This game needs actual mechanical changes. In age 1 towers/outposts should not be able to shoot arrows if units are garrisoned, they should act like safe heavens for unit to take shelter, arrows slits can can enable troops to shoot from towers in age 2 while garrisoned, and in Age 2 add another tower tech which is costly, called tower guards, which allows towers to shoot arrows without garrisoned troops.
All civs should work like this, simply removing some wood does not automatically remove tower rush.
English villagers garrisoned should be able to shoot arrows as culturally their villagers can shoot arrows, but their arrows must do less damage.
Units like elephants, horses should never be allowed to garrison inside towers, but only in castles.
Pop count of these units also need to be increased like siege taking standard 3 pop, rams 2 pop but needs troops garrisoned inside to move. This allow rams to have a risk of taking away troops from actual battlefield but has increased movement speed. All cav should take 2, elephants should take 3, but a bit lesser cost on gold side.
Siege still doesn’t feel rewarding, siege units should be a reward for reaching later ages as they should act like WMD in middle ages. The current changes are fine, but first step should be adding friendly fire to AOE siege equipment. The players are experts now, they are more accustomed to the game now and they have become advanced users of this game. It’s high time the game added new changes like this.
friendly fire removes a lot of spam, this is well proven in AOE 2 and in AOE 2 siege feels like actual game changer when it rolls out. maybe try experimenting, by slight increase to movement speed of siege when moving near troops.
A software should not just stay in baby mode in it’s entire life, allow advanced users to experience the software at their level, the software should scale for both users. The game already has a lot of stuff catering to new players.
Core mechanical changes will help this game work better, instead of slightly changing some numbers here and there.