I’m still very new, so obviously take whatever I say with a shovel of salt.
That said, Turks 1v1 feel predictable, completely reliant on gold and extremely susceptible to raiding in the feudal/early castle age.
I understand part of what makes the Turks unique is their lack of trash, but frankly it doesn’t feel justified considering how linear their playstyle already is. Free light cav upgrades are great, however Turks are forced to over rely on light cav as meat shields even when it makes no sense to. For example, facing an Indian player who can field elephants in the mid game, before you even have the hussar upgrade.
I appreciate wanting to make each faction feel more unique, and Turks are certainly one of the most unique factions imo. That said, short of a second unique unit, I cannot see the Turks as a successful 1v1 faction without access to at least pikemen.
Perhaps they could lose one or two of their infantry blacksmith upgrades but gain pikes? This seems like the best solution to me, but of course I defer to the wisdom of players better than me, which is pretty much everyone.
So what are your guys opinions on Turks 1v1? Am I exaggerating or are they truly as linear (light cav > jans/hc > bbc > camels maybe), and thus as easy to counter as I claim? Finally I’ll say that some factions should be better 1v1 or in team games, I do not expect the Turks winrate 1v1 to be that of the Franks, but right now the disparity is a little too large for my liking.
Yea they pretty much have no late game to speak of, which I guess kind of makes sense historically as they declined later but their decline was way after the timeline of this game anyway. And also makes no sense because in reality armies became more reliant on gunpowder later in history but in age of empires you get a gunpowder boost in castle/early imp ages and because of game mechanics that drops off to trash war with skirmishers and pikes. They sort of fixed this issue in AOE3 with the introduction of infinite gold supplies, which has its own problems of being a bit too easy as well, but they need to really find some sort of middle ground and hopefully apply it in AOE4 where there are more ways to make gold in the later stages of the game but not have it as easy as basically having free endless gold as in AOE3. I am not sure what it could be but some sort of trade mechanism where you can “trade” with your own markets or something that way you still need control of the map at least to be able to have gold income. This might not be a solution to the specific issue you raise but this is the solution we need in general going forward with this franchise.
Turks are really a fast Imp civ, and have one of the strongest Imperial game plans.
Being weak early on (which they really are not, since the Gold gather bonus helps Archers in Feudal, and Knights or Cavalry Archers in Castle), is part of what justifies their Imperial Age strength.
I don’t see too many pros playing Turks 1vs1 aside from a fast imperial game play on Arena every once in a while. The gold mining bonus is not enough to sustain them through Feudal and Castle ages. Yes, I totally agree they’re very good Imperial, but Feudal they’re garbage IMO. Even Castle age they’re weak with no Elite Skirm or Pike upgrade.
I would consider maybe having them start with more resources, or some type of small eco bonus that would help get their beginning game going faster. Free loom and start with more gold seems like a good idea since this civ is gold intensive.
Turks deserves to get Elite Skirmisher and I’m still fine having Spearman access only for Turks. Turks really doesn’t shine when comes to Archer civs. They have no counter to them. You are stuck with Mangonels which barely scratches Arbalest. What devs can do is to make Berbers only Genitour buff further(needs to get a bit more cheap like 50f, 30w. Maintaining similar total cost to Hussar) like doing more damage output, having Skirmisher like range. But take away Elite Skirmisher from them only. To improve Cavalry counter Turks can get access to Imperial Camel. Downside will be it won’t be as strong as Indians.