how is full mangonel vs units even fun man ??? like srsly i just sent in a good 80 hrosemen into them, and they got melted.
very historically accurate. and thats sarcastic
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First of all, if you charge into a group of catapults the chances are that you will be destroyed and rightfully so as it should require tactics as well as different type of units that can take those out more easily.
For example I donât see any ballista seige that can take out the catapults while you surround them with your other units as well.
If you just think you can just charge with a group of horses and expect to kill everything in your way then that will not happen and this was not a thing in history as well.
I agree that siege units still need fixing and tweaking and I understand your frustration but I just see bad play here from you as you went in to a fight with not the right counter.
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The thing about siege , siege is expensive and slow , to counter siege you need springals or heavy units like knights , actually you can counter siege with horseman but you need some strategy my dude , bait the mangonels and then with the horseman destroy the siege , you canât expect to run in and win the battle
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I mean, the Charge of the Light Brigade is based on the Crimean war.
Exactly! If you have 80+ horseman split them up and attack from two sides at the same time but those are pretty cheap units so dont expect much from them but this tactic could work if done right.
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As everyone knows mangonels function the same as 19 century field guns.
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i never said i expect to jump on horses and kill everything. u got any idea how expensive horses were? most would ride then dismount and fight.
but u know these mangonels and artillery in general only had so many shots in them per hour. and the fact that these just 2 shot an army of idk i had around 60-80 horses, makes absolutely no sense.
from both a historical perspective hence siege weaponry like this, mangonels and such, were used to throw stuff over the wall to get the people sick so theyd die. throw corpses, etc so theyâd lose morale and surrender. no one ever shot a catapult boulder at a well built stone wall. u shot it over the wall. (canons is different).
yet u mean to tell me these have perfect precision and fire 2 shots before i close in cmon use ur brain
A ranged unit which does area damage will always scale up with numbers, so thatâs how team games are faded to be because of the high pop. If the devs want to balance the game for team games they will need to nerf the unit scale capacity, maybe decreasing area of damage what would make the unit less lethal , or add friendly fire or even add trajectory what would make it less susceptible to hit moving targets.
Closing the gap is generally where the highest risk is. Siege units, historically, are massively damaging to all unit types (including buildings). This is a tad difficult to translate well to a video game.
Iâm not saying âbalance is perfectâ, but I am laughing at the idea of historical realism in a balance discussion. You canât have both in a game. One is always sacrificed for the other.
The ideal is âas much historical accuracy as possibleâ with a âbalanced gameâ. But ârunning a bunch of horsemen with no support into siege fireâ isnât balance, itâs strategy. And a poor one at that. Hence, Charge of the Light Brigade.
Mind-blowing this is from someone who âtaughtâ me âthere is a 20 year gap, color picker in a RTS has become different and more difficultâ, now pretending the 800 year technology gap between two totally different weapons can be ignored.
Catapults have high trajectories. Cannons have flat trajectories.
Catapult shots are much slower. Cannon shots are propelled by gunpowder.
Catapults fire stones or animal corpus. Cannons fire metal shots with a much higher velocity.
Catapults require more manpower to operate. Cannons do not.
Catapults are slow to turn and move. Cannons turn and move much faster comparatively.
There is around 800 year technological development of metalcasting, and precision of weaponry, and ballistics, and training of soldiers, etc.
The use of the word âsiegeâ is pretty weird. Have you ever wondered why a field gun is called a field gun but not a âsiegeâ gun? Or why roman light ballista were not typically considered a siege weapon but a field weapon, unlike most other engines at the same time period? Youâre like saying they belong to the same class of âsiege weaponsâ that function very similarly. But âsiegeâ weapons as the name suggests were designed to hit large stationary targets or throw projectiles through walls and a 19 century field gun by no means did the same role. I believe you know this.
The chance of a catapult hitting a fast-moving personnel, and the damage it could deal, is far worse than that of a cannon. I cannot see if that is even comparable.
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Anyone who dares to criticise siege in this game just gets hit with a wall of âgitgudâ style responses, but Iâm entirely with you. This is not what I want from an Age of Empires game. Iâm okay with siege being a small part of an army, but I have dwindling interest in playing this game which encourages increasingly large amounts of siege being used as you get further into the game. Iâve never felt this way about any previous Age game â I donât remember there ever being this breadth of complaint about a facet of any previous Age game. Yet there is a pointblank refusal from some here to consider that something is wrong. There is something wrong with the way Age of Empires IV implements siege in the same way that there is something wrong with the way Age of Empires IV implements water units.
As much as the balance is my main issue, itâs worth recognising how poorly siege units work in this game. Theyâre hard to read visually, they clip into one another, the animation concept with the glowing people sucks. They get stuck in gates. Theyâll occasionally refuse to attack units outside of their immediate range. There are tons of weird issues around line of sight. They can be repaired far too easily mid-combat. They feel clunky and janky in a way the other parts of this game do not.
