Nerf all range units

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
125

@Adribird90 it’s been too long since i played so i don’t remember all the numbers. Lol

@Marc4770
Delhi doesn’t have a basic counter to mass range in feudal except to do the massing better under TOV where only network of castle longbow composition os better. Abbasid has military infantry hp along with phalanx and cavalry debuff so Abbasid military wing also has a comparative answer mass enemy range.

Imo, these solutions, like many of civ solutions are nonintuitive. And it’s because more or less ot follows the policy you unveiled: “just do the meta range thing better than the other guy.”

126

Ironically, archers are actually the best counter to longbows in feudal. The +1 damage on longbows make them reasonably good vs horseman (as long as you don’t get picked off and have an ok amount of spearman). Horseman are still decent to train, especially early as they win in low numbers, can raid, and can pick off reinforcements in small groups.

However the slower movement and 12.5% increased resource cost means you can mass archers and you are the one that can force fights (since longbows can’t run from archers), as long as you aren’t running into network of castles.

English have a temporary advantage because of Council Hall, but they generally have to spend a lot of resources walking a vill or 2 and dropping towers (since they actually do beat most civ’s archers with network of castles).

This along with other things makes English a very strong Feudal civ, but that is a tradeoff for having a weaker late game. For most civs, mass archers is not a devastating feudal play (Ottomans can kind of do that, but that is more because of really strong horseman, the mehter, and the sheer amount of units they can output in late fuedal)

127

A superior archer mass and or tech (civ bonus and or bsm upgrades and or english NOT under network). Yet we’re all still saying the same thing. This effective counter play is NOT intuitive!!

As i mentioned before; Marinelord while reviewing some prominent conq 3 1v1 play commented on how your many army should be made of infantry and cav are supposed to be used as flanking units and raiding. The only exception to said cav functions is if enemy army is exclusively range. I tend to consider the game mechanics opinions of the top 4 players to effectively be words from the Oracle!!!

128

Longbows are a Unique unit and pretty unusual in how good they are vs horseman as a ranged unit. Their +1 base damage means they do a whole 50%! more damage to horsemen than regular archers in feudal, meaning horseman are drastically worse against them compared to horseman vs regular archers. Combined with palings, the anti-cav ranged unit ability (even if in practice is almost useless), longbows are supposed to be much better vs cav than normal archers.

Cav are meant to flank and raid because they are A) really good at raiding and B) they kill archers well, but spears counter them really hard, meaning they need to avoid the spears to do their job.

The fact that infantry (barring spearman) and cav are supposed to be raiding is actually because raiding itself is super important and very impactful, not that they are bad at front-lining. It’s more becasue idleing 10+ vills or killing 2-3 vills is more important than winning the army fight, unless you are able to do so convincingly (which usually requires a flank to stop them from just running away)

I could see an argument to nerf longbows in feudal, but if you are doing that, the English needs a ton of buffs, since good feudal and passable imp is basically all the civ has going for it. (and good hybrid map gameplay)

129

Raiding is paramount however most of the factions with superior infantry units in feudal also have highly defensive aspect to their gameplay.

English farm and defensive network of castles
Mali pit mines and free cow food
Rus knights kremlin and grimlins, safe boom and bonus food and wood gathering
Mongols superior free mass, keshiks, large LOS on towers plus movement speed, broken trade that is heavily resilient to raids
Ottoman military schools auto berries sheep vizor pt
China bbq and villages and strong towers

Which only leaves you delhi french HRE Abbasid as standard civs that need to be on the map without also having a strong defensive component.

130

Raiding is still important against most of those civs.

Rus has been notoriously strong at high ranks due to sheer safety of Kremlin + Bounty
Mali really only has to gather wood, and maybe gold later on

For the rest, they are much more vulnerable to raids.

Barbican can’t protect everything, their towers are the same as other civs unless they invest gold +stone into handcannon slits (which is still a combined 175 resources + idle time)
Mongol trade is very raidable unless they invest a lot of resources into towers (in which case at least you forced them to spend a ton of resources on towers).
Ottomans still need to gather resources, nothing can protect their gold and only 4 vills fit on their berry landmark. Sure they get free units, but killing vills is strong as well.
English network of castles is nice, but to utilize that, they need military in their base. If English’s slow moving military is protecting from raids, they probably aren’t pushing your base (or you can turn back and collapse on the enemy in your base)

Some quick maths, if you idle 10 vills for 15 seconds, that is the equivalent of killing a longbow. Infantry and cav can often do better than that, maybe even kill some vills which is another hit to their economy and thus production

Ignoring the math, raiding takes a lot of APM and concentration from the opponent. Oftentimes you can utilitze raids to catch their army with their pants down, because he is busy microing his vills or rally points on buildings. Or oftentimes they will overreact and you can regroup with your army to wipe out his, or even just buy some breathing room as he sends his army back. This happens even at the top level, where Beasty got his army caught out a couple times by Lucifron because Beasty was distracted in the latest tournament.

