My ideas for ranged units:
I agree that ranged units must be nerfed next season, but you can’t just put 4 changes at the same time or you will make ranged unit suck. There must be only 1 change at the time to see how that change impacts the game and evaluate if it is balanced.
Of all your ideas, I would support the cavalry one.It wouldn’t affect the actual counter system.
I’d tweak archer animations in some way that there’s more of a delay on moving backwards, shooting, then moving backwards etc. In some perfect world, this would be a sliding nerf based on how many are in a formation. If you want to run around 5 archers you can. If you want to do the same with 50 then they are going to be much slower.
I think bringing in melee attack or not being able to fire over unit’s would completely change the game which would result needing to rework everything else.
Why? I would say, the current system would be unbalanced forever without this change, we can buff horses, and horses would be OP against other units. etc
the current rock-paper-scissors theory does not work in practice.
In the practice, the more archers are in the battle, the less horse units are effective against them. Because archers can shoot all at once, while horse units depend on surface area - they can not all target the same enemy unit, or have access to attack a unit.
This is the core of the issue , not the resource cost and attack / defense values. These units act differently in battle.
We do not need to go far for to gameplay comparison, in AoE2 multiplayer, the militia line (infantry) is not used except the dedicated civs (Aztecs, Goths), because infantry is uneffective in practice, compare to missile units and fast cavalry. Even infantry buff (more pierce armour) did not change that.
Thats correct but its also economy, how much cost/time takes to make 40 horse and how much takes make 40 archers
ah btw if you are doing 2tc, you can still make mass archers while and aiming for age up, when you do mass horse you just cant, actually you cant even make mass horse are way to expensive
I agree with horse buffs, if they buff horse they could be way too broken specially for raids and killing workers at mid game, issue here are archers and just archers
No, I said Starship Troopers movie. They don’t ‘shoot’ through each other, only Elves in the LotR movies do that which is then extremely special.
Bioball has extreme DPS density because of this and can only be countered by splash, having so much splash causes army’s to vaporise into GG in 2 seconds. - so yeah, ranged is not the problem because splash became the problem
Nob and mangonels need more tracking and 90% range resistances and 0 wind up!!! All delay will be on reload.
130hp, 90% range resistances, 0s wind up. Tracking should work in such a way that if the units are in motion one direction then instantaneously redirect the moment the mangonel executes an attack, those targeted shots should all miss. But if the units were originally stationary when the mangonel shot was execute, then the units they to shimmy after the shot, the targeted units should get clapped!!
Dodging is a cool mechanic but the current iteration is extremely trivial and allows range dps to sustain essentially maximum effectiveness.
I don’t have any documentation. But I do distinctly remember either reading something or watching one of their early day dev diaries on Twitch where they mentioned that this was to reinforce the counter triangle at all times and make the matchup more beginner friendly. It was mentioned that they found Archers would die in melee mode to Spearmen if they gave them a melee attack, thus flipping that matchup.
Now that said, I don’t really agree with this at all. So what if Archers require a little micro to use? They are already inherently more beginner friendly because of their range and lack of pathing compared to melee infantry and cavalry. And the counter triangle doesn’t scale well the way it is now either, with archers beating horsemen in large numbers. I also hope they can go regain their melee mode attack from the campaign.
Another suggestion I have is to let cavalry ‘push’ enemy ranged infantry. This would allow them to get into the center of a formation and do more damage, reducing their reliance on pathing. This already happens with allied units, when you rally a unit into an army, it will push all the other units out of the way.
Yes, archers never miss. HAHAHAHAHA
Devs will have hard time to balance ranged units with 100% accuracy and homing projectiles.
This is why AOE2’s ranged units feel 100000000000000000x times better and more balanced in the game.
GL trying to find the sweet spot…
It’s actually the complete opposite of that statement.
Since ranged units do not miss, their damage is 100% predictable. There is no fuzziness that’s dependent on how well the enemy can twitch their units back and forth to dodge arrows.
That makes balancing them easier, not harder. A nerf/buff to damage, range, fire rate, etc… all have more predictable results.
Nope. If you look at AOE2’s ranged unit changes, there are not that many. Because in AOE2, ranged units need skill, their stats doesn’t matter if you are horrible at micro. In AOE4, skill doesn’t matter, click a and rush lol and that makes it so hard to balance because any noob can do what a pro in AOE4 does LOL
You can’t possibly be serious at this point.
I am dead serious. I am simply laughing so hard at the recent update. Devs are trying not to implement good projectiles that are not homing and trying to balance the game. It will never work because they simply have to look at all the games that are successful. They don’t have homing projectiles… And they are balanced!!!
you are talking about the only glorious rts sc2 game with have homing projectiles
Have you heard of SC2?
Having projectiles that miss like AoE2’s is actually the exception, not the rule.
Mangos bonus damage to range units need to increase to where 1 direct shot will castle age infantry range units in the triple kill zone. Also dodging mango shots should still exist but only as a means to mitigate the incoming damage; infantry units should not be able to completely make mango shots miss with an insignificant amount of micro.
The idea i have is mangonel, if the enemy is not countering it properly should be able to get its worth in wood gold by at least killing 600 resources worth of range units, even if the enemy exhibits god-like micro. Thats only ~8 archers? Or 5 crossbows, this is not asking a lot at all???
So if we made up a scenario and the lord beastyqt was micro’ing 20 castle age archers vs my 2 castle age mangonels, I’d say the mangonels are balanced if beasty’s archers got devastated before he finally sniped them both dead.
1 mangonel to every 8 enemy archer is a great ratio?
Change mangonel bonus damage vs range from +10 per boulder to +17 per boulder. This means any castle range unit inside the .5 tile kill radius will eat 81 siege dmg (3 boulders) or 108 siege dmg (4 boulders). Both numbers will oneshot all generic range units in the respective age with HC types as the exemption. Janissary will need 4 more HP in imperial to meet the exemption. But then again… do janissary need a buff?
Edit
More on the dodge concept. If we want complete dodges to continue being a thing… at least male it be at the cost of dps. Range units should NOT be able to make mangos completely whiff YET maintain their optimal dps??? IMO it should be, you can’t completely dodge a mangonel shot OR you can but only at the cost of moving so much that it cost you a subsequent shot of your own.
You not need any micro, you just need line formation on your archers and you reduce mangonel damage by 50% by just doing that
And with actual micro change between no formation to spread formation when mango shoots, thats 90% damage reduction for mango
Yesterday i had crossbows, 20 knights or more, MAA and 2 mangos, like my army was very varied but mostly armored+crossbow+mango, lost my whole army against mass longbows+mangos
How that works? why? its simple, when my knights and maa enter to the zone 20% of them are already dead, longbow stuns horse dudes and MAA damage its not enought
Reading stats and in the books, armored units should have a huge advantage against longbows but in real gameplay they win
Glorious? I don’t see anyone playing that game even when it is free, SC2 was so simple that people got bore it of after some time, they even removed the cool mothership black hole to please some pros.
Well you know what? That is a Sci-Fi RTS game lol. You cannot compare it with historical RTS game because medieval weapons didnt have any homing projectiles and that is some modern technology that we still not mastered it with pinpoint accuracy.
Yes, exactly, this counter triangel works fine in theory (“on the paper”),
but in practice, it is more complicated, because these units act diferently - cavalry move fast, and archers uses missile attack…
counter triangle would perfectly work, if all 3 units have same speed and attack type