Sieges will be the most hated unit if Relic wont change its wrong concept

I play AoE3. I know.

But I think what you say is only true if you have a huge mass of cannon…like 10 or 12.

If you have 2 or 3 cannon, cavalry units do fine…

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This is wholly untrue, cavalry demolishes cannons in AOE3

So you like bombards being literal tanks?

See this is the problem, you are trying to play off of ONLY siege, expecting a group of unguarded bombards to be able to defeat cavalry and infantry in close range? This makes zero sense and demolishes historical accuracy, yes it is a video game but it is a self-proclaimed historically accurate series and should stay true to that down to the point of which units were effective against which.

If they use real life references the job is literally already done for them on balance, part of war fighting is the war of technology to counter and overpower the enemies of your weapons, meaning that in real life there is literally a counter for every other type of unit because the mideval ages were well, hundreds of years ago, so therefore there are hundreds of years worth of military references, battle recounts, officers handbooks, commanders handbooks, etc.

Bombards were not tanks, they were immobile artillery emplacements that took hours to assemble or disassemble, and could easily be overrun by melee cavalry or the operators shot by arrows.

The lack of arrow damage to bombards is greatly annoying to me.

50 hussars will still easily overrun this in AOE3
(Assuming they’re not guarded by musketeers or pikes)

Also have you ever tried to mass cannons in the same way people do in aoe4? Cannons with no defense get destroyed by literally any melee, as they should.

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I agree. 50 hussars would indeed dominate over any artillery out there…

Although I don’t really know how the skill level affects this. I know Khorix is an age3 veteran so I don’t want to act like I know my stuff and he doesn’t…haha.

I also played age3 since it’s release, trust me it’s very rare you get artillery spam to be effective, and even then it takes incredible micro and they’re so slow to pack up and move it’s incredibly hard to dodge cavalry charges.

No one would ever make only artillery like they do in aoe4 in AOE3 and I stand by that

And in no way am I trying to diminish Khorix, he very well may be able to demolish me with only artillery, but my point is it takes a very high skill level to do that in AOE3, as it is the only option in aoe4

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Yep, I know!

I have played AoE3 since 2005. With a large mass of cannon you can kill 5 or 10 horses but if there’s more your cannon will eventually all die.

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It would go to the point that other AOE3 players would try to win the game before Fortress or spam mostly culverins vs me at later stages. With this you could see or at least imagine how far they would go by doing what was needed [ culverin ] or me only using canons + walls with very few anti cav. And this is mainly because canons in AOE3 are mostly as powerful as siege is in AOE4

While this is mostly true, I believe it’s the small distinctions that make the aoe4 siege so OP

Firstly, they pack up and unpack significant quicker, they also move significantly quicker and can outrun infantry although they’re not horse drawn? I’m actually surprised you’re okay with the significant downgrade of visuals for siege coming from AOE3, don’t you miss the packing/unpacking and the little dudes running to their horse and loading the cannon etc, it all felt right bc it had to be timed out like that to look and feel like they were actually getting off their horses, setting up, loading up, issuing the firing order, reload.

Aoe4 they just plop onto the ground and start shooting and as soon as a cav charge comes u just pack em up move back a little, body block them with like 10 spears and then unpack your superspeed tank cannons and wipe the cav.

Don’t even get me started on Chinese bombards.

Also culverins had longer ranges than falconetts, anti siege should outrange the siege it’s supposed to kill right?

Not in aoe4, bombards counter culverins (lol)

But you still had to have anti-cav

Aoe4? Nah man just make 5 mangonels ur good deathball It up 20 tanks, sorry, bombards, and 5 mangonels and you’ll kill pretty much everything.

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How often was siege used in medieval field battles as an anti-personel weapon? It seems wrong that siege is so effective at destroying armies, shouldent its main use be in … well sieges?

AOE4 almost seems Napoleonic in its depiction of field artillery.

The most obvious change to me is drastically increase packing and unpacking time on nearly all siege weapons.

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Well, in AOE4 there are no units that deal +70damage to Sieges. In AOE3 cavalry and cavalry archers dealt +70 damage and destroyed full siege cannon army cost-effectively. In AOE4, there is only one option to counter sieges, which is to produce more sieges. And that is very discouraging.

