the only thing I noticed in this game is that the siege guns here strongly dominate the units, and this is a strong imbalance, the siege guns need to lower the speed and rate of fire by 2 times, so that the players would not make sense to build them in large numbers, and that the siege guns would be support units, and not cheat combat units.
And it’s also very, very unfortunate that they didn’t add units to the siege that would move them, otherwise it looks somehow unrealistic compared to the whole game, and it’s time to understand that siege guns and ships can’t just be units, they must be massive engineering structures, with the support of units.
I would advise developers to really think about my advice, because it will only embellish the game, but it will not spoil it in any way, and I am not some schoolboy who would give rash advice, but a devoted fan of the Age of Empires series from its very birth.
All the Siege situations we have seen on the stream, like the nest of bees, were against absolute passive/ 0 pressure situations, meaning passive crossbow play and no big frontline pressure with MAA and knights at all, meaning huge missplays.
Trying to get a take on balance just by scripted games of mediocre players in advertisement streams (which is the only thing we have rn) is absolutely no basis to reshape game balance on a game that you can’t even play yet…
Honestly, I didn’t get into battles involving many siege units too often so far in the beta and stress test, but in the ones I did, I did get a feeling that when you have a “mass” of hard-hitting sieges (springalds, cannon etc), it is indeed disproportionately hard to break into it, even with heavy cavalry - unless you have a lot of (weaker) units rushing in at the same time, of course, but then I think cav should be more of a hard counter.
That being said, I completely agree with Keempf: we still haven’t figured things out, it’s too soon to be talking about balance (unless it’s something obviously broken, such as nest of bees from beta).
He posted the topic 11 hours ago, which was a few hours after stream and a few weeks after stresstest ending.
I assumed that he isn’t talking about ingame balance rn, since we are literally not able to play it right now.
And if he does talk about the stresstest, again: 2 days is not a good timeframe to draw balanceconclusions from.
How is it too early to talk about balance when we have had 2 betas and now a 3rd one coming up?
Unless you give feedback to the developers they will only chance it if they see a problem themselfs. Units like Nest of Bees had a clear dominate role in the beta, every Chinese player made them and that was basically the sole strategy the Chinese did.
I think the packing and unpacking speed is way to fast.
In AoE3 the cannons are definitely slower and especially AoE2 trebuchets.
It’s fine for siege to be strong but they are way to flexible.
I’ve been playing Age of Empires since 1997, so I know what I’m saying, I thought that at least in the new version everything would be different, but no, everything repeats
And that doesn’t mean much in terms of a game that isn’t out yet and isn’t the same game.
I am worried about the power of siege compared to AoE2 thanks to missiles always hitting, but we won’t know how much of an impact that actually has until the game is out since the game is balanced around that mechanic (in the same way that AoE2 is balanced around missiles not always hitting).
thats the point of adding the crew on them, they can nerf the fire ratio by adding a neat animation of the crew reloading the machine, such as AoE 3 did it. It is very well done in AoE 3. I just dont understand why they dont take the good things from AoE 3, we all know the best from that game are the canons, physics and ships.
Plus destroying the siege at the distance in AoE 4, lets them keep attacking, meanwhile in AoE 3 once they receive a melee attack they get nerfed. It’s a good way to balance the battle. Oh and in AoE 3you have some anti siege units that attack at the distance, things we do not see in AoE 4…(I am quite sure all games got an ´´anti tank´´ unit/soldier)
I don’t think we all know that. Also, the physics are fun sure, but if you are thinking they are even remotely accurate… they are way, way over the top.
That does mean absolutely nothing.
Not even if you are best player on age2 or so, since Age4 is a different game.
Funny story.
The last player that told me he’s playing the game since 1997 btw mined gold in stoneage in age 1 so…
Some players just play on a certain level for literal ages.
I’m here to tell you that even both with English and HRE which I played the most during stress test, the Chinese nest of bees were a pain to deal with with my MAA and the few knights I would have during their Feudal forward landmark drop. You’d have to build a ram to move up towards the enemy.
It’s not hard no, just needs a lot of attention doing.
Nest of bees cost tons of gold, splitting your units in the openening and then just running over them with MAA only is really common if you play the game tightly.
They probably have spears/bows on mass without any other gold units if they try to tech on top of that.
If it’s lategame, light cav and wide spread engagements seems to be the way to go.
Clumping in one big deathball with slow engagements will always get punished ofc.
But rn nest of bees don’t feel nearly as strong as mangonel/onager plays.
Not even close.