Response from Eric Wrobel and Zak Robinson about Update 8324

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Here are some quotes taken from the Twitch Stream they did earlier today.

No talk on the increase of Delhi research time in the Imperial in the Imperial Age, yet, unfortunately, but this is a good show of cause that they are listening and they are responsive (only 2 days after the patch, with a fix for a few bugs coming next week). Hopefully that will be enough to quell a lot of the Karens around on this forum, but I somehow doubt it and people will still find a way to say that it’s not enough. Anyway, I found it interesting and reliving. I hope some others do as well!

About Abbasid Tech bug:
Eric: “We got a fix coming. We can’t say the exact day, right?”
Eliot: "But, we can say that it’s coming next week, though right?
Eric: “Yeah. Next week, we have it coming.”

About Springalds and blueprint deletion:
Zak: “We’ve got the fix coming for the Abbasid multiple tech bug. We also have the fix coming for the deletion of blueprints refunding more resources than they’re intending to […] and then the other one that we want to address for 1.2.1 is the Springald. We’ve heard a lot from the community about the Springald. We, you know, overtuned, so we have got some nerfs coming for the Springald, as well.”

About Sanctity:
Eric: “So, what we found with Delhi is that the early Sanctity tech…it was so powerful that that was the strategy that people were doing every single game and we want there to be a variety of different strategies that people will pursue in terms of, you know, getting tech or expand or go for a big army and so…Delhi was always doing this strategy and the strategy was so good that the opponent HAD to respond. So, it really limited the options of the other player, because the other player, if they tried go for, like, building extra Town Centers and bumping up their economy or if they tried to go for, like, a fast tech, Delhi had already gotten SO MUCH value out of holding these Sacred Sites that the other player was super behind. The more and more that we played with Delhi, the more we kept seeing this pattern over and over again. So, to address this, we wanted Delhi to not feel like they HAD to do that strategy to survive and to be effective. So, that’s why we have the research times being faster in both the Dark Age and the Feudal Age, so that ALL Delhi strategies are now much more effective and you feel like you have a lot of different options and cool strategies, instead of being pigeon holed into going for Sanctity.”

Zak: “We’ll continue to monitor that and we want to make sure that it is still a viable strategy, but one that can also be balanced by other strategies and options available to the civ.”

About Horsemen:
Eric: "So, the Horsemen, there’s sort of some fundamental philosophy issues with it where it was both the fastest unit and also one of the highest health units, especially if you take its cost into account. So, it’s like, super efficient Health-wise and super fast. So, we found that it was able to perform really well in a number of areas in the game. […] It’s supposed to be the counter to the Archers, right? So, that’s the reason that we reduced the health of it, but we gave it a Ranged Armor, because we wanted it to continue to perform well against Archers, but perform not as well when it’s fighting other Horsemen or it’s fighting units like the Man-at-Arms, because the Man-at-Arms is significantly slower, so the Horseman has a pretty big mobility advantage and it’s able to get in there and raid and kill a lot of units, while the Man-at-Arms are chasing it around.

Even Spearmen are quite a bit slower than this unit, so the Spearmen needs to be able to REALLY cost-effectively trade when it actually does get to connect and do damage to the Horseman. We find that the Horseman really slaughters Archers in lower numbers, but once players get a really big mass of Horsemen versus a really big mass of Archers, it gets harder for the Horsemen. So, we are still looking at some changes to the Horseman and we have some improvements slotted, but we’re doing a lot of really extensive playtesting to make sure that we really nail it for the next Update on Horsemen."

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So if you are unhappy with the changes, you are a “Karen.” You lost me at that.

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No. I never said that. By all means be unhappy, critical and voice opinions of dissatisfaction. But the manner in which some people choose to voice those opinions lack any degree of constructive or useful information and has all the tact of a three year old screaming in a super market, because their parent wouldn’t let them get a toy. There are many things to be unsatisfied and unhappy with, but the way you present those opinions makes all the difference in the world.

EDIT: And, to be clear, there are a good number of folks that have been very critical of the game, but have done so and presented their ideas, opinions and criticisms in a thoughtful and constructive manner. I’ll encourage that any day of the week.

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I couldn’t agree more with you mate and besides I never understood those people who think just because you dislike something about the game or have issues with bugs and exploits that you cannot appreciate and like the game at the same time.

Either you hate or love the game? Really? There is no middle ground where you can acknowledge the issues and give the developers constructive feedback while at the same time admit that you like the game overall? Sure it can get much better and it’ll hopefully do that thanks to the communication done by the developers and hard work on getting those issues resolved.

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That’s the camp I am in. Is it a perfect game? No. There are many bugs that need fixed, many imbalances that need addressing and other things that need to be re-examined. But, overall? I think the game has good roots. Just needs a little watering and toiling the soil to reach its full potential.

