Imo it’d help a lot already if additional TCs would be moved to Castle Age as booming is too strong compared to AoE 2 or 3 (even AoM where TCs are also available from Age 2 on) since you don’t have to “sacrifice” additional vill creation for researching the Age up.
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You said it all! Perfect!
It would help a lot for the problem as listed in this thread, but would be devastating to the meta for civs that are focused on booming in feudal. It effectively kills song dynasty 2tc play, abbasid has no reason to go eco wing in feudal, and now instead of rock vs paper vs scissors gameplay we have rock vs scissors…
It’s totally fine that aoe iv is less like aoe ii and iii. The feudal tc is something that accelerates gameplay in the 7-12 minute range.
Aoe 2 feudal is painfully slow, basically an extended dark age. Aoe 3 has their card system to accelerate the second age.
Not only that, but that would push the meta to a single solution… great, we don’t see 2tc, but fast castle instead?
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/qbeqhl/town_centers/
Fun fact, they have nerfed the secondary TC since that post by: increasing cost (+50 stone), increasing build time (+30 seconds), decreasing garrison space (from 10 to 7 to 8 (because they nerfed it too hard)), decreasing range (from 8 to 6 tiles), nerfing attack speed (from 1.12 to 1.88, or a roughly 68% increase in interval).
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Most civs that thrive at booming have some combination of these traits. Faster gathering, free resources, considerable discounts, and/or highly defensive perks (Eng has 3 of these traits…balanced).
These 4 ideas would nerf BOOM across the board.
- Make farms/Orchards cost 100w/95w respectively and Cattle Ranch 130w.
- Make in base gold spawn always in front of base and completely outside the protection range attack of the main TC.
- Cut the starting in base gold in half , that’s 2000g.
- Never!!! Allow 2 or more in base resources to spawn so close together that 1 feudal defensive structure can protect both resources (that’s perk should be reserved for mongols moving TC and age 3 keeps, or Springald towers, etc).
All these concepts would guarantee a DRush or aggresive feudal push “opportunity” for all civs. And this would considerably dampen the in base BOOM.
And if with these changes civs like mongols and french and delhi start being too favored then nerf those respective civs.
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I’ve resigned myself to the idea that the direction of this game is not competitive, so I’m pessimistic about believing that they will make those changes.
These few civs could either be reworked or given a special allowance to build 2nd/3rd tc in feudal.
For example if you go abba eco wing, you could get a 2nd tc up.
The devs just have to be a bit creative and think about the big picture.
But definitely something HAS to be changed, the current meta is just disgusting and hence I personally stopped playing.
I got into this game late, in season4, because early on it was unplayable technically, but by now the boom-meta has stagnated so hard, that gameplay-wise its completely unfun in 1v1.
The current meta is boom boom boom boom boom boom and something HAS to be done about it.
They could as well increase the time/cost a villager takes to train in non-capital tc and slowly lift these restrictions with aging up by each a few percent.
But that is just an idea.
What you suggest again shows the immense firing-power of the capital tc.
Its attackspeed is just waaaaaaay to insane.
The ressources being close would be absolutely no problem if the capital tc didn’t offer such insane defensive fire-power.
It’s not the garrison slots, it’s that every 1.88seconds an archer/spearman dies for free.
I do agree with you, that spawns have to become more balanced though.
I is in no world fair when you got a goldmine behind your tc and your enemy got one infront or vice versa.
Or even worse, the enemy got 1 close to the side, one behind and you have one way in front and one almost in the middle of the map.
That is something the Devs HAVE to tackle ASAP.
3 years after release it is a shame that this still happens almost every game, including tournament matches.
