Wall and Siege Mechanics - Did anyone even use siege towers?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

The devs showed off very impressive and dramatic wall and siege mechanics in some of the earlier videos. I don’t recall seeing these mechanics during PvP and rarely in PvE during the beta.

During the beta, did anyone use siege towers and/or even see siege towers being used? I did see walls being used, but usually the traditional AoE2/3 manner. I did not see anyone station units on these walls, nor did I see any siege towers. Usually, to break through a wall, I saw people use a bombard or mangonel to punch a hole through the wall, and push through.

I have so many questions, b/c I think the new wall mechanics was one addition that was quite different from previous Age games. I know Ensemble tried to add wall mechanics in Age3, but ultimately pulled the wall mechanics.

Questions like:

What happens when you “capture” the wall?
How do you get down on the other side?
What prevents the defensive player from deleting the wall and killing your units? (Can you even delete walls after you build them?)
Is Siege Towering easier than just punching a hole in the wall?
What exactly is the bonus for units on the wall?
How does the wall bonus for units compare with elevation bonus? (Depending on the person posting, there may or may not be any elevation bonus).
Does it matter which direction the gates are facing?

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  • The owner is always the player that built it.
  • You would get down from the same way as the owner. Towers have a way down opposite the side they are on, gates allow passage on the back side of them, and partially destroyed walls can be walked up/down.
  • You are actually forbidden from deleting walls if there are enemies within a certain range of them.
  • Walls are pretty strong, so getting on top can be more decisive. Getting your own ranged units or melee units to push them away can mean pushing through the wall easily.
  • There’s a defensive bonus (50%?) to units on the wall. There could be more but I can’t remember. It gave a buff icon on the units on the wall that showed the tooltip info.
  • I don’t know the specifics for elevation bonuses.
  • I believe so. It’s harder to determine as the owner, since you can walk through it freely, but I believe the gates have stairs onto the wall from the back, that allows passage for enemies on and off the walls. I could just be completely off about enemies using gates.
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6

For now, siege towers are useless. Same as units on walls. Sad :frowning:
I was hoping that AoE4 will be more siege game, but it turned out as usual, that walls are only for quick block.

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At present, the age of this game is still very young, and everyone will subconsciously view and use the city wall in the way of AOE2; as time gets longer, there may be more new ways of using the city wall, let us wait and see.

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8

Archers on walls are meh because they are generally immobile but for defending wonders and sacred sites they are great.

Siege towers are very niche but I did find out the putting 8 landskenets in a siege tower is a very strong counter to wall archers. When ungarison them they will pretty much oneshot the troops you unload them on top of.

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I’m hoping wall and siege mechanics get some more use as the game progresses. I haven’t really seen anyone use them. Casted games that do use walls end up getting a hole punched through, and that’s it. Being able to capture an enemy wall and building your own gate to make it your own might entice players to test out the siege mechanics.

10

Everything worked well in my experience EXCEPT that a siege tower cannot be ''assigned" to a wall, and be used like a ladder… like you can only load up 8 units at a time then struggle to tell the siege tower to target a wall cause the hit boxes are clunky and the feedback a little trash for it tbh.

So it drops off its 8 units, and then to send more units to the wall you have to load it up again, and then re-task it to the wall… I would of liked to just task units to the siege tower and they go up in small droves.

Once you have the wall you can get down the other side at a gate. Unfortunately, taking a wall seems less useful than just knocking it down.

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11

Walls are fine. Defender who puts units on top of them is very strong. But usually, people build up their bombards so walls just fall fast.