I agree that France needs some Nerf, but what is our goal? We need to make every civilization rank Tier S or Tier A. Since then, there will be no other tires?
Many people in the current forum seem to just try to make all civilizations the same, like another AOE2; eliminate the feudal knights, eliminate the early fast attack, and everyone peacefully rise to the castle age and start fighting again, like AOE2?
I don’t want to watch AOE4 become like that. Even if I play Chinese, I always encounter the harassment of early knights and longbowmen, but I take it as a challenge; if I can withstand their rush, I will survive. And become stronger.
Balance does not mean to make all civilizations the same, but to try to allow players to have more choices. The early and weak civilizations will become advantageous in the middle and late stages; the early and powerful civilizations will change in the middle and late stages. If you are too weak, this is the right thing, instead of crushing all civilizations and pour them into a juice machine, and then give everyone the same juice.
This game is still young and I am looking forward to its first update, but I don’t want all civilizations to be ranked S or A. Let them be distributed at all levels. Let those challenging players choose those civilizations that are complex and difficult to control. Once mastered, they will have powerful power; let players who just want to play easily choose simple and intuitive civilizations that are not outstanding in combat effectiveness but stable in strength. We need all levels of civilization, not just S or A levels. This is my little thought.
I don’t think we want to remove the early unit availabilities, just a tuning of those units. They could be slightly weaker, but get the same stats in the Castle Age.
By degree I agree its important civs feel different. I think this adds longevity to the game - because you can spend time becoming a good “French” player and then becoming a good “Mongolian” player etc.
But equally, I do think civs should be relatively balanced. If 70% of people in a tournament (or whatever it was) are picking one out of 8 factions, it suggests something is wrong. Some of that may be player perception - but generally players aren’t a bad judge of power.
As I see it for instance, its very hard to see why you’d want to play Delhi beyond being that special snowflake who could (which I completely relate with). I don’t think its weakness is in being “complex”. Its weakness is in you have very little going for you early - and very little for you late. You have a few spikes of power in early castle and then early Imperial, and you need to push them hard to win. But if you were a good Delhi player - why not just be a “good French player” and likely do even better, as you don’t have to navigate these issues? What is the civ bringing that you can’t get elsewhere?
China is in a similar spot of being kind of weak early. Yes if the game goes the distance into late imperial you can become very strong - but due to that weakness if you were holding the line with China through all that early/mid game, you were probably the better player - in which case you quite possibly would have just won the game with the early power civs.
I absolutely agree. The only way to balance each side is make everyone OP. And it doesn’t cancel your skill as some people think, because you steel need ability to effectivily use bonuses.
It’s also change everything for your opponent, nobody going to attack if know you have something strong and think twice before push.
This sadly happend with Relics previous games, slowly the factions were tuned to be more and more similar. Hopefully this is less likely here as the civs in AOE4 are less assymetric to begin with so its easier to control.
agreed. The game doesnt need to be like AoE2 where all the civs are clones -maybe save for the Huns- where only the bonuses and a few unique units make a difference.
Best civilisation? Who cares? The most fun and interesting? It’s always the mongols for me, but they dont need to be the best, just competitive in multiplayer online. Campaigns are, fortunately, different.
I agree. Moving chivalry to age 3 is already a big deal because that means french can’t just take fights or overcommit to kill one villager, and maybe they could keep their other bonuses.
Hulk does need to be moved to age3 though.
I would much rather fight using normal galleys on the early game as it makes water games a bit more fun imo.
Ideally ever civ has some good matchups(55-60%wr) and some bad matchups(40-55%wr) and tools to outskill any other civ if played right. Currently french is in a class of it’s own with barely any counters and as an enemy you exactly know for what strategy they go. So you know how you should counter them but they are so strong that you can’t do it most of the time. France breaks the rock-paper-scissor system that AoE games tend to have. Ofc this game is not figuered out 100% right now but why does nobody counters french in a tournament if they know that 90% go for france?
