Right now it’s about equal for boom/non-boom civs which is a nice balance.
Going multi-TC on HRE is super rare since they almost always want to do a tech strategy since a lot of their bonuses are tied behind landmarks.
English very rarely booms since their civ is by far the strongest in feudal age, though a fast-imp tech strategy is not too bad.
Ottomans pretty much go either tech (fast-imp) or all-in feudal
Delhi goes hard on feudal since they basically have to fight over sacred sites
French/Mongols are 50/50. French can boom, but they can also go heavy knight and both are viable. Mongols boom on maps with good trade, but they don’t on other maps.
Pretty much only boom civs are Abbasid, Rus, Chinese, and Malians right now, and 3 of those 4 civs have bonuses that basically make the civ total garbage if they aren’t booming.
So we have 4 boom civs, 4 non-boom civs and 2 that do either
Altought it’s true that boom is strong. I personally don’t see it too much as an issue. I think it’s just part of the game, and there are so many different strategies you can take while booming, and how to boom as well.
So saying “all civ go too often 2 TC” to me is a bit like saying “all civ are rushing feudal age”. Sure but that’s how the game is designed. The question isn’t so much if you’re going 2 tc or not. The question is more if you’re going 3 TC or you stay on 2.
We’re making differing applications of the term BOOM.
I think your definition is solely centered around natural resources gathering efficiencies (a primary focus on increasing your effective gatherings thru expansion, specially facilities and what-not).
My use of the term more loosely define the term BOOM to mean a continuous growth in overall prowess whether it strictly be thru additional natural resources accumulated or unstoppable military production or a mix.
Using my definition, all civs are “BOOMING”. BUT what is the issue if any?? The original post was how centric the “Boom meta” is and how counterplay (specifically contesting 2nd TC) ISN’T rewarding enough if even doable.
I posit some forms of BOOM are exceptionally rewarding and safe with very little viable counterplay: Kremlin 2tc; mali cow boom with safe pit mines; mongol with behind base trading; Ottomans MS into STUFF. Meanwhile other “booms” are NOT SAFE and or as rewarding especially given the risk.
Example is Delhi sacred site gold. Delhi has no direct use of gold except to create scholars or traders or save up to age up to castle. The longer you stay in feudal with delhi AND NOT HAVE SACRED SITE VICTORY counting down, the more diminishing your gold income becomes as you’re actively buying food/wood off the market. On top of the fact that there is a fixed amount or sites and a fixed rate of gold generation.
Compare mali pit plus cow or rus Kremlin plus tc vs delhi sacred site map control and its overwhelmingly clear that delhi has a harder task and a lower reward ceiling.
I’m a strong advocate for adding sufficient and reasonable counterplay option to every single stratagem. The idea of blindly going into a build order and have it pan out despite the enemy’s response isnt balanced RTS.
RUS bounty needs to be diminished and maybe given golden gate some type of bounty perk.
Ottomans need their schools to be more expensive by 50f (50f 150w 100stone).
Mali need their houses and pit mine HPs reverted an maybe goven them q mod game upgrade to increase those HP back to current levels. Meanwhile musofadi can use some raiding buffs like a slight bonus damage vs villagers (+3 vs villagers starting on feudal, +4 with veterancy and remains +4 with elite upgrade). Traders need to regain their natural cavalry malice vs spearman and map design needs NOT to ever make neutral markets safely tucked in corners especially on heavy choke point maps. And ovoo production needs a nerf in dark age rom 80 stone per minute down to 60 stone per min then on feudal and beyond it returns to current rates.
In general for RTS, boom strategy means an eco focused strategy.
RTS strategies are usually divided into boom, tech and rush (sometimes turtle is included).
I’m not really sure what you are defining as booming. Bounty shouldn’t count for example since it’s a very temporary boost to resources (unless you think the food gathering bonus is OP).
While I do agree that Rus is really safe with their boom, mostly due to bounty and Kremlin, Mali in many ways is not. Mali is actually not a particularly great civ atm and desperately needs some buffs.
Booming strategy is a strategy of spending your resources on increasing your economy in a higher than average manner (so doing a strategy that is more eco-focused than just 1 TC vills). Just having an eco bonus like English better farms is not booming, or stone produced units via ovoo is like the opposite of booming.
Can agree with the problems, I don’t think the solutions are the best.
Rus i totally agree and i think the bounty mecanics should be completely reworked. It’s my least fav mecanic in the game because it affects so much your eco long term based on a mini game at the start. There’s no way to “take away” that bonus from your opponent later of you pwrform poorly in the minigame against rus. Which o think is bad mecanic.
Ottoman not long ago people were saying (even pro players) that military school are too expensive and not worth making if you plan fight in feudal. So i totally disagree with raising cost which would force even more the playstyle towards fast imperial. I think the prob is that they boosted the observatory landmark to 100% in last patch. Because military school are fine without that landmark. They should have been more prudent maybe 80% instead.
Im not against your mali house upgrade but I don’t think it will change that much.
About map design i totally disagree as i like to have map variety and i think some map should make it easy to protect your trade while other map not. Remember not everyone is playing at pro level and we need variety even in ranked map pool. If trade is too strong they can just nerf trade in general but i think it’s fine… I have no issues with both players trading in some maps…
I also disagree that oovoo should be nerfed that’s the only eco advantage of mongol and mongol isn’t that powerful at the moment. And nerfing oovoo would nerf ALL strategy not just boom.
On the contrary, Mongols have been a top 2 civ for many months now, and could use some nerfs. Personally I would nerf Mongol trade since it is kind of ridiculous and very game-warping on many maps.
