I can’t for the life of me understand how making this game a non stop cheese harassment fess is what was intended for AOE4. It is bloody unbearable playing this game and absolutely NOT fun in any sense. Literally every game, EVERY GAME, is non stop mass Royal Knights over and over again just harassing your base/economy. And if it’s not RK, it’s Mongol horse archers. There is no cunning strategy to this… no skill involved… all you do is continuously mass horsies and send them to enemy base and kill villagers. Spearman are supposed to counter but they don’t. It’s a joke. Archers? Joke. Crossbowman? Joke. You just run around back and forth across your base trying to chase them down but you cant, and villagers just get slaughtered over and over. Rinse repeat.
The changes to map size and the battering ram just exacerbate this 100 fold. Team games you spawn literally a stones throw away, even on 4on4. You literally can’t defend this crap on any of the open maps. It’s impossible. They get RK so early they’re in your base within 2-3 minutes and you have nothing to wall off. It’s mind numbingly frustrating. And EVEN IF YOU WALL OFF it takes all of 20 seconds to burn down a fence, nevermind if they have 1 battering ram there’s not even any point in making walls.
This is NOT a FUN game WHATSOEVER in its current state. Please for the love of AOE change this ridiculous dynamic or make it EASIER TO STOP in early game and increase the damn map sizes back to what they were.
There are plenty of ways to defend these types of harassments. I suggest looking up strategies online, or try it yourself to understand how it works and what it’s weaknesses might be.
While it can be frustrating to lose, complaining and blaming it on game design is just showing your ignorance and/or lower skill level.
If they are attacking you with knights and constantly controlling the knights to run away from your spears, avoiding getting into TC range, re-engaging when you emerge from being garrisoned, and at the same time managing their own base, that does take skill. If you think it gives an automatic easy win, have you tried playing as French and doing it yourself?
I agree with you that a contest for who has the highest APM isn’t necessarily fun, particularly for those who don’t have world class APM, but having high APM and using it effectively is definitely a skill.
This sounds like you’re frustrated and needing a good vent. Nothing wrong with that. Cavalry absolutely can be annoying. My recommendation would be to build towers at your exposed points and when playing against French, prepare to turtle/boom into Crossbows. Otherwise, a good break from the game can be helpful!
If you think there’s no skill in microing Knights, imagine what your skills are(n’t) that you cannot defend from them having a plethora of options (walls, outposts, spears, TC range…)
I understand your frustration because the first games i played were against a friend which is waaay better player than me and he harassed with knights. It feels like spearmen never get to touch them while they run around your base picking exposed villagers and even if you damage them a little they will heal it away.
As other have said its not a free win strategy and involves a lot of risk and skill, it’s pretty much the same as Tower rushing, Barbican Rush or Man at Arms rush. If they surprise you then you are fighting at a great disadvantage but it’s still doable, if you scout them approaching they are at a disadvantage.
Also great advise is to try executing one of these rushes yourself and see how it can fail and lead to a huge waste of resources.
About spreamen in particular they can’t really kill the knights if they don’t commit to fight and just run away, but thats the whole point! your spearmen scare the knights away and that means the knights are wasted resources if they arent using them. Also you should be aware of which resources are exposed(outside your town center range) in your base and protect those.
Lastly i do agree that there are waaaaay to many french players and that the civ is way to consistent, perhaps balacing the civ a little could motivate people to try other civs or strategies.
Against a cav civ you need to play different. Expect a knight in your base in 6min mark. 5:30 is you are up against good players. So you can either start making spears as soon as you age up OR you may try to stay within the base. e.g Rus can drop second TC very early and can secure resource like gold or hunt with TC and a single or two knights cannot do anything. If you are having hard-time defending against cav or early rushes start playing English first. You won’t get raiding. You can build farms within your base which are very cheap. I think English might be ideal civ for you.
Playing other civs you will be vulnerable but with good micro you can absolutely defend against french knight spam. As for team games its way way more difficult to defend. You may have to defend against 2 or 3 players attacking. So its better to focus on defensive play. Or coordinate with teammates if you are playing offensive.