They said it is supposed to be educational and depicting sieges such as Cannons and Trebuchets as building is a wrong thing.

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the thing is AOE4 covers until the early renaissance era and the AOE3 covers up to the late colonial era.
That simply means AOE 4 sieges must not be as effective as AOE3 sieges and needs to be much more limited in terms of capabilities due to early techs.

It is simple logics mate.

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This is very misleading. The reason why in AOE3 (mostly in late game) you have to use culverins to shoot cannons is because they are usually well protected by musketeers or dragoons, which is a player decision. This is not the same thing as cannons being tanky as tanks.
That is to say, even if most of the time you could protect your cannons with units (thus forcing your opponent to use culverins), you would still be severely punished when you failed to do so, because they are still very fragile in melee (except the heavy cannon class, which has very limited availability).
However if they are very tanky by themselves, that is a totally different case. Now even if you failed to protect them, they could still resist a surprise raid.

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It’s probably preferable to the current situation, yes. But as with everything, it’s also probably tricky to balance. If we combine all the suggestions here, it’s quite easy to “overnerf” all siege IMO.

I’ve noticed lately, though, that Castle Age battles are a lot more entertaining to watch than Imperial Age engagements, overall. The bombards, especially, are way too dominant!

Great post.

Please read this one devs! Thanks :slight_smile:

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Big problem with siege, bombards in particular is that they are too tanky and too fast and the only way to counter them is by massing bombards yourself. Also they pack and unpack too quickly. Not only its hard to counter, but it also adds a degree of mobility that siege units shouldn’t have.
Also chinese bombards have simply no counter at the moment as they have an insane amount of HP and the same range as culverins and they even win against culverins which are supposed to be their counter.

AoE3 has handled siege pretty well. Canons are very powerful, but there are several options for counter play against them.
Melee units and cavalry destroy them if they are not protected properly, you can charge in, kill a canon and get out, dragoons have a multiplier against canons, culverins are really good at doing their job, canons having negative multiplier against cavalry and canons in aoe3 are very slow which greatly reduces the army mobility.
Heavy canons which are the strongest siege, are tanky but slower, cost 7 pop and can only be made in factories or by shipments requiring players to sacrifice the equivalent of 20 vills in ressources to mass produce them.

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I COMPLETELY DISAGREE WITH THE IDEA OF MAKING SIEGE VUNERABLE TO ARROWS.

Range units by DEFAULT are EXTREMELY safe units to make and are the MOST efficient unit, MORE SO than siege! The idea of making sufficient range STRONG vs siege would only FURTHER promote the range unit as the end-all-be-all unit (which in a way they are already… aka strel with some kind of meatshield ).

Siege rather SHOULD be the DIRECT counter to mass range units. Units that can clump up together and make it near impossible for melee them down WHILE all being able to efficiently fire ALL their shots???

You want those kinds of units to ALSO beat siege?? I say that’s a HORRIBLE IDEA!

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We’re talking about archers; arrows; Longbows; units that are useless in the late game. Not Streltsy.

Do you think knights and siege won’t still be able to counter archers if the archers could suicide into them with the opportunity to kill 1 or 2 mangonels instead of 0 mangonels?

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I actually hope they don’t change the movement speed too much. If it is too slow-moving armies will be a pain in team games.

I just want the pack and unpack times to be greatly increased. It should be a commitment when you put siege down.

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there is only range damage in this game for land units? So if you allow siege to be vulnerable to arrow shots then by default that makes them also vulnerable to EVEN STRONG “arrow” shots ( aka crossbow and handcannon units).

Again range units TO INCLUDE archers are very very SAFE units and extremely versatile. You can already use range units to tank Calvary, go on efficient raids, and obviously counter melee infantry. If we add to that long list ALSO CAN KILL SEIGE?!?! What’s left to be fulfilled?

Heck you can just go Brits and mass longbows all game and trickle in a few pike/knights for meatshield and gg all games.

Longbows don’t work against siege.

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Itd be more along the lines of adding extra siege damage to archers while leaving gunpowder units the same as they’re already strong against siege.

I’m more specifically talking about bombards, I can understand mangonels remaining resistant to arrow fire as they’re supposed to counter infantry, however a bombard being able to withstand 50 archers with flaming arrow upgrades is a bit broken imo

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