Unit composition against this?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

I’ve played a game (2v2v2v2) where I faced a 1v1 with a guy the whole game (my friend was also facing a 1v1 the whole game so couldn’t help me).

I was using abbasid, I boomed as hell, got trade, got 100 villagers, so eco was not a problem, but I kept losing near all the battles against a rus.

The battle scenary was a choke point.

He was going at first knights+horsemen+streltsi+rams+springalds, and I was going pikes+handcannon+mangonel+cannon.

At first I more or less won the battles, and I even destroyed a castle, but then he changed to maa+streltsi+rams+springs and it was impossible to do anything.

My mangonels were not effective since he was destroying them with springalds, I tried countering the springalds with cannons but they simply weren’t enough.

He was massing near 10 rams and just dropping them (OP strategy since the ram buff since they only cost 2 pop and they are tanky as hell).

My pikes and then my maa were getting melted by streltsi, and my handcannons obviously weren’t enough since he was killing my front line faster than my HCs, and mangos weren’t effective…

I faced this tactic more times, and I have a friend who is main rus who states that is simply unstoppable.

In the case you win the battle rams just destroys your base, and if you try to focus the rams then you lose the whole army.

Also I didn’t know which unit composition to throw against this rus comp.

What would you do?

I was full upgrades, plus military wing with +15% health.

But man, 10 rams has near 5K health and units doesn’t kill them fast enough.

2

Aren’t Culverins supposed to give you siege superiority?

If needed try to avoid putting all of your forces at the frontdoor and attempt a backdoor (breaking some wall far from the place you were battling) into the opponent’s economy. If this is not possible then you got a shit map which happens quite often in megarandom

3

It is better to have crossbowmen because it is very likely that they will come to you with heavy units, hand cannons you should produce them when you already have an advantage and want to close the game, just in case the heavy cavalry beats the man-at-arms

4

Yes,Culverins are good against siege units and weak against melee units…

5

Yes, and I made culverins but I feel them not worth against springalds… They are more expensive and slower, so you get theam easily snipped.

I used them also from a lot behind, queueing them to kill the rams, but I couldn’t win a single battle when he switched from cavalry+streltsi to maa+streltsi.

He was just melting my front line faster than me.

And yep, map was a bit tricky, there was no way to get into his eco without passing the choke point.

6

Enemy springalds are also weak against melee units so what is your point? You don’t make pure culverins. Instead you decide to counter springalds with bombards like what the fuck.

7

I had enough eco to mass HCs so I don’t think xbows would fit better in that situation.

I felt like any unit composition was bad. When he was doing cav+streltsi I won, because I was spamming spears while HCs where hitting, and I got some mango shoots into his streltsi, but then he switched to MAA and he massed springalds.

My MAA+HCs was weaker than his MAA+streltsi for obvious reasons, and he was pushing tons of rams.

8

Yes, that is, the culverines are half useless, in AoE 3 at least they serve to destroy ships, I did not try it in AoE 4…

10

Even if you didn’t know culverins> springalds going cannons to counter springalds is absurd. Also culverins have the same pop cost as springalds and 1 culv 1shots a springald but springald need like 4+ to kill a culv. The Rus 0.5 extra range don’t make culverins useless but they do counter bombards even without it + from your description of choke point game etc it seems the Rus went for the stone wall landmark rather than siege which should make his siege less good.

I don’t see the link to AOE3. Springalds are even less good than culverins against non siege.

Next time try them and micro them well to avoid overkilling. Ironically there are people complaining that Culverins are OP and that it is unfair only 3-4 civs (4 with French) can have them.

11

Culverins are powered versions of springalds, they do all springalds do better.

Problem with them I feel, is when massed springalds are better, because they are faster, easier to mass, and less micro intensive.

A single culv can one shoot a spring, so if have three culvs and use them at the same time, you are wasting his potential.

12

How were your cannons easier to mass than culverins? So you prefer countering yourself?

Anyway, when you are at maximum supply and train units they train until 100% progress once you have free population space they come our immediatelty making training time less relevant assuming you got enough production buildings.

Also as Abbasids you have extra production speed so your culverin training time will be 28s and his springalds will have 22.5s training time. Not a big deal

13

Which you should avoid. It might feel like bad micro punishes culverins more than springalds but don’t forget that they have the same population cost so even with average micro 5 culverins will bully 5 springalds any day.

If your culverins aren’t at roughly the same distance of an enemy target then you can use shift rightclicking enemy siege then by the time your second culverin is in range the first enemy spring/mangonel is already destroyed. If the difference in distances are very small don’t that since the attack has a relatively long animation. Anyway be careful if the enemy pulls back his units this would make yours chase them and go out of position.

