Who’s there to counter bombard then? Bombard the new springald?
With some differences to me.
The changes about university technologies , especially the change about chemistry technology ,made the tag “gunpowder” of Chinese civ a totally joke, because the free chemical technology for Chinese can’t provide fighting capacity in frontal battle.
I have seen a conqueror III player played Chinese in five games at the beginning of this season and be ranked to gold III.
2 Likes
Change the siege weapon back, your modifications have lowered the game’s dimension by one, while not paying attention to civilization characteristics, making the entire game very unbalanced. The current games are very boring, and all ethnic groups have to use knights and archers to fight from the second generation to the fourth generation, because siege weapons are completely useless and no one is reproducing them.
3 Likes
But you could also make springald anti-siege again but with much lower efficiency no? Bombard/culverin can be better versions of springald in age4 with anti-building abilities. Springald role as of now is just too awkward, melee infantry is already countered by many units, I don’t see a reason for another anti-melee siege weapon.
1 Like
I prefer a siege unit that beats another siege unit to be made in Imperial, have bonuses against buildings and have somewhat longer siege battles. It would be missing to add operators and better destruction physics.
Regarding infantry you are right, especially with MAA, they will have to do something with them in Late Game in my opinion because they are not seen much anymore.
1 Like
This season is cav superiority season. Problem is not every civ have strong cav or an alternative to stay competent.
And in my opinion malian is really in the shitter with my perosnal experience and having watch some high level games. They cant compete knight vs knights, obviously doesnt have a crossbow, and since this season is anti melee infantry…what does mali do again??
Last i checked, sofa could beat most knights in age 3 due to cost effeciency. Is that no longer the case?
1 Like
Sofa are more cost effective than knights yes, once you have imported armor. But also that war of attrition requires malian to have the superior production capacity in order to win on efficiency. So if you didn’t start off stables, having to composition switch and get special upgrades and make sufficient production to compete with a civ that immediately gets veterancy, doesn’t need the mass production necessarily, nor a special upgrade; it means mali will have to come from behind to win and that’s asking a lot.
Most malian games players dont open up sofa?
1 Like
El cambio ha sido positivo, las guerras entre máquinas de asedio eran tediosas y aburridas, en mi opinión el juego se ha vuelto más dinámico y divertido.
5 Likes
Most malian games players dont open up sofa?
Well thats honestly a surprise to hear. I dont really touch malians, but on release it looked to me that their best conventional comps all included sofa just for that mobility aura.
At the very least I enjoyed farima leadership boosted gunners, running around at 1.44 speed.
Mayhap the basic malian build order just needs to adapt to enabling the sofa asap?
Sofa does not have the aura right from the start. It is an age 4 technology.
“Opening” refers to the early game, or did I get that wrong?
Well, you kinda skipped logic
- Best mali endgame comps need speed aura
- Speed aura is provided by sofa in endgame
- Sofa is better than knights early on for even cost
So there’s a need for sofa at later stages and they are strong early on → apparently mali DOESN’T open with them → why not?
They’re strong from age 2, 3 and have solid role in age 4 too. And thats what you missed.
1 Like
Chinese and Ottoman need buff
2 Likes
Holy Roman Empire: The Aachen Chapel in the feudal age almost made this nation completely ahead of other civilizations more than 30% of the resources, march exercises let this civilization unlimited grasp the initiative of the feudal age, need to balance these two points
English: mangonel is now unable to deal effective damage to Longbow due to the changes to the siege, and England has received a good benefit with almost every recent patch.
Abbasid: nerf Eco wing, nerf camel archer
Dehli: nerf elephant
france and jeanne: Cant understood why do not increase the cost of Royal Bloodlines
ZhuXi’s Legacy: we found a unknown reason that can made Zhu ge nu with full technology and enter Ming dynesty to be 6+8 damage, Should it be reasonable?
Byzantines: I noticed that a patch removed the cost of the mercenary small stack alliance, but the civilization still has 100 olive oil as its initial resource, is it necessary to confiscate the additional 100 resources?
