you faceplant into one of the strongest defensive landmarks in the whole game.
Keep evolving friend.
Usually in a RTS game you have some kind of rock paper scissor system when it comes to rush turtle boom tactics. But in AoE4 literally every civ can turtle while booming very well, some civ’s are even designed for doing exactly that. With every TC you get another defensive structure that can garrison villagers and shoot arrows with a 100 % accuracy (turtle) but also produce additional villagers (boom). Also those TC’s usually do not need to be placed at highly exposed positions in the middle of the map. I think that we also have to take into consideration the overall pace of the game. In my opinion a slow pace benefits a defensive playstyle even more because he’s got lots of time to find a proper reaction to a raid e.g. garrison villagers in TC’s or towers. If we compare this game with Starcraft 2 I think it favours turtle/boom over rush/all in strategies.
Sure, the game isn’t about massing Roaches or Stalkers and microing them like SC2, it’s more abou5 diversity of military, how you micro groups of units, not necessarily each unit individually, etc.
And sure there are FAR mor defensive structures in this game than SC2 as well, which allows for better turtling.
But in 1v1’s turtling can be easily punished. If you build army, and push out into the map, you can cut them off from the resources then need to keep booming. You just need to be proactive about it and identify their boom to react to it.
@Calerb @WailfulLynx233 @ZdsAlpha
You are giving me advices how to win from the position I was in which are all true.
But I’m talking about the design, when you face an opponent who doesn’t have any army because he played bad with bad macro & army compositions the entire game, then he builds 1 defensive Landmark (Berkshire Palace) with a huge range covering his entire base (which is annoying by itself), you giving him an option to produce gold out of his farms as well, and suddenly my 60 units very expensive army is worth nothing anymore, the exact moment I saw him going from age 3 to 4 I knew how ■■■■■■ I’m.
Building 1 single defensive building, forcing me to transition completely from melee & ranged units into springalds and trebs, suddenly in one move he can make my attack completely denied, forcing me to invest thousands of thousands of resources on siege ONLY, like all my army is not there, and then we starting from the beginning because it’s a siege battle.
And I ask you if that’s a good design, I don’t think it is imo.
I think a good design is to slow my attack down, and scare my army away only if he has an army to protect the keep with!!
but if he has nothing? Absolutely nothing except this stupid landmark?
I should win guys, the game should be done, why forcing me to take over the whole map and building siege, this is just frustrating, why I need to spend 5k resources now on siege? it doesn’t make sense he can delay the game by 5-10 minutes only by building 1 building which is usually costs only 800 resources.