There is a definitive reason pros no longer intimate this and Ottomans have received back to back nerfs before this bombard and observatory thing. Also if you watch the pro tournaments Ottomans castle push had no equal. That’s not a great bombard or observatory issue
Not really. Mongols were destroying the pro scene due to dominance on hybrid maps with dark age aggression usually into a feudal rush/all-in. China is not doing well at any level on this patch. Heck, the English are shockingly one of the best civs right now on high level ladder (pretty sure it’s because they are really good against the Ottomans though).
Ottomans haven’t been nerfed since July and the last couple nerfs they had was because their feudal age rush strategy was too strong (and this was the time when people considered building military schools was not very good)
If it’s not observatory issue, why is no one making the other landmark?
I don’t understand why they boosted the landmark that was already the most used and ignored the one that is never used.
At least pre patch we saw a bit of the imperial academy and the trade keep. But post patch every single ottoman is going for the free siege landmark+ observatory because you can spam free great bombard.
Of course the game heavily favours boom/turtle/tech playstyles. It’s literally all the same in AoE4 because of how the TC’s work and since devs wont change the TC’s mechanics it will very likely always stay a boomy game. Also keep in mind that literally every player that favours aggressive over defensive strategies has already left the game. So the overall opinion one would get from the forums, be it here or on reddit, will be highly biased towards a defensive playstyle. People who would say that the game is in a good spot in terms of a good mix of aggressive and defensive options, basically love to play defensively. It’s the same with AoE2. Literally everyone that plays AoE2 favours defense over offense maybe with the exception of EW players, which doesn’t seem to be an overly popular game mode over there though.
Booming, as a strategy, is reinvesting resources into the economy, meaning economic units, buildings and techs, in order to maximize the resources income as fast as possible. That economical advantage allows to overwhelm the enemy with more and better units, eventually, if not countered correctly.
It’s best to not stray from the original meaning, to avoid misunderstandings.
I would argue that boom and turtle are too close to eachother in this game, that could be creating a distortion.
When booming you’re making more TCs but those double as defensive buildings and throwing in a few Outposts doesn’t cost that much resource wise (although the time cost is noticeable). A strategically placed Palisade can provide you a good defense in the early game. I’m saying that you don’t have to forego defenses when booming.
Surely a proper would be different, mainly for stone going into fortifications more than TCs and the training of a defensive army, but the point is that they’re pretty close. Almost just nuances.
So maybe nowadays the strategic triad is boom/turtle > rush > tech.
normative meanings are only applicable when the context remain normative; if you invest resources into an eco unit to gather more resource which IN TURN makes more units? How is that functionally different than another guy that invest resources into a special facility that skips the middle part and just directly generate more and better military units???
Having said all that; only Ottomans and Mongol have such mechanics.
sadly tech no longer beats boom/turtle; they nerf castle a while back to make feudal in all, and alike more viable.
STILL, IMO, I don’t see anyone addressing the issue:
Do all BOOM have a reasonable, heck any stratagem for that matter, have an equivalent counter play? IMO, most of the more powerful BOOMs do NOT;
Rus Kremlin
Mongol Tower rush into safe behind base trade
Mali cow boom with close first and 2nd pit mines or otherwise safe pit mines.
Tech is arguably strongest strategy on the current patch. Fast imp Ottomans is the highest winratre team at the moment and even other civs are copying them and doing fast-imp strats.
Different civs will always gravitate towards certain strats due to their bonuses, but the boom civs are not meaningfully out-performing the non-boom civs. (and Mongols are doing well even on maps they can’t trade boom)
Mali is hard countered by pretty much all of the good rush civs for example showing that rush is still > boom. Rus and Mongol are exceptions since their boom is super safe and probably need to individually be tuned down.
The problem with stretching definitions of booming means it’s insanely hard to get a point across. If you are including ovoo’s into booming (meaning that anything the mongols can ever do is now qualified as a boom strat), what is stopping people from saying collecting sheep with your scout is a boom strat and now we quantify everything as booming, or French making villagers faster is now a boom strategy. You can argue ovoo can quantify as an economic bonus, but any strategy that includes spamming military units in the early game is not booming.
Only talking about 1v1s, team games are a different beast where booming and teching is much stronger since you are just too far to rush most of the time.
While Mongol trade is really strong, the civ is just frankly overtuned and they are really good even on maps they can’t boom.
Mali boom is really only good against other boom civs, the civ does really poorly against any civ that can rush competently.
Rus has not really been overperforming this patch, though their boom is still excessively safe.
Frankly in 1v1s right now, the boom civs and non-boom civs are performing about equally atm. Only HRE and Mongols are really outliers in performing atm, and that is more due to overall civ strength rather than 1 specific strategy they do.
Mostly paying attention to winrates in Conquerer, Diamond, and sometimes plat/gold. Can even check out winrates in matchups and specific maps.
For example Mali has a sub 45% winrate against Ottomans Delhi and Mongols since their gold pits just get torched in feudal (or Delhi often just out-masses their army in late-feudal/castle age since Mali armies lose a lot of advantages in big numbers) and those 3 civs can make large early castle or late feudal armies which Mali is not that great against.
English in general is doing far better than previous patches (likely due to map pool as well as ottoman presence which is their best matchup by a noticeable margin and frankly the main reason ottomans don’t have an absurd winrate.)
Mmmh yes it’s the same in the end result but not in the process. Ottomans and Mongols can stil make a traditional boom but in practice don’t need to. Their bonuses don’t mean they’re properly booming, they’re getting free resources. We’re talking about semantics here.
So isn’t rushing lacking? That’s my takeaway.
2 TC is relatively safe, much more so if you have a defensive Landmark helping turtling. Being that common teching goes stronger. So rushing should be the thing the next week!
would be different, mainly for stone going into fortifications more than TCs and the training of a defensive army, but the point is that they’re pretty close. Almost just nuances.