Ayyubids: The Silk bowstring will give range to the Desert Raider in melee mode, and this civ needs more balance to slow down its dominance on most maps.
Sofa are not good vs knights before imported armor? That’s an age 3 expensive tech. Early knights keshiks etc all shit on sofa until said upgrade AND SUFFICIENT production, aka you need to be able to field the efficient multiple more of them.
That’s the malian dilemma, your malian success in rooted in your efficient units, but to flies those units you need sufficient eco and production…the get sufficient eco an production you need to be left alone? To be left alone you need the other to player turlte?? Or you need to defend and ive long enough? But defending is hard bc your units are weak individually (donsos the exception).
I’d actually like both: To get the old Springald back, but to also keep the new Springald.
I love the concept of the new Springald, because it adds another tactical avenue to fights. Yes, fighting in choke points was before already powerful, but now it becomes even more significant if you can use the terrain to your advantage.
It also adds a second hard counter to each melee infantry unit (with the other being archer/crossbow), which allows for higher flexibility in people’s strategies.
Similarly I’d love to see every other unit type have two hard counters as well. We already have this for knights & ranged infantry.
Siege, with old Springald, had two hard-counters as well. We’re left with Horsemen, which only really got Spearmen as counter (aside from Abba, Ayyu, Otto).
1 Like
I’ve been having mixed feelings about the changes myself. I see siege in an odd place with the adjustments to their mechanics, mostly the lack of a ranged siege counter outside of bombards (something that I think is not in any way equivalent to what springalds represented before S9, but I’ll leave it there).
After reading through the press release I’m thinking that a lot of the changes being made to the meta represent features that are being planned with the DLC. Understanding that, it makes sense that they would make changes to the siege meta, as well as tuning the melee/ranged/cavalry triangle. Hoping that they add more to break up the triangle, it’s incredibly hard to tell this far out though.
Whatever comes next I’m in it for the long-haul with this game. Haven’t walked away from a game after putting >1k hours into it yet, and I don’t see AoE IV disappearing over a bad season or two. I just hope that the changes are building into something and not just being made to break a stale meta for the sake of it. Mostly because my ranked 1v1 games have been against one of 3 civs. Feels like a statistical anomaly, but the meta does feel tilted towards mostly ranged/cav compositions because it’s what I’m seeing every game. So, if the point of the changes was to add more strategic options to the meta it failed in doing so (in my experience at 1200-1400 1v1 ranked).
I like the idea of siege being in every army composition, but at the moment things are tilted towards it only being there to siege buildings or as a massive snowball/deathball unit with no effective counter. Having it be specialized (mangonel vs ranged, springald vs melee infantry (I think it should deal extra to all melee units, god I need a counter for cavalry masses)) is a great way to give it that feeling. There’s clearly a need for more adjustments though.
Guess I’ll have to wait and see what they bring us in the end of year patch.
1 Like
Sofa are not good vs knights before imported armor?
Is that right? Darn. I gotta play mali some more.
Then, if thats the case would it be best to buff sofa early or enable the donso/javalin/archer comp better in late game?
I’d be partial to the former just because early cavalry can always be countered with spearmen, but a strong archer/spear ball early to finish might be tough to handle.
Springalds sadly arent strong enough and the devs admit this. Main issue is the splash dmg is predominantly in a line trajectory and that pattern has diminishing return the less of the units that are stacked in a line (one behind the other). If they insist on keeping it mechanically the same they need to add 10 more bonus dmg.
Currently, even when facing a tremendous melee infantry mass (if not funneled into a choke point), the melee mass will always attempt to form a concave which means at best you have 2 rows of melee trying to get in on the action. Springalds meed to be decent in THIS scenario, and allow the longer line stacks be a treat.
Adding 10 more Bonus dmg makes Springalds as cost effective as crossbows when at least 2 maas are being splashed. Right now a Springald shot needs to hit 4 melee units each shot min JUST to average the same DPS/cost of a crossbow, but hitting 4 units in a line??? Is impractical.