I wanted to give a shoutout to the snare mechanic, which I think was one of the great innovations in rts that has gone underappreciated in its time. It gives an amazing feeling of friction and realism and materiality to units that you don’t get in the other age games, where units just float in and out of fights.
It’s what let’s you “slam” in a bunch of cav or melee infantry into an infantry mass and turn the whole thing into a frantic and chaotic melee. It’s what lets you surround and destroy an enemy army, as opposed to just driving it off. This is opposed to what happens In other age games, where cav and Infantry just kind of float around one another and retreat at will with no consequence.
It makes micro and positioning so much more consequential.
It complements the pull trick mechanic extremely well— one counters the other. Aoe4 feels incomplete Bc it has pull tricking but no snare. It also raises the skill ceiling tremendously. You can get really, really good at abusing snare and it’s incredible to watch and to work on yourself.
It was a huge mistake for the devs to make chimus unsnareable / unable to snare because aoe2 people complain about it, and I’m glad they fixed that and made them like other units. The current hatred for snare among the aoe2 / aoe4 community is purely because of momentum-- its just what those players are used to. But the snare mechanic objectively makes the combat in this game superior to the other age games, if not to any other rts