Nerf rams

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
61

no, i did read. its just tiresome your moving of goalposts and unrealstic hypotheticals that are not reflective of actual games.

62

You probably need to play art of war again if you cant even scout properly. Whats your age up time to Feudal? You’re 100% supposed to be punished for being greedy and improperly scouting.

63

your post outright ignored everything i typed. i think we’re done here.

64

Good, we’ll agree to disagree and its highly likely rams are not going to be touched by the devs. Its been that way ever since the early betas.

65

Dont nerf rams, just pull villagers and torch them. if you are playing 2 TC boom you will need villagers to defend and you can afford it because you have to 2tc to boom back after villager loses. If you are on one TC and still have problem with rams then check your record game because you obviously need to improve with spending resources and with countering units.

66

Rams are not tanky at all though unless you’re thinking arrows is the solution - even a group of villagers will take them out with torch damage.

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67

Exactly this! If you are having issues taking down the rams then you aren’t playing right.

68

Civilization of AoE IV needs to be balanced Eg. French civilization is presently the most picked civilization and it’s too strong.

69

Honestly, I used to think rams were fine and I was just bad at stopping them but those last days I see more and more pro players pull off (or get defeated by) that exact strategy.
If you focus the rams, your units/peasants get murdered by the enemy army before they can destroy them. If you don’t focus the rams and try to kill the enemy first, the rams will do a ton of damage and possibly destroy your building before you’re done.

I think part of the problem is you can’t target the units you want with your defensive buildings + the defensive buildings do next to nothing to armored units anyway. 90% of the time, if there are rams in the enemy comp your defensive buildings may as well not be there, they’re just gonna shoot them and deal next to no damage. Either let us micro our defensive buildings or make the order they shoot enemies in more intelligent (unarmored units → armored units → siege units → buildings). Giving some pierce armor bonus to defensive buildings would also help.

2 Likes
70

And I’ve seen just as many streamed games recently where ram all-ins get defeated. It’s very doable as long as you scout and prepare for it. Being able to manually target with TCs and outposts would instantly make ram all-ins impossible.

71

Well yeah, that’s why you build defensive buildings in the first place, to defend. The fact that you have next to no advantage in your own base just because the enemy built 2 rams is kind of ridiculous

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72

You still have advantages in your base - you reinforce quickly for example. Villagers can hop in and out of the TC to repair, attack the ram or retarget arrows as needed. The opponent has to push in with the rams leading so you can damage them first. Generally it just comes down to who micros better and whether the all-in was scouted in time. Holding it off also puts the defender way ahead.
Here’s an example: Twitch
From about the 1 hour 10 min mark.

73

To be fair though, in your example red played this pretty horribly.
Had he just protected his rams with the MaA instead of chasing after the peasants in between 10 towers, there is nothing blue could have done. Add some ranged units for red and it pretty much becomes impossible to answer.

74

Agree completely, the feudal ram timing demolishes any civ that doesnt have MAA/Knight in feudal. Needs to be adjusted somehow

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75

Rams have to be untouched because if they are nerfed or we are able to control TC fire. Then we are going to be having a TC festival, It then becomes whoever builds the most TC and goes to imperial, thus becoming a 2 hour long game just like AOE2. As of right now it is rather easy to stop a ram push and if all you have is pure defensive buildings that only shoot arrow Then you are going to lose because that is why ram are made. To soak up arrows and destroy buildings. They don’t do anything else in this game. In fact after Castle age Rams are no longer useful.

You are supposed to always be scouting. And whenever you see many military buildings plus a blacksmith that is a guaranteed Ram, Why wouldn’t you prepare for that if you’ve scouted it?

Also if both players are playing off 1 TC, both players should have equal army size or little bigger.
With proper scouting you can deny the setup of rams and or win a fight and probably the game.

4 Likes
76

That is overly simplistic. There’s a bunch of different strategies in AoE II and only few of them will end up with a game that’s over 1 hour long.
Reaching the imperial age is also not guaranteed, the game often ends at the castle age. Competitive AOE II games (not counting water maps) usually last around 40 minutes. Since AoE II is on 1.5 speed by default that’s actually around 25 minutes of gametime, so it’s not that different from AoE IV. It’s just that early agression isn’t as strong so games don’t stall in the feudal age for 15 minutes.

In AoE IV, early agression is king. There’s so many games where it just devolves into feudal cavemen soldiers bonking each other, it’s kind of getting old already.
And what would be wrong with the game being closer to being “just like AoE II”? AoE II is literally one of the most popular games of all time, so people must enjoy its gameplay

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77

That’s totally not true. We all know that rams had giant neodymium magnets in them which pulls the arrow to them. Smh. Haven’t you seen ancient aliens on the history channel? It’s a well known fact that Nikola Tesla worked closely with Warner von Braun and Billy Crystal (the actor). They lead the way in infantry siege tactics in the 800s AD. It was 812 ad specifically when the trio inventors/actor sold their patents to Apple who then was able to mass produce Rams globally. At the time Samsung, this was before they started making OLED screens, they were in the bow and arrow business. It was early in the technology vs sieges. In the 800s to 1500s the best arrows were made with solid steel with an inlay of carbon nanotubes, which, again, as we all know is hyper magnetic.

If the Rams magnet wasn’t there, the arrows themselves track and target things with a magnetic field, which humans do have. So when the ram is there-- well the magnetic field is so much stronger on the ram that arrows just ignored the infantry.

Source: Facts About Dihydrogen Monoxide

78

There are upgrades for ramms in the university. Rams are defently not op

79

Yeah instead we have most games just stalling in Castle Age. Early aggression is important in a 1v1 of course, and the reason why AoE2 doesnt go into big Feudal fights is its really easy to wall off and lack of siege at Feudal. If the rams themselves were nerfed, everyone would just go 2 TC boom or a cav semi FC just like Khorix said. If you see the pushing coming time, which would be around 7 min earliest, you should have no problem preparing. An all in Feudal should beat 2 TC booms or a cav semi FC. Rams useless come Castle.

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80

Honestly we should not encourage another AOE2 of defending until imperial. Let us have a different taste of the same flavor. Game is already lot closer to AOE2 than any other tittle. Being able to gamble a win early on because of Rams is worth it

1 Like