I agree, also their updates take quite a while to research on top of the already mentioned cost.
Tbh Trebuchets shouldn’t be in Castle Age or should be an extremely nerfed version of it.
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Definitely walls and keeps need more hitpoints
The other major problem is that bombards are OP. I’d always build like 4-5 of them and level everything very quickly.
Strengthening the keeps and walls isn’t enough. I think bombards should have their damage reduced against buildings
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Well, there is some key feature missing in the game, and it make unbalanced for the keep.
Oil:
-When reseached, oil should make enemy unit run away in painfull burn, when castle drop oil.
-Units in ram should be push out of ram, when oil fall, and should run away of castle, whit painfull burn.
Fire arrow:
-When reseached, castle should fire fire arrows.
-Fire arrow should set seige weapon on fire, and be devastating on units whit oil on them.
Cavalery charge:
-Well, when cavalery charge, land units should be push and trample, to let place for the Cavalery, unless it is siege weapons or pikemen. It would allow deffender to hit and run for the trebuchet. Maybe have a raid units in the castle, to do the job?
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I do think buffs to Keeps would be appropriate, and some more reasons to build walls, even a small circuit, around them (ie a castle proper!). As it is right now, Keep range makes it very difficult to wall around them without severely compromising its effectiveness.
- Greater range, but no greater vision range (need units to target spot at long range) for the Keep.
- For particular Keeps and other unit production buildings behind the walls within a short distance, allow them to produce units atop these walls directly.
- Walls reduce Keep damage sustained from siege weapons that fire over them (rather than destroying the wall segment).
- Allow units on walls themselves to pour boiling oil on Rams and units passing beneath the walls to swarm the Keep.
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Valid points all around. I agree This is NOT AOE2 So dont try to play it as if it was. 
Oh dear. Maybe you should try and read a few books. Preferably about medieval buildings. 
Maybe you should try to understand my comment more before making smartass comments.
I’ve heard that walls actually block projectiles now.
I haven’t thought about that actually, Ill definitely try walling around my keeps when I get a hold of the game.
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Its amazing that aoe4 fixed the slow, boring campy playstyle of aoe2. THere’s nothing more boring than forever lasting treb and castle fights in aoe2. Its one of the major reasons aoe2 is so unappealing to me
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It’s interesting to me that people made significant enough use of trebs in aoe4 that they are getting mentioned…
They compare very unfavourably the second you get bombards.
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Their range is still insane( a good thing) and their cost is several hundred resources cheaper than bombards.
The main problem is they come too early. Bombards only show up in Imperial age.
The question is what the purpose of keeps is supposed to be
Are they supposed to just be a safe spot for your villagers or are they supposed to give map control. Right now it probably makes more sense to just spam more TC’s instead.
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map control. Protect your resourcese and allow army to move away without losing all vils to raid. They are not supposed to be a replacement for real army
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Yeah during the stress test I tried to make some walls around my castles and it was just so darn difficult. I wish there was a way for wall to merge with castles in some way… like a extra stone layer of wall where you can put archers are.
That would be incredibly cool. And perhaps it will boost the protection of the keep by having a secondary layer around the keep that you can always build back up.
The castles are always facing one way on a square grid anyways so walls will know how to wrap around the keep if they are built on or around the keep. Kind of how Walls know how to merge with mountains by adding that extra bit of wall.
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I know walls block things like arrows, and I’ve seen them block mangonel shots. Unsure about bombard shots and unless I’m mistaken Trebuchet shots ignore them.
While Bombards have excellent range and damage against buildings, slow units, and siege weapons alike, Trebuchets have unparalleled range for sieging despite coming much earlier in the tech tree.
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I think its fine if trebuchets fire over the walls. They seem to be the only kind of siege that can do that, which i think gives people incentive to use them.
They do come too early though and I think it should take a little bit longer for even a trebuchet to take a keep down.
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I think that’d be fine, yeah.
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A keep by itself is easy to kill but with effective long range anti siege units and repair rates that feel much faster a defended castle is way harder to deal with.
I personally find it fun that towers and castle are a bit less of a static defense and more of an active defense.
I like the discussion in this thread, and I agree with the overall sentiment. However, even though the fortifications are slightly underwhelming, I have a feeling that it’s just the siege units are overtuned. Perhaps nerfing the siege units could help balance things out a bit more, both against buildings and other units.
To be frank, I’m less concerned about these balance changes because they will eventually get to a proper state once the game gets going. 
That said, I’m more concerned about the game design choice of Castles being able to make every unit in the game. I think it should be more specialized, because then we’ll most likely get a lot of cheese strategies that are viable because the game is too lenient when it comes to unit construction (not to mention that certain landmarks double as a Castle and all-in-one production building as well).
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Yeah its hard to say really.
And we even saw drastic balance changes between the Closed and open betas.
We shall see how balance changes later on into the game’s release.
It would be nice if we were only able to recruit a unique castle, maybe even some siege instead of just every unit.
If im not mistaken some civs couldn’t even recruit units from their keeps.