The functionality of the battering ram needs to be addressed and changed accordingly. I feel the game will remain flawed and even unplayable until the following issues with it are addressed.
How the battering ram operates according to Age of Empires IV:
Battering rams can attack stone walls.
More than one battering ram can fit through a gate at a given time.
More than one battering ram can attack the same piece of wall or gate at the same time.
A battering ram or battering rams can do large amounts of damage with only little time to any type of building or wall.
How the battering ram operates more historically btw the original advertisement for Age of Empires IV claims that the video game is aiming to be historically accurate.
Battering rams can attack gates, pallisades and buildings.
Only one battering ram can fit through a gate at any given time. If it would fit at all. “not an recommendation.”
Only one battering ram can attack the same gate/piece of wall at any given time.
Battering rams do not overlap “clip” into other battering rams espescially at the back end of one another going through a gate. Obvious.
A battering ram does not break down a gate or piece of wall with five hits. (Too much damage). Also obvious. Now if you would roll up a battering ram too a house it would no doubt take only 2 too 5 hits to bring it down optimistically speaking, depending on wether the house is made of wood or brick. But at least would have to relocate between hits as it other wise would slam air since it would have created a wide gap the first time. Just think about structural integrity.
Mention worthy notes.
Now I can compromise on the fact that a battering ram or battering rams can attack a keep/castle. Though historically that would be a job suited for trebuchets and cannons, maybe mangonels.
Nest of bees could do a very small amount of damage against a stone wall.
One might think: Well making these changes will make a battering ram sluggish and unsuited for most tasks. YES that is correct. A battering ram has an excellent use for gates and pallisades. Other than that one might want to think again.
Currently the siege tower has no use, because of previous mentioned issues.
Given the battering ram would/will be changed, the health and defense of the battering ram in general could stay the same.
Stone walls, stone gatehouses and stone walltowers should be a job for trebuchets and cannons generally.
Conclusion
Battering rams are inaccurately portrait by Age of Empires IV making the video game unnecessarily difficult as hordes of enemies can storm through a section of stone wall after about five seconds as three to five battering rams slam it to dust given that time. It also takes away the use for siege towers which i only have seen once or twice when Age of Empires IV just released.
A good gameplay is more important than a precise historical representation of all game elements. In Age of Empires, there is a certain level of historical representation, but not everything can adhere to history, or the game would be unplayable now.
If you make rams less effective against buildings and limit sieging to only one ram per gate, it would significantly enhance defensive gameplay and potentially lead to more stalemates.
The siege tower is considered ineffective, but the issue isn’t just a powerful ram, it’s more about the unit itself.
Again, if we become overly meticulous about exact historical representation in an RTS game like Age of Empires, it would render the game unplayable.
For what you’re suggesting, there are mods that can alter the balance and somewhat change the design.
P.S: The efficiency of rams in the late game can be a concern due to their low population cost. However, that’s a separate issue to consider and address.
Personally I am not looking for a mod. And i am also not looking for high amount of historical accuracy. But a modest amount would be expected and my opinion is that it would make the game more playable and enjoyable.
I think your low population cost argument is linked. It wouldn’t be an issue with some changes made to what I mentioned. Since you could spam as much as you like. But would have little use for it.
Yes we have a ram issue you pointed the unrealistic side but im fine with it.The real issue a player can make like 20 rams and can destroy all your city.We can solve this by giving villager a extra damage against siege at the castle and imperial ages.
I disagree with everyone except @CrosstownPiano1 so far. The things i mentioned don’t need to all change, but i do think there should be some sizeable changes. Not something as generic as a purchasable upgrade or small nerf or buff. That would not cut it for me.
“I disagree with everyone who isn’t agreeing with me”. You’re really just here to complain then?
I think @Adribird90 hits the nail on the head here regarding gameplay mechanics trumping historical perfection, and about rams’ low pop cost being the one real issue with them. Because it makes them easy to spam.
Although your entire post is written in the context of historical accuracy and then you backtrack and say you don’t care that much about historical accuracy, I can tell you’re largely complaining about rams being strong, and you might just need to work on your gameplay and isolate a way to counter them. In all reality, mangonels would probably be more effective than rams against a literal building, but the point is to have units for different purposes and have a fun and challenging game for unit selection and management.
I’ve played plenty of matches at different stages of the game as well as watching an insane number of casted matches on YouTube, and overall I think the ram is generally fine. It’s easy to spam in the late game so a higher population cost would be a good preventative measure for that late game spam.
But in almost every way, I think they’re well done. They’re accessible early on if you really want to sacrifice the wood for them (I won a game in feudal about an hour ago by making 2 rams in the field), the resource cost is pretty balanced, and when someone fields a couple rams against me, I can find some springalds, men at arms or knights somewhere.
Having villagers idle killing rams is horrible idea. Give all melee bonus damage vs all siege. Soege ahould always be protected from melee damage so the concept is balanced.
Even when melee gets a bonus vs rams, the issue is still then your melee units aren’t fighting the enemy. Vills are already a very common way to kill rams (especially when the rams come from an area you don’t have military).
Frankly even siege and emplacements do like no damage to rams. Imo they could just nerf rams flat hp since they are all-around too good against everything.
Rams are quite literally the amy. And again idling villagers on purpose and often? Is a horrible idea.
2nd reason for it being a horrible idea is this would further strengthen the 2TC meta as the one thing that multiple TC players have a lot of by comparison are villagers!!!
Partly why Rams are as strong as they are now is to an endeavor to counter early expansion.
Rams are generally considered to be in a reasonable spot in feudal/castle age. They are pretty expensive wood-wise and require a blacksmith tech, so you actually sacrifice having a bigger army in order to build them, meaning they are really only used to punish greed or take advantage of a crushing early military victory which is fair.
In feudal, unless the game has gone horribly wrong, the ram player should be either down in miliitary or down in vills/TCs, so idling vills is not really a big cost (considering the opponents are dumping tons of resources into the rams anyway)
The ram balance issue is mostly imperial age where the wood cost doesn’t really matter much since you both have 200 pop. The issue is that if you have 100 army, and the enemy has 90 army and 10 rams, if you send more than 10 units to kill the rams, then you are outnumbered in the army fight. There is no way that 10 melee units should ever defeat 10 rams, so the answer is generally to pull vills.
Right now the meta is to usually run your army at his army and pull vills to kill rams. Idling some villagers is annoying, but not really terribly detrimental other than in micro. The problem is rams are so beefy that they are basically guaranteed to get significant damage done to your production buildings or defensive structures before they die unless they are horribly misplaced.
Heck if they want to go for increasing vill damage to rams, they could just scale the torch damage by age like it used to for military units (that way 2TC in feudal doesn’t become stronger at killing rams).
A frequent use of rams late game is to just send a few in on the side flank where the enemy has no army, so making melee units do extra damage to rams doesn’t really fix this issue.