Patch suggestion by several experienced players

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
43

More or less, some of the changes I think need compensation like if we are making China get cheaper dynasties, dynasties or their units probably need nerfs. If HRE is getting Reignitz or Swabia nerfed they need noticeable compensation buffs since that’s like half the civ’s power right now (and I don’t think it should be marching drills, it’s fine at it’s cost). I actually think Guild hall is fine, it’s power level is currently usually lower than Reignitz, tbh I think other castle landmarks should be buffed, I like Reignitz, guild hall, abbey etc power level.

No comment on Wynguard palace or Khaganate palace they need something, but idk really what. (Wynguard would be amazing if trebs weren’t so meh).

I would add chemistry and geometry should give buffs to the bonus damage and not just base damage of the units (probably bombard building damage nerf to compensate) Treb gaining 3.2 dps from a 1k resource tech is just a meme and it would make culverins actually beat bombards in post-imp.

I think China only needs 1 siege nerf to start, the bombard techs are probably fine as is if clocktower isn’t super broken.

Not really a fan of reduced monk speed with relic, they are already usually really slow and the converting is hard to pull off.

Mounted precision might not be op if horse archers get attack speed and incendiary arrows bugfixed, who knows though.

44

I agree with most of the suggestions however I disagree with the nerfs to swabia and regnitz. They need to buff the age 2 blacksmith landmark and age 3 barracks landmark. Maybe for the blacksmith you could have it be 35% cheaper blacksmith techs and the barracks landmark also reduces the cost of training barracks units from the landmark by 25%. Kind of like the school of cavalry except 25% instead of 20 but can only be done at the landmark with units creating in batches of 5. Buffs like this would actually give a compelling choice to go for the blacksmith landmark instead of aachen chapel and to go for the barracks landmark instead of always regnitz. The second age iv landmark for HRE needs a buff also to be on par with swabia but idk what.

45

I think Elzbach is fine tbh. The landmark is actually pretty good, all buildings being 33% tankier as long as influence connected is strong and putting a relic in it can be pretty clutch. I wouldn’t mind some smaller buff to it though. If anything from HRE got nerfed it would probably be swabis, it’s just such an insane landmark but they would need something to compensate. Idk if it’s really needed though, Elzbach does fill a niche and is pretty good if you don’t need the vills from Swabia.

46

I detect that HRE has 2 problems, one is related to its bugs, which seem important to me in its playability, and another is that, due to this, they use a strategy where it is probably the worst early game civilization (first 15 minutes with very low win percentage, but in Late Game is the BEST civ except vs chinese bombards :D).

It seems to me that the Blacksmith’s Landmark can be improved a little more (30%) and with the cheaper unique upgrade that these players propose plus the bug fix and the buff to their unique unit, if these Landmarks are not nerfed, it would mean a serious problem in the future.

I agree to nerf, because the value of those builds is too high compared to other more balanced Landmarks.

47

And most of the people who are picking the Mongol civ are actually higher-skilled players compared to other single-star civs. It is considered as one of the most difficult civs in the game with the Chinese.
Therefore, ofcrse the win rate would be higher since the difficulty already determining the winner when a player picks this civ.

higher difficulty means > more reward. And that is the concept of each civilisation.
The easier the civ, the lower the reward.

This is why the single star civs are laying underground and the most skilled players are usually choosing the Mongols as a majority.

If you see the graph, the Mongol pick rate is one of the lowest, and the games played are also the lowest.

1 Like
48

You are wrong. The high gold cost of Knight/Lancer make them a very bad units for their price. For a few factions like Mongol with the Steppe Redoubt and stone production which mitigated a lot of that high gold cost can train them without much strain on gold gathering. The Steppe Redoubt effectively make Lancer cheaper than 2 MAA which is safer choice for most other factions

And if Mongol manage to trade boom with Silver Tree, the gold cost are even more neglectable

Would love to see a game where Mongol players dont have overwhelming eco and still win with Lancer

49

abbasid is medium. delli is the same as China and Mongolia, but neither is good :joy: :joy:

50

Give Delhi a baby elephant from Dark Age that grows up by Castle Age.

3 Likes
51

Let this baby elephant buff research rates in nearby buildings and improve nearby villager gathering (The Hindu elephant God is a God of prosperity)

And when this baby dies, another baby spawns like the mongol khan.

Aka baby elephant prelate khan :heart_eyes: gooooo Delhi.

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52

Then give me a camel too🐫

1 Like
53

Best idea I’ve seen all year. It is said that Delhi is not a true representative for the Hindu peoples, but with baby elephant prelate we would be getting closer to the mark and improving the Civ. Win win.

