I would like to say that if there is one thing the devs have done an outstanding job on recently it is polishing the meta. I come from watching AOE 2 and half the games are just wall up and make cross bows. In the AOE 4 Red Bull tournament series, I’m seeing big spear battles in dark age (never happens in AOE 2), armies made of different unit types, no one unit everyone defaults to every game, no overwhelming amount of siege, plenty of action in Feudal Age, lots of unconventional strategies, every game is different, players don’t wall up often and every civ (except maybe Delhi) is now relevant. Obviously, there are areas the meta can improve: half the landmarks are not viable and the English 5 vil rush is annoying. However, the games are really fun to watch.
There are a lot of things that still need to be fixed or added to the game. And I really hope new civs have a great amount of infantry variety (Axe-men, armored halberdier, heavy swordsman, light swordsman/daggers, javelin thrower, etc). But I wanted to say that this one thing has been done really well lately. I can’t go back to watching AOE 2 because it’s the same thing half the time with no unit variety. Also Aussie Drongo doesn’t cast AOE 2 games.
Here are a couple recent games with legit spear battles in Dark Age:
yes yes, keep believing it.
It’s depends on timing. Map. And who plays.
But in castle age or Imp every game someone wall off half of the map. Repeat every game.
proof
Check any ANYBeastyQt twich videos, select any timing and wait until they build walls.
I’ve find the game there he leave a “space” without walls… behind pushing army
while walling from corners.
ZEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOO walls.
Let’s predict your counter arguments: 1. late walls in castle or Imp 2. noone walls in dark age.
But did you know, that:
your TC 100% protect you wood + food, and partly gold?
you can place tower, which do not cost stone and still saving vils.
and each game ended in 26 minutes. In the middle with “select all army” → A-click vs “select all army”.
Let’s keep pretending, that stone walls is Okay, while you can patch stonewall between bombard’s shots.
you could just post positive videos… but if you want “appreciate” how walls work in aoe4. For me walls bad, and should be removed from the game. Or we need other real options to deal with them.
IMO late game in AOE4 is much better now as well since siege and stone buildings have been nerfed. Because of this, along with late game sources of gold, unit compositions are more dynamic. Wam vs Lucifron’s Mongol vs French game over the weekend was a good example.
Contrastingly, I watched an AOE2 game today between pro players that went 70 minutes where the winner just spammed halberdiers and literally nothing else for the last 20 minutes and won the game.
He exclusively talked about casted tournaments, and he isn’t wrong. Sure, in team games or on very dense maps walls can be prominent, but i disagree that their arent way to deal with it. If your opponent is able to wall you off from resources on anything other than those map type (Mountain Pass, Black Forest, etc.) Then you weren’t scouting or didn’t have enough units early on to kill vils before walls completed. Sorry.
The OP said “the meta” not walls, and in pro games very few maps allow for walling, and virtually no pro uses stone walls except on a VERY rare occasion. So you either don’t follow thr pro scene and are speaking on 4v4’s or low ELO 1v1.
Anything that encourages mix unit composition and discourages single unit spam. Is always a huge win in my book. And a double win if they figure out ways to double-punish single unit spam.
Example being laid out on the vid.
Drop to tier2 level. Players build armies in feudal but waiting for A-click to finish the game.
Ok. Top1000 is noobs. Is top100 will be good enough? or your level is top10?
I need more excuses: wood walls != stone walls. What’s next?
why you need stone walls, if you can build 2-3 layers of wood wall
Puppypaw:
just wall off half of the map.
(it’s again random stream + random timing).
How one can be so delusional about walls. It does not matter stone or wood. If they works the same, perfectly protect vils. And vils have enough time to run away, while units destroying wood walls.
The balance is in the best moment (it would be necessary to polish some Landmarks and some unique unit).
The meta, on aggressive hybrid maps, is a lot of fun, although I do miss more viability of the ram rush all in without the main TC destroying you easy. The TC shot automation was a better buff than the battering ram buff, it should make it viable and rewarding to garrison units into that siege engine.
Give me proof on how walls ruin games. Not examples where you describe how you hate them and they block your knights or whatever. Photos, with the scenerio where the wall objectively ruins the game and I’ll think about considering your point as valid.
Firstly, atleast I’ve already spend some time to give you already proof, that the statement above were False.
Now, you start playing game “it’s not enough, I do not like the proof”. I’m too lazy to search a proof for this kind of asking.
Secondly, I’ve never said “it ruin games”, How ruins? What does it mean ruins? But it surely affect gameplay.
Thirdly, the whole conversations started from this:
They do wall.
They just do walling in Castle age, while in Feudal they build towers, which literally the same.
Walling just moved to another age.
Hybrid maps are truly aggressive but they only for top10 players. It’s not available in the ladder. You can not name it’s “meta” for 10 players.
I agree, they’ve done a great job overall with addressing players concerns in each patch and making the meta fun. Balance is pretty dang good too, maybe a couple matchups need addressed, but good overall.
I agree.
The road to redbull wololo is more entertaining to watch than ever. I see so many different unit comps, and honestly each game is a treat to watch.
Another thing I am loving now is team games, specially when it goes to late game, the improvement is massive, game is not about siege masses or mass keeps and walls anymore, there is a really great balance between offense and defense too with rams being cheaper while TCs and defensive buildings despite having lower villager cap it prioritizes enemy units, making live so much easier to micro units when deffending while at the same time allowing players to punish extremelly greedy plays.
Maybe it’s an underutilized mechanic because it’s not viable. Garrisoning units in the ram doesn’t give it more power or speed (it happens in AoE2 and makes sense,
AoE4 should be inspired by that), you don’t even have a hotkey to immediately ungarrison units (you have to use a group only for units that enter the ram to be able to ungarrage them and you get deselected on top of that).
My proposal with the battering ram is to increase its speed and attack by 3% for each garrisoned unit, a hotkey to immediately expel the units and that the control group is not deselected when you use it to take the units out of the battering ram.
