Unless you’re France, it just doesn’t feel right. Without knights, well, you’re screwed. Rams need to carry at least 5 units to work. An empty ram(s) just burning through an early age town with 20+ longbows wasting even horsemen is totally broken.
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I think Rams are way too strong in Age iV tbh.
But the units to make the rams are underwhealming so…
Don’t know that’s only one of a lot of things that are currently weird in age 4. The most weird thing that the whole environment of the game, the atmosphere, is just like you play dragon age, gothic, skyrim or something like this rpg stuff. It’s so weird.
This is still 100% broken. English need siege engineering moved to Age 3 or lose early MAA.
What about HRE?
I would argue that there are only 2 civs right now that struggle the most in feudal age, and these are Abassids and Delhi, and I would still argue that Abassids can make rams really early but defensively are more or less equal to Delhi.
Rather than penalising HRE and English, maybe Delhi and Abassids need buffs
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Chinese struggles until castle.
Just buff horsemen to be a bit better vs light ranged, and allow them to more effectively harass MAA with charges despite being weaker once in combat
The ram rush solve is obvious but they are lazy. Force at least five units in the ram to operate. This removes units that massacre everything else from the field of play while the rams are out. This would force a player to balance their ram count as well. It wouldn’t simply be resource constrained.
I like this one, and then rams wouldn’t have to take population (that for some reason right now is created by infantery?). It doesn’t make sense that the ram manages itself like a robot, in AOE2 it can be explained like the people who moves the ram are already inside when they get out of the workshop, but right now, how do you explain it?
They are nerfing ram hp but increasing ranged armor next patch confirmed on stream. This makes it easier to kill with vills/units but die less fast to late game siege.
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I’m surprised it took an entire thread before someone mentioned this
20+ longbowmen is part of the issue… how much res is invested into this PLUS rams PLUS the tech
But I agree with a lot of others that horsemen in general are not a good enough counter v archers, LB being even worse to deal with in feudal.
With the weaker rams that are coming, I think horsemen should get some pierce armour at least.
And then we should be able to control what TCs and castles shoot at. Instead of this artificial barrier
I hope they don’t nerf the rams to the point that feudal ram rush becomes impossbile.
Longbow doesn’t beat horseman at equal res until like 30-40 longbows, the issue is English get 2 archery ranges as their age-up building, so to get equal res, the defender needs an extra 300 wood invested into stables, not to mention the build time to put the stables up upon age-up.
Long bow ram rush costs a huge amount of wood.
Maybe horsemen just aren’t good enough for their price.
The strat is just ■■■■■■■ lame because the rams are broken and LB counters are non existent for some civs in age 2.
I would agree with this, horsemen are quite terrible at their job compared to spearmen or archers. It actually feels like archers were made with 0 account for the fact that they are a ranged unit and therefore can compliment any other melee unit.
The other problem I have with feudal age is there is literally no counter to Early men at arms, except either early knights or other early men at arms. This leaves literally half the civs with no answer to them. There’s a few ways you could fix this, either lower their ranged armor (for the early versions at least) or maybe just give everyone early men at arms. or both! in AoE2 rushing men at arms is fully counterable by archers, but not in aoe4.
I’ve seen many people struggle vs Longbow + ram push when this push is just a delay into your eco and if you’re open you’re definitely going to receive damage, where as if you prepare it is relatively easy to stop
So Ideally the moment you scout council of hall you should plan to make another scout or leave a scout in a position where you can continuously scout his base and also knowing when he drops the blacksmith while also getting information as to how many longbows he’s massing.
If this is done right you should be able to drop 1 or 2 towers while aging up. Build a stable as soon as you age and use towers + horseman to deny any damage he can do, As game progresses you need a 2nd TC to be able to have enough vills to siege down his only ram or 2 rams and as you see him add a blacksmith or a barrack add a 2nd stable probably a 3rd, just enough so that you can spam vills off 2 tc and continuously make 2 or 3 horse,
If you’re able to hold he will try to age and your plan should be the same, Age up earlier or follow him.
After you’ve been able to hold, understanding what army comps he can make and what you can do. English can go LB+PIke + springalds or LB+lancer + springalds
Whatever the english decides to do, Against them Magonels are always a must, You need at least 1 or 2. The rest should be springalds / Mass horseman to deal with his springalds so that your can use mangonels and or depending how game is going you can mix in maa and crossbowmans.
While doing all this, From the very early stages of the game. Towers will always be useful as you can make them into springalds/canons and you can bait him to fight into you while you take map control else where or force him to take bad fights.
When fighting vs the English, Infantry wise it is not smart to clash army vs army, unless you’re hard wining on siege or are defending under many towers.
The other exception is if you were able to do a lot of damage with the early horseman at his base or delay him, Then you could go for pick offs. Say a couple of horseman in the back picking off archers 1 by 1,
The one that opens horseman has more room to be proactive than the one who starts with longbow as he has a slow army comp which can’t really break into 3 or 4 towers.
In the case you get to face MAA + ram push which is the only unit that is hard to deal with in the feudal age. If you scouted this very early, Tower + horseman + archer is a very nice way of dealing vs this plus some villies and force him to follow while you kite him down. also as stated above, Horseman have better chances at picking of things around the map where he has to only focus his attack in 1 place
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We can add MAA rush with White Tower going up outside the base to the list of total English horse ■■■■. My god there are a lot of way to cheese in this game. Kind of turning me off.
There are so many balance issues early with the way they have treated “early units” and how the armor mechanic works.
At least building MAA heavily delays getting to the white tower and it is a risky strategy. Tbh hard to really describe how to play vs early MAA because it seems punishing for the average player but pros consider early MAA to be bad so you never see how to properly counter it. An annoying conundrum tbh.
The best tip is honestly make sure you scout what resources and buildings he’s getting. If english player is heavy on gold he’s probably going for age 3 or MAA. TBH an english player needs like 40+ vills before he can constant produce out of barracks and council hall. Full army is extraordinarily expensive so if you don’t lose too many vills or your TC you are very ahead.
Realistically I think you could keep things sorta the way they are if you moved longbows to age III. Rams could use a health debuff, think I saw somewhere they take 30 torches to kill 1 which should be lowered and allow for a buff later game (add it to the tech that buffs ram/treb damage).
I think its lame to move units to age III, Im not rly sure how to fix it other than moving them out. Maybe buff light cav or reduce raw DPS early longbow?
On stream rams were confirmed to be receiving a health nerf with a pierce armor buff (ie they die faster to torches but goal is to make them survive siege and crossbows better).
Idk how moving longbows to age 3 would work, council hall would have to be reworked and would regular archers upgrade to longbows?