1 Like
54

“little bellow average” Is heavy understatement. All of them are trash outside of clockwork tower / spirit way in form its used for FL or grenadiers so very situational. Lately in high elo FL been used as cannon fodder because they’re cheap to produce and can do decently against anything other than spears.

If we give any of these landmarks to any civilization they would NEVER pick them in any situation.

Nerf to bombards is fine but without giving anything out to balance feudal / castle age is going to butcher china even more. China already has sub 50% winrate outside of +1600 elo rating. 50.5% in 1600 but pickrate is 3rd worse.

I would happily take any other civs none picked landmarks because they would easily outperform what china has to offer. (-clocktower)

Then the fact that Chinese bombards are tied to clockwork tower meaning they can only produce 3x of rate and with 50% increase HP this means any civ can outperform chinese bombards with 4.5x production so with 5 siege workshop they can outproduce china and win siege war. This doesn’t take map size to consideration. Bigger the map is harder its for china to reinforce so in non optimal situation its worse than 3x production.

With suggested change only 20% extra HP this puts the production to 3.6x in optimal situation and its far easier for other civs to outproduce china. It would plummed china to worst civ in game if this change happened without addressing other balance issues.

Also the fact that tax collection is semi worthless past xx minutes and top of that tax money is lost if building is destroyed. It would be same as delhi losing all the tec if tec building was destroyed and had to start all over again. Also the gold cannot really be collected after china expands outwards which again makes tax collection worthless bonus. Without wheelbarrow tax collection money in game can be anywhere from 5-20k depending how long game goes on and economy of china and something like 90% of this isn’t collected.

Without fixing these fundamental issues of china there is absolutely no reason to touch china in terms of nerffing them.

55

I think you should read the statistics better. If you nerf Mongols, Rus and very slightly French, which civilizations do you think will be featured in the Top?

Chinese Bombards outside the Clock Tower will still be better than a normal Bombard.

We can agree that maybe Landmark extras deserve a bigger discount for make up better Early Game, but nothing more than that.

56

Just because civs may get some nerfs it doesn’t mean they will go down so much that X civ is better especially if the only strength of civ is nerffed heavily. Only above 1600 rating China is #2 in terms of winrate but pickrate is 3rd worse from out of all civs. If we go to 1500 rating then China is 5th and that trend sames under 1500 rating.

Besides Rus power goes down once they fix HA bug. After that we can start looking at their real win rate. Same applies to delhi. Once delhi bugs are fixed they might be even stronger than mongols who knows. Even now delhi is top 2 above 1500 rating.

Clockwork bombards benefit from clockwork bonuses which do not apply to normal bombards meaning if chinese player creates siegeworks shop the extra HP is not added to bombard. True that the reload speed and range is, but HP is much more better than either of those upgrades.

Discount for landmarks will not fix early / mid game of china. Its one of the issues but fact stays that all the landmarks outside of clockwork tower are shit.

Barbican = worst defensive landmark in game. Handcannon cannot even be redirected as far as I have experienced it. Just bigger outpost and far more expensive

Imperial Academy = sure easily better one if the tax collection can be utilized better but nowhere near good as other civs got as option

Imperial Palace = “yay more vision around imperial palace”. Spy ability allows see villager locations which is nice especially if going for raiding, but once its down its worthless provides basically nothing.

Spirit way = only beneficial for dynasty units which all are situational and mostly now used to benefit FL. Also allows access to already unlocked dynasty units

Gate = useless garbage. Extra hp for walls is so irrelevant when instead of 1 volley from cannons it takes 2 volleys. Makes no difference and the dmg increase when ON the gate is so irrelevant. No enemy lets it be alive. They just nuke it instantly and its gone.

Its super poor excuse to have shitty landmarks if we can build 2 from each age and dynasty argument isn’t great either because we need to make a choice between which dynasty bonus we want. If you go for late game and get Yuan or Ming and lose bunch of villagers you would prefer song over those, but cant switch. Tough luck or if you want to unlock Ming building but want to stay in Yuan you have to first go for Ming and then go for Yuan.

Imagine Rus having 3 different choices for their bounty and they can only use one or abbasid golden age having different bonuses and they can only have one. Thats essentially same as chinese dynasties. Its nice concept and I like it but its underwhelming and not that great especially only argument ppl can come up is “because they can have 2 landmarks form each age”

Dynasty bonuses:

Tang = Nice
Song = Nice
Yuan = Nice
Ming = Nice

But then when moving to different dynasty all bonuses from previous dynasty is lost. Cant build buildings again, cant make dynasty units unless spirit way is done.

