We agree it’s easier to manage as oppose to having to weave past enemy spearmen but to have to run past units then a move is more actions than running away and focus targeting or running away then hitting stop. The first requires you reselect your cav per repeat while the latter you can do the complete manuever on a single selection. AND there isn’t as strict a timing requirement on the attack/focus fire move. The cav have to first be in position before you a move while the archers only nees be off attack cooldown
For archers it’s right click away, right click cav, repeat.
Horseman it’s right click ground behind archers a-right click ground in the same spot, repeat.
There might be some difference in the difficulty to micro that, but as long as you are aware of how to properly use the cav, it’s not meaningfully more difficult to pull off and it isn’t more clicks or anything (other than pressing the a key once).
Most people just don’t try to do the horseman micro, or don’t know how.
I vaguely remember A move will deselect your units? If so that considerably adds to the difficulty especially by comparison.
No, a-move does not deselect, that would indeed make it harder.
The hardest part of the maneuver is not accidently clicking a unit or building, which isn’t that crazy.
A good compromise to nerf ranged micro if that is the issue would be to just give them a longer windup animation (and faster rest of animation so attack speed isn’t affected). This means they have to stand in place longer before moving away and can’t kite nearly as well.
I gave my opinion on the topic, just wanted to emphasize that if a player produces a critical mass of archers (with very few spearmen), it’s for three reasons:
- They have a strong archer civilization.
- They see that the opponent is producing very little or no cavalry.
- They play defensively under the Town Center or on maps with many chokepoints.
Archers don’t siege well, lack the mobility vs horsemen, and if cavalry can’t micro effectively due to the archers’ positioning, they can resort to siege units.
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I think that moving its base damage to its bonus is a healthy nerf, I think that the developers did not take into account the micromanagement and evidence of them was the problem that there was with the cancellation of the animation with explorers and elephants
There is also evidence that the “Meta” of the game was not deeply thought out, like the sea battle system we had in the beginning, so I bet micromanagement was not taken into account and action must be taken.
The problem if base damage is reduced is that the archer would be super useless against anything that isn’t a spearman. 4 damage is literally doing 1-2 damage to most units.
Archer mass has always been a thing, and AOE4 is much better in regards to having proper counters to archers than AOE2 for example (a very popular game)
Civs would have a really tough time dealing with feudal MAA and knights. Heck even Mangudai/Camel Archers might become obnoxious because killing them would be super hard. Horse archers would suddenly be extremely hard to kill as well.
4 Likes
I want safe units to not be super effective; either nerf their dps or nerf their safety (lower their HP); but being a safe and powerful unit isn’t good for RTS.
1 Like
safe units? If you play english as example and attack with longbows early, you have to mix in spears otherwise you get completly destroyed vs horsemen.
If you mixed in spears, enemy still can attack the reinforcement with horsemen, because they are fast and mobile.
so the english player has no continuous reinforcement and needs a safe point at the base for this.
this leads to, his army is at the front way smaller and could be cleared pretty easy, because the whole army is slow.
beaten once, there is mostly no comeback as english.
If archer or longbows are so super strong, why english struggles against so many civs? feudal allins should be easy possible, but it isnt, ok maybe not for all, but for the most.
I mean you still wanna nerf archers, but no one says anything about the speed of horsemen, and the tactical advantage, because you can decide if you take the fight or not.
You can counter raid them or kill reinforcement.
There is not only dps and damage if you look at units!
beastys civ tier list
english D tier
solo ranked civilizations > conqueror
english 8 of 10
we should buff the longbows 
or instead of letting your reinforcement trickle in; move in groups; 6 spears moving across the map is impervious to reinforcement raids; AND EVEN IF they die; they will trade effectively.
strawman arguments; I clearly mentioned cavalry advantages on mobility and tactical maneuvering. Also listing beasty’s tier list (his own opinion; still a strong opinion) pertains to highest level pro play.
Another strawman argument
Just because overall the civ design might be suffering from a holistic gameplay; the win rate doesn’t directly reflect on whether or not the unit; the longbowman is OP or NOT OP?
Stop it, archer aren’t even that good. They lose to cavalry, mangonel, maa… They can’t destroy building and are supper slow…
Cavalry have so many advantages already.
We see tons of games where (spear + horse) beat (archer + horse), in feudal. It makes no sense to nerf archer.
This nerf would make archer worse against crossbow, against maa, against camel archer… Why?
Which league are you by the way? And which civ you play?
Im Platinum 3, I play mostly french and HRE and mongol, and i see no issue with archer, cavalary counters them well in feudal, and when they start massing too many you can destroy them with mangonel.
Longbow are a bit more though to deal with, but you’re saying that all archer should be nerfed. And longbow are a unique unit so it’s more normal and you should get mangonel against english.
delhi exclusively in the diamond to conq league.
you can really mass mango in feudal?? b/c they can critical mass in feudal.
No you can’t have mango but that’s why you have to go castle against mass archer.
If this is really the issue then there’s tons of things to fix. Because Massiing MAA (english hre) is also a problem in feudal if you really counting on never going to castle. But i think that’s the fun part of the strategy if you get too greedy in feudal you will get out-tech or out mass. With archer at least you can make your own archer, but against maa no.
How are you not able to counter mass archer at conqueror? I see ton of pro match and archer don’t seem a be an issue. Its not at my level at least.
Cavalry is already hard to deal with in raid running around, if you can’t shoot at them on top of that would make things even worse. Archer weaker would make maa too strong in feudal.
so … like i said;
you expect the archer mass to be on standby until you achieve castle and invest in 300w into a siegeworkshop then another 600 into mango and of course have units to defend it; THEN THE ARCHER MASS WILL ATTACK U??
But it takes a lot of resources to make mass archer. What did you do with those resources? you should have time to either mass cavalry or harass vills or castle or have good walls/towers while they do that. Or make your own archers+cavalry. It depends of the situation.
Also you ignore the fact that archer nerf would cause other issues like unbeatable maa in feudal. Harder to deal with raids.
Also at equal resources mass cavalry beat mass archer. especially if they are attacking you and cant hide behind stuff. Tc and Towers deal a lot of damage to archer compared to most other units.
Maybe try playing an archer civ and make only archers and see what happens.
maybe try watching a few pro games and clearly see what im saying play out??
I do, but i dont get it, when i check a pro game, they go cavalry against archer. Sometimes go spear + horse against horse + archer.
Honestly the fact is that a mass of anything in feudal can be a threat given the right circumpstances, archers, horsemen, early knights, hell even a spear mass can do some funny stuff.
Honestly the only unit I find a bit problematic in feudal are zhuge nus as they deal 3 damages minimum and can be massed very quickly once unlocked because of chinese IO eco and production bonuses, and yet this song into zhuge spam isn’t the bread and butter strat in most chinese match up indicating that it’s not so good I sometime believe myself.
1 Like