Tell me i’m wrong. French and Mongol will always be OP versus other races that are not cavalry focused. The entire game in its current state is based around economy griefing. First thing French or Mongol do? Go right for villagers. Every game. Well, just build the units that counter them you say? In any sustained match / battle you will outright lose if you’re going spears/x-bow, cavalry can cover twice the map distance the units that counter them do. As a result, Mongol/RK will just keep spamming and overwhelm you. Defenses are so limited in option and effectiveness it’s laughable. Just break one wall and your base is flooded, gg. And you can’t do anything to their economy because you’re always stuck in defending / turtle mode.
I thought AOE4 was going to be about epic battles. All it is now is an econ harass / cheese fest. Chasing horsies around the map until you’re blue in the face. The entire mechanic is really just not fun at all, IMO, and I really dont think that’s what was intended for this game?
What 's your definition of epic battles? Play economy simulator for 15 minutes then have a huge fight? That’s extremely repetitive and RTS games like AoE4 are not designed for that purpose. Economy harass is very usual and it’s certainly not a cheese. Further you should never chase horsies around the map because then you’d fall for the bait. Games like AoE4 reward activity and making high quality strategic decisions under high pressure. As for the balance I can recommend you this site: Ranked Match 1v1 – Matchups – AoE4 World
If your not a very good player balance shouldn’t play a role.
I really do not get the logic behind the labelling some strategies as cheese. When someone builds x walls, keeps, siege to drag the game out and let exactly nothing happen it is considered no cheese for most people. But when you actually do something and create strategically dynamic situations it is often considered cheese.
I have ended up playing 2v1 few times lately when my Ally decided to quit even tho we had upper hand because he took some dmg from opponent and decided game was over. I proceeded to take control of map and dominating fights but my pushes always came to end when opponent spammed 9234872389 keeps and outposts stopping me to do any harass or meaningful pushes even when I included siege and only reason I lost them at that point was because the keep/outpost spam.
So I have to agree that keeps and outpost are stupid at this point when siege is just meh.
You’re quite lot simplifying it so lets clear it out. In both games I won all the fights kept pushing and harassing them and both of them would’ve lost their eco unless they had ridiculous amounts of towers and keeps. Those players didn’t win the game even when 2v1 because of their control, economy management or any related to skill other than just spamming static D. Im not now talking about 1-2 keeps and 5-10 towers at their base. Literally 5-10 keeps to 20-30 outposts around their base. Even when I got some units through all of it, I lost so much in process trying to.
It won’t even matter if its 2v1 or 2v2 when ppl do it anyway and it creates this stupid drag out scenarios. In past this was not the case as much because siege was actually more useful.
This also changes game from RTS to tower defense game. Especially when you can just throw away cavalry to kill siege even if you lose 20-30 horseman who cares as long as siege dies and you’re fine behind the towers
Edit its not just about the towers / keeps themselves but siege being what it is rn. In the past I could’ve easily gone through everything and won the games, but because players can just throw away masses of units to take down siege + have better anti siege than civ im playing with
If it is epic battles you are looking for, AoE is the wrong game.
Total War series would suit you much better for that.
While I agree that French are very strong, due to Royal knights combined with easyness to play.
Mongols are far from OP, especially now.
Mongol’s have no defenses. They have rather weak econ compared to any other civ, and they suffer from some serious weaknesses that are easy to exploit.
Infact one of the currently strongest Civ right now isn’t even a cavalry civ! Its a infantry Civ! (HRE)
Everyone has the ability to make cavalry. Just because your cavalry isn’t “as good” as theirs, it still doesn’t stop their usefulness for those Civs.
It is more of using them correctly.
If you are on your Toes on the defensive. Make a few horsemen and knights and counterattack the enemies, while you focus using your infantry for the defense.
This is something Mongol’s do not have the ability to do, due to lack of walls. Making it very easy to harass the econ of mongols even if things are hidden under the TC, but in castle age and with knights, even the TC defenses is inadequate with a few range armor upgrades.
Walls are not designed to stop an army.
Its designed to stop harassment, limit approaches, and its main purpose.
Buy you time.
As timing is everything in any strategy game.
If you want to look on a perfect example of a game where the Defender is heavily suppressed by is still able to pull a victory out of his ass.
You should check out the latest game between BeastyQT and MarineLord.
Its English vs HRE.
While its not a cavalry civ vs a non cavalry civ.
English are extremely oppressive in the early stages of the game. and you will see MarineLord being forced in the defense, almost seemingly at the brink of Tapping out at any moment, but still perserveres and manage to pull a win.
This is the game I am referring to.
now, both you and me are nowhere near level of pro players like this.
But watching a few of these peoples games does help improve your own play significantly. not only in figuring out build orders, but more importantly, Strategy and game mechanics otherwise not thought about.
pre aoe 4 and post aoe2 games already solve this issues with counter cav cav units to counter mobile units. The fact thta even xbow can be countered by the thing that SHOULD COUNTER add another layer of inconsistance in the design of the units in the counter system
When you are in that situation of “being the whole game defensive/turtle mode”, just make 5-6 knights when reaching castle age and go harass their gold or farms. Wood villagers are also very unprotectef in castle age.
That usually is enough to get some advantage and break the turtle mode.
If you have the fastest unit, strongest, hits with the most damage, has the most hit points, regenerates health.
They can keep nerfing French they will still have the best win rate.
Look at the top players stats. They pick French the most for a reason and have the highest win rate with them and the worst lose record with them. Cause there hard to defend against in early game
It is not that hard to defend against french, of course playing french knights is easier but I mean it is not like you are hopeless.
Spears melt knights while being a lot cheaper, towers denies raids and make idle time shorter, and walls are a great obstacule for a small cavalry group
Not to mention that some civs have their own defensive strategies, like Abbasids with better spears and camels (you build just one and negate 20% dmg from knights), Rus is mostly unraidable since they have towers on wood and they usually don’t mine gold early game. And thats to name 2.
I don’t think France is OP, it’s just more straighfoward to play
You are wrong. Cavalry is strong on open maps. So as infantry focused civ your answer should be to narrow down the battlefield. This can for example be done by walling your flanks or pushing your opponents base to force them to fight etc.
This is a strategy game. Not a “let’s smash units into each other and see who wins” game.