Also france is rather easy to play. You can just spam knights and beat people who go full spears.(multiple games in genesis showed this). So we have an easy to play civ that is also the strongest right now by a large margin. What does it do for a civ if you have the better lategame but no way to reach it without losing the game in the first 15 mins?
But you gotta have the tools to get to this “powerful” state. Lets make a civ that auto wins as a bonus when the gametime reaches min 60 but they cant produce vills. Won’t win you any games with that.
Is it fun for you if you wanna play a civ that gets hard countered by the most played civ? So 5-7/10 games you basically lost due to the civ picks on an even footing(and even skill)? Wanna play anything that is bad against france right now is not how you will climb the ladder right now.
I agree with you that not every civ has to be good at any stage and that some civ matchups should have advantages and disadvantages. Also that the game and more complex civs are not really that much figured out right now, however we can clearly see that some civs are just too strong right now and that some balance changes are needed to allow more late-game orientated civs reach their desired state of power.
LOL
u dont understand why France OP.
If u listen to any pro player(which u probably should do), the main issue - heal & eco bonuses.
If u want early rush - Mongols or other civ with eraly agression, not Over Powered unit which are meant to be in Castle Age for other civs, without needs to build a stable. And with the best economy to afford a lot of kts immediately.
I think it would be better to buff the weaker civs. I’m not keen on the constant nerfing that has happened with AoE 2 DE, where some people seem to want every game to be played out as both players using the same standard build order so the “better” player who can execute that one build order slightly better wins. So whenever they play against anything that seems strong against their one build order, they complain it must be nerfed, and one by one, all strategic variations are eliminated from the game. 4 shouldn’t head in that direction.
buf how much, and what about new civs? If u keep “buffing” everything, u wull recieve some weird OverPowered civs.
I need to recognize, when u should buf or nerf, or just “rework” mechanics.
France - should be nerfed.
what “strategic variations” do u have against france?
Just make pikes, u expected that France will do the only kts
Even with English u can play man&&arms (not longbows), with France - only kts.
It’s same as “variation” between English landmarks, no one chose the second option.
So overpowered just killing ur “Variations”.
May be it’s fun in low legend level with no attack for 20 minutes, but in high level players want to choose the most efficient way to win, so kts the only option for france.
You buff the weaker civs enough to make them no longer weaker, not so much that they become overpowered.
So buff the second option. Nerfing everything that is strong just moves everything towards being the same. What an asymmetric civ game should be aiming for is to have things that are strong in different ways.
How much u need to buf second landmark for france?
Instant win? - That’s will be fine, build second landmark and instant win.
I dont see how u can buf, because it’s already pretty cool landmark with trade bufs, but no one ever will pick “trade landmark” if they have free stable.
may be u have “ideas”?
I think the issue is that its a lot harder to sort out buffing everyone rather than cutting the leader down.
I.E. I think the argument is that spears just don’t do a good enough job*. But unless you had a highly tailored buff (i.e. extra damage to feudal-era French knights) you’d start messing up the game with a generic buff to all factions. I feel feudal horsemen are very fragile for instance, so better spears would be a further nail in their coffin.
*I.E. I think if France does immediately go School of Cavalry->Knight Harass, if someone responds with 2 Barracks Spear Spam, the French player should be worried. Not instead be left thinking “okay I’ll lose a straight up A-move fight - but if I can ever get into their villagers I’ll 10% of their economy instantly then just run away. I guess I should swap over to archers now.”
The problem with this is that many civ bonuses are conditional, e.g. you gotta hunt with rus to get a better gathering rate, or you need to build many buildings in order to get to the golden age, or create the prelates instead of vills,invest in scholars for research time,…
You have tradeoffs and you need to do something as a player to get the civ advantages.
Not so much with the french. They are there without any commitment/requirements. So wouldnt it be better instead of buffing others to change some eco-bonuses from french that requires something? it would be in line with the civ design from others. E.g. for each additional towncenter your vill production speed is 10% increased or something like that. This emphasizes you to change your strategy towards strenghts instead of just having them passively.