131

I know this post has been going on for a while, but just to throw my 2 cents in…

What if a good way to balance range units is decrease the base accuracy, and then through upgrades increase the accuracy of archer units. This way they are nerfed in the early game but if you keep upgrading your army through the ages they will receive significant power spikes in each age.

Fore example…
Archers start with a base accuracy of 75%, but with blacksmith and unit upgrades their accuracy increase’s by 5%.

Blacksmith upgrades:
Steeled Arrow +5% accuracy
Balanced Projectiles +5% accuracy
Platecutter Point +5% accuracy

Unit upgrades:
Upgrade to Veteran Archer +5% accuracy
Upgrade to Elite Archer +5% accuracy

This way with fully upgraded archers their accuracy is a clean 100%.

This can also be done with Crossbowman. Just have their base accuracy start at 80% since there isn’t a Veteran upgrade.

Just a thought.

132

I don’t think so, that would be the only randomness ever introduced in the whole game after the map generation. I think the game is best with no randomness.

133

I agree, accuracy and arrow dodging can stay in AOE2. I feel that is one of the key differences in the games.

134

Extend the production time of feudal age range units

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https://www.youtube.com/live/FwSa9r1oKto?si=joQOw9de8lBSoFr9

135

Now it turns out that the mangonel is so important to counter ranged units!

imagen
It improves the ranged defense of the veteran rider so that the damage of the veteran archer is the same as that of the feudal (difference of 3) and thus counter the broken Zhuge Nu

136

Nobody yet gives me a convincing reasoning why Handcannoneer should have a damage of 35 (feature that only causes problems) and it seems that the only excuse to have a strong mangonel is to counter Handcannoneer.

So, lower all its characteristics by 2/3, cost and damage and problem solved

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137

Handcannoneer is fine as it is.
It’s an extremely expensive, super-lategame answer for heavy melee units and can deal with bombards.
Without very good map control (gold veins) you can not make it in large numbers in 1v1.
And in big teamgames it balances out, as this unit is slow and the maps are large.
Cavalry is superior there.
Even more of a reason to have a good counter for knights lategame.

Something Relic should have learned from aoe3de:
Give all (!) ranged unit an alternative attackmode → melee mode.
When archers/handcanoneers or anything ranged fights in melee range, make them use a low dps melee mode.
Also, finally make melee attacks SNARE the enemy for gods sake!
It worked so beautifully in aoe3 and aoe3de and is the only reason why people feel ranged is op in aoe4, because you can just kite your hardcounters until infinity.
A melee unit mass can never punish a ranged unit for being way out of position because of no snare and poor pathing.
You can barely get any hits off of them, the ranged units casually walk back home to safety.

138

The campaign has the original vision for unit design, this was once the case. Source

Campaign version

Because the campaigns have not been rebalanced since the release of the game, Archers in the campaign have the following main differences:

  • They attack with a dagger in melee range.
  • They have slightly more hit points and a significantly smaller attack bonus vs Spearmen.
  • They cost mostly food instead of mostly wood.
  • They can gain a fire attack vs buildings and siege after Incendiary Arrows is researched.

Streltsy (rus UU handcannon) are the only ranged unit that maintain this vision. It’s too bad, really added to the immersion… however, most of the differences between SP and MP are balance related.

139

Every time I read “Relic should’ve considered” I’m tempted to take a shot.

It’s one of the biggest reasons I want the devs to open up more. Not that some would believe them anyway.

140

Relic, World’s Edge, anyone really who has their hands on this thing.

I don’t necessarily blame players for these statements mind you. All players can do is guess what is happening on the other end. Of course there will be blind accusations from all angles; we are literally left out in the dark. We lost our community managers years ago.

I happen to think the game is doing great, but can see far more potential if it was only tapped. Communication is likely a bridge they will never rebuild, my guess being that multiple companies being codependent on contractual development has made it a tangled mess to produce any meaningful statements from independent or whole departments, pushing it all onto seasonal patch notes when each cycle has properly delivered a product.

It probably would be a lose-lose situation anyhow unfortunately. I think we can all agree we would like them to do more things, so if they started communicating more and just stated that they are actively trying then no one would be satisfied, as currently is the case. The opposite would be equally devastating, who in their right might would openly state they cba doing more for the game?

If anything, the best thing they could is keep us less in the dark about the future. I don’t think our community quite deserves weekly or even monthly contact with developers, seeing as posts like this are always wildly circulating and demanding absolutely minor and meaningless balance changes. Instead, I think it would be good for us to at least be told about upcoming expansions, or longterm plans rather than leave them as surprises.

