Hello 
Next Monday we get a new patch
I was afraid that the developers would listen too much to the competitive scene and make the maps smaller even for custom games.
I and of course other players appreciate that the developers did not remove the gigantic maps for custom games. Like this the competitive players and the others are happy. Thank you very much developers.
Although I think stone walls are too weak and part of the problem is that bombards are too strong, I think it is realistic to understand that stone walls can also be more easily destroyed by other units during construction.
There have now been some nerfs to the stone walls. I think it would be time to make them relevant in the game again by giving them more HP and/or making bombards do less damage. This would be especially important because one of the very cool new features in AOE4 - placing units on walls - is rarely seen, because stone walls are so weak. This is really sad 
In any case - many thanks to the developers for the regular patches.
What do you think about the upcoming patch?
Kind regards
3 Likes
I do not understand why you say “walls are weak”. You can build and repair walls faster than 4 or 5 bombards.
Atleast at high level, walls are stronger than bombards.
4 Likes
You can make stone walls in feudal, while bombards only appear in imperial. There should be a LOT of gameplay happening between those two points in time.
5 Likes
I’ve yet to ever reach Imperial down here in silver. Too many English rushes ending the game in Age 2 or 3 (half of them because I barely hold on and beat back their Age 2 all in with my own Age 3). And in my last game, I got French rushed. I’d love to see stone walls or bombards in my games…
2 Likes
If they go all in, you might consider building up an amry to defend instead of rushing to castle. (Depending on your civ). If you play something like french and build knight archer, they’ll have a hard time to break you. Use knights to lure the spears out, then fall back and let you archers kill their spears. If you manage to do this micro, I guarantee you you will win against silver english. Watch the beastyqt guide on french for BO.
1 Like
Stone walls should take longer to build and be harder to break, so that they can be strategic. But a stone wall that is too strong can easily turn the game into a deadlock, and I don’t think the devs nor the players want it Seeing this happen.
Although there are few corrections, the patch time this time came quickly, and I hope the next patch will come soon.
I play Dehli, my options are limited until Age 3. And with the weakening of Sacred Sites and the gold income those give, everything goes slower. Not to mention that they’ll always tech faster than me.
Against English, they usually just spam Longbows, so I counter with a couple towers and archers of my own and if I can reach Age 3, 4-5 elephants usually wins the game because they counter his bows, maa, and rams and then I just walk into his base and win.
I walled against the French but they ended up just blocking me in and my spears/archers were useless against his knight and archer army.
Dehli is a very strong civ. Get horsemen archer. You get every upgrade for free, and not only that, you get free gold from sacred site so you can build a bigger mass while still creeping towards castle. English got no other eco boost than the cheaper farms, and the farm bonus which isnt really faster than just using natural resources
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I’ve tried that but my horsemen always get butchered easily. Personally I think they’re still super weak.
Do you engage the spears? Never ever engage the spears
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The best mixed combo against longbows and spearmen are horsemen and archers and be pretty aggressive when you get into battle.
2 Likes
Not sure how you engage the archers when they’re on top of the spears. Do you just use your horsemen to tank the arrows?
Exactly. You fake charge the archers forcing the spears to move forward. When they do, pull your horsemen back again. Your archers will kill the spears quickly. And while doing this little dance back and forth, your horsemen have 2 extra ranged armor and will tank the arrow shots better than their archers will- When their spears are dead or there’s like 1-2 left, you kill the rest of the archers with your horsemen. Remember to use control gruops to make this easier. I like archers on control group 1, and horsemen on group 2, but you really only need one for the horsemen.
5 Likes
Wouldn’t just massing twice as many archers work better? Longbows are more expensive than regular archers right? As are horsemen?
Also longbows are WAY better. They attack 25% faster. Do significant more damage, and can start shooting you before you shoot them. No, you need to build a better army composition to have a chance.
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Oh I see. I usually have a tower or two to counter them, and they die real quick to tower elephants who can shoot them while also doing 100 melee damage. But that requires Age 3…
Okay so I’ll try making horsemen again.
While alot of players enjoy big, bigger maps and long games. Alot of players complain (especially new ones) that the game takes too long on average. So not just the competitive scene.
- Even starcraft, if i remember corectly, reduced the average game time (by reducing the available resources) to please the new generation.
Well unfortunately nothing was done to ranged units in this patch :(.
Continue the ranged unit death ball that can take out a line of Spearmen in their faces!
1 Like
This is only a preview of the release notes. So we know nothing about the bufs and nerfs to civs or civ specific units.
The full patch notes if i remember corectly will be released , discused on stream, on Mai 2.
A lot of us newer AoE players come from a variety of other RTS games.
I come from C&C & AoE1, where a 30 minute game means a lot was going wrong for one or both players.
I love the push for smaller maps to help this sluggish game. Now I just want it to have a more fun Dark Age and I’ll be set.