With this patch, I am still scratching my head about the x15 research time in Imperial for Delhi and I was hoping they would have talked on that a bit. I didn’t understand the Horseman nerfs and moving Sanctity to Feudal Age, either, but Eric’s explanation on the reasoning behind it made sense to me. I also liked that, in both instances, they assured that this isn’t the final form and they’re going to continue to monitor these changes and tweak it, until they find the right balance.

Everything else in the patch, though, I think were good changes (and there were a lot of them), but those get understated by the bugs that it created (which will hopefully be fixed next week) and the 2-3 questionable decisions that we’re all talking about.

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What other Delhi strategies??? Please enlighten me. No Dark Age, barely any Feudal, and definitely no Imperial. The Tower of Victory is piss poor and doesn’t work with MAA, Hisar Academy doesn’t work (And is now worse do to research times), no early units or strats other than the one they took away. Please, please, please tell me about all the “different options” Delhi have. After watching the stream, these guys don’t even know how to play the game they are making.

So much smoke . . .

As far as Abassid:
Eric: “We got a fix coming. We can’t say the exact day, right?”
Eliot: "But, we can say that it’s coming next week, though right?
Eric: “Yeah. Next week, we have it coming.”

You wouldn’t need a fix it if you didn’t mess it up in this patch. Quality assurance pls.

About the springalds:
If their fix for the springalds is the same as the rest of the “fixes,” it doesn’t look good.

The horses and spearman stuff i am still experimenting with so I don’t know enough yet to comment.

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You’re not helping it, rather inviting it by this, though. Just saying.

It would be interesting to know what there main source of data is for this changes.
The reasoning is fine on paper, but when you look at the game and what players have to say about it, it doesn’t seem to fit. I’m waiting to see how Dehli unfolds but the horsemen felt never that effective in the game itself, rather niche on every stage. Even early mongol horsemen was extremely dangerous because of the low dmg against buildings and villagers while super fragile against towers, TC and scattered spearmen. And +1 Armor will diminish rapidly in progression and make it even weaker as part of army comp. Right now, I see them only as eco raiding gang before the player walls up.

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They said that they get data feedback of every unit that people create in games. So, extrapolating from that, it seems like they have data streams that give them a statistical analysis of games, as we play them. As far as what all those data streams entail is anyone’s guess a purely subject to speculation. It also sounds like they are already aware that Horsemen do not perform as well against Archers en masse as they would like. With those two things combined, I speculate that they likely put out those changes to the Horseman as-is, so that they could gather more data on their performance, outside of isolated, internal testing, because it’s no secret that they are going to get a LOT more useable data from thousands of players playing thousands of games than what they could ever hope to achieve through internal testing. More games, means more data. Granted, this is purely speculation, but it seems a plausible scenario to me. Their reasoning for the changes to Horsemen made sense enough to me to justify the change, but I’m definitely interested to see what they do with them in future patches.

I’m still not sold on the x15 tech for Delhi in Imperial. Definitely feels like over-tuning to me. It seems like even if you beat someone on the age up to Imperial, then you’re going to spend so much time on research that they are going to have within 1-2 minutes after aging, that it’s just going to be a one-sided fight, especially if you were on the disadvantaged side of some early aggression.

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So, what we found with Delhi is that the early Sanctity tech…it was so powerful that that was the strategy that people were doing every single game and we want there to be a variety of different strategies that people will pursue in terms of, you know, getting tech or expand or go for a big army and so…Delhi was always doing this strategy and the strategy was so good that the opponent HAD to respond. So, it really limited the options of the other player, because the other player, if they tried go for, like, building extra Town Centers and bumping up their economy or if they tried to go for, like, a fast tech, Delhi had already gotten SO MUCH value out of holding these Sacred Sites that the other player was super behind.

Okay I totally get that. But meanwhile every French player and every English player goes for the same early strategy too. School of cavalry and the Council Hall are so strong that you barely see anything else being played than early knights or early longbows. And it is not like I still have a ton of options when playing against French: i HAVE to go for spearmen or I will get raided to death as soon as he hits critical knight numbers.

If this is your argument for nerfing Delhi then be consistent with that for other civs too.

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Perfectly said, and my thoughts exactly!!!

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I agree with this. There isn’t much variety on different tactics you can use and English and French are two good examples of it where the majority picks the same landmarks.

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Depends on perspective, I think. If they see English and French as the baseline, then the goal would be to bring other civs up to that point, rather than bringing those down to the point of other civs. We did see a little tuning with English Longbowmen and French Royal Knight, by extension of the Spearman buff. There is now a very real and very present counter against Royal Knights with those Spearman buffs.