Why? AoE4 is a good game. We know it is. However, if you leave the whole future of this game a mystery, it just doesn’t bode well about imagining a future between patches. We clearly are able to assume more content is coming; but, why not just tell us? If we knew they were working on a new DLC, modding and casting tools, on graphics additions and more seasonal events, that’d be great for making it appear like this game is truly thriving.

Instead, each patch drop makes us feel like we’re standing on the edge of a cliff. That is to say, the last patch did try to vaguely hint towards a future… Something about something in 2025. While this is nice, be more specific for christ’s sake. Whatever negatives there are to this will surely be made up for a hundred times over by ensuring this game has a future with a statement of actual intent.

The way they are currently presenting and delivering content reminds me of games whose content can be played in a few short hours, and whose developers randomly drop patches to “bring you back” to it. AoE4 isn’t that type of game, and instead, they should aim towards making us stay by engaging and showing that there is something ahead.

1 Like
141

Sure, insert name here. Unless we’re talking about upper management, and the context was “development decisions pertaining to gameplay”, which limits the % that upper management is imposing something that specific (unlike DLC, strategic decisions like mod tools support, etc), I’m still tempted to neck a shot :sweat_smile: The good news is I’m off on holiday on Monday with my family, so my ability to do so then goes up dramatically!

I’ve been a big advocate for more communication in general. But “the devs should’ve considered this thing” is assuming that they didn’t based on an individual’s perception of the end result, which means the % of changing that view is near-zero - even if the developers came out and said “we did”.

I have nothing wrong with being kept less in the dark. I think it’s one of the bigger problems between the devs that those that honestly appreciate the candour. But all too often “the devs should’ve considered this” actually means “this is what I want regardless of how good or bad it is for the game”. It doesn’t even matter if I agree or disagree. I believe discussion would flow a lot better if the poster in question lead with that, instead of claiming the developers never bothered to entertain something that only the developers (or any legally-related individual) would know.

2 Likes
142

Well, about “if the damage of ranged units could be limited more”:

  • The idea of ​​lowering the archer’s damage (5 → 4) and increasing the anti-light infantry bonus (+10 → 11) is interesting.
  • The idea of ​​increasing the Horseman’s Rank defense by 1 more could also be good.

Now, the game seems to me to be in good condition, but well, since it is an online game and each new season there are new maps, unique units and technologies, or revisions to the bonuses, you always have to have balance backup ideas, and in In general, since many of the new civs have “functional Horseman” (Japan, Order of the Dragon, Byzantines), if the devs want to make the rest of the civ also join the use of the horseman in feudal for combos, they could give them certain advantages against archers. Here’s a little of what I came up with, inspired by other games:

TOTAL WAR CAVALRY AND ARCHERS

Recently I have been playing several games from the other RTS franchises, as Total War (Attila and Medieval2), and in their case the balance between cavalry and ranged units is similar:

  • Unit balance is similar: Archers are good against light infantry, crossbowmen against heavy units, heavy infantry good against light, light cavalry good against archers, heavy cavalry good against almost everything, but loses in cost value against spearmen . Of course, horse archers are hellish, they are generally “anti-cavalry” and very difficult to kill, their only counter are other archers with more range or siege weapons.

  • The archers are good, but their shooting rate is slow. Of course, since the battles last between 20 minutes, 30 minutes or up to 1 hour if you pause them (They are 1-player games), the shooting ratio makes sense. Of course, your ammunition is limited, which does not happen in the AoE franchise, take note of that.

  • Cavalry is quite fast, a lot, triple the speed of infantry (TWA: cab:100, inf:33), not just double. This allows it to be maneuvered in a very cool way on the map. On the other hand, units have a ratio to "Dodge projectiles", something that was canceled since AoE III, so speed is quite useful for cavalry.

Here’s the important part: Unlike AoE2, Total War Attila and Medieval 2, and Aoe3, in AoE IV: Projectiles always hit the target and light cavalry are only slightly faster than heavy cavalry. This has problems, since the speed advantage that in those other games benefited the Light to dodge projectiles, no longer works. In AoE3 they knew this, and that’s why they gave high HP plus 20% projectile resistance to melee light cavalry, such as Hussars, as well as a debuff to light ranged infantry (archers, riflemen) against melee cavalry (only They deal 75% damage to melee cavalry).

Following the Example of AoE3:

  • Range damage resistance for Horseman: Light cavalry could be given a percentage resistance against range and siege. It could be 10% or 20%, but it would be useful to represent the resistance that these units were supposed to have to projectiles because they were always moving. Oh, it could be that this bonus “When they are moving” is activated so it makes more sense.

  • Debuff as “anti-bonus”: It’s a new idea, certain units could be given a damage reduction when fighting others. In AoE3 the debuff is a percentage, here it could simply be integers. Example: Archers: -1, or -2 attack against melee Cavalry.

Well, those were my ideas, I’m looking forward to the August patch, take care of yourselves.