Siege concept issue (includes grenadiers)

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Sieges were operated by men (operators).

In this game for the sake of simplicity, the sieges operate without operators and the developers are confused whether the siege is a building and so made melee units to throw torches…

This is completely incorrect. No one on the battlefield wastes their time, life, and switches their weapon to pull out a torch… Soldiers simply killed the operators! It is a much faster and efficient way to make the siege their own and turn off the offense.

Moreover, the game developers confused the siege engines like springalds, mangonels, cannons, and trebuchets with light vehicles to tanks.

They move too fast, set up too fast, shoot too fast, and are too tanky!

Next thing is, every shot hits! They have 100% accuracy! (same goes for archers!) (Except: Mangonels and Trebuchets)

The melee units whether it is heavy, light, mounted, etc don’t matter. They are all useless. Because they throw torches!

Why are torches so useless?

The torch attack speed is 2 seconds compared to the melee attack speed of 1.35…
Torch damage is the same for the units that cost more or cost more gold.
For example, knights deal 20 torch damage to siege and building and the same goes to spearmen, scouts etc…
Again, poor balancing!

About grenadiers!

The need to have a minimum “no attack range”!
At the moment they can drop a grenade right at their face…
No self and friendly damage…
And ammunition should be the biggest problem for grenadiers (could make the attack speed much slower and decrease the range!).

Finally, the only counters of the siege engines are the siege engines! (Except Chinese Fire Lancers)
In AOE 2 and AOE 3 we had specific non-siege melee and ranged units that countered sieges effectively!
And here in 2021, we don’t have it. Such a poor design!

Tell me about your opinion about this problem guys
For me, I am done with the Age of Siege.

To the developers! Please read this!

"I think the developers have no idea about the medieval to renaissance era. Because, as I understand, they think the melee units need to burn the cannon barrel instead of killing its operators. And that makes the siege units so OP. The units are trying to destroy the metal cannon, not the operators. As you can see logically, burning the metal barrel using torches will never work, or burning the trebuchet will take longer than killing its operators.

In AOE 2 and AOE 3 melee units used their weapons instead of torch because they have the correct logic like a human being. Here in AOE 4 again they have the wrong logic about the siege. This is one of the main problems"

Look, I don’t want operators on siege engines, for now, You guys have bigger problems to fix, just use the logic of AOE1, 2, and 3 and let melee units swing their weapons instead of torches!

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Siege weapons are very costly. It makes sense they provide value.

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They are very effective yet should be fragile unit to melee units.
Currently, it feels like a fantasy unit for the sake of balance and I don’t like it.
in AOE 2 and AOE3 all melee units are very effective against all siege units because they dealt bonus damage and sieges had minimum no shooting range.

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I think they are pretty weak. The thing you are talking about is their speed. They can outrun most infantry which is a problem, its mostly because of yam network and other buffs different civs have (e.g Chinese). Not to mention how much HP bonus chinese civ gets making it harder to destroy. So its not the unit itself, its stupid buffs siege units get for certain civs.

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As I mentioned in my reasonings, all melee units use torch, the Health is not an issue.
It is about the damage units deal to the siege.

I think the developers have no idea about the medieval to renaissance era. Because, as I understand, they think the melee units need to burn the cannon barrel instead of killing its operators. And that makes the siege units so OP. The units are trying to destroy the cannon, not the operators. As you can see logically, burning the barrel will never work, or burning the trebuchet is self will take longer than killing its operators.

In AOE 2 and AOE 3 melee units used their weapons instead of torch because they have the correct logic like a human being. Here in AOE 4 again they have the wrong logic about the siege. This is one of the main problems

And yea, I agree with the civ bonus to siege speed bonus.

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Visually torch damage looks better than swinging sword on metal.

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How could it be? The torch will never melt a metal xD
A sword on the other hand at least kills operators.

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Siegue should de packed buildings, like the mongol edifications.

Packing and unpacking could requiere the assistance of infantry, like building a RAM. More infantry helping, faster packing / unpacking speed.

In order to attack, the siege should be manned by 2 infantry units. They are inside the siege unit, but can be targeted. If both if them are killed, the siege unit becomes neutral And can be captured by anyone, just by putting infantry inside it to take control.

While attacking a infantry inside the siege unit, it also receives damage and could even break.

When a siege unit is created comes with two siege engineers, a low attack melee light infantry. Their main purpose is to drive the siege engines. Using regular infantry instead will make the siege weapon to reload slower and have lower accuracy. Archers don’t have accuracy penalization, but it will reload slower.

Rams should only move while having infantry inside.

Yes, it would be a big change all over the place to make it this way, and it would also be a nightmare for developers (I guess) but it would be closer to reality.

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I agree with that. Things are ridiculous.