Imagine moving to yuan dynasty and getting villages sniped by enemy. Yeah nice thats 120pop worth of houses needed to be build. Or while being in Ming lose the granary well there goes that bonus besides granary what I tested with 1 worker (unless ingame resource per minute is bugged) hardly provide any benefit. 1x had like 1 extra food per minute with 2 this was like 2-3 and with 3 it was 10. So bad building. And way too hard to stack their effects efficiently.

57

Imagine other civs which has to choose one landmark forever.
Who cares about other trash civs, which build only one landmark once.

easy choice The highest one

Imagine as HRE build Chapel in bad position.
All civs gas choices but china can change it second time. other civs can not change it.

1 selection vs 2 selection. and someone still complaining?

Try to play as other civs before complaining.

58

Quality is better than quantity, why one wants two expensive garbages when you can get a functional one with the price half of the two garbages. Common sense.

59

if the original post would say smth about “landmark - sucks” i could agree with you.
But BdelloidBore5 said about “he can not use some bonuses if he was raided”
So, u would suggest him to wall and play better, that way he would have no need to reselect previous dynasty.

Also, i believe dynasties are strong. Very strong. Especially, u can boom with +35 vils production and after that recieve crazy military bonuses.

60

From what I understand, he tried to say ppl overestimated the dynasty bonus, which from my point of view is kinda true. I dont mean that the bonus is bad, in fact it is really nice especially on paper. Furthermore, The dynasty bonus is quite well designed in which u get the bonus to spam vills then use those vills to eco, as entering next dynasty get an access to granary. But in an intense 1v1 match up where the choice of using resources at the right time can decide the game, it becomes somewhat redundant to enter the dynasty especially with that high cost.

For example, entering song causes 600 resources, u get the bonus of 33% time reduction in training vills, but if I pick 2nd TC instead with 700 resources I immediately get 50% reduction time of training vills with a big TC that can garrison 10 vills plus a drop off all resources. This is like more than Barbican plus imperial academy (in most cases).

The last two landmarks are utterly waste of resource the most. By comparing to e.g. red palace, you get the highest dps castle which can also reduce 20% cost of all core of the french army. While spirit of the way can only reduce the cost of dynasty unit, which if you dont use fire lancer or zhugu nu it is hella useless. Not to mention greatwall. The imperial palace is also meh, if you scout opponent enough you already know the position of their vills.

“My point is not that China doesn’t deserve a nerf, yeah it is. But to say ability of china being able to build 2nd landmarks is great is what I totally disagree.” For me if I can choose between building a 2nd landmarks and wasting my vills idle time to build it, or directly going to the next dynasty with half resources w/o making 2nd one I will gladly go for the latter.

61

They chose vastly superior landmark “forever” which is very useful through whole game.

Imagine Golden Gate giving only 50 tickets or allowed to train 20 knights from school of cavalry or able to get 200% more gold from relics for first 5 mins or English defensive landmarks being same as outposts

Quality is better. It wont matter if every building is landmark if they’re shit.

Besides China is only able to have one dynasty which isn’t something that we can exactly chose from. We chose to enter specific dynasty and giving up existing bonuses.

You’re now thinking if its the ones that currently exist. But if it was either get gold or movement speed or HP for military units. Gold is given with lowest bounty and speed with mid tier and HP with highest bounty but instead of getting as much bounty per animal killed u needed to kill 2 times more for new tier than previously. GL HF

That is players own fault for positioning chapel poorly. Also once resources run out around the chapel it can be reused for creating farms which all get the bonus but if China wants to align everything perfectly with imperial academy they need to create mills around the area and the farms take space on the area because the bonus is applied to building and not the workers.

Its not selection between 1 or 2. Its other civs picking the best landmark which is vastly stronger than anything china(outside of clockwork) even with dynasty bonuses vs forced to build 2 landmarks to get bonus thats baseline for other civs for building one.

But I DID SAY

From original post

Oh as strong as 2nd TC? or swabia? Or french just baseline getting decreased villager training time and tech cheaper? Or abbasid getting hafl of the cost reduced from villagers. Only reason why you think they’re strong is because you cant defend against FL and think China is op because of them.

Let me tell you. China has worst winrates sub 30min marker. After that they reach similar levels to other civs and shortly after go above. So yeah those dynasty bonuses especially song which is worse than 2nd tc are so strong.

Ofc you gonna lose to china when your only way of playing is try to boom for 45mins and then fight

62

Indeed. Bonuses are nice but when compared to other civs what they get from building 1x landmark for each age they’re not good especially when the bonuses are gone when entering new dynasty.

If china could unlock all dynasty bonuses at same time but one they currently are is 100% and rest 50% then it would be much close to what other civs got