And it has been the most popular opinion of devs to player that BOOM META IS UNEVENTFUL AND BORING; both to play and watch.
These changes would directly impact RUS ABBASID AND CHINA. French, HRE, and English would feel this nerf slightly. All currently remaining civ typically do not go 2nd TC early.
Like @Adribird90 said; arrowslits on a nearby tower can shutdown the ########## TC from a side; and not just that but archers/longbows could harrass villagers from closer.
IMO these changes will force blind 2nd 2TC to be placed extremely defensively or risk disaster. Alternatively ppl will have to make army to secure their expansion placement.
I guess itās a good change overall. Iām just curious how civ that are impacted will need to play now.
For example Abbasyd is one of the civ I play often. And TC was really useful to help defending. I guess they will need to just play more aggressive from the start? Do you think military wing will be the only viable option?
Most pro players seemed to be saying you shouldnāt get fresh foodstuff unless you get a second TCā¦ So it will be hard to gain eco edge while most other civ can still get their eco edge as easily as before.
Also another collateral of this change is that on water map. Going for water and KEEPING the water would be even more necessary. Reducing the possible options.
I believe normative abbasid play is to open up military wing and go 2nd TC using the free units as a buffer against mild aggression/setting your own minor pressure.
If you watch the pros they only go culture when its a mirror abbasid or a BOOM vs BOOM civ (vs china rus mali etc). And technically all of Abbasid strategies are still viable when executed into the right matchup.
Military wing into aggro/expanison vs most
Culture/Trade wing into boomers.
The problem for Rus/China is that if you are building your 2nd TC near the landmark, you are sacrificing a lot. Either your landmark is not protecting the resources it normally would (usually the woodline), or your 2nd TC isnāt securing more resources (itās just vill production and you still need towers or whatever to protect deer/golds).
Imo, this change is a pretty sizable nerf to a number of matchups for Rus/China/Abbasid. Rus basically has to place their 2nd TC on food and the kremlin on wood, but now they canāt as reliably protect both.
Another way to weaken the strategy of multiple TCs is to decrease the range of the villagersā torch.
Consider that the attacker must invest in making the blacksmith, then the siege technology, produce at least 2 rams, two production buildings (for two different units) and produce some units; while the defender has an easy time with the distance advantage that the torch gives him with his villagers
Agree.
They should instead have moved additional TCs to castle or reduced the training speed of villagers in non-capital TCs.
That would have been the easiest way to fix this hyperboom and perma-spam of vills.
Moving tc to castle would just force even more Fast Castle and nothing else. This would be a worse idea.
Not a big fan of different training time as it becomes inconsistant with main tc. I think if you want to nerf TC the best ways are increasing tc cost or reducing tc hp.
This match shows exactly, what the problems is.
Towncenters are so strong that you canāt rush.
Hence, people just build 1-2 additional towncenters and try to outboom the enemey.
Since you donāt have to be scared of Feudal all in, you can casually go to castle and get keeps up.
And again the game stalls out, because noone can push against that for a long time.
Hence the game goes to Imperial.
Ideally during a match both sides are constantly switching between rush-tech/turtle-boom playstyles.* Letās say you rush your opponent. Your opponent scouts your rush and builds defensive structures. The rushing player scouts the defensive structures so he either trys to make something happen with the rush and adapts afterwards or adapts immediately halting the rush and going for a quick boom (a few minutes) to gain an economic advantage over the turtling player. Repeatā¦
If you look at the video posted by @_e_o_ka you see an english player (heās btw sitting on rank 77) that knows exactly before the game starts what heās going to do. Booming (heās turtling, booming and teching at the same time which kind of is the core issue of AoE4 but thereās mainly people left now that like that playstyle so it rarely gets mentioned) until heās in imperial age so that after 20 minutes the fights can begin. This is so god damn dull from a strategical point of view I will never understand why thereās not many more players that have an issue with this. Thereās zero dynamics. Zero strategical adaptions. Just turtle and boom 20 minutes. This is what I would call a typical casual match when in fact it is a high level match.
