Hi,
I followed AoE4 so closely for a year of its development, played all the open betas and watched all the youtube content I could find about the game.
On release, I played the game extensively for a month, racking up over 100 hours.
I quit after that month, absolutely disappointed.
I came into the game, wanting to play nothing but The Mongols. I know the history of Mongolia and the history of the khans, especially in regards to Military strategy, tactics and doctrine. The buildings looked amazing, the sound design, everything.
In gameplay, the mongols became an infantry/tower civilization, the underlying ādouble produceā mechanic seemed interesting, especially as a homage to the āZergā style of play in SC2, which is my most played RTS by far where I main the Zerg faction. In execution, it was incredibly poorly done and caused many balance issues.
The Rus are the predominant horse archer civ in game, with cavalry rarely being built by the mongol players. The whole design philosophy of the mongols has fallen flat, mangudai are overpriced and useless and their light/heavy cav play is boring/non-existant.
The entire Mongol faction needs to be redesigned, either to use a similar ālarvaeā system to the zerg or to allow them to actually play as a cavalry/raiding civilization.
I have shelved the game until this faction actually becomes playable in a reasonable way, not relying on tower rushes and infantry spam to cheese the opponent to death, which is fun for neither player.
I welcome any input on how this could be achieved.