I just checked the pics and descriptions of the Rus and saw an interesting structure there.
Similar to the ones used in stronghold.
I did not see these in action yet, so I wanted to point them out
Looks like wheels to me. But I could see those just being their architecture for palisade gates, although I like the idea of movable walls from a gameplay perspective at least. Not sure how historically accurate it would be.
I do think these are wheels indeed, and they seem kinda movable to me. I dont know, for a palisade wall the left ones look like there is too much space between them.
But the way the wheels are mounted seems a bit weird.
Either way I think that movable walls/shields were definitely used, the question is if they would be wheeled as we can presume here.
Maybe they are just a campaign element and not a unit aswell, who knows.
Looks like pallisades on wheels. The one on the left is moved and acts as a gate. Maybe their pallisades can are modular and do not require gates.
pretty sure its a separate unit/building, theres good images of their palisades
cba but here’s an image clearing showing they are separate, so likely to be mantlet type things
Perhaps they will be static structures the units can construct like Longbowman spikes.
I feel if they moved it would be very hard to control?
these are neat. I hope there is more uniqueness to these civs than what is shown (streltez and warrior monk) seems like either there will be a core of shared units like man at arms or something, i wonder if they really will have unique skins or stats.
this is hopeful they may have a more unique siege strat.
it looks like they are pretty focused on getting to gunpowder units.
And their palisade walls actually look different (perhaps a reference to early russian fortifications) Ostrog (fortress) - Wikipedia
In general the 2 new civs sound great.
practically every single unit in the game has a unique skin
most of the civs have shared units, but all civs have unique versions of certain units… for rus they have knights that are available before other civ knights, same for mongols and french. rus have horse archers which are unique, their strelet is likely a unique hand cannon, which most civs have
rus also has unique tech that affects their shared units differently, the same way the other civs have unique tech for their shared units
the game is much deeper than it seems at first glance, but of all things the visual difference is the most (unlike aoe2)
again they likely share certain units, and either have unique siege or unique tech for their siege.
their bases are already fairly unique in that they are fragile for a “city” civ, since its all wood instead of stone, but made up for it with their seemingly better eco… heck that wonder gives them a huge military boost, potentially better than the mongols
Yeah its very refreshing, it always felt weird when non-european civs were running around with very european looking man-at-arms. (in terms of stat differences time will tell)
I actually think their palisades will be stronger than that of normal civs. If you look at the footage they clearly look sturdier. And its a nice reference to early Russian fortifications. They did show later in the ages they get stone as well.
actually if that was their stone tower I saw and not the HRE then they have one of my favorite towers because its all wooded at the top.
But even if not, just speculating on how these civs might have been balanced in a spectrum. The mongols have no walls (or only palisades? ) and have some unique strengths for that, and HRE may have the strongest but maybe have harder time controlling something else… the RUS seem like a very strong early civ with better than regular wood walls, but then weaker as stone goes on… Aesthetically this is one of my favorite civs. The super fortress feel, and the medieval vikingesque’ ships are awesome. And I think it will be fun to have all these wooden forts around to control all the early hunts. While other civs try to turtle up. or vs other control civs like mongols could get fierce!
Despite my disappointments in lack of crew for siege, I am pretty excited to watch people stream it.
yeah if the russians can construct early keeps out of wood that would be really intersting. (though i haven’t seen any). Regardless, them being better fortified that early indicates they’re defensive early. And then perhaps they get really strong at imperial age with the gunpowder units.
fair assessment, but it seems since all their eco bonuses rely on natural ones so one really would need to be able to aggressively take land and then build defenses to hold it. While still needing to build up before getting strong enough to actually push into a strong defensive town like English, Delhi or China?
ah, you can see it much better here, thanks for the shot 
Im still wondering as to how they will work.
Do they have to be build? and by vils, or also military untis?
Or are they just additional obstacles for campaign only?
If they are build - (how) can they be moved? it looks like their movement will only be sideways, which might be interesting
Or will it be as in strongold, where you need units to move them forwards? (I doubt that, they seem too massive to be really movable.
Will they be used for offense or defense? here it seems more defensively. But why would you use them to shield archers instead of walls? they must provide excellent cover.
It will be very interesting to see what they do and how they can be used. Especially since we didnt see them before in age games.
Or maybe they are ust nice looking campaign elements…
they might function similar to the hussite wagon from aoe2, where projectiles that pass through their collision box, only do half damage to units behind them, i might be over thinking this, but so far everything they have shown in videos has been accessible to players, even how they have the mini roads/bits around structures
maybe like other siege weapons where they collapse into a wagon and then move around and construct elsewhere? they dont actually roll around on those wheels like that in game?
yeah exactly, their buildings need trees nearby to generate more gold, so you dont want to chop those trees, but at the same time you need to chop wood due to their excessive wood eco, the same way mongols dont build stone structures but use exorbitant amounts of stone anyway
thanks, i initially missed that. although then they likely function similar to cumans in aoe2 in way, where they have stronger palisades but their stone walls come in so late that you are building walls only after opponents have access to siege(cumans never get stone walls, so have stronger palisades but suffer for it later on), so you have this period where your defences are actually worse than the enemies relative to the weapons
as well as the fact that rus have to spread out so you will inherently be more vulnerable to attack, as well as having a harder time “stone” walling, palisades will help, but only so much, even buffed ones should die quickly to a concentrated attack
i really wish they would change this. as much as i like the game, they added ships "just because its cool " so why not add crew to siege when it would look so much better?
It feels like a very interesting playstyle to say the least. The fact Rus come with early knights and horse archers sort of lends to early raiding/easy movement to run around the map defending your settlements until you get mustkets. Very curious to see how its played.
The Ostrog will be the wooden fortress.
We can see one in the trailer for half a second: Age of Empires IV - Official Gamescom Gameplay Trailer - YouTube (at 1:13)