Given the majority of players are bronze it is safe to assume the level of play being described needs to be countered at that level. At bronze players struggle to have a set gameplan based on matchup. So they likely have 1 or 2 buiold orders they will always always always do and when it doesnt work vs a certuah match or map they rage.
To be fair it is impractical to assume rhe average bronze player is decent enough at scouting to see some stuff coming AND have an adequate response to what tbey know is coming. Even rarer is the idea that bronze could preemptively strike an aggressive civ during their transition like a tower rush on gold vs french to slow down their knight production.
Laslty bronze players typically dont have a strong grasp of proper unit countering system. Like buddy who started the post alleged spears dont counter early knights?? 240 resources unit that trains 15% from a landmark having 190 hp 19 attack 1.25 delay between attacks, 24 dmg charge, 3/3 armor versus 3 harden spears 90 hp (270hp) 28 bonus dmg vs cav (83 dmg), 1.75 delay between attacks, no armor.
Edit
In thr bronze defense, they tend to only take fights once they both have sufficiently large army mass WHICH does favor a knight archer ball due to body blockin and archers firing with impunity.
The devs have zero sense of what the historic impact were of each unit. Rams running around like Tiger tanks. 10s of mangonels devastating armies. Archers were the most numerous of units next to spearmen, yet it takes nearly as long as swordsmen to make them in numbers.
Complete failure of imagination at this point.
Do you have this build order for RK in 2 - 3 minutes into someone his base? I see pro’s doing it in 5:30 ish which is still quick, but a planetary distance from 2 - 3 minutes away.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate royal knights too. As a random player my rating is my skill level plus and minus the overall balance of all various factions. Hence some tough factions give me a low winrate because my rating is buffed by other factions. Yet with French, which is an easy faction, I currently have no losses as of yet on the ranked system. Due to the same system: my rating is deflated relative to that faction as I play many other factions that are more difficult. I’ve complained in the past about how unidimensional French is. Knight archer push early feudal to ez, to gut. And that goes on every map vs every faction. Yet in team games, even 2v2, they don’t have to bother and can spam knights from feudal all the way deep into imperial if they’d like.
But I feel like being a bit more objective about it is more helpful to the cause.
My friend and I constantly run english vs french 1v1s and I use to do this to him. Soon as he realised he could just leave 1 or 2 spears down on his resources early game I was unable to get really any value from early raids other than distract him.
Try it. It’s more than enough to prevent raids and once you hit castle you can invest in stone walls if you still need too.
I think I understand him, he is what in AOE3DE we call a TREATY MODE PLAYER, you love building your eco and your strategy without being constantly bothered by those horses etc. then after 40 minutes you can really measure who is better.
But again, this game is full of flaws, stop crying and quit, I did so. Even the number of topics and comments in here just dropped drastically.
It won’t really matter how big the map is. If there is lot of surface area then cavalry is far superior to infantry. Maps like blackforest do not favor cavalry that much because its less surface area but once cavalry has empty spaces to move around and surround units they become so much better.
Every game especially TG’s been cavalry > rest because thats the superior combination because of mobility. If player doesn’t go cavalry and opponent does then opponent can constantly harass you and now that stone walling is nerffed its even harder to wall things off, still possible but then its just poke hole to couple of spots and run around and infantry is running and trying to chase them.
Lot of times when I play with lancers I just go to opponents base with intend of running around. I just run from one corner of map to other corner (2v2) and let them chase me. During this time I just go imperial and sometimes even ming dynasty while my opponents are chasing me.
If they don’t chase me I get free dmg and if they do I get ahead. So its win always
I also stopped playing aoe4 because playing it was not enjoyable. I still follow it here and so forth and hope that it gets turned around. I’m skeptical it will, though the developers have promised us great things are to come. I hope those who are unhappy with the game can continue to get our voices heard. It’s natural for the people who enjoy the game to play the game and discuss the game and get heard more.