Make Counters and Defensive Buildings Great Again (lol)

Hey, guys! First of all: congratulations on last patch! I honestly feel that it should have came much earlier, but it is a good step in the right direction. I love Retold and my only goal is to discuss ways to make the game being fun for everyone!

This topic is inspired in IamMagic last Wishlist video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I6vPN7wIcw), but I mention a few more important thing here:

1- We all agree Retold has many fun things and excellent improvements compared to The Titans and Extended Edition.
2- I would risk to say that more than 90% of playerbase agrees that Retold is too much “1 big fight win” and that there are many GPs that can end a game in “one click”, and that old versions had much more room for comebacks. Ok.

I have been watching pros videos and talking with a lot of people from 1100 to 1900+ ranked points. Many also play other franchise games like AoE 2, 3 and 4, and 90% or more agree that some changes would make Retold perfect and give it more room for comebacks, like:

1- Making defensive buildings having more impact again, as well as building decisions. What is the point of investing so many resources at TC and 2-3 towers if your opponent can cast 1 heroic age GP and kill your entire army under these buildings and than destroy them easily?

2- Put some of Pop Cap away from houses and more into TCs. In addition to first item, this should make 2TCs strats having more impact than a simple “doubled vill production”.

3- Adding more goldmines and food spots around the map (and/or give hunt more value), in a way that gold control is not focused only in 1 or 2 easy spots to focus on. TT and EE had more medium and small gold mines I think. GC was easier in some maps, of course.

4- Consider making standard map sizes a little bit bigger with more room to both accommodate the number 3 item and also give more room for raiding, risk of being catched out of position and to compensate more resources being available.

5- By far, the thing AoM players like the most when playing AoE 4 is that “hard counter” have much more impact there. You can be in front of your opponent, but in 2 secs, if do not pay attention, you can lose 15 knights because you ran into some pikes. On the other hand, there are many situations in which Eggy Axeman seems too strong against all norse army, as well as Peltast against eggy. Try to go for a bit more similar scenario with AoM.
In AoE 4, your pikes can kill a buch of knights, but if you give a wrong step, they melt to defensive buildings and archers again.

6- We know that AoM Retold is about mythology and love using MUs and God Powers, but please, consider to tone down a bit every single thing that can end games in 1-2 secs, like heroic and mythic age god powers and some special abilities with area of effect.
Believe me, I love using some Manticore, Chimera, Fire Gigants or seeing Qinglongs in actions, but I hate to see 2 or 3 of them melting 20-30 archers so easily. Specially flying units. Maybe they could be a bit tankier, still strong, but less of a “3 unit melting 30-40 units” in 2 secs lol

7- Kinda same thing about last one, but, please: reconsider the hate over damage cap on mythic god powers or give some kind of inicial cooldown to them. Some of them are actually a bit confusing, like Earthquake, which people still try to counter as in TT and EE building thngs close to TC and making masons upgrade, just to see their TC go away anyway lol

8 and last: consider some kind of “season” system in which you could see how some “bigger” changes would go, and also reseting ranking points inflation. People above 1500-1600 get bored playing always the same opponents.

That’s it guys. Retold is amazing and fun, but it can be even more for more people. The main thing we can say is: listen to pros from AoM and other AoE games!

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Aom players are very unlikely to play aoe4. They are more likely to play aoe3.

That being said, counters are already very powerful here.

I don’t really agree with many of the points, to make a long story short:

  • making defensive buildings more impactful: I don’t like the idea at all, it’s horrible enough as it is when a player spams fortresses it gives an impression of powerlessness and the same goes for spam towers at the end of the game

  • the hard counter: same here, I don’t like the idea at all, basically a Poseidon player could never play cavalry after all, it’s already pretty obvious that he’s going to make cavalry 80% of the time, just make 10 spearmen and they’re all dead with your idea

I don’t think we should copy the AoE4 model, just because certain things work well on a game in the franchise doesn’t mean they’d work well on a game like AOM, which, let’s not forget, is also unique and different from other AOEs in terms of its concept.

The changes you’d like to see in the game would appeal to you, but wouldn’t necessarily appeal to other people.

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I haven’t been playing AoM every day and I don’t play PvP, but towers and fort-type buildings feel weak as paper. What is the point of building any if they can’t even resist an attack?

Some things would need to go hand in hand, buffing towers would be a good idea, but they would have to remove some of the starting resources, its hard to food starve someone when they have hunt, berries, chicken, pigs. By the point they run out of food a farm transition isnt as expensive and agiving them stronger towers on top of that would make aggresive play harder.

It’s not as fragile as you think, in fact I think it’s already been buffed. A fortress counters small unit raids, and a single fortress will effectively protect the villagers from a possible raid on a gold mine or similar. And by the time he has taken it down, you can bring your army back.

I’m not even talking about fortresses that are stuck together. When you want to advance into an enemy base and you’ve got 4 of them protected by an army, that gives him a hell of an advantage. I can’t even imagine if they buffed the fortresses even more.

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This is a huge affirmative mistake hahaha. I have already won 3v2 and 4v3 matches in Retold, do you think that would have been possible in The Titans?

And of course, there are explanations for why the old one had fewer comebacks and why a 3v2 victory wasn’t as possible. The total population was much smaller, the number of villagers was much more limited, and the number of houses as well. There were also fewer caravans. The map was smaller. Among other reasons.

You couldnt be more wrong; its the complete opposite - retold is incredibly snowbally and winning with one man down is only possible if playing against far lesser skilled opponents.