As for balance I feel strongly that the tuning of the mangonel and springald is bad for the game. The mangonelâs AoE means it has enormous potential DPS, and while you can use spread formation to mitigate this up to a point, any melee units will collapse into a tight formation as soon as they reach the enemy. In Age of Empires II that wouldnât be so much of an issue because of friendly fire, but in Age of Empires IV the mangonel is able to continue shelling right into frontline.
All together this means you have to think very hard about how youâre going to deal with the potential your opponent will have a mass of mangonels. While lots of people make lots of suggestions about how this can be dealt with, they often fall flat in practice as the OP found to their peril. The two strategies that I do find work consistently are:
(1) Avoid building units that are particularly vulnerable to mangonels (i.e. build huge amounts of heavy cavalry). Knights can survive mangonel shelling more than any other core unit, and theyâre fast, and they are good at destroying siege units.
(2) Try to ensure that you have enough springalds to destroy their mangonels before itâs too late. In practice you also need to make sure you have enough springalds to deal with their springalds. And if they have enough mangonels they will still do so much damage while youâre destroying the mangonel that you can be devastated.
Iâm sorry to say that Iâm not finding either of these things particularly enjoyable. While lots of people that play this game do seem satisfied with creating armies that are predominantly made up of one unit, I like using and seeing diverse armies, and I think the siege balancing is at odds with that. Iâm starting to wonder if removing springalds would actually open the door to better balancing for the other siege units. I also find that the need to micromanage this specific thing (directing springalds to attack their siege) takes away from managing anything else, which is a shame, but what choice do you have when it is overwhelmingly important compared to anything else? The speed at which siege can devastate your army is so out of whack with any other type of unit that it has to be priortised.
All together this is a huge factor that is driving me away from the game, and anecdotally those that Iâve been playing it with too. Having so much of the game revolve around its clunkiest element is an enormous shame, and I think the true depth of the problem is largely being overlooked because it primarily affects larger team games rather than 1v1s. Too many people arguing about whether it can be countered, too few debating whether itâs actually positive for the game.
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Iâm pretty sure I didnât teach you anything. Youâre the one picking fights, not me 
I was replying to someone else on the âdifficulties of implementing a color pickerâ and you jumped in with your long essay about âno you are not making the exact same color picker in aoe2 and aoe4â. Donât forget that.
Also, as always, because of this one sentence (you think) I was wrong, you naturally have again perfectly proved the entire point about catapults and 19th century field guns.
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Running cavalry straight at ranged anything that isnât basic infantry, has, definitively, historically, been a very bad idea. Which is why flanking became a thing (as far back as chariot archers in ancient civilisations. Didnât the Hittites basically perfect the manoeuvre?).
My point was that historical accuracy is a silly way to balance anything. You can keep saying that it is if you want, I really donât care 
Quote one sentence I wrote on this topic talking about whether the game is or should be historically accurate. When can you get rid of this way of thinking (which you object when other people behave like this all the time) that the reason I disagree with you on one point is NOT because I hate everything about AOE4 but because I disagree with you on that one point?
BTW classifying everything ranged as one ârangedâ class is even more stupid than putting a catapult and a 19th century field gun into the same âsiegeâ class.
Moreover, when you are aiming at something with a cannon, you just need to fire directly into the direction so the shot will hit anything on that direction. If itâs a high trajectory weapon youâll need to exactly calculate the landing point, unless it is a large immobile crowd. Thatâs why before gunpowder the bolt throwers are anti-personnel field weapons and catapults or trebuchets are siege weapons (only anti-personnel when they are hitting people on the walls, but thatâs not comparable to cavalry on open fields).
And even with that:
The opposing Russian forces were commanded by Pavel Liprandi and included approximately 20 battalions of infantry supported by over 50 artillery pieces. These forces were deployed on both sides and at the opposite end of the valley.
20 battalions of infantry
Why the charge of light brigade did not happen with mortars?
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I donât need to. My argument was that the game shouldnât be balanced around historical accuracy, and here you are, still arguing with me.
Iâm arguing on whether you can compare catapults with 19 century field guns. You do not need to prove to me about balancing because I NEVER TALKED ABOUT IT HERE.
Do you know there is a slight probability that not all people who disagree with you are on the same malicious faction that tries to undermine your precious AOE4? (Again, if others act like that youâll accuse them for entrenching different communities)
Is it possible that one can simply disagree with that one single comparison youâre making? Or multiple points can be discussed at the same time in one thread?
And with that reply to that one sentence I wrote, you again proved your points with catapults and field guns perfectly. I lost again. Another trophy in your display.
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And Iâm . . . not. My point about the Charge of the Light Brigade was about strategy. I mean, I said this already, but I guess for whatever reason you missed that.
Quite a while ago, in AoE2, there was a lot of complaining about the paladins of Franks being totally unstoppable.
Strategy comes along with weaponsâŠcâmon.
Before the invention of bayonets, musketeers need to be protected by pikemen, but later they could form squares and fend off cavalry. Why no one thought about forming musketeers into squares when there were no bayonets?
The way you deal with a weapon far less accurate and far less lethal is very different from one that is more accurate and more lethal. Not to mention in the charge of the light brigade the Russian battery were on a very well-established defensive position and supported by 20 battalions of infantry.