Siege needs further rework in my opinion

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

As mentioned in another post, ppl still spam mangonels, and due to the slower movement of anti-sieges, they are even harder to be sniped out, which ruins the experience of the game, at least to me.

Here I list some of my suggestions for further reworks on siege units.

1, Make a siege more like a building not a slow moving terminator, destroys everything it sees. I would significantly increase its pack and unpack time, to 5 or even 10 sec, (may be extra vulnerable during that process, and you can use villagers to slightly speed it up). Hence the opponent can choose if they want to give a fight seeing those sieges unpacking. I also feel it is more true to the history

2, An easier way would be just make them take up more pop, say 6 pop each, then probably less ppl would make more than 10 sieges.

3, Increase the minimal range. Since for now, once you have around 10 Mango, there is no dead spot for you siege coverage. You can have your units approach to them, they still can shoot, and your army will get wiped out before you destroy them.

Please also share your opinions here and I hope Devs will take a look.

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2

For trebuchet, maybe have 2 attack mode (like how melee unit have 2 attacks; melee against unit and torch against ship, siege and building).

When trebuchet attack building, it will do single non AOE high damage attack. And when it choose unit as target, it will change to AOE ground-aimed smaller damage.

Ort maybe make trebuchet (maybe mangonel too) don’t have auto attack on units but have attack ground to attack unit instead.

3

I’m not sure the trebuchet needs changing. Of the core siege workshop units (springald, mangonel, trebuchet and bombard) it’s the one that fits its role best without feeling broken. It’s somewhat too expensive, I think, but the main reason no-one uses trebuchets is that bombards make them redundant.

The immediate problem right now is that mangonels are too strong against infantry and bombards are too strong against buildings. That they are more vulnerable now is great, but while bombards can delete buildings in seconds, and while mangonels can delete huge swathes of units in seconds people will continue to mass produce them.

4

Mangonels are strong now indeed and historically they are great to deal with remote mass opponent army. In real fight, no army will mass Mangonels not only because the maintenance, but also due to it can do no harm once your enemy is close enough. Also you cannot use your own army to stop your opponent from approaching Mangonel, while keep it shooting due to it will cause friendly fire.

Adding friendly fire into the aoe4 system might be a too big stretch, so I think Devs need to make them more a powerful but stubborn and fragile unit that player need to pay attention to all the time, instead of a slow moving tank like now, so player can just build 20 of them and just hit A and target opponent base and wait, since they will auto destroy everything along the way.

5

A bunch of people write that it’s easy to fix them but I doubt it.

Decreasing health or increasing torch damage will affect 1v1 more than 4v4. If one team is able to build up a critical mass it doesn’t matter much how fast the theoretical TTK against siege weapons is.

About tweaking move or build up speed the devs also have to be pretty sensible. If siege becomes to slow defenders will get more advantages and 3v3 and 4v4 could turn into Age of Walls/Wonders.

In my opinion the next step should be adjusting pop costs of siege weapons.

About bombards: the last way to go could be by disabling targeting units with them. If they would be only anti-building it could offers more trade offs between bombards and trebuchets.

6

I agree that there is no easy way to get there.

Yes, If we just let siege move slow, it will be good news for defenders. However, for the defending, you still need to move your sieges from one gate to another one. If they are spread out evenly, then you lose the edge. Then, if we increase packing/unpacking time, instead of moving speed, then we have a relative even situation between two sides. If the packing time is so long, then both sides need to think strategically where to set their sieges, not just shoot and move. Some anti-siege can still have very low packing time. BTW, we should give defending part some advantage don’t we?

Now, the issue for the wonder in team game is that its cost too little, comparing to 1v1. I think Dev need to make wonder more expensive for larger size match, but this is another topic. Also, if one side got a wonder, you still have 5 min to take all SS. Actually using such strategy, I won twice in team game, which were the most satisfying experience in playing AOE4.

I am not sure about bombards. For now, treb is actually usable, and I use them 80% of my previous matches after the recent patch, (I almost never used them before the patch) due to its high projectile, esp, in some uneven place. Some ppl will put their keep in certain angle that your bombards need to get very close to shoot it. Also, treb’s better range also helps a lot. Since now they need to bring forward there anti siege to get treb, and my mounted units can charge in and get them. Maybe let bombard’s attack speed slower, say 10 sec per shot, but increase their one shot damage? It still can one shot almost all units, by all means, but if you just use them on units, it just over kill, and won’t output decent DPS. Further, when you have 10 bombards, it also makes it hard to micro.

7

I was noticing the other day, anti siege would work a lot better if it prioritized targeting siege first, instead of having to use mass microing

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8

I have to disagree about packing time. Defenders would have an advantage. For example you could fake engage to to force to unpack siege and retreat. Or spamming walls and other buildings to keep them busy while wonder or sacred site is ticking.

9

Also for A move? And do the same with bombards focusing buildings.

10

I don’t agree with you. If your suggestion is implemented. Then how do we deal with people in team games makes wonder and make 500 walls to the wonder? Do we need to siege and unsiege slowly to get there?

11

First, you might misunderstand what I mean by “setting siege strategically”. You can unpack your siege to cover all three layers of walls or at least two of them. If they have wall all over the map, it just means your team has lost control of the map. 5-10 sec packing time won’t slow you breaking the wall too much, but it make a significant difference when you have mass infantry run into 10 mango marching. In real life, if both sides are not prepared, infantry will destroy mango. Now, in AOE4, mango destroys infantry. Packing time is to make siege needs some preparation before making their first shot, since the first shot is the most important one, and if they want to engage, then after the first shot they cannot just run away like nothing happened. BTW, even now, most sieges in AOE4, need more than 5sec cooldown to take a sec shot, just like packing once.

Secondly, In the history, you need more than double your opponent force to penetrate a well defended castle, so I think Dev should give some advantage to the defending side, although need not to be that true to history, otherwise the game won’t be competitive. I would very roughly say 1:1.2 of military force between defending and offending force to draw an even would be okay.

Thirdly, if you already lost SS control AND let them build wonder AND a lot of wall, then you deserve the lost. If the wonder is expensive enough to make building one causes an obvious difference in military/eco balance, then everyone will think twice before they pull the trigger, even they have the res. If you have the eco advantage and map control, you can just build your siege builds in front of their base.

Finally, wonder is a mechanism to “end” a match, like penalty shootout in football game. It will not necessarily pick out the stronger one, but for a competitive game, you need some way to end if it too long to tell the difference, and pick a winner, not just letting it go forever.

12

Please read my reply I just post. Also, as I said before, after your opponent build a wonder, you still have 5 min to take all Sacred Site to turn the table, if you do not want to break their ridiculous walls. If your opponent has controlled both SS and wonder and made a lot of walls, then what I can say?