Lastly I don’t know how your game was like but you might want to consider using keeps in siege plays

14

rarely have issues as Abbasid against this composition, They counter RUS pretty hard nomatter what RUs throws at them.

If you have super strong econ (From the sound of it)

Handcannoneers+CamelRiders+Culverins+Mangonels and toss in a few bombards to break through castles and walls.

Almost nothing counters this.
Streltskies melts from mangonels, Culverins 1 shot kills springalds, Abbasid Handcannoneers are more Tonky than Streltskies, and melts their MAA.
Camels Rider counter anything Cavalry, and provides +2 armor to your Handcannoneers.
CTRL group your culverins and manually controll them to deal with their siege.
Put your armies in Line formation, this provides more DPS for your range units and easier surround for your melee units.
Also less vournarable to Mangonels.

If your Econ is strapped:
Maa+Crossbow+Camel Archers+4xMangonels+2xCulverins

MAA+Crossbow is a solid combination. Abbasid MAA is stronger than Rus MAA (Due to higher HP pool and +2 extra armor from camel).
Crossbows Melts anything knights.
Camel Archers, makes the enemie cav weak and easy to deal with with your MAA and prevents your crossbow from melting from Horsemen.

Given a window of oppertunity, break through with your Camel-Archers to the enemie backline and raid their econ. This forces them to pay more attention to their backline, making them slip up in the frontline fighting.

Also as Abbasid, you can run a pretty thin Econ-pop at Max-Imperial+age (if you have all wings and their upgrades).

55 Traders trading gold+wood + 35 Vills on food With all upgrades and golden age III, should suffice, leaving you at a 110 Pop cap for military units.
And you are free to spam as many handcannoneers and siege on your whim.

If you loose your culverin from badluck or suprise raid, thats not a problem. just use your infantry to make a few emergency springalds and focus the mangonels.

15

If you already established siege superiority which you should (rams don t cost much population but they are still costing military pop) snipe the rams with anti siege while kiting befire going full blown out battle . If you have cavalry you can hit and run(dodge mango shots) when killimg rams or just kill them with siege. 10 rams shouldn’t be a problem if you force fights away from your base/production. If you got caught off guard and they surprised you that is a totally different subject.

If somehow the opponent feels overwhelming while not outmicroing you it is possible that they have a larger military pop (can easily happen in 1v1 unless you are a top level player and much easier in tesm games, ffa etc) in this scenario depending on the situation you might want to delete villagers (on a side note since you are abbasid you have better eco even when you both have same eco population and if you accumulated rss while he had less vills/traders your stocks of rss are normally higher than his).

He has a large army that he cannot reproduce on desire so if your trades with a smaller army were very inefficient (i.e he hardly lost units) delete villagers then trade armies he will have a hard time remaking it if not immediately after a few trades. Then based on how things go you will know when you can remake villagers if needed (or make more traders instead if you have secured a long trading route)

Back to culverins, if you mess up your micro it is fine there is always a first time. Keep practicing. (Chinese are very common in Nomad megarandom if you like that mode and want to practice anti-siege micro)

16

When I said cannons I meant culverins (not bombards), sorry, I’m going to edit.

I will answer to the rest later, ty for the tips by the way.

17

Pretty sure everyone would assume bombards especially since the French bombards are called cannons.

18

Yes, it’s quite a topic…

Yes, those names confuse you…

19

I had forgot it was a teams game so probably his ally made stone walls for him right?

20

Nope, he hadn’t stone walls (at least in the front). I got down a castle, several towers, and a TC, but he was pushing me because my base was more exposed than him, so if I tried to enter his base he would just leave my troops and go to my base, so I got stucked in this pass forever until I started to lose the fights, then entered my base.

By the way he didn’t win also, because someone of the other players did a wonder and this dude won’t stop attacking despite the wonder team was just chilling.

But I felt like his composition was way better than mine. I can try share the rep of the game if you are curious.

@Kameho3743 I don’t usually use camels to support my infantry to be honest, I usually don’t face problems using just spears+HC and some siege. Abbasid spears are so good since they have a lot of HP and more attack range.

21

Abbasid spears are indeed good, But they don’t have a good sustain in the field. You want tanky units that can soak the damage away from your handcannoneers/ranged units.
also the +2 armor for all your infantry and -25% damage to all enemie cavalry is quite significant.

In a 1v1 battle, this might not seem to much, but in a battle of scales and when you have multiple units, the much greater the impact.

A fully upgraded knight does 32 damage.

With full armor upgrades + Camel support bonus armor and the debuff that it provides, a knight only does 19 damage. Thats a whopping 41% damage reduction on your units!

Which means your units die slower, dishes out more damage, and makes you fight far more cost-efficient than the opponent.

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