With Knights, at this point it’s a waiting game. We want to see how Knights (of all variety) perform against the new Spearmen. If they threw a nerf to Royal Knights into the mix, on top of the buffs to Spearmen, I am sure we would have seen the same thing with the French that we’re currently seeing with Delhi (a case of overtuning and implementing too many sweeping changes at once). I would prefer them hold off on any hard changes to French Knights, until we see how they play against the new Spearmen.

EDIT: For clarity, I am not saying that English or French should go on unchanged. All I am saying is that before we go nerfing French Knights, we should see how they hold up and perform against the Spearman buffs.

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Philosophically I completely agree that Delhi were reduced to a mini-game - because if they could take and hold the sacred sites from about 5 minutes to say 10 minutes they had almost certainly won - but if they couldn’t hold them they had almost certainly lost.

French arguably have alternatives and competitively we have seen them. Yes on land map its almost always School of Cavalry - but that can be 1 knight harass into fast castle or lots of knights for an extended harass which evolves into knights+archers+rams or techs up. Possibly even knight into 2 TCs although I think that’s not seen as especially competitive (although it depends a bit on map). I’m not really sure its right to talk about “the meta” given its changing week on week - but fast castle seems to beat 2 TCs, which I’m not sure should be the case but is.

The problem is though - as Innocentfish said above - is “what other strategies”. I mean… sure, I can go 2 TC as Delhi like any other faction. But I get zero faction-related reason to do so. Pretty much every other faction’s villagers get some sort of bonus which would make this more attractive while Delhi get… free tier 1 economic upgrades? Great.
And then sure I can mass… spearmen, horsemen and archers. Make some rams etc. But again, I have zero faction-related reasons for wanting to stick in Feudal for any length of time.

Basically you needed to add in some sort of carrot if you want people to see these strategies open up. You can’t really expect a civ to try booming or rushing when its weak at it.

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I really love this game but my biggest issue right now with the game is that I’d like to see changes made to the less chosen landmarks of each civilization to attract new playstyles and make them more interesting for players to choose and experiment with new ways of playing the same civilization.

Right now that ain’t happening as more often than not there is always a clear choice which of the two landmarks to take when you age up. I think an overhaul is needed here to make both options more interesting.

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They could even remove the early knight completely and the French would still be a playable civ. French have so much stuff (Best crossbows in the game which got buffed with this patch too mind you, still the best knights in the game just only at castle age, superior siege in imp, absolutely GREAT landmarks, default eco bonuses for which you don’t have to do anything and to top it all of a production bonus on their production buildings)

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Agreed. 100%. You don’t see anybody going with Abbey of Kings on English. That’s the most blatant example I can think of. The healing you get from it just does not outweigh the benefit of mass archers, even with a defensive strategy. Right now, I think if you put Mongols, English and French in a vacuum with each other, then you would have a pretty decent balance. What I would like to see is for them to bring the other civs UP to that level of viability, rather than bringing those civs down (unless there is just no other option to get the other civs up to their level).

Absolutely. The French are a great civ with a lot of different options, but they are also one of the most straight forward civs and, arguably, uninspired civs. They have a lot of really good bonuses, but their bonuses are rather vanilla and straight to the point. I imagine that French were one of the first civs that they designed, simply because they don’t really have a lot of truly unique and special mechanics surrounding them (at least not to the same degree as Mongols, Delhi or Rus). For a lot of the more unorthodox civs, I think they’re still trying to get a feel for and solidify where their place in the game is (which we’re really seeing full on with Delhi in this update). French and English are definitely the easy picks right now (which ironically are classified as the easiest civs to play), but I would definitely like to see the civs like Delhi, Abbasid, Chinese and Rus (although Rus are in a pretty good place right now, comparatively) come into their edge, because, personally, I find the unique mechanics of those civs to be far more interesting to dig into than the default English or French pick.

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I like how you didn’t include HRE in that list of civs

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Purely a personal bias. I don’t play them (or against them) enough to speculate on them one way or another. On paper, they seem like they’re in the same category as English and French. The basic “big infantry” civ, but…like I said, I don’t really play them enough speculate one way or another.

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It is okay. Statements like:
“The game is just out 1 month, give the meta some time to settle”
or
“I feel the HRE eco with the prelates and stuff is absolutely insane. When people figure out how to play them they will be S tier”

are just exactly the kind of things you have to hear over and over again as an HRE main when you bring up how they are underperforming. The reason I brought up French specifically is, because the HRE have a terrible matchup against the French since they have the least defensive capabilities in feudal against raiding (together with Delhi and Abbasid).

And I agree with you I would like to see those three civs actually reworked a bit to bring some spice and inspiration to their gameplay.

The fact that you know that you will deal with early knights or longbows in feudal against French or English ist imo toxic for the feudal gameplay

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He heard that “witty remark” on the internet and had to use it since it’s so 2020

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