However, if you read other threads, you will see that people are fine with this. I think the majority of people who play AoE4 do not care about this siege fiesta. They are happy to win with an army of wooden tanks, and they have their arguments for it e.g. “they are costly and therefore having them means you are good at economy”, “you have to defend them and therefore you are good at micromanagement”, etc.

Some people want to play AoE for some quasi-realistic medieval fun (I belong here), some want to just win even with ridiculous tactics e.g. armies of packed siege weapons.

You will see a lot of people defending their siege army strategy by arguments such as “you can make anti-siege” or “you can use this or that”. But that is NOT the point. Nobody is complaining that they cannot beat a siege-weapon army. Anybody can have an army of wooden tanks and win, nothing smart about this. The complaint is “it is no fun playing or winning this way”.

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Disagree. Most people don’t like it, based on threads. Nobody liked mass springalds, it was boring to play and boring to watch.

All the way down to the noobs who only play turtling team games and end up facing 20 bombards, to the point where they are suggesting we cap the numbers you can build, or make them 5 times as expensive in those threads lol.

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You should reply to the whole post, not one particular sentence and finish it with a lol. Why are people in this forum behaving like annoying lawyers who pick one sentence and go on and on about it.

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Yes, people don’t like AOE 4 sieges because as I mentioned developers have the wrong logic xD

It is beyond funny when you go close to the siege and try to burn instead of swinging swords.
For example, the developers think that they need to burn the cannon’s metal barrel with a torch. Both visually and logically it doesn’t make any sense since torch cannot melt metal barrel xD or for wooden sieges like trebuchets, it will take so much time to burn them.

Swinging swords to siege engines is the correct way and was done in AOE 1, AOE 2, and AOE3. This is a simple logic for anyone fighting to defend their castle or turn the tide of the pitched battle.

Why? because swinging swords meant killing its operators not breaking the siege engine itself.
AOE 4 sieges are just ridiculous!

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So you watched some youtube videos and now you think you know way more about that part of history then a team which developed a game around this the past 3? years ?
Quite arrogant to think the team got no idea.

And about your initial point, friendly fire of siege aoe damage is something to consider and I would also prefer that.
And no, there is no need for units to use their weapon, they can simply use their torch, it is just about balancing the numbers. No one said that they can not change the damage towards siege or the range or the torch attack speed. They can do all that, its just about changing numbers, nothing more or less.

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Yeah, and even trying to torch siege while it runs away and your guys constantly trip over each other, catching up, stopping, throwing, catching up, stopping, throwing… painful.

People also expect medieval battles, trebs and rams and siege engines and defensive walls and castles…
OP sniper cannons make these largely redundant.

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You see, I am a medieval nerd, grown up reading history books well mostly warfare.
So I do know how siege engines operate and how they were captured, not destroyed.

If the developers knew simple logical approaches they would never let melee units use a torch.
As I said, visually and logically it is incorrect to burn the siege. It is waste of time and torches cannot melt metal cannon barrels, end of the story.

The torches don’t look good too.
So it is better to use swords as it would make it sound and feel better than throwing fireballs…

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You should NEVER apply 100% realism to a game.
It would make even less sense, coming from such a perspective, to hit on wodden siege engines with a sword or poking it with a spear. Doesn’t make that much sense neither.

You are interpreting too much into this, in the end it is a game which does not need to follow fully realistic behavior.
What you actually wanted to say is “why don’t we have siege operators” and there the answer probably would be, for readability of units and scaling consistency

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Is better than Torch.
As I mentioned in my post, in AOE 1,2, and 3 all melee units used their weapon to destroy siege as it meant killing the operators.

Look, the devs went lazy on this game especially to sieges. They made it without operators in 2021…
That is their main issue!
Wrong logic, concept, and thinking behind the development of this game.

And, yes, it is not 100% realism since I am requesting melee units to use their weapon to hit the siege engine.
Bbut, just keeping the logic behind it. (killing the operators) not burning the siege.

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So you are asking for a visual change and I guess we know that this has no priority what so ever.
Since nothing else would it be.

It does not matter if they attack with their weapon or the torch, in the end it is a numbers game.

The aoe damage / friendly fire topic is a completely different one and I totally agree, ranged aoe should do friendly fire, I am sick of mangonals shooting at a ball of friendly and opponent infantry and only killing opponent infantry.

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I like when a game has a sense of logic and strategic and tactical decisions of units so I do care about the torch xD.

About the AOE (cannons, trebuchets, etc) and Friendly fire yea, it is almost non-existent.
In AOE 3, I had melee and ranged non-siege units that specifically dealt a lot more damage and that was the better design.

In AOE 4, the only counters of the siege are the siege. (Except the Chinese Fire Lancer).
Currently, this is the main problem.

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Sure if an army is defending siege, you have no way of defeating it with just non-siege units unless the mass is extremely large. I think the only issue is their speed and/or packing/unpacking time.