How to make the mongols MORE of a cavalry archer civ?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

I am a big mongol fan… and I hate hate HATE that traditional tactics are more successful with the mongols than going cavalry archer/scouts.

What do I mean? Well, which is a better army that wins more often? A bunch of say 15 pikemen and 15 archers defending 10 cannons? Or 60 of any combination of mangudai/scouts? The cannons will win most of the time against an ai in the long run, because cannons have an incredibly good exchange rate against other units 1v1 unless they are overwhelmed, and mongol horsemen… do not. So, what is to be done?

  1. The mongol cannon is too strong for their civ. They might even need for it to be removed if it can’t be properly nerfed. That said, the thought of dragging a cannon on horseback across the steppes is kinda ridiculous, and although the mongols DID use cannons on occasion in ship battles and in defenses, they didn’t lug around artillery. https://factsanddetails.com/asian/cat65/sub423/item2696.html The mongol army used gunpowder primarily as an explosive NOT as propellant.

  2. The mangudai are not strong enough. First, they are not maneuverable enough. Many times in combat, the mangudai will either lag a bit in catching their targets unless the khan activates his speed boost, or they will get caught by a charging enemy and actually take a few hits from melee mounted units. The counter to mangudai are archers. If you use mounted units, you should be taking steady losses vs mangudai if you chase them. Lastly the mangudai need slightly more damage in the early game, and all mongol cavalry need a passive healing factor in all stages of the game, and mangudai in particular need more health or armor late game.

  3. The scout role and the horseman role overlap too strongly. I think that mongols could use an evolution system to make them more mobile and to potentially ensure that they always get their units. Mongol archers could use an evolve ability to pay some food and gold (and time) to become a mangudai. Mongol scouts could evolve into horsemen, and mongol horsemen could then evolve into lancers. Every evolution is merely the difference in cost and time between training the units.

  4. The mongol econ is weighted far too heavily towards food lategame. They need a food dump. Ideally, they could dump that extra food into researching.

  5. The mongol scout eagles are far underutilized. What would be AMAZING is if there was a tech that could have food dumped into it in order to increase the duration of eagle sight, or perhaps even keep it permanent. Perhaps even tie the eagles back to animism and shamanism? For example, scouts release eagles, but any shaman could use an ability to reactivate all the eagle vision? And if you had say 5 shamans who used the ability on repeat, then the eagle vision would be permanent?

  6. The yam network is really cool. However, building the outposts takes time (and a builder) It would be nice if the scouts could drop off a builder who would build the outpost to extend the yam network, and then be consumed. The yam network needs a visual of its coverage. Also, it really needs to influence cavalry and mangudai more than it currently does. (not in combat though)

2 Likes
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Agree with pretty much everything you have said here.

You’d expect mongols to be an early game powerhouse thanks to the ovoo 2x build, but TC’s and outposts are just too OP and mangudai too weak to really do anything. Mangudai range should be 1 less than archers not 2 and should match them late game and should do more damage. They should also be able to outrun all but normal horseman who should be the same speed! I also think they should do siege/fire damage to buildings rather than just shoot useless arrows.

Late game Lancers and Mangudai should be an extremely strong combo with siege but they just aren’t. Like Paladin were capable of taking fights against their counters without melting instantly.

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Tbh AOE4 doesn’t looks like a certain specific unit type gameplay. I like this direction personally. As Mongols or any other civs, you can go any build you like. You will miss certain unit type bonuses but still can win the game with non-cavalry build without an issue. In AOE2 you have nerfs which makes many builds difficult (For example Spanish player going Archer build essentially means you lost the game).

I would say they can slightly reduce the Ovoo stone cost for cavalry or something that. Their Mangudai and others aren’t bad actually. A slightly more push in that maybe good.